A friend asked to borrow my pickup to haul the family Christmas tree home and, being the kind man I am, I offered to drive the truck myself. (I didn’t trust my 25-year-old truck in his hands.)

My family talks funny. My mom and grandparents on her side of the family are all gone now, but I can still hear them using words like privy, lariat, pipsqueak, scuttlebutt and wieners.

If all the cars in the world were placed end to end ... they’d probably be behind a slow-moving cattle truck.

“Hello. Is this the vet clinic?” Buck wasn’t completely sure because the last time he’d called the veterinarian was when his 30-year-old mare was born.

One of the things a good cowman has to have, besides a good banker, is an early detection system for determining when an animal is sick.

My wonderful wife is the picture of perfect health, with only one known ailment: She suffers from what is known in the medical community as “white coat syndrome.”

High tech has destroyed businesses, turned Main Street into a ghost town and driven your FedEx and UPS delivery person to sheer exhaustion. Forget the mall; Americans are shopping on their cellphones.

I’m proud to say I was a vocational student, even though the rest of my high school looked down on us, and we were quarantined far from the regular campus.

There’s a fad occurring in the Western world I’d like to encourage. Ranch people are naming their kids with rodeo-inspired words. I’m not talking about names like Freckles, Ote, Tibbs, Ty, Tuff, Trevor, Tomkins, Luke, Lane, Beaver, Monty, Mahan, Shoulders, Charmayne, Ace, Jake or Walt.

Hi ladies, it’s me: the wife of the slob who usually writes this column. He’s resting now, getting his beauty sleep – and believe me, he needs all he can get. Unbeknownst to him, I’m taking over the column this week because what I have to say is much more important than any gibberish he’d have written.