I like cowboys, cowboys like Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Stompin' Tom Connors. I like a cowboy's cowboy attitude. Getting out in the country for the weekend reminded me of that. Not that Canada has many full-time cowboys. What we do have is a lot of people with a hand in cowboying. Most times, they do not give a shit about anything but their next drink, their next toke, their next line and their next fuck. Cowboy Canada is alive and well.
What I do not like is when the cowboy attitude gets expressed in industry. You see it all the time. You see the cowboy attitude pumping right now in the waters off America's south coast: toxic gas and crude oil. There are a few cowboys stomping on their hats over that chaos because it looks like safety, a value of comparable worth to your next drink, toke, snort, fuck, was compromised on the fatal rig.
And the boys who died on that rig are not heros, as some hero-hungry Americans would have it, they are just dead, that is all.
3 comments:
Sad but true Beer. Sad but true.
On another note of sadness, this time for things lost here's a little story. Once upon a time I was heading down to Shaunavon Saskatchewan for no good reason. On the boneshaker of course. The southwest corner of Saskatchewan is that province's excuse for cattle country. I actually (shudder) worked there for a little while.
We stopped at Gull Lake (no gulls, no lake) on #1 for the connecting bus, and I hooked up with a Newfie heading that way to become a cowboy. We, of course, retired to the bar and missed the connecting bus. At the beginning of the night I understood about 1/3rd of what he was saying (HEAVY ACCENT). The more we drank the more sense he made. Next morning I crawled out of the bush where I had been sleeping to find out that I had bedded down in the windbreak around the local cemetary.
No sign of the Newfie whatsoever, and no sign of him when I finally got to Shaunavon. To this day, however, I am haunted by the strains of a cowboy song..
"yippie a yay cod fish
yippie a yay cod fish"
Do Newfies still dream of being cowboys today ?
Well. Sad to see this one cowboy finally bit the dust.
I was spread out on the fold-down sofa when I caught the news. Straight after an update on the BP oil spill.
I am glad I am no gunslinger. Retired or not. In the old west cowboys keeled over from lead poisoning or infection before explosive calorific diet and lack of exercise set in.
I reckon Newfies do still dream of becoming cowboys. How else can you explain the stampede of Newfies to Alberta? If most of our strange talking Canadian cowboy dreamer brothers were not afraid of crossing the Rockies they would be clubbing baby seals and setting up oil rigs off our western shores.
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