Postcard from Ahloso - March 31, 2003

Greetings,

No rain now for nearly two months. This must be what Mars, or maybe Hell, looks like. The wind's blowing at 40 miles an hour and the thermometer reads 40 degrees. We have red skies in the mornings, even before the wind starts to blow.

As I write this my room and the fields beyond and the clouds are bathed in an eerie red light caused by the sunlight passing through dust high in the air and where its mixed with the smoke from grass fires burning out of control way off to the south. These fires happen often during a long dry and windy spring, and folks around here have learned to fear them—they'll reduce a farm in their path to a few smoking fence posts in no time at all.

The "chicken lights" on my farm and the farms off in the distance are turning on prematurely because they "think" it's sundown.

A roadrunner, a big bird with dark blue tail-feathers and a spot of red on his crown, has taken up residence here in the yard to be near the water put out for the dogs. Wind is about to blow the feathers off him and the hair off both dogs if it keeps up—and it'll sand blast the paint off the cars if it gets any worse. And the poor old bovines; they just turn their tails into it and suffer.

Red dirt and tumbleweed from eastern New Mexico passing overhead. No television; Channels 10 and 12 always go out when the wind blows like this and they're the only channels we normally can get. Missed seeing Rudy Dockray and his 'Farm and "Raynch" Report' this morning. Fire hazard warnings on the radio. I guess they're worried about one of those dust explosions.

Great monster of a billy-goat outside my kitchen window last night. About the size of a buffalo. White with a brown face, big laid back horns and a mean look in his eye. He infuriated Beetle, our spaniel, and she chased him over the hill toward Lake Nada Pescada. She came back after a while looking triumphant; as they say "It ain't the size of the dog in the fight, etc." Called Swede Cushing (he leases the surface and runs a few cows) and he says "THAT GOAT'S BEEN HERE ON THE PLACE FOR THREE YEARS NOW AND HOW COME YOU'RE JUST NOW NOTICING HIM?" Swede always yells because he's hard of hearing; he says the goat belongs to Landers (the farmer across the section-line east). Landers says "the damn goat don't want to stay home, and I'm not much of a mind to insist." Says we can shoot "the son-of-a-bitch" for all he cares. Some people! We won't shoot him. Swede and I have decided he can't eat much except a few tin cans and some barbed-wire, and besides, he fits right in with the jackass (Cactus Jack) and his missus (Ms. Cactus is expecting), and the emu. Beetle's pretty grumpy about him though. She'll get over it, but that will take a while; she ain't gettin' any nicer as she gets older.

There's talk about getting one of the tribes it do a rain dance, but the last time they did that we got a tornado. I think all we can do is sit and wait; but 70 years ago this same country went for eight years with less rain than they had in Arabia and the result was the famous "Dust Bowl", so its hard to know what to do.

If you haven't decided on where to take your vacation this year, consider Oklahoma "where the wind comes whippin' 'cross the plain."

Alex Coyle