The Boys Are Back In Town

That would be the presidentially bearded Abe and lily-white Casper (The Friendly Goat), not to mention Lola, Alice and Buttermilk.  If you thought all vestiges of the Caprine persuasion had permanently abandoned NW 112th Avenue with the departure of the earlier flock, well, you weren’t the only ones.  Perhaps you’ll recall that Siobhan finagled the first crew in on the pretext that they would “clear the new property” which we had just purchased adjacent to ours.  There was no doubt it needed clearing, densely forested as it was with a stifling carpet of vines frustrating one’s every move.  And as far as goat neophytes like I know, goats will eat anything, so why not?  Well, I have news for you: goats will most certainly NOT eat anything.  They are actually a little fussy, if you ask me.  And while they will tear into certain types of vegetation, they have absolutely no interest in those infernal vines which clog our field.  I mean, they don’t trip on them, right?  Also, they are not as hungry for chewy greens as they might be if Siobhan didn’t feed them delicious top-of-the-line goat food.  So when people come over to our place and remark on the wonderful land-clearing job Casper and company are doing—and before they resort to the folly of collecting their own herd—I am quick to point out that the real credit for the job falls to Mario the Mexican, who works cheap and doesn’t require feeding.  If you want to import a herd of Marios, I have no objection.  Unlike some, I have always fully appreciated mariachi music.

The latest goats emanate from the desire of our new neighbor, Greg Poe, to have a goat herd of his own.  Now Greg seems like a perfectly sensible man when first met and no one would have a hint of suspicion that under his normal guise lay a goatherder-in-waiting.  This is a quiet affliction which affects only an unfortunate few but you never know where it will strike.  Anyway, Siobhan being the neighborhood goat expert, Greg came to her for advice.  Siobhan, of course, just happened to know where he could pick up a herd of twenty-two at a rock-bottom quantity rate.  “Buy twelve, get ten for free!” is how the breeder put it.  It takes awhile to learn to appreciate goat humor.  Long story short, Greg bought his little tribe and Siobhan, missing her old goats as she did (though she still had me), took the rest.

The new goats arrived weeks ago and looked happy enough to me.  They had plenty of food, a giant field to ramble around in and a large horse stall in which to escape adverse weather.  Siobhan, however, ruminated on the situation and came up with a decision: the goats needed a house, preferably one with little shelves on which to lay about, and perhaps even a nice front porch.  She googled up “Goat Houses R Us” and—wouldn’t you know it—just happened to find two distinguished carpenters in a nearby trailer park.  Eight hundred dollars later, she had her goat house and a fine one it is, wonderfully painted by Siobhan, herself, and her helpful neighbors Hal and Jennie Hollis, who encourage this sort of thing.   The goats, for their part, carefully surveilled the new edifice, sniffed at it, poked around a bit and after checking with the code enforcement bureau, decided it was acceptable to occupy.  Since then, the landlady has built a little rustic fence for the critters, the better to keep Lila, the goat-eating dog out.  Yesterday, she was pridefully displaying the venerable estate to neighbor Chris Gaisunas when the latter pointed out an important shortcoming.  Apparently, as some people keep pictures of their pets in the house, so do goats often display photographs of their keepers.  Siobhan decided on tintypes, just in case one or another of the tribe might be having a bad day and see fit to punish the photographs.  And no, I am not making this up.

Now taking all this in was our next-door neighbor, Scott Sibila.  Scott owns the field adjacent to ours and, on comparing the two properties, decided that he, too, might need some goats for landscaping purposes.  Unfortunately, he didn’t check first with me to be properly advised of the more fertile Mexican option.  He tracked down Drew, a nearby goat-owner and offered him the use of his lush woodlands.  Drew accepted and brought over the first five of an eventual fifteen goats last week.  I hate to be judgmental in these matters, but I would have to say that our goats appear to emanate from superior families and never resort to rap music in the middle of the night like some people’s goats.  And while our snobbish caprines have absolutely no use for Scott’s band of delinquents, his goats are fascinated with ours.  Instead of clearing land, they huddle in the closest corner to their eastern neighbors and pay close attention to their every move.  Siobhan told Scott they need a new lead goat to advise them of their proper duties and direct them to the working area.  Who knew how complicated all this goat business was?  Anyway, as you can tell, Fairfield, Florida is now awash in goats.  If you’re ever of a mind, come on over and we’ll introduce you.  You can even bring the grandchildren.  Siobhan is working on a little railroad which will transport the kiddies throughout the vast goat territories.  There will be treats available for goat-feeding.  The five-minute ride is only a pitiful five dollars.  All proceeds to be used for the impending construction of the Fairfield Greek Orthodox Goat Temple, the first of its kind.  And that’s only the beginning.  After all, there’s no stopping the momentum of an Idea Whose Time Has Come.  Unfortunately.

Buttermilk And The Goat Lady Of Fairfield

 

The Devil Is In The Details

Now, it’s all well and good to raise a couple of goats here and there but when great hordes of them begin sweeping over the land, the Christians get nervous.  Did we ever tell you we’ve got Christians out here?  Well, it’s true and there’s no shortage of them, either.  And Christians get a little squirmy about goats and their possible hobnobbing with the Devil.  I think it all goes back to the final discourse of Jesus when he described the end of this age.  He stated that a day would come when he would sit on his throne and gather all the nations before him and on that day he would separate the nations just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25, verse 31).  Anyway, for some unknown reason, the goats are given short shrift in this deal while the sheep move up.  It doesn’t seem fair.  What did the goats ever do to deserve this?   

Anyway, when some unhappy grouch decided one day that it might be a good idea to begin worshipping Satan, he figured well, hell, any enemy of Jesus must be a friend of mine.  So he began to use Eliphas Levi’s Sabbatic Goat—popularly know as Baphomet—as the major symbol of Satanism, which developed in the context of the Christian faith as an ideological backlash to certain tenets of that religion.  In 1990, there were 50,000 Satanists in the world.  Today, there may be as many as 100,000.  We say just leave those Satanists and their goats alone, they’re not hurting anybody.  Oh, and listen:  once and for all, Rosemary’s Baby was NOT a true story.

 

Scottish Goat Humor

An old-timer in Scotland. talking to a young man at a bar:

The old man points out the window.  “Eh, Laddie—look out to sea.  Do ya see that pier that stretches as far as the eye can see?  I built that pier with the sweat off me back.  Aye, I nailed it board by board  for many a day and it has stood the test of time.  But do they call me McGreggor the pier-builder?  Hah!  I think not!”

“Look, lad—out there to the field.  See that fence—how well it’s built?  I built that fence with my own hands, stone by stone , I piled them for months.  But do they call me McGreggor the fence-builder?  Oh no—no, they don’t!” 

“And look at this bar.  You see how smooth and just it is, the surface planed down by me and my aching back for many long hours.  it was eight long days in the making, this bar.  But do they call me McGreggor the bar-builder?  No, they assuredly do not!”

Then, the old man furtively looks around, inspecting the room and lowering his voice barely above a whisper….

“But you fornicate with just ONE goat….”

 

The 94-Year-Old Man

It seemed odd at Derby time that we didn’t hear from our old Connecticut compadre, Theron (Ted) Blow, who always called prior to the classics to discuss the horses.  We’re not sure whether Ted wanted to get a bet down or just appear knowledgeable to his diminishing list of friends and associates, but that was of secondary importance.  The conversation was the thing.  The previous time we had spoken with Ted, mere months ago, he attested that he was problem-free and still on course toward what he called “The Big One,” his 100th birthday, six years hence.  Ted still lived at home, got around fairly well with his walker and had the benefit of a housekeeper and cook who lived nearby.  His son, Paul, was just across town and kept a close eye on the old man.  In all conversations, Ted was unfailingly cheerful and always inquisitive.  He could never remember Siobhan’s name but always asked about her, remembering her as that “little girl” he gave his coat to at my grandmother’s funeral, degrees farenheit 8.  Siobhan is 5-6, but Ted, after all, was 6-4 at his peak.

My sister, Kathy, emailed with the bad news:  After a very short period of regression, Ted had succumbed to some foolish problem not worth remembering.  Truth be told, I’m surprised that anything short of a runaway bus could lay the man low.  Ted was tough, “an old Vermonter” he would tell you, and proud of it.  Old Vermonters are not like you and I.  For one thing, they never whine about the cards life has dealt them, even if it’s a fistful of deuces.  For another, they are the fiercest of friends.  As his daughter, Beverly, reminds in his obituary, throughout his life, Ted made people smile with his “endless supply of stories, jokes and unsolicited advice.”

In February of 1942, Ted enlisted in United State Army and was eventually shipped overseas to complete four years of service in the European Theater, serving in the Signal Corps and the Second Armored Division.  He was with the contingent which occupied a liberated Berlin.  On his return, he took a job with the Southern New England Telephone Company and kept it for 36 years.  He was an energetic family man, a proud husband and an easy guy to know.  If you could find a reason to dislike Ted, well, there was obviously something wrong with you.

The other day, I reached for the Cosmic Cell Phone to check in with old pals Stuart Bentler and Newt Simmons, now ensconced in the ethers, the better to know how the old man was handling the afterlife.

“Well,” Stuart reported, “Newt and I happened to be sitting in the Gateside Bar just as Ted arrived.  They booked him in, he walked around a little bit and shook his head from side to side.  Then he went back and told Pete that he’d be leaving.”

“WHAT?!?  I didn’t know you could do that!”

“I didn’t either,” said Stuart.

“Well, what did he say when he left?  Did you hear him?”

“Sure I did, I was sitting right there,” Stuart remarked.  “He just looked at Pete, smiled, gave him a big wink and said, ‘All things considered, I’d rather be in Montpelier.’  Just like that, he was gone.  Later on, Pete came over and I asked him about it.”

“’Well,’ he told me, ‘sometimes we make exceptions for Vermonters.’”

 

That’s all, folks….