Windy gives his version of history

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Slim Ran­dles

When Windy walked into the Mule Barn dur­ing that cold snap last week, we knew he was get­ting fran­tic for an audi­ence. He has a hard time get­ting us to lis­ten to his ver­sion of his­tory, his notions of what was going on now, and his prog­nos­ti­ca­tions of the future of mankind.

But it was cold, and sit­ting out on the bench and ambush­ing lis­ten­ers didn’t work too well right now for Windy Wil­son, so here he came. We gave each other the wink and dragged out a chair for him.

What d’you know, Windy? Cold enough for ya?”

Cold? You think this is cold? Why, one time up on the high line, I was dis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing fire­wood for the crew on the rail­road, and it come over me, then and there …”

We weren’t talk­ing about the cold this morn­ing, Windy,” said Doc. “We were dis­cussing the future of microbes.”

Microbes? Ain’t they like choir robes? Why, this one time I was singing bar­ley­tone in the Pres­by­too­lian church, and there was this guy named Mike all right, and …”

Now Doc,” said Steve, twitch­ing his wal­rus mus­tache, “Don’t you remem­ber? We’d fin­ished with the microbes and went sail­ing on into Feb­ru­ary. Sorry, Windy, Doc didn’t mean to dis­rup­ti­cate your dis­sem­i­na­tion of events, but he’d just for­got. It was February.”

Feb­ru­ary? You mean like Leap Year kinda Feb­ru­ary para­pher­nal­ium where you only get olden on one day every four years? That kinda February?”

Dud and Herb were try­ing hard not to laugh.

No, Alphonse,” Doc said. He some­times got for­mal with our friend. “We were dis­cussing whether or not to leave out the first r in Feb­ru­ary. No one uses it …”

But just because some­thing isn’t used,” Windy said, wav­ing his empty cof­fee cup at Mavis, “doesn’t mean we have to com­pletely immo­lify it, does it? If we occa­sion­ally sloop over the top of a let­ter, that doesn’t brag­gan­dize it. That doesn’t cod­ify its lesser­ness, does it?”

So you’re say­ing we should keep the first r in Feb­ru­ary, is that it?” asked Steve.

Abso­tively,” said Windy.

OK, now,” Doc said, “who will stand up for the h in school?”

Some peo­ple think we’re just hav­ing cof­fee each morn­ing there in the truck stop.

Brought to you by The Back­pocket Guide to Hunt­ing Elk, an e-book. Read a sam­ple at www.slimrandles.com.

Posted by kpotts on Feb 18 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.