Freebird

[Palaver]

Freebird

Some of you already know the story but to those of you who don't, my
late husband used to be in the buffalo business with a partner back in
the 80s, that they called "Thunder of the Plains."

Voted one year as President of the American Buffalo Association, he
and his partner worked the buffies by horseback, the way "real
cowboys" would have done it, as he put it, and not with A.T.V.s.! No
sir!

They had buyers such as Ten Turner, also in the business, and when he
and his friends would get together slinging their b.s., you could
always hear him say, "Just put me in a pine box," never realizing that
his days were already numbered, until we learned that he had terminal
cancer.

All the while, he kept insisting, "just put me in a pine box... don't
let them embalm me... and my boots too, by g_d!"

Then a week to the day before he passed, I gave a friend the go ahead
to build him his pine "box" a richly polished pine coffin, shined to
perfection, like the cowboys used to be buried in but a cut above, and
on April 30, 2003, he rode his last trail at 4:20 in the morning! Get
it? It was his last and final, cowboy salute to the federal government
and those who fight to keep God’s perfect herb from becoming legal!

Then, with another person’s help, before rigor set in, since he wasn’t
embalmed, I put his snap button shirt, his Wrangler jeans, the long
leather duster I had given him two Christmases before, his cowboy hat
that had been his dad’s and by G_D HIS BOOTS!

I lined his coffin with his favorite quilt that Auntie Glo had made
for him years before I knew him and as his closest friends and family
walked by, each one slipping a little something into his pockets, to
remember them by and giving their last farewells, I glanced over at
his face. Underneath his heavy grey mustache, that man, without
question, was smiling!

When the last nail had been driven, a sound mind you, that rivals any
bell toll, we carried him a mile up the road to the cemetery from our
house, past the adjacent fields of wheat, on a mule drawn wagon.

One couldn’t help but notice what a beautiful setting it made; a
masterpiece of golden wheat, waving in the gentle breeze like it was
waving its last wistful farewells as his riderless horse led the
procession slowly by.

After his home boys had placed him over his grave and each had taken
his place side by side and parallel to him and as Brothers in Arms by
Dire Straits played, I took turns handing each one a silver coin that
he had purchased for them, commemorating (of course) the buffalo
nickel.

Backing up a little, he had actually ordered two coins a short while
before he got sick, one for his good and faithful, lifelong friend and
former partner in Thunder... and one for himself but as if by some
wiched twist of fate or cruel sign, when they came in the mail, there
were not two, but six! And that’s when the realization hit home. This
was one he wasn’t gonna whoop.


And finally, with confidence knowing I had been his true and faithful
woman right down to his final wish, with Freebird playing as his last
request, I "saddled up", turned my back and walked away. There's not a
doubt in my mind, he was grinning and I'm almost sure I could hear him
saying, "Atta girl!" ;)