The Texan

"Crazy for thinkin' that my love could hold you,

I'm crazy for cryin', and crazy for tryin',

And I'm crazy for lovin' you."

-Patsy Cline Showcase, 1961

The summer after I graduated college, I got hired to go to Texas for a summer job. It was a very exciting opportunity to try something new...but I was moving to a teeny, tiny town in the middle of the Panhandle of Texas. The nearest large city was Amarillo, a 30 minute drive away, and it was also a 30 minute drive from the truly glorious Palo Duro Canyon.

Once I arrived in Texas, I was bewildered by the landscape and how different it looked from anything familiar to me on the east coast. Everything was so....FLAT. There were very few trees and, for that matter, very few of ANYTHING that was green, however it still maintained this exotic beauty and allure.

Even more beautiful and alluring? That enigma which is: The American Cowboy.

They were everywhere. It was absurd. EVERYWHERE. You couldn't look across the street without seeing some 6-foot-something-10-gallon-hat and jeans-wearing-boot-stomping-spur-clinging COWBOY. I could barely walk two steps without drooling on myself. I really did feel like I had stepped off the plane into a little slice of the 5th circle of heaven.

It was only a matter of time before I was bound to literally stumble into one. Brady (yes, his name was Brady. That was pretty tame for these parts...I actually befriended a human being whose birth name was Rifle.) was in the middle of his course at West Texas A & M University studying Animal Science. He drove a MASSIVE red Chevorlet truck and owned a beautiful horse named Rooster.

Brady was a simple man. In fact, he was so simple that I don't think he was capable of carrying on a conversation with a brick wall. But to this chick, that couldn't have mattered LESS. We met one night through mutual friends sharing cases of Keystone Light. I had brought my guitar along, and Brady and I ended up taking turns serenading the group. We ended up sitting in the bed of his truck exchanging the guitar back and forth. Because it was Texas and everything was so flat, there was an awesome thunderstorm raging away some 30 miles in the distance. There were fireflies encircling the parking lot (Vomit, I know...but it was too perfect NOT to remember all of these ridiculous details.)

We ended up having some sweet smooches in that truck bed until the sun came up. Next thing I knew, he was saying, "Oh wow, I gotta get on to work, darlin'. I'll see you later."

Sighhhhhhhh....

This story is simple, because the encounter was simple. Sometimes the sweetest things are the simplest things. I got to have a wonderful affair with an extraordinarily handsome, albeit stupid, cowboy and I'll remember it as long as I live.