All I Ever Wanted to Be Was A Cowboy by Bill Roberts

Author:Bill Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cowboy, Florida, cattle, collection, non-fiction
Publisher: Atlantic Publishing
Published: 2014-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Bonifay

After the Thompson affair at Okahumpka, Theo Johns and I continued to get a lot of work together. He had left the Castro job and settled on a ranch south of Fort McCoy. He was breaking and training a few horses for some cow people and old friends.

Theo had a horse of his own he was trying to sell, and a man was supposed to come by about ten o’clock in the morning. Well, the man was late and Theo had to go and check some water troughs. Theo told his 8–year-old daughter, Gloria, to tell the man, if he showed up, that Theo would be right back.

Theo had no more than gotten out of sight when the man showed up and Gloria told the man to wait. Theo had the horse saddled for the man and the man asked Gloria what kind of horse this was. She told him the horse was all right but he would jab your head in the ground. When Theo got back, the man was long gone.

Theo asked me one day if I wanted to make a trip out to Bonifay in the Panhandle to pick up a couple of horses he was going to break for an old farmer friend of his. He said we would be gone overnight. I decided to go along ’cause I knew I would hear some tales about some wild adventures that had happened to Theo. Maybe I could find out a little bit more about why he had been barred from Okeechobee County.

We headed out early one morning, and Theo was telling me all kinds of stories about catching cows in the Panhandle. When we got almost to Tallahassee, he asked me if I liked oysters. I told him I wasn’t crazy about them. He knew a little place where they served them on the half shell. I told him I would watch.

Well, he ordered three dozen on the half shell, and about halfway through the order, he told me to try one. I had almost lost my breakfast by then. He took a big old fat oyster, put it on a Saltine, put a little hot sauce on it, a little tiny bit of horseradish, and some salt.

I had ordered a beer. Theo didn’t drink, he was crazy enough without alcohol. Well, he told me to shut my eyes and open my mouth. He shoved it in, and I started chewing. When I got it down I took a big drink of beer. I almost gagged. But, in a few minutes, there was this strange feeling. “Not bad,” I said. Three dozen oysters later, I was hooked for life, and I couldn’t get enough.

We made it to Bonifay about sundown, and Theo stopped at a little restaurant where everybody knew him. He called the old farmer. It was in January and cold as a well digger’s ass. The old man told Theo to come on down to the farm, and they would feed us and put us up for the night.

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