The rumor ranch

    I'm not one of those greenies who believes that humans are a cancerous growth destroying the planet, but I'll admit it's getting a little too crowded in my neck of the woods. The old sale yard is gone that had been there so long it became an archeological dig when they tore it down. There's houses there now where I took a lot of bids and walked lots of alleys. We've been invaded by a horde of rich tech gazillionaires who are buying ranches, kicking off the cows and planting grape vines and olive trees. The sale yard was our church and our social hall and now that it's gone all us ancient geezers hardly see each other any more. And I seriously doubt a bunch of crippled old cowboys are all gonna start going to wine tastings.
    I’m told that the techies like our lifestyle because, “it’s stress-free.” HA! Evidently they have never had a calving season where the neighbor’s 3,000-pound, double-muscled, Full French exotic bull broke in and shacked up with the six-weight heifers for two months. Or lived through a seven-year drought, have a banker breathing down their neck and have to sell cows at hamburger prices that they paid $3,000 apiece for last April.
    Nah, there’s no stress.
    Some of the newbies are friendly and we welcome them to the neighborhood. They come to our brandings, we go to theirs and we like them because they buy great range bulls that breed our cows because no one has fixed any fence around here since The Great Trich Epidemic of 1973. We are more than happy to continue this arrangement but eventually they end up fixing the fence. Either way, we win because they pay for it. And we’re grateful that they’ve driven up the value of ranch real estate to the point any 20 acre rundown ranchette is worth a million bucks.

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