An Election Contest?

 

  “This whole election process just doesn’t work for me,” Dud said, sipping his coffee. “There’s no way we can tell who is best for the job.”

   Doc, being the senior member of the Mule Barn truck stop’s world dilemma think tank, looked kindly at Dud. “Well, haven’t you been reading what each guy stands for, Dud?”

   Dud shrugged. “Sure. But I firmly believe they only tell you what you want to hear. They’re the best, and the other guy is going to take you straight to ruined aspirations.”

   “Ruined aspirations?” piped up Steve, the cowboy with the owlish look of pure bowlegged intellectualism. “That’s why I’ve always thought we need a contest. A real contest. Have them put their aspirations where they’ll do the most good.”

  “A contest?”

  “Bull riding,” said Steve, nodding sagely. “Just put them on bulls and the first one to fall off loses.”

  “But what does bull riding have to do with taxes and warfare and education and all that stuff?” asked Doc.

  “Nothing at all,” said Steve, “but you can bet it will separate the serious candidates from the oh-what-the-heck guys.”

  “I like what I’m hearing here,” said Dud, with a grin. “Only problem is, if they ride bulls, one of them might get killed.”

   Steve grinned, “Simplifies that ol’ selection process, doesn’t it?


This year, vote for biodegradable candidates. And insist they prove it first.


 

Newspaper columnist Slim Randles, who writes the weekly Home Country column, took home two New Mexico Book Awards in 2011. His advice book for young people, “A Cowboy’s Guide to Growing Up Right,” took first place in the self-help category, and “Sweetgrass Mornings” won in the biography/memoirs category. Randles lives and works in Albuquerque. Home Country reaches 3 million hometown newspaper readers each week

Slim Randles learned mule packing from Gene Burkhart and Slim Nivens. He learned mustanging and wild burro catching from Hap Pierce. He learned horse shoeing from Rocky Earick. He learned horse training from Dick Johnson and Joe Cabral. He learned humility from the mules of the eastern High Sierra. Randles lives in Albuquerque.

Randles has written newspaper stories, magazine articles and book, both fiction and nonfiction. His column appeared in New Mexico Magazine for many years and was a popular columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and the Albuquerque Journal, and now writes a nationally syndicated column, “Home Country,” which appears in several hundred newspapers across the country.

 

  Huntington Beach News


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