Global Barbecue

This here’s Stretch Coyote talkin’ at ya.

Feelin’ pretty bad for the folks back home what needs some gal dern rain pretty gal dern soon—gal dern it!

I got an uncle livin’ back at the old homestead what’s let his geraniums die just so his old hound dog Buster Brown can have a bowl of fresh water every day. He told me “global warming” is way too tame a description of what's french-fried his farm. He said this here heat wave seems more like a global barbecue.

Now I ain’t one to shy away from a little hot weather now and then, but my cousins here tell it’s not exactly the hot weather that bothers ‘em, it’s that whole end-of-the-world fiery apocalypse kind of feelin’ that is deeply unsettlin’. It’s the kinda thing that makes you think about all the bad stuff you’ve ever done, and all the bad stuff your family has ever done, and all the bad stuff your ancestors ever done all the way back to the Alamo and wonder if it’s all just piled up so high that God figures he might as well torch the whole damn state and start over.

But I just can’t see it, Bible-wise. I mean, shoot, if God was a gonna burn down a place just to punish sin, you might reckon he’d start with Lost Wages Nevada.

So I suppose this time of the scorched earth is more akin to the story of Job, in that my kin are bein’ tested to see just how much they will take before they crack. Well, some of the more sophisticated big city folks may make fun of Texans, but if I know my folks back home, and I do know my folks back home, I do, they may dry up, but they ain’t gonna blow away. They’ll do what has to be done, as long as it takes, until at last the rain finally comes and floods their basements.

It’s always been kinda feast or famine back in my home town. I know they’ll make the best of it and pull through in the end. That’s what my kin always does. That’s what my kin will always do. Rain or shine.


~ Stretch Illustration by John Sherffius
~ © All Rights Reserved

My Spittin' Cat

This here's Stretch Coyote talkin' at ya.

Let me tell you about this here cat of mine I call Custer. He’s the darndest spittin’ cat you’ll ever see. When I come home after a long, hard day of lawn care, I just give Custer a few Apache war whoops and I’ll be an unsliced loaf of bread if that darned cat don’t rear up and spit clear across the room.

Now I figure if I could breed a whole genetic strain of spittin’ cats, I might really have somethin’ people could get in no catalog for sure, not even in those slick little public television catalogs that have pictures of sheep on T-shirts that no farm person would be caught dead in nohow.



~ Stretch Illustration by John Sherffius
~ © All Rights Reserved

Smokin' That Rope

This here’s Stretch Coyote talkin’ at ya.

Well Billy-ding-dang-dong, now that smokin' wacky tobacky is catchin' on in assorted public opinion polls and Super Bowl states of residence, I'd like to un-bogart some old song lyrics I wrote back in the days of my country western rap band: The Palaverin' Polecats. You'll have to imagine a lively two-step with banjo, fiddle and mandolin.

The man in the moon is a cowboy
Ever since I smoked that rope
The man in the moon is a cowboy
And the moon is a cantaloupe
Gotta pair a’ pantaloons in the gravy
And the chicken upstairs is not home
And I think I’m gettin’ kinda lazy
Here on the range on the home

Home on the range, home on the range
Grease your pan with half a turnip
Home on the range, home on the range
Take two egg whites and beat em’ stiff
Home on the range, home on the range
A cup a’ cornpone and a pinch a’ saltpeter
Home on the range, home on the range
Mince a little meat and slice a bit a' rhubarb

There used to be a bit more to that recipe, but I can't quite recollect how "preheat your oven to 350 degrees" fits in to the overall rhyme scheme.

I suppose I could finish this tune if my agent gave me a little encouragement, but I'm not quite sure of his location. Seems he shook the dust off his boots and hightailed it out of town pretty dang quick after that bar mitzvah the Polecats did for Nathan Rosenstein, son of the deodorant stick tycoon at his palatial Malibu beach spread.

It was the most highfalutin bar mitzvah we'd ever done. (I'd never had chocolate-covered lobster before.) The Polecats were fillin' in for some country western band what got stuck in some airport north of the snowline.

Our doggone agent didn't even leave us so much as a goodbye note, much less a check. And this was just after we'd fronted him some pretty hefty cash to cover recording costs for the album we were gonna make: “Ding Dang Disco.”

I suppose you can reckon how long ago that was, back when musicians were still cuttin’ wax and my cousin’ Jane was puttin’ John Travolta posters up in the hayloft. We weren’t rope smokers back in those days. Just an hour or two shovelin’ manure pretty much did the trick.


~ Stretch Illustration by John Sherffius
~ © All Rights Reserved