Don't know what made me remember this, but I'm glad it did...
... Was on a business trip, stuck at some small ass airport... somewhere inbetween Louisiana, on the way to Houston... Our flight was MIA, no explanation, no concession, no security... just a stale, ghost town of an airport... quite strange in this day of "modern security"...
.. all I could get out of the clerk was that, "the next available flight would be diverted to pick us up".... "not bloody likely" is what I heard...
... so I called a union van to come pick us up(the only thing a union has ever actually done for me to this date
)... when the ride showed up, I saw a crippled up old man with cowboy hat glance up at me.. so I asked him to join me on the trail to the next airport...
... You just never know who you're gonna bump into on an airplane/van/cross country adventure....
...We intitially broke the ice with him lamenting about the onset of the resctriction of equine slaughter houses, and the effect on the horse market in gereral, which I have also witnessed...
..he went on to describe the mounts they'd aquired over the years from, would be, slaughter prospects... some of which went on to be stand out mounts in motion pictures... others making solid dude ranch hands.... all besides the fact... but anyways...
...What makes this story memorable to me is as follows...
....As I always do, once a new aquaintence has had adequate time to impress me on all of his/her conquests/experiences... I love to stare blankly at them and ask "what have you come to understand as the meaning of this life?"
........... Sorry............. probably lost a lot of you right there, but that's ok.... you may not be there yet... but you will some day...
.... anyways.... when I asked the old man this, he replied in the form of a story... and here is how it went.
On his family's dude ranch, they had a regular clientele, most of which were from overseas...
Now I, myself, have experienced this... the europeans are keen on all things western, sometimes suprisingly so...
.... back to the old man's story.... they had a repeat client, a very successful norwegian businessman... the man worked all his life... year after year, and his only "happy place" was when he brought his family over to work cattle on this "dude ranch" in Texas...
Over the years, the man began to look more and more towards this "vacation" of working cattle with his family... something about it had captured his family's collective mind...
Well.. here's where the story takes a turn and, personally, SLAPPED me in the face....
... On one of these, "reward for the miserable chit you do all year" vacations... the Norwegian's horse took a bad step on a hillside, up and rolled over, and killed the poor sucker... stone cold dead.
... Chew on that...
... First thing that most of us would think... OMG... is his wife and family gonna sue me because his horse (that we supplied) took a bad step and killed his ass.......
....HOWEVER.... when the man's wife rode up on the scene, she began to cry.... when the men went to console her, she told them... she was not crying in sadness for his death... but crying for happiness that he died doing what he loved so much.
I've been around this sort of people, people that have not had the opportunity to live.... ever... in their life.
.... What does this mean? I don't know.
... I'd like to show more people what it is though.
