As far as I am concerned, Joseph Glidden
was the most miserable SOB that ever breathed a breath. I curse his
memory every October 27th because that's the day Joseph got the first
ever patent for barbed wire.
Joseph
Glidden is known as "The Father of Barb Wire" which to me is like being
known as "The Father of Leukemia" or "The Father of Hitler." It is
simply something that I would not aspire to be. But Glidden was quite
proud of it, so much so that he kept on "improving" his invention. He
started out innocently enough with a wire he called "Glidden's Barely
Barbed" but he regressed quickly and towards the end of his miserable
life he came up with "Glidden's Hog Wire with Rusty Extra Long Barbs."
The
life of the common cowboy has been immortalized in song and the golden
screen but the cowboy is always portrayed in a romantic light, breaking
wild horses, turning a stampede, or serenading a herd going up the trail
to Abilene. Hah! I am here to tell you that the average old cowboy
living on Social Security in an old age home spent far more time
stringing a piece of Devil's Hat Band whose sole purpose was to inflict
pain and ruin shirts than he ever did singing under the stars to a bunch
of steers. And any cowboy worth his spurs has the scars to prove it.
Look at any sun burnt, crippled up old cowboy and amidst the wrinkled
skin, pitted like a cratered moon, you will see the scars. The old wire
cuts are worn proudly like a badge of honor.
There
are something like 1,400 kinds of barb wire and some brain dead people
are actually collecting it, as if it was art or something. (I only have
200 pieces in my collection.) I wrote a story one time about a rancher
near Henrietta, Texas, who has three rolls of "Brinkerhoff Twisted"
sitting in his shop and the poor old coot thinks he's wealthy. He's
leaving the rusty wire to his grandkids and it says so in his will!
It's
amazing to see some of the types of wire these demented inventors came
up with. At a barb wire show I recently attended I saw one version that
was nothing more than serrated steak knives welded together. The English
on the other hand were much more humane, their version was simply
smooth. Now it's the Japanese who are on the cutting edge of barb wire
technology and if you want to put a little spark in your otherwise
dreary marriage try stretching a mile or two of the Japanese version
with your spouse. You'll be hauled into divorce court before you get a
third wire stretched.
What my wife and
I do is get a smooth digging bar and shove it through the middle of the
roll. This allows us to unwind the roll of wire as we walk. The only
problem is that my wife is afraid of having the roll of barbs slide too
far to her side of the bar so she raises her end which of course means
as the roll unwinds it takes the hide off my hand. And of course she is
wearing the only decent pair of gloves.
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