Now Mr. Boomer Johnson
was a gettin’ old in spots,
But you don’t expect a bad man
to go wrastlin’ pans and pots;
But he’d done his share of killin’
and his draw was getting’ slow,
So he quits a-punchin’cattle
And he takes to punchin’ dough.
That’s the first verse of a funny poem by Henry Herbert Knibbs. Apparently, Mr. Johnson’s personality didn’t change with his shift in careers. When one of the fellows in camp complained of stomach trouble and refused a donut, Boomer strung some on the barrel of his gun, poked it in the man’s gizzard and said, “You’re takin’ one.”
The cowboy should have known better. Rule number one in cow camp is never to get on the bad side of the cook. My first husband learned this early on, when he mentioned to his spouse that she seemed to serve a particular dish a bit too often. He ended up wearing supper, and the marriage went south from there. It wasn’t that he disliked that food, but simply was tired of it. That’s the version I heard; I never interviewed his ex, so her story might have been different. In our thirty-two years of marriage, I sometimes did make dried beef gravy on toast for supper, but I always asked Bob ahead of time, if he was up for it.
I have a strong strain of Scotch in me to begin with, and was raised with parents who frequently quoted the mantra about starving children in China when I didn’t clean my plate. When I cooked for a crew of hay waddies, I always told them up front that they were welcome to stay for Saturday night supper but it was going to be stew or leftovers. If they had a problem with that they might as well head for town early. At Saturday noon dinner, I asked who was staying so as to get a head count for supper. The closest my kids’ dad ever came to complaining about food was to say he didn’t mind leftovers but sometimes couldn’t remember when we had the meal.
I suppose the reason the Boomer Johnson poem is my latest ear worm has to do with the fact that July is my birth month and I am also gettin’ old in spots. Furthermore, the spots are getting more numerous. There are some things I can’t do anymore, and others that I won’t do. Maybe I’m getting crotchety, like Boomer.
I still use up the leftovers and Bruce says he’s ok with that, but if I leave something in the fridge for his use when I am going to be away it’s almost always still there on my return. Neither of us mentions it, but he’ll probably get that for the next meal.
Sometimes it takes years for things to dawn on me. Looking back, Bob probably was saying the same thing he said to his first wife, when he wondered when we had the real meal. One of the benefits of age is learning when to laugh something off. I must have learned that early because I never threw any food at him.
Meet me here next week and meanwhile, do you best. Somebody might like it.