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October 20, 2000

If the truth be told, there's probably not a bigger coward in the state of Texas than me when it comes to getting my teeth worked on. I never see a dentist come at me with a drill that I don't think of poor Dustin Hoffman undergoing the worst kind of torture in Marathon Man.

"Ain't nuttin' to it," said Mel, carting me to the dentist's office recently when a jaw tooth broke and I had to get a crown. He grinned at my nervousness. "I'd like to crown you myself."

"I'll bet you would," I growled.

"You shore are gittin' to be high maintenance. Why, I could buy a shore 'nuff good cow/calf pair fer whut yore shellin' out fer a tooth. If it wuz me, I'd just tell 'em to pull it. It's away back in the back an' nobody wud notice it wuz missin' anyhow."

"Except me, when I tried to chew," I snarled.

"Like I said, it's a back tooth. Nobody's gonna see it no how. One good thang about it, in the event of a war, nobody's gonna knock you in the head to steal your teeth if you go with porcelain. How many's that make, now, anyhow?"

"Three," I grunted. "And it isn't fair. I'm the one that always took care of my teeth growing up. Brushed and flossed two or three times a day. I'm the one with the cracks and cavities and Curry and Lyle don't have a filling in their head!"

The dentist said my brothers could attribute that to their good genes. I don't know why I had to get the bad ones. Oh well...

"You keep it up, you're gonna be worse 'n some ol' smooth mouthed cow, now that you're gittin' a li'l age on you," Mel gouged.

I had just about had enough by then.

"Did I ever tell you the one 'bout the city slicker and cows' teeth?" he resumed.

"I don't think so."

"Well, this city guy bought him a ranch and begin showin' up at the sale barn, buying him one or two bred heifers ever' week or so. Really bought some nice uns and built him up a mighty respectable herd. By and by, he decided he'd sell some of his heifers. Run him an' ad in the paper an' ol' Bully Cutbirth wuz the first un to show up on his doorstep...you remember ol' Bully..."

"Can't say that I do," I replied.

"Well he wuz jist about as crafty a cowman as they come. Anyhow, they drove out to the pasture an' the guy honked an' rattled a feedsack an' got all his cows up in a huddle around the truck.

"Bully insisted that he run 'em through a head chute so he could git a close up look. First thang he done was run' his hand in the first cow's mouth and said, `Why this un must be old as Methuselah. She done lost her top teeth.' The city slicker got mighty apologetic. Bully went to the next un. Same thang...'"

"I didn't think cows were supposed to have upper front teeth," I said.

"They ain't, but that city slicker didn't know that," Mel hooted. "Yessir, 'at sly Bully shore got hisself a heckuva deal on 'at bunch o' cows."