Over the Hill by Pep Macadoo
“A Cowboy’s Heart Turns to Love.”
With the end of the fall round up, a cowboy’s heart turns to love. Not in the spring when city folks are thinking about romance. Nope…up in the hills a bachelor starts thinking about red hearts and cupid’s arrows when I shut down the bunkhouse and kick everybody out ‘til next spring.
“Do you know what you call a cowboy who breaks up with his girlfriend in November?” my favorite waitress Millie asked at the café last week.
“A lonesome loser?” asked Big Red.
“Nope,” she said. “Homeless!”
We all laughed a bit but then turned serious.
Slim and Red were really on the quiet side.
“You boys need to try online dating,” Millie said.
“You mean those phone numbers you dial with all the pretty girls waiting to take your call?” asked Slim.
Gail hollered from the kitchen, “Online means using a computer Einstein!”
Millie then explained that there were all these outfits that take your hobbies and personality quirks and find a lady who likes the same stuff. You pay a small fee each month and pretty soon you have blondes, redheads and brunettes lined up on your computer like a string of fence posts.
Slim looked skeptical. “Hobbies….I never did find too many fillies who like reloading ammo and tying trout flies.”
“Or picking their teeth with a knife and going to tractor pulls,” Gail muttered from the kitchen.
After the morning rush ended, Millie had us in her back office and was busy typing into the computer. She took a quick picture of Slim standing against a rail fence looking manly and took a shot of Red looking pensively toward the west. She made him put his chin on his fist and suck in his gut. She made the boys take off their resistols and combed their hair. She put all of this into the computer and then asked them a series of questions.
“Do you like to cuddle in front of a fire,” she asked.
Slim and Red shrugged.
“Only once in Montana and that was because I lost my bedroll,” Red said. Slim glared at him. “You weren’t supposed to ever bring that up again,” he said.
“Do you like long walks on the beach?” Millie asked.
“Only if my horse throws a shoe,” Slim said.
A week after posting their profiles on MeHarmonious.com the emails began to come in.
Slim stopped by the café on a daily basis to check on his hits. Red was on the computer at the county library every evening.
I was enjoying standing by on the sidelines. After a three month hiatus from love, I had struck it rich with a pretty blonde who owned a saloon up North… more than worth the 300 miles round trip I drove each week in the way of courtship.
On Monday last we were welding an old stock trailer and Slim was smiling ear to ear.
“Well,” he said. “I went ahead and done it.”
“What,” I asked, “paid off your bar tab?”
“Nope” he said. “I went on an online date…in Fresno.”
Red and I looked shocked.
“A really nice young widow,” he said. “A little heavier than the way she looked on the computer. I think she took the picture in high school.”
We nodded and I turned off the welding torch.
“She also didn’t say she had five kids at home and that she had just lost her job at the olive cannery.”
“Did you take her dancing or just go out to dinner,” I asked.
“Well” he said. He looked down at his boots and looked a little sheepish.
“She said that her septic had backed up and that was why she was late. So we ate kinda fast at the restaurant and took a ride over to her house. I just happened to have a plumber’s snake behind the seat of my truck and I had the line cleared pretty quick.”
Red shook his head in disgust. “You cleared a sewer line for a first date?” he asked.
Slim smiled.
“Yep…those kids were so happy to have the toilet back in service that they thought I was some kind of hero. I then let them ride around in the back of my truck and we all went out for ice creams.”
“What’s her name?” Red asked.
“Esperanza,” Slim said. “And she just sent me a home-baked pie in the mail as a thank you present.” He grinned again. “Boys…I think it’s going to be a warm winter!”
Red smiled too. “I met a little gal at the bowling alley last week,” he said. “And it didn’t have nuthin to do with cuddling by a fire or walking a long ways on a beach.” Red took off his baseball cap. “She asked if I could help her rebuild the engine on her bass boat… life don’t get any better than that!”
Morton “Pep” McAdoo is the owner of the Double Diamond Ranch. He is dividing his time this winter between Tuolumne County and Nevada County all because of a blonde named Dee.
