Except as noted, all images copyrighted by and should be attributed to E B Hawley.
I had become many eons ago a traveling literary gnome, inquisitive about places I had and had not visited,
walking the same paths of peoples from the past, through places once grand and still grand,
photographing images that now show me the places about which I still dream . . .

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Need Cup of Cowboy Coffee

MyMrMallory and I were invited by a real live cattle foreman to watch and photograph real live cowboys round up, brand, and medicate cattle. To enjoy more photographs, please click at left the link to my Pbase site, and go to  the album entitled "Cowboys Branding in Archer County."
Cattle ranching requires miles of fencing and their maintenance. Here, the fencers arrive to repair the fence, unaware of the foreman's plans to brand cattle at these pens.


A fencer's truck carries a huge number of things (including beer).


In the distance, I spot a cowboy in the middle of Mesquite plants herding cattle toward the pens. Cowboys don't like Mesquite. It has thorns, grows in thick bushes, and hides cows. This land was once covered in grasslands, before the Mesquite plants migrated north. Behind him we can see oil pumps.


Each calf is lassoed, wrestled to the ground, branded, and medicated within seconds. 


Taking a break.


Cowboy pictures, including boots and the obligatory cute heinie.


Cowboys + Camera = Group Photo.
These guys rounded, lassoed, branded, and medicated approximately sixty head of cattle in three hours. In comparison, at one time, the Wagoner Ranch would do the same with 1200 head of cattle per day (I hear, so please confirm and let me know).


After work, off the cowboys go to the cafe in Archer County, with hunger and trailers and horses.


I am a cowboy in my dreams, tells Hodge, because I can't rise as early as they do. Bring me a cup of cowboy coffee, would you? 


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JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On

Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.