Under the Wire

Well, I did it again! New Year’s Day, widely celebrated throughout the land by nearly everyone, came and went more or less unnoticed by yours truly. How does anyone manage to miss such an obvious holiday? For me, Holidays trigger columns or at least are supposed to. There are, again, supposed to be columns dedicated to Christmas, New Years, even Valentine’s Day.

I try to treat all equally by missing about all of them. It seems that when I sit down to write a column, the near disastrous experience I just had with a traffic round about that found me in Miami, Okla., 50 miles away from my destination of Riverton, Kan. takes precedence over the effect Labor Day is having on me. Thus you get an “Under The Wire” about being lost in horrible traffic driving Sue’s brand new car rather than a tribute to one labor-free day during which most of us work anyway.

With two major Holidays, Christmas and New Year already missed, Sue suggested (strongly) that I begin thinking about a Valentine’s Day column. “Write about Love,” She told me.

At first that seemed to be a simple task. Many years ago I wrote about our oldest daughter and her soon to be husband working cattle together through a squeeze chute. Any husband/wife teams out there reading this will know all the things that can go wrong, challenging their marriage vows.

The story went viral, sort of, since it ran long before that phrase was coined. In simpler terms, lots of people read it and sent me their comments, nearly all favorable. By the way, they went ahead with the marriage-we have two grandsons as a result of it. Unfortunately, they must have worked cattle again years later because they split up.

Now to my wife requested story of Love. I may be some type of export after all. I have been in Love with Sue well over thirty years. During that time I have become aware that I may not be easy to love back. Nevertheless we are still married. In addition to Sue, I love sunny spring days moving cows horse back, I love the sight of a newborn calf and I love writing this column for you.

I have just written a column using the word “Love” seven times, eight now. This is significant since in my previous 1,800 “Under The Wires” the word has never appeared.

I can hardly wait to find out if this qualifies as a Valentines column and if Sue “Loves” it.

New record set. I have just used the word nine times. That should just about do it for me. Hope you “like” this story.

Happy Valentines, too!