Red Cowboy Boots, Red Jacket, Red Pickup Truck – Only In Texas!

Yee Haw, you know you’re in Texas when outfits are color coordinated with boots and pickup truck!   You gotta love it, don’t you?   I mean, where do these people come from? 

  We stumbled upon First Saturday of the Month events in town when we were on a major expedition looking for poinsettias for the porch.   Ollie and I were in the truck with Slow, and I knew as soon as I saw all the commotion of cars and Peeps walking around town that it must be First Saturday.   I despise getting into this throng of Peeps, but Slow was thrilled to spot the Homemade Baked Goods Lady, and I told Ollie to settle in when she parked the truck in the lot next to the real estate building and left us with the windows cracked so that we could get some AIR.   Always a bad sign.  The Homemade Baked Goods Lady was under her usual white tent canopy that was indistinguishable from the twenty-five other white vendor canopies at the Old Montgomery Courthouse park, but I saw Slow sniffing around until she found her.   Good grief.   All of this for a loaf of honey wheat oatmeal bread.

Then, I saw the old woman walking along past our truck with her  bread in a little sack, and she acted like she didn’t know me and Ollie were waiting.   Hey, you daffy old twit!!   Where in the hell do you think you’re going???   Let me outta here, do you hear me???   Hey, I’m talking to YOU, old woman!!!    I’m barking, barking, barking and twirling, twirling, twirling in this pickup.   You-Know-Who has wadded himself into a corner of the back seat and is trying to ignore me.   I’m barking LOUDER now so that some of these Peeps will think “What kind of person would leave a cute little dog like that in a truck?  He must be thirsty.”   Yeah, I’m thirsty, all right.   I’m also mad as a wet hen.   Let me outta this truck, I’m telling you!!!

Oh, dear God.   I see where Slow’s going.   She can’t resist those old men who sit on the porch of that antique store every month and play some kind of ancient bluegrass/country/gospel music.   I might have known she’d head over there.  Geez Louise.   What does she see and/or HEAR in those guys with their guitars, fiddles, dobro, mandolins, etc., etc., etc.  At least, the old man who plays the WASHTUB wasn’t there today.   Seriously.    The Peep plays a piece of string attached to a pole that stands in a hole in one of those old tin round washtubs.   He pretends it’s a bass fiddle, I guess, but he clearly couldn’t afford a real one so he makes this one himself.    It’s like your worst nightmare of embarrassment.  I dreamed I played a washtub in a band sitting on the steps of the Pearly Gates, and they wouldn’t let me in because there was no demand for welsh terriers that played WASHTUBS!!  Yikes, get me outta here, Percy!

 Yep, Slow sat right down in a chair under a tree that gives her a little shade while she pats her foot in the slow rhythm of those mournful tired songs that the old men sing.   I think I’ll name them the Elderly Brothers or the Banana Peel Players, since they all look like they’ve got one foot in the grave and one slip on a banana peel might be the end of the whole group!   Heh, heh.  My little joke for the day.   Slow is the ONLY person in the audience this fine beautiful Saturday, I might add.

Uh, oh.   What’s this?   Just when you think it can’t get any better, it does.   Here comes a tall slender attractive older Peep with big white hair, and it looks like she’s going to sit on the other side of the tree next to Slow.  Yessirree, another patron of the fine arts has arrived.   Audience count: two.   Does anybody think these musicians might want to take a hint and give it a rest for a minute?    Nope.  No breaks.   The show must go on.

The pretty Peep isn’t as pretty as Pretty, of course, but then Pretty has a different style.    You won’t catch Pretty in red leather cowboy boots and a matching red leather jacket, will you?   I don’t think so.   Plus, this Peep today got out of a red pickup truck.   Now, I’m the Red Man, and I LOVE the color, but I think there’s such a thing as too much red, if you catch my drift.   Red truck, red jacket, red boots.   That’s overkill if you ask me, which I might add, no one does.

So, Slow and the Peep in Red sat and nodded their heads and tapped their feet to some ridiculous old country tunes for a while, and then Slow got up and waved goodbye to the Banana Peel Players and made her way back to our truck.   Thank God for small favors.   She was in a very good mood, and I wasn’t sure if it was the bread or the ballads.   Whatever.   I’ll never understand how anyone could be happy after listening to all those songs about being sad.   That’s a Peep for you, though.

We managed to find the poinsettias outside of town at this little garden center.  Slow told the store Peeps to put them in the truck bed so that Ollie and moi wouldn’t mess them up.   Please.  As if we cared about poinsettias.

If I were the old woman, I’d be more worried about the homemade oatmeal honey wheat bread.