Author Archive for M. Toole
vegetarians who hunt
This year western Colorado will see record numbers of vegetarians traveling here to purchase hunting licenses. For some, like Herb Gardener, owner of the Mother Earth Root Salad Patio in Los Angeles, it was the repetition of the often heard maxim; hunting is good for the health and strength of deer and elk herds that brought him out this year.
“We live in L.A. so of course we have a lot of guns,” said Herb.” And we enjoy shooting guns. This seemed like a way to use my guns for something positive. Yesterday while I was stalking a buck I could just feel the positively charged ions in the air. It was like the deer were saying, “Thank you Mr. Gardener.”
For others the motivation is different. Skip Townsend, a hunter from San Francisco explains:
“Eating meat definitely offends me. When I see people eating burgers I just want to smash their heads like pumpkins because they are so inhumane. I don’t even let my kids eat animal crackers.”
But man, I love hunting. The challenge, the chase, the feel of cold steel and the smell of gun powder. I want to get a big old bull elk, of course, this year I hired three veterinarians to go with me to doctor any animals I shoot. It’s very expensive but I don’t want to kill any animals, I just want to hunt.”
– Harold Forth
“Luck breaks a sweat.” – Melvin Bedwetter Toole
The Running of the Kokanee
continued from Soft News
and couldn’t see what harm it would do. Sure, I’ll take my chances, I’ll run with the salmon!
All a person has to know about swimming upstream, or down for that matter, is to watch out for rocks and overhanging trees. The high walls stretching down to the powerful current were chocked full of spectators. The participants began to bunch up, a turn in the river, the current swift, then peaceful, now tranquil as we float out at a snail’s pace to engage The Kokanee.
There…just off the right bank…spawning salmon and lots of them! Kokanee for sure, angry pent up emotions from the long hot summer flaring out through their lethal gills. Look at those razor fangs! They are moving toward the swimmers, bunched up still now breaking in panic at the sight of the fish.
I remember reading about this type of thing going on in Pamploma when I was a boy but not since the Heeny Tick Festival Flea Circus have I witnessed such brute bloodlust squatting on our sacred Colorado soil.
Sadly the stragglers are dead meat in minutes, dragged to the depths of the cold, heartless stream like marshmallows at the mercy of a roaring campfire, like chokeberries toasting on the tongue a goldbrick black bear. The survivors scurry back and forth into the water, clutching banks and willows vowing to stay on dry land forevermore.
It’s a lot like body surfing except that the salmon are the waves. Sure, there were moments when I was scared to death but, hey, everyone needs a little peril, a bite of fright in their lives. The icy cold water, the flags and banners of the crowds, the slimy Kokanee bent on death in the afternoon…it’s a lot different than TV.
If you simply use your head and concentrate…
What! I’m cut. I can feel the blood and see red in the water. I’ve been finned! Oh my god…I’m going down, the hooves of the beast cracking my scull like a shellfish in a blender, like an aristocratic keilbasa about to go under the knife. Trampled in the backwaters of the Slate, the East…what’s the difference now. Left for dead by fish with a morose, senseless agenda. Gored by the scale of it all.
Suddenly a surge of water lifts me. I pull myself out of the water and flag down a topsail henway tuna boat and hop on.
That night in the ship’s stateroom the captain and his seductive wife told me of the hundreds of souls lost to the spawning each year.
“And they’ll be back for more next fall, them that survived the onslaught.”
Uncompahgre To Run South in November
(Portland, CO) In an attempt “to make the river safe for fish” the Department of the Inferior has approved a risky plan to completely flush the Uncompahgre River this fall. Environmentalists, concerned as to why there are no fish in the upper reaches of the river while there are surviving species in the South Platte flood plain, have petitioned for the project since 1990.
The flushing will run concurrently with street resurfacing in downtown Ouray so that everyone can be inconvenienced on an equal basis. Residents participating in the popular Save A Trout Program are asked to keep their charges home in a fish bowl. Persons concernd about walleye eating bass and such should keep it to themselves so as not to alarm more dorsal species.
“It should be quite the deal,” said project manager Ariel Buttman of Lakewood. “I’ve lived in Colorado all my life and I didn’t know this place existed. It’s really nice here but what do the people do in the winter?”
The flushing will cost an estimated $500,000 with any fiscal excess earmarked for the Ridgway By-Pass, scheduled to begin next May.
“If our plan is successful we should have clear, beautiful water by spring, you know…the kind they have on those Coors TV commercials.”
– Uncle Pahgre
SACRED COWS EXEMPT FROM GRAZING RESTRICTIONS
(Washington DC) Interior Secretary Runn Rabbit today admitted that a long list of sacred cows will be spared the confines of an innovative new public grazing bill that resides somewhere under his desk here.
Although Rabbit did not elaborate on the list, he promised that all the one-dimensional fringe groups that make up the Wheatfield Coalition would soon be appeased, even placated, by his new plan.
“If your average sacred cow wants to graze in the National Forests, there is little we can do to stop it from pursuing that end. Of course,” he said, “sacred cows come in all different shapes and colors depending on the region of the country one may reside in.”
Critics such as Sen. Oral Noise (Unitarian-CA), insist that Rabbit has ignored the fact that sacred cows do not graze at public expense in many locales east of the Mississippi since there is a short supply of grass and far too many people there.
“The simple fact is this,” mooed Noise, “cows, sacred or otherwise, don’t feel comfortable grazing in the more urban areas of the East due to the mass congregation of people, concrete and houses. In addition, they don’t enjoy standing outside at all hours in the Midwest due to the lousy weather,” he smiled. “Out here on the West Coast they don’t feel safe pasturing due to gangs and random violence. That leaves the Rocky Mountain states,” he continued, “as the only feasible spot in which even the most sacred cow can achieve any level of peace in the 21st Century”.
Responding to his critics, Rabbit has promised new legislation aimed at curtailing the population boom that now threatens the lifestyle of people living in the Rockies. He assured those in attendance in a bread line outside his office that the Brady Bill should end violence once and for all in America and that the ACA will easily end disease leaving a lot more time to concentrate on the plight of livestock.
“Everyone has faced a little barbed wire and a few essential cattle guards in his life, even if he lives in New York or Los Angeles,” declared Rabbit. “All the government has to do is back up the existing barriers with fortified walls and deep moats inhabited by piranhas and Republican-eating alligators,” he explained. “We’re currently dismantling our defenses along the Mexican border, due to the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement. We think these safeguards can be implemented to save the Rockies from overgrazing by man and/or beast.”
Rabbitt would not comment when asked how many cows have actually read the fine print in that particular document.
– Rory Lyons
Earth is sole planet says Vance
“And global warming is no threat”
(Middletown, Ohio) Vice Presidential hopeful J D Vance told a group of intergalactic oil drillers here that earth was indeed the only planet in the solar system and that their efforts at oil extraction in outer space were good for America.
Saying that “God told me” Vance went on to discount earlier findings that the solar system was crammed with heavenly bodies.
“Show me one place in the Bible where they talk about Mars or Martians invading the earth,” said Vance, to a chorus of laughter. He quickly turned serious then added that with the Martian threat gone the administration could now focus wholeheartedly on the War on Liberals. Silence.
The Kentucky denied allegations that his comments reflected a conflict of interest due to former associations with the oil industry. Frowns.
“Back when I was at the helm in Ohio we were subjected to the same kind of harassment by narrow-minded people who think the earth was created to be preserved. What nonsense. I don’t remember reading about any environmentalists crossing the Red Sea or fighting with the Philistines.”
Again Vance got a throng of guffaws, mixed with tearful laughter.
When asked about Martian landings by unmanned spaceships and an assortment of high tech photos that have been collected over the past five years Vance said that he could not answer in that the activity in question was a matter of national security.
“I’ll say this: He smiled. “If I was a passenger on a United Airlines Flight to Disney World I’d be far and away more comfortable with Donald Trump in the cockpit than I would his Democratic challenger.”
Vance ignored countless questions by reporters as to his immigrant status, that of one time Briar Hopper turned Buckeye.
– Sergio Jingle
Vice Squad Strikes Gold, Parrot City in Flames
Rocky Mountain Mammories
Special from The Gladstone Gladiator (October 26, 1884)
(Parrot City) The dark side of the mining boom came to light tonight as contingents of local deputies, backed by Pinkerton agents and remnants of the Colorado State militia staged a midnight raid on brothels and opium dens here.
Their expenses paid by railroad interests the small but hallowed army was silent moments before the strike. They are one as the new abolitionists joined by a young reporter from this paper, a foul-smelling circuit judge and an anxious undertaker from Silverton. They move on the sweaty gulch under the eye of a band of Utes peering from the painted ponies of their last hurrah.
Not since the Civil War have such perverse conditions existed unchecked by civilized men. Upon entering the muddy hollow that has come to be named Parrot City it becomes apparent that one must keep a firm hold on anything of value. Swaying residents, drunk from rapid fire fermentation, stand in the doorways of makeshift tar shacks watching for the slightest weakness, a blink, on the part of the regiment. A nickel for a beer. Four cents for a life.
The first order of business is to close down and torch the ramshackle Mule Billiards which doubles as a house of ill repute. Since January this dump has hosted several murders in its debauched halls. Miners, heavy with gold dust and momentarily rich in ore from surrounding claims are systematically fleeced here and then thrown out to the rutted streets to survive the frigid night in their skivvies.
Run by Polly Singleton, The Mule will be the first to go. Hallelujah. Watch it go up in flames. Watch the rats scurry to retrieve their lives as the flames creep higher into the frosty spring night. The sun seems to have stayed up in the sky just a wee bit longer to catch the finale. Ashes to ashes. Purification. On to the next den…
That same night there was gunplay out at the DeLila Mine, some fourteen miles from the main from Sullivan’s Ditch where my father was last seen packing ore onto his bare-boned burro before the descent to the flats and on to the assay office over at Lake City. Some people here say he never made it down the mountain, that a slide got him and washed away his treasure. Others say he was bushwhacked by bandits that roamed the ragged heights. I believe they did him in and took his precious cargo of life. I’m certain his murderers sleep in Parrot City tonight.
When we reach DeLila a loud explosion distracts us from our holy mission. Light in the sky. Handguns blaze. We return the fire. We can’t tell who is who. Now they’re all cold on the ground. We lost one of the Pinkertons to foot blisters but otherwise reported no casualties. After a meal of army rations we head back to town to continue sterile purge of the infested gambling halls.
The Chattanooga Saloon. Roulette wheels and keno. The devil’s picture book. Whiskey, soaked chips, courtesan champagne, tiny rooms of sin sag the ceiling above. Stains of the boom. Costumes of deplorable mirth!
One staggering poker face draws on a Pinkerton gun slinger. Dead-eye shot! He drops to the hard wood floor never again to shuffle a deck. Another thinks about it, fingering his leather holster but decides to exit through the back alley into the night. We disarm the lot and detain wicked in the parlor awaiting further instructions from Rev. Chivington, who should be arriving from Capital City this very night.
But wait…they’re hanging the inmates of the Parrot City calaboose! They’ve had no trial! Shouldn’t we wait further…”The boys are just having a little fun,” says a former Union sergeant. “Let them be. We’ll cut ’em down after we’d scared them a bit,” slurs the judge.
Then it was on to the hash parlor, the China Belle opium den where men fancy the foggy dreams of demons and narcotic fantasy, wasting away until the dehydrated dawn comes looking for another handout. Unfortunately there is no one there. They have been warned of our coming and we set the block of leaning shanties ablaze in their absence. It makes a dandy roast on a cold morning. They called the district Parrot City’s Rec Center. The damned at play in the alpine meadows of the Lord!
The Pinkerton fellows are getting itchy for a fight. We’ve met little resistance in our attempts to muck out this hole. Several of the men are headed back down Corduroy Street in search of holdouts. Someone has set fire to the Chattanooga. I wonder did our prisoners get out or face hell’s own fire right here on earth? No report at mid-morning. Witches burned at the stake? The tools of their misdeeds the kindling of vengeance.
Out in the street it is clear that the victims of the necktie party are still in flight, dangling from the noose. Unclaimed souls stranded in space, scarecrows of the swift sword. Fodder of decorum.
Suddenly there is gunfire coming from the upstairs of the Henson Hotel. Somebody’s got a rifle up there. Three of our men are down bleeding in the dirt street. Another is hit.
“Take cover,” screams the sergeant himself holding his belly. “He’s up there,” points one of the deputies, close to tears at the scene. “I can see the rifle!”
The firing subsides and we began the tedious chore of closing in on the balcony assassin. Creeping slowly on all fours I slide along the cupola and into an empty hotel room. The exchange of fire continues, while in its lapses I can almost hear my target breathing through the thin walls of the 19th Century. I hug the hallway wall making my way through barricades as the shooting subsides. I force the door my revolver hip high. There’s no one there.
Surveying the room one more time. Then I pull my handkerchief as a flag of truce and carefully approach the open window. A flurry of bullets greets me there.
Waking up heavily bandaged in a hospital cart I scribble my story while the ghost of John Brown speaks to the righteous of our next engagement. They’ve got excitement in their eyes. A pretty nurse tells me I will likely survive my wounds.
Three weeks later Parrot City is up and running again, a new cast of characters roaming its seedy streets, the mines giving birth to mounds of tainted gold.
– Kashmir Horseshoe
