Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Fade in.

I'm on a scooter -- not a motorcycle -- one of those scooters big enough to 1., carry a big ol' eighth-of-a-ton redneck and 2., get up to around 55 mph, headin' to the newspaper office on the freeway I never take, since I usually take the as-yet-largely-undeveloped county road just east of it.

It starts to slow down, and eventually fails and I coast to a stop on the shoulder. I get off and can't see any clear problem, so start pushing the thing. In a minute, there's a firetruck, ambulance and a couple of cop cars -- first responders.

They start standin' around and BS'ing, because there's really no reason for them to have been called. I get on the ground and see that the chain has come off -- like on a bicycle. Easy fix, if I only have a screwdriver to prise it back on with -- but I do not, and they do not. So, I start pushing the scooter again, and --

Swipe screen to:

Suddenly, I'm walking a horse, not pushin' a scooter. We're alongside a wooden corral -- the kind you still see on old farmsteads, not the fancy put-together pipe pens you can get at the Tractor Supply. It's a narrow run leadin' to a ramp and a loading chute.

I walk the horse and tie it to a post -- this is odd, 'cause I have not been on a horse for 10 years, and never was much of a horseman atall. I walk into the pens, and there are some calves around and a bunch of trash, vaccination bottles and nutsacks and such. The calves have been "worked."

I realize I have tennis shoes on, and the lot is muddy and shitful. Over in a corner, behind a bale of hay, is a pair of boots. They seem to be work boots, but when I get over to 'em, they're the kind of shiny, pointy-toed dancehall boots that are good for looks but not much for working. Anyway, I sit on the bale of hay and start to change when I feel a tickling sensation on the back of my neck.

I mean I am laughing out loud -- and I stir in the bed and realize I am actually laughing out loud in my sleep, but don't come out of it -- and turn and look and it's a cow that has stuck its head through a loose slat on the corral fence and is tryin' to eat my straw hat, but keeps missing and it's wet cow nose is pokin' me in the back of the neck.

In the dream, me and this cow -- nondescript breed, mottled color -- go way back. 'Cause I stand up and talk to it -- although I can't hear myself in the dream and so don't know what I said -- but I was being real friendly to the cow, which, in my dream, seems sad because one of its calves has just been worked.

The calf is nowhere around; if it was it would be right up by its mama. But it is gone, and since there is a loading chute in this scenario, I presume it has been loaded up and hauled off somewhere.

Cut to:

Suddenly, I'm somewhere else, with my old guitar in my hands, playing some basic G-C-D country song ... and I wake up.
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Interpretations, y'all?

--ER