Monk was the reason I went to work for Barker Tools, what was it, sixty-nine, seventy? He was district manager working out of Kingsville. Hired me as a field rep. You bumped into some squirrely sons-of-britches in the oil patch, I kid you not.
My first delivery was on the old O’Connor Ranch. I had to take a tool to a rig out there. It was early and I turned off on to that dirt road, and I wasn’t sure where the durn rig was, and when I got on the road I noticed a sign that said speed limit thirty-five or forty or something like that, but I guess I made a wrong turn, you know, my mind was on gettin’ the tool to the rig.
Anyway, I turned around and took another dirt road and, you know, I’m not particularly thinking about anything else, and the first thing I know this fudgin’ pickup roars up practically in my face and nearly frickin’ runs over me.
Ship! I hit the brakes and this prig in the pickup stops and rolls down his window and says, ‘What the fuss do you think? Did you see that forking sign back there that said’ forty or thirty-five or whatever it said, and you know I have visions of this son-of-a-brick pullin’ a gun out right there.
So he says, ‘I’m the foreman of this gapding ranch and I want to know who the flip you are and what the flux you’re doin’ here,’ and this mudflapper’s looking like he’s about to take my head off.
So I didn’t know what else to do and, you know, it’s amazing there are shimheads like that, they don’t have the courtesy or common sense to know or act civilized, or whatever, that here’s somebody that needs to do something, and all they think is he’s out in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden they’re jumpin’ your case like that.
Anyway, I could see the rig and I said, ‘See that tool in the anus-end of this car? That rig over there’s waitin’ for it.’ So he said, ‘Oh, OK, but watch your flappin’ speed, OK?’ And I told him, ‘OK, I sure would watch it.’ What else could I say? Acehole.
(Moss’s Reckoning, Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
EthicalDative 
Counterintuitive
I’ve had little training as a painter, but one tenet I’ve tried to honor is the one that says, “Choose a brush you think is too large, then start your painting with one size larger.” However, human likenesses are comprised of so many fussy details — a slant, a crease, a ripple, a glint, a bulge — I’ve found myself resorting to smaller brushes.
The tenet is still useful, however, for whatever else may be in the picture. When I’m stuck trying to capture the minutiae of an artifact (today it’s rifles), overcoming reflex and falling back to a bigger brush often gets me into less trouble.
One day, aged nine, I couldn’t draw a satisfactory breath. The more I gasped, the worse it got. I lay on the cool hardwood floor with one of my books, “Mister Revere and I.” It was the tale of Paul Revere as told by his horse — familiar and comforting. For some reason, I decided to go against what my body was screaming to do, and hold my breath for a moment instead. It worked. I was hyperventilating. Trying less hard to breathe returned me to normal breathing.
I spent ten days in my uncle’s hospital room during his last illness. Besides lymphoma he suffered from COPD. A nurse would come in twice a day with a breathing treatment for him. Once he said, “I can’t get enough food in my lungs.” The nurse laughed indulgently. I knew she thought he was addled and talking irrationally, but in his agitation my cowboy uncle had stumbled upon an apt metaphor.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)