APHC: Saturday, May 5, 2001

The Lives of the Cowboys
Saturday, May 5, 2001
Listen

(GK: Garrison Keillor, TR: Tim Russell, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith)

(WESTERN THEME)

SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS....brought to you by Trailblazer Table Napkins and Centerpieces...even though you're out on the trail with five hundred head of longhorns, you can still enjoy festive centerpieces and matching napkins from Trailblazer….Trailblazer napkins really soak up the grease (SMOOSH OF GREASE)....and you can use em to store your tobacco in while you eat (HAWK, BIG SPIT) ---- and now, here's Dusty & Lefty and today's exciting cowboy adventure.....

(OUTDOOR AMBIANCE, DISTANT CATTLE. CAMPFIRE AT EVENING. HORSES NEARBY)

GK: You smell what I smell, Dusty?

TR: No, I guess not. They say you can't smell your own.

GK: Talking about green grass, Dusty. Spring is here. The world awakens from winter. Death and resurrection and so forth. Person of artistic temperament, like myself, you feel the life force rising up within you.

TR: Life force, that's what you call it, huh? Well….they say you can't smell your own.

GK: It's a time when the artist yearns to be free and to shuffle off the past like dead skin and to find a truer and purer expression of himself in the form of love….

TR: (TWO BEATS) Another week or two and it'll be time to take our baths. (PAUSE) I was thinking about checking into a hotel when we get to Laramie. (PAUSE) Eat a couple cans of beans and have myself a bubble bath. (PAUSE) Maybe put some jasmine on the beans. Make the life force smell better.

GK: I miss being in town. Enjoying conversation with people. Real conversation. With people who care about poetry and beauty and language----

TR: I feel some bubbles coming on right now.

GK: Soon as we hit Laramie, I'm going to head on over to the library and see if they don't have a literary society where I could go and find like-minded persons to talk about ideas and feelings with.

TR: Soon as I get to Laramie, I'm gonna get hammered on beer.

GK: Dusty, Dusty, Dusty. Don't you want any culture in your life?

TR: Okay. I'll get hammered on imported beer.

GK: I mean, the life of ideas and art. The life of cultured people.

TR: Cultured!! Ha! (BELCH) I thought we become cowboys to get away from all that. So we wouldn't have to sit around with women who only want to talk about day care.

GK: No sir, I became a cowboy on account of a broken heart.

TR: You go to a saloon and get yourself in an amiable mood and you saunter over and talk to one of the dance-hall gals and all they want to talk about is their kids' reading skills.

GK: I lost the love of a woman whom I can never forget. The beloved Annabel. Isn't a day I don't think of her. A schoolteacher. We used to go out to a nice restaurant and sit and have an imperative and some hors dovries and converse.

TR: What's an imperative?

GK: It's a drink you have before dinner. She had a beautiful home. Dining room table with a lace tablecloth and chandelier. Bedroom ---- with a little table beside the bed. Lamp on it. A book. You'd lie in bed and read. I loved that. I miss that out on the trail.

TR: What'd you read?

GK: I don't know. I fell asleep before I could find out. She was a beauty.

TR: So what happened between you and her?

GK: Well, let me tell you about it. (SOUR CHORD) ---

TR: What are you doing?

GK: Tuning up my old guitar, Dusty.

TR: Couldn't you just tell me, Lefty? Do you have to sing it?

GK: You know what they say: "Anything that's too stupid to be said can always be sung." (TUNING)

TR: Didja ever think that your lonesomeness might be due to people not liking your singing? Huh?

GK: (MORE TUNING)

Once I lived in Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
With a woman who wore red combs in her hair
She once was a true love of mine.

She made me a lovely cambric shirt.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
And then she left to go to work.
She asked me to clean the house, I said, Fine.

TR: I think I've heard this story before. The housecleaning story.

I sat down and wrote her a poem
Parsley, thyme, rosemary, and sage.
I was too busy to clean up the home,
Putting my feelings down on the page.

It was afternoon when I finished the ode
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and cumin.
And I took a look at our filthy abode.
I said, Someone's in trouble and I am that someone."

TR: It was pretty bad, huh?

The food in the fridge had all decomposed
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and mint
Fungus was growing on the bed clothes
There was mildew and grease and corrosion and lint.

Everything messy and filthy and raggedy
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and chervil
I could see I was now in a terrible tragedy
Like Moby Dick by Herman Mervil.

TR: So she asked you to clean the house and you didn't get around to it? What's the big deal?

GK: I got so busy writing her the poem I didn't notice what time it was.

TR: Women have impossible standards sometimes.

I met her at five when she came up the walk,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and curry.
I said, "Let's go out for dinner and talk,
O my true love." She said, "What's the hurry?"

She went in the house and it didn't take long
Parsley, sage, rosemary, Dijon,
She threw my guitar and my love song
And my clothes and my cowboy boots out on the lawn.

TR: I take it Annabel was out of sorts, huh?

She said, "I ask you to dust and mop and vacuum
Parsley, sage, rosemary, cayenne.
And pick up the piles of junk in your room
Go away and don't darken my towels again.

I begged her, I knelt down there in the avenue
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and salt
I cried out, "My darling, I can't imagine not havin you
And my tears they sizzled on the burning asphalt.

Oh the chilly winds blew and the hard rain fell
Parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano.
Still thinking about my dear Annabel
Will I ever find someone like her, I reckon no.

(YODEL)

(DISTANT HORSES' HOOVES, APPROACHING)

TR: Oh oh, your yodel has upset the neighbors, looks like---- (HORSE ARRIVING, WHINNYING. SS CALMS HIM. WHINNY.) ---- My, my, my, who have we here? (FOOTSTEPS APPROACH)

SS: Howdy, stranger. I was just riding past and I heard a cry for help--- anyone here in need of assistance?

TR: Depends on what assistance you're offering.

SS: Well, I'm the county librarian. Kitty Corner's the name. Any books you need on health care, personal hygiene-----

GK: Kitty Corner? Are you the Kitty Corner? The poetess? The author of White Tombs and Topaz Mountains? Author of The Impassioned Heart? The Libidinous Bride?

SS: Sounds like you're pretty familiar with my work, mister----

GK: Familiar with it? I know half of your poems by heart. "O little thrush thy vocal art /Proclaims the passions newly born/The yearnings of thy tiny heart /Upon the dawning of the morn"….I love that poem. It's one of my favorites.

SS: Thanks. And what's your name, big guy?

TR: Me? I'm Dusty.

SS: Dusty, huh. You sorta remind me of a fella I was sweet on once. A fella by the name of….Duke.

GK: My name's Lefty.

SS: Pleased t'meetcha, I'm sure. Yeah, this Duke---- You look a lot like him. Same big shoulders, big hands…..same strong chin…..my, he sure made my heart pound.

TR: Duke was his name, huh?

SS: Duke. He and I rode together for a few years. Then one morning I woke up and he was gone.

GK: Was this the gentleman you wrote about in "The Impassioned Heart"?

SS: No. He wasn't.

GK: Oh----

SS: Yeah, something about your steely gaze reminds me of him. That manly way you have of looking straight at a woman. --- I was crazy about him. Wild about him.

GK: He wasn't the man you described as "All that I ever was or e'er could be/All of the longings of my heart and flesh/The ardors of my very heart descend on thee/ Come, my love, and let our gearwheels mesh."

SS: No, that was somebody else. ---- He even sat like you're sitting now, his head tilted a little to the side, just like yours.

TR: I always tilt my head like this when I feel a belch coming on. (BIG BELCH). Whoa. That was a whopper. Think I mighta sprained my neck on that one.

SS: Maybe I could help.

TR: How?

SS: Give you a neck massage.

TR: Sure. Whatever. (FOOTSTEPS, AS SHE MOVES TO HIM)

SS: Tell me if it's too hard.

TR: Okay. (HE STARTS SIGHING AND MOANING WITH PLEASURE)

GK: This Duke, I believe you wrote about him in "The Ransomed Morn" ---- I remember, it went "O dear companion, My Other Self, My Sun/Extend thy arms in sweet embrace/My Apollo and my sweet Endymion/O let me feel thy breath upon my face." ----

SS: What?

GK: I say, I believe you wrote about him in "The Ransomed Morn" ----

SS: Who? Duke? Yeah.

GK: That's one of my favorite poems. That whole water/desert/death/rebirth motif that you had goin there.

SS: The what?

GK: The water/desert/death/rebirth motif. I loved the way you worked that in--- the metaphor of the cactus flower and the water hole ---- the skulls of cattle ---- the vultures in the tree by the salt lick---- loved all that….

SS: Oh. Yeah. Thanks. (TR SIGHING, MOANING) --- Unbutton your shirt and I'll work on your shoulders.

TR: You're driving me crazy and you know it----

SS: I love that about big men----- they're so easy if you know how to push their button----

GK: I'm a poet myself. Write songs mainly. But I write some poems. Lyrical poems. Love poems. Poems about loneliness and solitude, too. I do both. Would you like me to sing you one?

SS: Sing what?

GK: Sing you one of my lyrics?

SS: I don't care.

GK: You prefer one of the love poems or one of the solitude poems?

SS: I don't care. Either one.

GK: Okay, I'll sing you a love poem. (STRUM)

SS: Why not sing one of the solitude ones?

GK: You prefer a solitude one?

SS: Yeah.

GK: You'd rather I sing a solitude poem than one about love?

SS: Yeah. I think that'd be better.

GK: Okay. (STRUMS)

My heart is sad and I feel wretched
Longing for the one I love
Love's a virus and you catch it
And that is all you can think of.

TR: Oh gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh gosh.

So bury me beneath the cactus,
Underneath the blazing sand ,
Place two Bibles on my eyeballs,
Put my pistol in my hand.

(THEME)

TR: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS......brought to you by La Casa Grande Brand Placemats for the Trail. Don't set your grub down in the dirt --- use one of these handsome place mats from La Casa Grande. They come in six different patterns: Famous Geysers, Game Fish, Igneous Rocks, Hunting Dogs, Noted Authors, or Miss Gwendolyn Savage of Las Vegas, Nevada. (WHINNY) (MUSIC OUT)