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
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