As always, I’m happy to have Slim Randles as my Wednesday’s Guest. He never fails to entertain us with a yarn or two about the guys at the Mule Barn Truck Stop. He shares these columns free with us here, as well as readers of several hundred newspapers around our fair nation. So, if you like these stories, you might want to check out his books. I’ve read most of them and they are well worth a few bucks and a bit of time.
Even though I drink coffee a lot in the summer, sometimes a nice glass of iced-tea is the perfect refreshment. Join me and enjoy Slim’s story.
There’s something about the freedom of a motorcycle ride … the wind blowing through your hair, passing mere cars at light speed, mosquitoes splattered against your grin. I guess that’s why men take to the road on two wheels.
But why would ol’ Dingle let Dewey Decker take his motorcycle out for a spin?
“Hey, I was right there,” Dingle said later. “I told him not to go past the neighbor’s mailbox, and I’d shown him how to run the thing. It’s not like he wasn’t supervised.”
But Dewey?
The problem is, Dewey has … occurrences. A Dewey Occurrence (and the capital letters are on purpose here) normally consists of something so out of the ordinary happening to him that it would be virtually impossible to happen to someone else. Like the time he got his father’s pickup truck stuck in the mud. During a drought. In the only mud puddle in the county.
If Dewey drove a car in the Indianapolis 500, it would be hit … by a meteor.
If Dewey took the podium to conduct the high school band on the football field at half time, the podium would disappear into quicksand.
If Dewey had been a soldier in World War II, we’d all be speaking German.
So, allowing Dewey to ride a motorcycle … even as far as the neighbor’s mailbox … comes perilously close to being a crime against humanity.
You don’t really think of accidents happening at less than five miles an hour. Not usually. But I understand Dingle’s motorcycle can be fixed, Dewey only has to wear the cast for six weeks, and the neighbor was tired of that mailbox, anyway.
Brought to you by The Fly Fisherman’s Bucket List by Slim Randles, from Rio Grande Books, and now available at Amazon.com.
Check out all of Slim’s award-winning books at his Goodreads Page and in better bookstores and bunkhouses throughout the free world.
All of the posts here are from his syndicated column, Home Country that’s read in hundreds of newspapers across the country. I am always happy to have him share his wit and wisdom here.
Slim is a veteran newspaperman, hunting guide, cowboy and dog musher. He was a feature writer and columnist for The Anchorage Daily News for 10 years and guided hunters in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A resident of New Mexico now for more than 30 years, he’s the prize-winning author of a dozen books and the host of two podcasts and a television program.