Baxter Black

 

Baxter Black can shoe a horse, string a bob wire fence and bang out a Bob Wills classic on his flat top guitar. Cowboy poet, ex-veterinarian and sorry team roper, he has more hair around his lip than on his head. Raised in New Mexico, spent his working, life in the mountain west tormenting cows. Now lives in Arizona and travels the country tormenting cowboys.

Since 1982, Baxter Black has been rhyming his way into the national spotlight, and now stands as the best selling cowboy poet in the world. He's written 12 books (including a rodeo novel), recorded over a dozen audio and videotapes, and achieved notoriety as a syndicated journalist and radio commentator, from the Tonight Show and PBS to NPR and the NFR. Baxter's wacko verse has been seen and heard by millions. His works are pron1inently displayed in both big city libraries and small town feed stores.

Yet Black, who still doesn't own a television, fax machine or cellular phone, hasn't changed a thing about his subject matter or his delivery. He continues to focus on the day-to-day ups and downs of everyday people who live with livestock and work the land. Driven by a left hand sense of humor Black evokes laughter just by being there.

Baxter's philosophy is simple enough -in spite of all the computerized, digitized, high-tech innovations now available to mankind, 'there will always be a need for someone who can "think up stuff'.

STORY OF THE COWMAN AND THE COW

By Baxter Black, DVM

Ol’ Dave was calvin’ heifers when the thought occurred to him "If I’d been born a thousand years ago I’d still be up at midnight with my flashlight blinkin’ out Because I let my flint supply get low.

The mud would still be ankle deep or snow still to my knees Though now their old time methods seem so quaint.

Back then I’d have to shoosh her in a drafty calvin’ shed And squeeze her ‘tween two panels for restraint.

Or use an ol’ rope halter to secure her to a post So I could slip inside and have a feel.

The oaken bucket would be filled with water cold enough To turn the chunk of soap as hard as steel.

I’d have to straighten up the calf to grab his two front legs And loop some calving straps above his hooves.

Then pull when she’s a pushin’, watch him pop out on the ground And hold my breath until he finally moves.

Then rub him down with wads of straw and tickle his wet nose And leave the two together for a while.

I’d stand there in my tunic till I knew he’d had a suck Then walk back to the cottage with a smile."

It made him laugh, Ol’ Dave, that is, as he rolled up his sleeves, "A thousand years between back then and now.

We might have better batteries, but some things never change."

The story of the cowman and the cow.