In this monologue, the speaker argues that cowboy stories are rooted in truth and proceeds to recount a chaotic calving day on a Nebraska ranch. He describes a series of rapid, comedic mishaps: a rope that won’t come up due to a tangled honda, a new saddle with overly long stirrup leathers that trap his foot, a fall that lands him on his face, a calf that bursts through a fence, and a broken belt that sends him sprawling—all occurring within about ninety seconds and each described as a "billion‑to‑one" odds event. The narrator manages to complete the job despite the chaos, while the rancher's wife laughs at his misfortune. He then shifts to another anecdote from Van Horn, where his horse falls into gopher holes, turning the rider into an impromptu landing pad. The story ends with a reflective lament about missed opportunities—if his mother had listened to his aspirations, he might have become an astronaut, brain surgeon, or fisherman—contrasting the harsh physical reality of ranch work with imagined alternate lives.
Chapters
And the thing about cowboy stories is they're true. And, you know, some people say the only difference between a fairy tale and a cowboy story is that, well, cowboy story starts out, we ain't gonna believe this, but— And we can have things just pile up on us so fast that there's no sense in even Wondering if you're all right or not. And I was working an outfit up in Nebraska, and we were calving out, and we were gonna do it the smart way. The cows obviously calve out there, but they were laying down with their butts uphill, prolapsing, so we decided to take them in, and we were going to tag the calves that were already calved on the way to the barn and drop them back. The guy's wife was going out there with the pickup. She'd see you getting up to the calf, and she'd go down, and we'd rope it, tie down the calf, give her the number of the calf, She'd write it down on the tag, put it on the froster for a little bit, because it was snowing, and that lets that dry to where you can read it in the fall. Well, for years I'd either had a ring on my rope or a stainless steel hondle. And this guy I was working under, he said, you've got to try this rope here. This is a good rope. It's got a regular hondle on it. It works so much better. So I'll go out there and I'm riding this colt. And I'm just trotting along up on this calf, almost into range to rope it, and I go to bring my rope up and the rope don't come up. So I look down and that honda had gone around this 2-inch spur route. Oh, shoot. And every time I try to go like this, the little horse kicks me off to the side. So, okay, I got to switch gears, become advanced. Calf's kind of slowing down. So I go to step off, and the other thing was is I had a brand new saddle. And I don't know if anybody bought a new saddle, you know, they always put way— they put on, you know, stirrup leathers that fit John Wayne. They don't put them on for some low-legged sucker like me. So the tail of my stirrup leathers was hanging down about a foot underneath my oxbows. So I go to step off, and I get one foot on the ground, and I've got that on my Wood. And I hooked that and brought it through where I couldn't get my foot out of the stirrup. Oh no. Now I was in the point, I could have really been bad because on the way off I kind of dropped the boat over the saddle horn. And boy, I got up there. Well, the guy's wife is sitting there and she's kind of starting to giggle a little bit. So I get up and I mess around and I get out, get Get that foot out of there. Well, that calf is in the fence, went through the fence, it was coming back. So I, when I stepped off, I thought, man, I'm going to be able to just rope that sucker coming through the fence. Well, I dropped the rein down, of course I put this foot on the rein, stepped forward like this, went flat on my face, all over the place. So the calf's still trying to get through, so I go ahead and I get up, and by this time she's laughing. Very hard. And I reach up there and I jump up and I grab that calf coming through the fence, drag it up to my horse. I tie that sucker down. And I'm thinking, you know, I just had 4 things, million to one odds, go completely wrong in less than 90 seconds. But I still got the job done. And this gal's laughing. So what do I do? I stand up. I start to walk off. The belt on my chains breaks. Fall down around my legs. Boom! That's 5 things, 90 seconds, each one a billion-to-one odds of ever happening. And, you know, but it isn't always quite that funny. Sometimes you can be going along, and I did this up in Van Horn, and I'm trotting out to the pasture to go bring a bunch of yearlings in, and I see all these gopher holes in front of me. I'm actually going to pull my horse, give him a little bit of leg, And he's going over. Ground caves in. He's coming down, and once again, I know I'm going to be used as a landing pad for a horse. On the way down, I thought, I wish Mama would have listened to Willie. If Mama would have listened, I could have been an Argonaut or an astronaut. If Mama would have listened, I could have been a brain surgeon or gone fishing for sturgeon. But Mama didn't listen. So instead, I wake up each morning, Or hurtin' in bed, hopin' and prayin' to not land again on my head. I wish Mama would listen to Willie.
