(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell)
(WESTERN THEME)
SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS....brought to you by Old Leather Butt Bath Salts.....after a long day in the saddle, you want to soak in a hot bath for an hour --- but you don't want to smell like camellias....so use Old Leather Butt, the bath salt that smells like horses ....and now here's today's story....
(HORSE WHINNIES AND HOOVES, OUTDOOR AMBIENCE)
TR: Nother couple miles we should be in sight of Deadly Gulch.
GK: Yep.
TR: Can't wait to get my rear end planted on a barstool and have me a cold brew and get a whiff of that Channel No. 5 as one of them painted dance hall gals comes and runs her fingers through my hair. Oh boy.
GK: Last time we were in Deadly Gulch you fell in love with one of them dance-hall gals and you kept dancing unaware that her meter was running and we wound up paying her a hundred bucks for a night of pointless waltzing around in circles.
TR: Lefty, nothing a man does with a woman is ever pointless, pardner.
GK: Well, it wasn't worth a hundred bucks.
TR: To me it was.
GK: Well, it was my hundred dollars.
TR: It was a transforming experience, that night.
GK: Ha.
TR: When she put her hand on my shoulder, I felt I was no longer a mangy filthy saddle bum with no career skills other than cattle driving, I felt I was Charles Boyer.
GK: Who is Charles Boyer?
TR: I have no idea but I felt like him.
GK: Fine. Dance all you like. Just don't ask me to finance it.
TR: You ain't coming over to the saloon with me?
GK: No, I'm gonna stay with the cattle and get some writing done. TR: What kind of writing?
GK: Song writing.
TR: I was afraid of that. Lefty, I don't know how to break the news to you, but the American people need another singer songwriter like they need a longer hockey season.
GK: Hmmph.
TR: I just hate to see you waste the best years of your life writing songs that nobody is ever going to care about.
GK: These are the best years of my life?
TR: Well----
GK: The best years of my life will be when I get my first hit, Dusty, and the company sends me that check and buy me a house on a hill in California, a house with a kitchen as big as a saloon and I'll sit up there beside my swimming pool and look out at the Pacific. That's all I want after all these years on the dusty god-forsaken plains. Just to look at water.
(FIRST MUSIC TAPE SEG.)
TR: What's that?
GK: What's what?
TR: You listening to music or is that something to keep away deer flies?
GK: Nevermind.
TR: Would you mind turning it off?
GK: Not bothering you, am I?
TR: You're making the cattle edgy.
GK: I don't notice em getting edgy.
TR: Okay, you're making me edgy. Shut it off! I said, Shut it off! (FIRST MUSIC TAPE STOP)
GK: Okay. Okay. Don't get your undies in a bunch.
TR: I hate that music.
GK: You hate a lot of things.
TR: I hate that music.
GK: Well, a lot of people don't, and that's why the people making that music are living in houses on the tops of hills in California and you and I are slogging through the valley of the shadow of death!
TR: You planing to write songs like that?
GK: If I could I would.
TR: Lefty, those songs are not written by old men with bad breath and nose hair. Those are written by little girls with rhinestones in their belly buttons.
GK: Leave me alone.
TR: (SECOND MUSIC TAPE START) O my gosh.
GK: Shut up. I'm listening.
TR: You can't find anything better than this?
GK: This is music that America has taken to its bosom.
TR: No wonder America's bosom hurts.
GK: I wasn't asking your opinion.
TR: It's a free country.
GK: Don't bother me.
TR: Don't bother me---- turn that thing off.
GK: It's a free country.
TR: Turn it off. What if some other cowboys should hear this? They'll think it's a Girl Scout troupe coming for a picnic. Turn it off.
GK: (SECOND TAPE STOPS) Okay. Okay. Have it your way. But when I'm living in that big house looking out across the Pacific and you come to the gate and I say into the Intercom, Who is it? and you say, Dusty, I may just say, "Dusty Who?"
(PAUSE, TWO BEATS)
TR: I see Deadly Gulch up yonder --- what you say we head the herd over here by the river? (WHOOPS, CATTLE. AND TIME TRANSITION CHORDS) (FIRE, SPOON STIRRING POT) (FOOTSTEPS. TR HAWK AND SPIT)
GK: Wish you wouldn't do that right near where I'm making m' chili and beans.
TR: Your chili could use some phlegm. Tell me. How do I look?
GK: You look like a man any woman would do her best not to get caught alone with, that's what.
TR: What do you think of my new cologne? It's called ---- Fascination.
GK: I don't think it's gonna be enough.
TR: If I should come back to the campsite along about two or three with a friend, I trust you will turn your back and continue sleeping and not come over and join the conversation.
GK: Whatever. (THIRD MUSIC TAPE STARTS)
TR: And don't play your stupid music either.
GK: Go to town. Go have your fun.
TR: Turn it off. I can't stand it.
GK: It's my tape player, I'll play what I want.
TR: I said shut it off. I can't stand it.
GK: It's hit music, I'm studying it.
TR: That is the absolute worst--- (GUNSHOT. CRUNCH. THIRD TAPE STOPS.) There. Peace and quiet. Thanks to Mr. Colt, America's first music critic.
GK: You owe me for a boombox, pardner.
TR: Put it on my tab.
GK: You hurt my feelings, Dusty.
TR: Oh, come on----
GK: You do. You hurt my feelings. You don't care if I write a hit song or not. You don't want anything good for me.
TR: Oh, come on--- I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.
GK: I get so discouraged sometimes, I could just lay down and cry. Thank goodness for my old guitar. (STRUMS, OUT OF TUNE. HE STARTS TO TUNE)
TR: Oh boy....
GK: I swear, I don't know where I'd be without old Louise here.
TR: I thought her name was Lucille...
GK: Lucille was the one you stepped on and broke off the neck. Myrtle was the one you accidentally dropped in the river. Evelyn was the one you left sitting beside the campfire. This here is Louise.
TR: You sure know how to make a man feel guilty, don't you. I was on my way to a romantic tete-a-tete and now I suppose I gotta sit here and bond with you.
GK: Don't do anything you don't want to do, Dusty!
TR: Oh, go ahead, and play me your latest song.
GK: No, no. Don't feel obligated....
TR: Go ahead and play it. I want to hear it.
GK: No, no. You just go on and have yourself a good time. Don't mind me.
TR: Play your song, Lefty.
GK: Okay.
TR: Is this gonna be rock n roll?
GK: No, not exactly. (STRUMS)
You're the zip in my zipper,
You're the lace in my shoe.
You will always be my necessity, I'd be lost without you.When men ride hosses,
And they get nauseous,
They love their sauces,
And you're my Worcestershire, dear.You're the tines on my pitchfork,
You're the blade on my plow,
You will always be my necessity, I'd be lost without thou.I've got to say, dear,
I've lost my way, dear,
I don't need an -ism,
Need a trail and you're my Chisholm.You're the pegs on my guitar
You're the lacquer and glue, You will always be my necessity, I'd be lost without you.
TR: Spare me the yodel, Lefty.
GK: Yodeladiyodeladi---
TR: That was nice, but I must say, there's something rather familiar about that song.
GK: Good songs have that effect, they make you feel you've heard them before.
TR: Well, I'm off to the saloon. Wish me luck. Sure you don't want to come.
GK: You go ahead, pardner. I'm going to stay here and write. (THEME)
SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS......brought to you by Old Leather Butt beauty products for trail blazers. They don't smell like camellias, they smell like real life. (MUSIC OUT)
(c) 2000 by Garrison Keillor