mom, can I keep it?

Back when I was in the music business I had to drive down to Wichita, Ks for a meeting one year. I finished up my meeting and I’m driving back in this big van that we used to haul gear around in. So there I am tooling along when I see this Cow walkin along the side of the highway. Now being the old farmhand that I was, I recognized it right off for what it was. (

Every year when I was a kid my parents shipped me to West Texas to spend the summer with relatives. One of em had a pig farm and I actually used to slop pigs and fuck around with Cows and all that good country shit. Did you know that pigs will eat anything? We’d hop into this pickup filled with these old barrels and visit restaurants in town and pick up their old food and crap from the trash out back. Then we’d feed it all to the pigs. I think that “smell” will always be a part of my memory. On the high side some of the “sows” (adult female pigs) were so big that we could ride em barebacked).

Now I’m checkin out this Cow walking on the side of the road and she looking all lonely and shit. So I pull in front of her and park the van and I get her stopped. As I’m standing there petting old Bossy I get to thinking. Hmmm? I bet I could get her in the back of the van. Did I ever say how bored I was from the drive? In my head I seriously thought that I could steal this Cow and pay someone back home to butcher it up for me, we’re talking steaks for days. What a dumbass I was. I actually got to the point where I’m trying to push her into the van. (that’s a pretty picture, a big black guy in a Hawaiian shirt tryin to push a cow into the back of a van on the side of the freeway) As I’m doing all this I hear the blip of a siren and there’s a trooper pullin up behind me. I was so busted. The trooper just sat in his car staring at me like I was the freak of the week. He gets out and ambles over to where me and the Cow are takin a much needed breather.

“That’s a cow isn’t it?”

I thought about lying, but he had me with my hand in the cookie jar. “Do you know that Cow rustling is a serious offense and you were trying to stuff that cow into the back of that vehicle weren’t you”? I tried to tell him I found the damn thing on the side of the road and what crime is that? To make a long story short, he made me put the cow back and let me off with a stern warning. Cow theft doesn’t pay.
"and the monkey flipped the switch"