On Reading Jory Sherman’s Sidewinder While Ordering Chinese Food

On a trip through the Raleigh-Durham airport yesterday I found a used book store in Terminal B, and even more surprisingly it had four shelves of westerns.  With just a few minutes to look before boarding I spotted a copy of Jory Sherman’s Sidewinder.  A vague memory that some blog had given it a good review came to mind, I plunked down my $4.50, threw the book into the backpack that passes as my briefcase, and boarded my flight.  I bypassed Sidewinder, though, and read comics on my Ipod and half of Peter Brandvold’s Dust of the Damned (review forthcoming, I hope).

Today after a long day of work I stopped on the way home at a chinese takeout place.  Knowing it would take a few minutes for my order to come together I reached into my backpack and found Sidewinder.  The girl at the register laughed when I ordered my General Tso’s Bean Curd (what, there are no vegetarian cowboys in China?!?).  Taking a seat, I flipped open the book.

Chapter one, page one, paragraph one.  Already there is a square jawed hero.  No, really, he is described as having a square jaw.  The rest of the page is exacting descriptions of two characters.  Our hero, Brad Storm (seriously?), is given more visual description in this first page than the Kid was given in 327 pages of Blood Meridian.

On to chapter two, in which our hero beats nine kinds of shit out of a rattlesnake.  I think.  That happened really fast and I’m not sure exactly what happened to chapter one.  I go back and reread all of chapter one.  I’m back to chapter two and the snake is still dead and the hero is dying.

Is this the book that got such a good review?  I look at the cover.  Yeah, I think this is it.  I hope the writing picks up.  Wonder what’s taking the food so long?  I like how the delivery guy has his collar flipped up like a bad boy from an 80’s movie.  Is that woman cooking the same woman who took my order?  No, she’s older.  Oh, there’s the cashier, she’s sitting behind the counter playing with her phone.  I’ve really found some good comics for the Ipod.  Wonder if the cook’s married to that delivery guy, they seem to get along.  Can you believe that woman at the other Chinese place by the yoga studio is having another kid?  Amazing.  I don’t have any kids.  She’ll have two.  She seems so young.  Oh yeah, I’m reading this book.

There’s some woman, and she knows how to handle a gun.  Sherman really knows a lot about guns.  I wonder if he knows how to develop characters without direct exposition?  I bet this woman is the wife of the main character and she gets kidnapped.  Let’s read the back cover.  Yup, she gets kidnapped.  Huh, what’s that say:

"Jory Shreman is a national treasure"- Loren Estleman.  

Estleman.  That guy can write.  Didn’t I listen to The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion on my morning walk?  Yeah, I’ll have to listen more in my evening walk.  He writes a lot of good books.  So does F.M. Parker, I should dig some of those out.  Like that trilogy of interconnected novels all taking place in parallel during the Mexican American War?  That was cool.  Amazing how Riders of the Purple Sage turned out to be such a crisply written, proto-feminist, erotic read.  Man I love that book.  Can’t believe Mrs. Slap loved it, too.

Always trust the opinions of Mrs. Slap.

Man, this food is taking a while.  Had to go hunt up extra bean curd.  Where was I?  Chapter four.  Four?!?  Are you fucking kidding?  Okay, now there’s an Arapaho and a Navajo who are helping out the poisoned hero.  Wow, that’s some bad dialog.  Did this come right out of the 1950’s crazy racist Injun dialog book? 

There’s the table with a stack of free magazines.  I should read one of those.  Maybe I’ll leave the book here.  No, someone’ll just throw it away.  People really seem to like this guy’s writing.  I wonder why?  If I review it on my blog and he reads it will he be pissed?  Last time I published an article someone told me to never read the comments.  Then I read the comments.  One day I’ll publish my novel and people will hate it.  That sucks.  Got to finish it first.  First comes my yoga certification, then I’ll finish the book.  Where’s my food?

I really should be reading something better than this.  Ed Erdelac sent me a copy of Merkabah Rider, what, a year ago?  And I still haven’t read it.  I bet it’s better than this.  

Ah, my bean curd.  Smile at the Chinese girl, she’s laughing at your bean curd.  That’s fine, I don’t have to read any more of this book now.

Heartwarming Thanksgiving Message

Happy Thanksgiving from Slap!  Thanks to our ancestors for setting the course for open dialog and multiculturalism across this country and the world.

Bacon Brings Peace to the Frontier

During the 1500s, the Spanish gave Native Americans pigs as peace offerings, knowing the natives liked the taste of pork.

-2011 Daily Bacon Calendar

Slap Bacon

"Slap some bacon on a biscuit and let’s go!  We’re burnin’ daylight!"

-Wil, The Cowboys, as quoted in the 2011 Daily Bacon Calendar

Hurricane Irene Power Outage Cowboy Chili for Two

 Ingredients:

One rusted out, unusable gas grill that you regret buying from your friend

One grill grate from when you tried but failed to make the unusable grill usable

One fire bowl

One bag charcoal briquettes

One bunch of twigs for kindling (semi-dry)

Four mid sized logs (semi-dry)

One large pot

One small container of bacon drippings

Three tomatoes rescued from the garden before the 75mph winds, diced

One can beans from the back of your pantry

One onion, diced

One chili pepper, diced

One jalapeno pepper, diced

Two chicken breasts slowly going bad in your depowered refrigerator

One bottle Corona

½ pack of taco seasoning left over from Thursday’s dinner

Two cups of water

1-     Stare at the unusable gas grill.  Shake your head in shame.

2-     Prepare the fire bowl by dumping out the water, then pouring in the charcoal.  Light charcoal.  While the fire is still going add kindling and four logs, arrayed so that they can provide support for the grate as they burn.  Because the wood is wet you may want to liberally add bacon drippings which burns hot and gets your neighbors and family agitated.

3-     When the coals are burning red and the wood is spitting flame, place the grate on top of the wood.  Place the pot on top of the grate, and put a couple of tablespoons of bacon drippings in the pot.  Enjoy the melting and sputtering, then add onion.  Stir occasionally for five minutes.

4-     As onions brown, place the two chicken breasts on grate over the fire.  Turn occasionally.

5-     Add water and taco seasoning to the pot.  Stir.  When boiling, add chicken to the pot. Stir occasionally for five minutes.

6-     Add peppers, beans, and tomatoes to pot.  Stir occasionally for 40 minutes. 

7-     Drink beer while watching the pot boil and avoiding ashes flying in your face as the last of the tropical storms winds pick up.  If the pot starts to look dry, pour beer into the pot. 

8-     Check to make sure that chicken is cooked through.  Spoon chicken and chili into large bowls.  Either eat outside or light candles, because it is going to be a while until the power comes back on.

To Be a Trail Cook

A few years ago I put up one of those little Facebook “how well do you know me?” quizzes.  One of the questions was “What is my ideal job?”  The possible answers were safety consultant, federal law enforcement agent, college professor, or trail cook.  Pretty much everyone who took the quiz picked one of the first three. These are all reasonable assumptions as I have either worked in or been trained in each of these professions in my brief three and a half decades on this planet, but were all wrong.  A few astute observers of old Slap got it right and picked number four- trail cook. 

I love cooking.  Absolutely love it.  I can’t do plumbing, am vaguely competent in carpentry, would be a disaster as an electrician, and don’t understand how cars work other than the whole “put key in ignition and push pedals” thing.  When it comes to cooking, though, I can be an outright genius.  Point me to a supposedly empty refrigerator and bare pantry and I’ll whip you up a quiche faster than you can whistle Dixie.  More likely a nice pasta salad, but you get the point.  Where it all really comes together, though, is making something in a pot.  Soup, stew, chili, any chance that I get to throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot has a good chance of coming out tasting like manna from heaven.

So why aren’t I a cook?  Terrible hours, mediocre pay, and you have to be inside a hot, windowless kitchen for most of the day.  As a trail cook, though, the world is your kitchen.  You cook outdoors, plucking fresh ingredients from the ground as you wander the earth.  You ride ahead of the herd, away from the dust.  You have hours of blissful solitude, but can still share in the brotherhood of humanity when you ring the dinner bell and bring the hands home for supper.

It really wasn’t like that, I’m sure, and you faced danger and the elements for crap pay.  What really attracted me to this idea in the first place was reading Lonesome Dove.  The sheer joy felt by Bolivar when he smashed the dinner bell with the crowbar is something that I hope to have some day. When Po Camp came along, the sage mystic with a knack for experimental cooking, I knew that was the job for me.

In my mind the trail cook became the consigliore, the maester, the wise adviser to the trail boss, serving up equal parts cool advice and hot chili.  Am I right?  Probably not, but it is fun to dream.

Tune in next time for recipes from Hurricane Irene!

Cowboy Coffee

Have no doubt:  manly as they are, cowboys always need their coffee. 

“With Roberto Zavala at this side, Wallace crisscrossed the roads leading up from Old Mexico.  When their supplies ran low the two men trapped and lived off the land, eating antelope, wild turkey, and white tailed deer when the bacon and salt pork were gone.  Texas winter brought days of bright sunlight and mellow temperatures, interspersed with a week or two of freezing temperatures when a blue norther struck and lashed the desert hills with wind and rain and ice pellets that struck like buckshot.  But Wallace the kind of man born without an ounce of quit in him, so he endured.  And Roberto was not about to abandon him.”

However, with only enough coffee left for a couple of days and looking forward to their third evening meal of fried rattlesnake and boiled jicima root, the two men reached a mutual understanding and had just decided to start back for San Antonio when they spied a column of dust spiraling up against the hard blue sky.”

-From The Red Ripper by Kerry Newcomb

Pioneer Bacon

From the 2011 Daily Bacon Calendar:

“The pioneers who journeyed west in covered wagons brought bacon with them for sustenance.”

Outstanding.  No wonder so many people moved West.

"I'd trade all my gold some for some tasty bacon!"