Under the Wire

Go for the gold

 

February 10, 2021



“Thar’s gold in them thar hills!” I’m not sure who this quote should be credited to, but he sure knew his geography. In the old days, that meant you could apply shovel to hillside, add a liberal amount of sweat and you just might hit pay dirt. Today, I was to find, modern-day “prospectors” have found another, less grueling way to find the gold.

Recently my family and I journeyed to the mountains of Colorado. It was partly work, visiting a few business associates and partly fun with a rodeo or two scheduled along the way. My run-in with modern day gold seekers came while attending one of the rodeos. As many of you will agree, a rodeo is a chance for contestants and observers to have fun, visit and enjoy America’s oldest sport. We’re talkin’ traditional good old fun here, folks.

As we pulled through the gate of this rodeo grounds near a modern resort town, we started to notice a few different things about this place.

“Seven dollars,” the lady at the gate stated as we drove up. “Per person,” she added.

“Ma’am, I just drove 350 miles to get here. Now you want me to pay to watch myself rope?” I asked her.

“Well OK, go on in, but don’t tell anyone,” she whispered as we drove in. I’d just encountered my first gold miner. “Cowboy Barbecue” the big sign said as we parked and unloaded our kids and horses.

Now, this was more like it. Real Western hospitality! We got in line with everyone and moved toward the food.

“Teeket pleeze,” the man with a strange accent requested. “If you have no teeket you must buy one from ladee at booth.” Please excuse my poor interpretation of his speech. Grumbling, I moved to the booth.

“How many are you?” the lady asked.

“Five,” I grumbled back, holding back the urge to point out there is one of me and one, also, of each of them.

“Feefty-five dollar, pleeze,” the same accent informed me. I bellowed, “What the heck are you serving?”

“Cheeken,” she smiled. “Everyone gets teen peeces of Cheeken.”

“No Beef?” I asked.

“No, just Cheeken,” she answered, smiling less now. I, too, was smiling less after finding out our Western Barbeque wouldn’t even be serving any of the critters the West was founded on, beef. The line was building behind us with people eager to give this strange talking person eleven dollars per head to eat a good old down-home Western Cheeken barbecue. I paid. Another gold miner had just struck pay dirt.

Moving through the line, I noticed no one but us seemed to speak English. Even the people piling off buses from the nearby resorts all seemed to be from some other country. As we left with our plates of “teen peeces of cheeken,” I wished at least one of the cooks had been able to speak English. I would have liked to ask him how he managed to get 10 pieces out of a single chicken thigh. This “authentic cowboy barbecue” in Colorado’s mountains seemed to be staged for tourists from another country by modern-day miners from some other country who had found an easy way to “go for the gold.”

The Old West sure has changed in parts of this land. I can accept cultural diversity but I’ll never learn to like “Cheeken.”

Oh, by the way, I didn’t rope worth a darn at the Rodeo. It started to rain, turned into a downpour and I don’t think anybody caught a calf or steer. Seemed kind of appropriate, all things considered.

 

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