WINTER WONDERLAND

By Terry Cole

Y’all need to be careful out there...why just the other day, cold as all git out and ol’ Crook, my longhorn steer, comes knockin’ on the back door and asks real polite like if I could please put out some more hay.

....So here I go—put on my coveralls, load a round bale on the tractor, and sit it off in the pasture. Parked the tractor and walked back to pull some hay strings I had missed.

So Here I am, ankle deep in the mud and a lot of you know what when all of a sudden ol’ Clabberhead bumps the other side of the bale and rolls it over on top of me. Then he bumps it again and we keep on rollin’ round and round. We stop with the bale of hay on top of me—and I'm gettin’ squushed flatter than Aunt Frannie's Chiwawa dog after she sit on him. He's okay, but don't trust her no more.

Well Sirs—I figured I was a goner. Then I realized we had stopped rollin’ because we was up against the a tractor tire. I had one chance. I opened the valve stem on that tire and let the air into my sleeve. Then, as I was gettin’ some air, I done something I never figured I could do.

Now this is something I been studyin’ on for a long time. and never could figure out—But that's what I done. I turned myself wrong side out inside those coveralls like a woman taking off her brazierre under her shirt. Then I used the hay string to tie up the sleeves and legs and neck so I wouldn't lose no air.

After that there weren't nuthin’ for me to do but take a nap....and it was two days before them cows ate enough hay off of me so that I could get aloose.

Sweet Merna didn't seem to be worried about me at all. Said she thought I had just gone to town and had got into some longwinded conversation with somebody.