MOJAVE MULESKINNERS

It is a curiosity what we humans call success. All of us no matter where we live seem to want near the same things, with some variations of course. But as I see it we don’t all start from the same starting line. Some of us came from the rusted sheet iron roofed shanty’s along the tracks, others from farms across the nation, still others from the suburbs of large and small cities and towns. Still some from gated communities and finally those who have property in high rises and penthouses and never see the earth from ground level. And this is just our America.

 

The kid from south of the tracks thinks he is successful when he finishes elementary school and owns a second hand Ford and lives in an apartment. The son of the Park Avenue Adman considers he’s done well with his Princeton diploma, drives a Beamer given to him by his pop on graduation and lives anywhere he chooses to throw down his money and with benefit of a higher education. Those in between suffer along as they can.

 

They all, as you may well consider, have varied opinions too. Judgment is always affected by environment. I’ve always found it difficult to think politically when I’m a little hungry. Of course, my hunger pangs don’t last long because I can point my vehicle toward the house and swing on my refrigerator door in a short time. One of the remarkable things about this American Continent is the fact that we have seldom been hungry as a nation. We have nearly always had enough food from our amber waves of grain, our fruited plain, and our longhorn cattle. Not to mention all the hybrids we have developed to better feed the world. Even the native Americans had little motivation to create any device to make their living better. They had it all. Wild game was nearby for the taking, rivers flowed in the valleys and vegetable crops were bountiful. Women chewed the leather to make it pliable, cooked the meals, made soft beds from the diverse grasses, helped skin and butcher the animals, cared for the babies and kept the lodges. Men labored hard in the woods chasing game and fishing. But then the European came along and taught the poor savage the proper way to live. Apparently having been born in an entirely different environment and with benefit of education.

Little thought is given to the simple fact that if our Yankee neighbors had stuck to their diet of pork and beans there would never have been the demand for Texas beef and the farmer would have been America’s icon. We sit here on our tower of successful history never paying tribute to the humble farmer whose produce has fed us for over 230 years without fail. While the cowboy, who came among us and worked for a mere fifty years at the most, did nothing more than drive cattle to market, mend fences, and get drunk. Another case of environmental rudeness.

 

But as I have pointed out in previous writing, the use of alcohol in our early west was a blessing. That’s right a blessing! It wasn’t the doctor who eased the everyday aches and pains of the masses, nor the missionary or preacher. It was whisky. There was a terrible absence of aspirin, Tylenol, ibuprofen, and the multitude of other alleged pain relievers available today biased toward menstrual cramps, dental pain, headaches, joint discomfort, whooping cough, morning depression, lumbago, collywobbles, goiter, warts and blurred vision. This is not meant to cast aspersions on religion because by necessity most pioneers were religious as a lot a prayers were offered up in those days. But more often by those that ran out of whisky.

 

I mentioned at the beginning that we humans are a curiosity. We are also paradoxical. We tend to do things to ourselves that are contrary to our natural behavior. For instance, we males love the females. We gather around them with purpose. We love their fragrance and we want one by the time we are not more than 15. We would go running naked through meadows with them if allowed but all the rules set forth by those who came before us say no. For centuries the Polynesian’s lived together in perfect harmony never choosing a permanent mate and the children were products of any man. They were loved by all the tribesmen and cared for equally unto adulthood. This worked fine until the good Christian Missionaries told them they had to select one woman and stick to one house. More benefits of a higher education you see.

 

Now for you moralistic critics who would argue that those natives were innocent savages who knew nothing else let me point out that today’s American culture is no better as witnessed by thousands of illegitimate children running our streets. How successful are you?

 

~ Weakeyes Cody