Two decades ago our Double Rafter Cattle Drives
hosted a Tennessee cowboy affectionately tagged Dr.
Nate.
He stood six-foot four, weighed 300 pounds, and had
a redneck, southern accent.
He claimed to be the first member of his
family to graduate college and his first day at med
school, the faculty thought he “was there to fix the
air-conditioning.”
We loved Dr. Nate.
We were camped along the Little Horn River and the
intense afternoon sun had the cattle brushed-up in
the shade.
We unloaded the chuckwagon and set up camp
before deciding to cool off in the river.
Many guests packed swimwear and plodded to
the river in their boots, hats and board-shorts.
The cowboy crew, responsible for packing
everyone’s gear on mules, specialized in lightness
and efficiency, so skipped personal, non-essentials
like swimsuits.
Also, substituting boxers for swim trunks
allows a cowboy to stretch six days out of four-day
underwear.
Like a quiet code of the west, everybody does
it, but nobody talks about it.
Our favorite swimming hole was beneath an old bridge
approach where the cracked concrete abutment served
as our diving platform.
Bathers used a two-plunge approach:
Jump in, climb out, lather up and jump in to
rinse.
The total bath time was less than 15 seconds.
More adventuresome cowboys demonstrated their
high-diving skills, which brings me back to Dr.
Nate.
Calling it his Wabash cannonball, he leapt from the
concrete, scrunched into a massive, 300-pound ball,
whomped into the swimming hole and sloshed a tsunami
from bank to bank.
We skinny cowboys stood speechless waiting
for the river to refill our bathtub and this brings
me to my point.
President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago cannonball has created
a Dr. Nate-sized splash on the American economy.
Payrolls are exploding, unemployment is
plunging, the Dow has rocketed through 25K and
America is once again awash in opportunity.
By quietly correct-o-taping over dozens of
President Obama’s senseless environmental
restrictions, President Trump has freed the American
economy.
Just when you think the news can’t get
better, it does.
On January 4th, Interior Secretary
Zinke announced a draft proposal opening our
nation’s coastal waters to energy exploration.
This is huge and timber, mining and grazing
resources could be freed next.
Obviously, Marxist ecoterrorist groups, all
Democrats and cocktail-caucus Republicans will
scream hysterically and spew climate change
mythology to attack Trump and advance dependency.
Freedom thrives when ambitious Americans earn
market wages outside government control, but
progressive swamp dwellers hate that and prefer the
little people on their knees begging for crumbs from
the master’s table.
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