Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Dinosaurs Did What?

We have only recently learned that the dinosaurs farted themselves into extinction.  I don't know why we didn't come to that conclusion long ago but at least we know the truth now.
Come to think of it, flatulence has played a big role in my family history also.  Okay, we didn't fart ourselves into extinction as evidenced by this writing.  However, my grandfather did get fired from one of his first jobs because of one last fart.
He was a cowboy riding the range and may have been the inspiration for the campfire scene in the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles.  Papa (my grandfather) and his trail driving colleagues were sitting around the campfire farting.  This type of after work activity has diminished somewhat with the advent of iphones and also with the almost complete disappearance of trail drives or for that matter cowboys.  However, I imagine back in his day there wasn't much else to do around the campfire because, believe it or not, most trail cowboys didn't carry around guitars and even if they did they probably couldn't sing all that well anyway.  At any rate, the trail boss got fed up with the farting, stormed out of his whatever (probably not his tent but maybe his bed roll) and shouted that he would fire the next man who farted.  My grandfather, never one to pass up such an opportunity, stood up and let one last good one rip.  He was immediately fired.  Such an act is no laughing matter because the trail drive may very well have been out in the middle of, for lack of a more detailed location, nowhere.
This really happened.  I know it did because my mother told me the story.
Such are family legends.

1 comment:

Tom Walker said...

I tried to post what I thought was a meaningful comment about dinosaur vs. cow flatulence a few days ago, but it never showed. What happened? Did it run afoul of some filter?