Measurementals

 

 “When you been maturinatin’ ‘long as I have, they’s a few ultimatum facts about life that jest can’t be ignored,”

   With that, our favorite old-time camp cook, mule packer and occasional predictor of things that haven’t happened yet, Windy Wilson, stirred the sugar in his coffee and looked at the rest of us. Wisely. Well, as wisely as old Windy ever gets.

  We knew we were in for another dose of campfire education, even if it’s totally wrong. We smiled. Some people need cable TV to find this kind of fun.

   “Like them measurementals we use when we’re cookin’, he said. “If you look in them recipe books, they slam a buncha measurementals on ya that you never heard of and no one to convert them into plain American, like we speak here.”

   “You jest take in there them bakin’ recipes,” he said. “Cups a this, then you gotta shift them so they don’t stick together with stuff you already tossed in a bowl … like a dramblin’ of this or a sticker of butter. You ever see that stuff? How in the everlastin’  hoot owl drumsticks they spect us, ‘way over here in the United States of Our Country to figger that out?

  He sipped and stirred and looked up at us in that same way old Sam Elliott does when he finds a greenhorn he wants to set straight.

  “Let’s figger out real cowboy measurements and use ‘em. That’s what I say.”

  “Like which ones, Windy?

  “Why, Doc, didya know there are them caf-ma terial ladies all over the place don’t know what a herman is? Truth. A herman, as all of us know, is a cubic fistful.
Jest right handy fer makin’ biscuits in a Dutch oven. Set ‘er on that campfire and let ‘er go! Gits too hot? Hey, jest pull ‘er back a mite ‘til she’s settin’ more in the coals out where the state line would be if campfires had states.”

    Our resident working cowboy, Steve, got up to pay his bill and leave.

  “Don’t run off, Steve,” said Windy, “ was jest ‘bout to start ‘luminatin’ on stuff like gloogles, gurgles, bellyache triggers, slushes and nips.”

    “Next time, I guess,” Steve  said over his shoulder as he headed out the door for his getaway pickup truck.

Brought to you by that marvelous stocking stuffer, Home Country (the book) on Amazon.com.

 

Newspaper columnist Slim Randles, who writes the weekly Home Country column, took home two New Mexico Book Awards in 2011. His advice book for young people, “A Cowboy’s Guide to Growing Up Right,” took first place in the self-help category, and “Sweetgrass Mornings” won in the biography/memoirs category. Randles lives and works in Albuquerque. Home Country reaches 3 million hometown newspaper readers each week

Slim Randles learned mule packing from Gene Burkhart and Slim Nivens. He learned mustanging and wild burro catching from Hap Pierce. He learned horse shoeing from Rocky Earick. He learned horse training from Dick Johnson and Joe Cabral. He learned humility from the mules of the eastern High Sierra. Randles lives in Albuquerque.

Randles has written newspaper stories, magazine articles and book, both fiction and nonfiction. His column appeared in New Mexico Magazine for many years and was a popular columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and the Albuquerque Journal, and now writes a nationally syndicated column, “Home Country,” which appears in several hundred newspapers across the country.

 

  Huntington Beach News