To the Bovine Signal!

Original image by Skye McAllister. GIF remix by Rochelle Lockridge

I’m concerned enough that I’m calling for help. Dr. M posted her concerns earlier today. There are now several Burgeron family members that are missing: JJ Mac GIF, Stefanie, Bella & Bonnie Burgeron , and Julie Burgeron.  Quite possibly West Burgeron too – although I’m not positive if he was coming or not. There was even a mention quite early on that the Headless Inkspots from over in DS106 City would be sharing their music at the trailer this summer.  Everyone made contact early on that they would be joining us, started their journey, then not a word. Our Bovine County ace reporter Betsy de R. and Aunty Sappy were investigating some strange sounds over the 4th of July, possibly linked to that mysterious AREA 106, but they haven’t located any of our missing family members. Thank goodness we know Anna Cow is just fine. Congratulations dear on be crowned “Miss Bovine America” at the Bovine County fair.  While Mama and Little Boo are doing some traveling over in Italy at the moment, they’ve at least kept in touch to let me know they’ll be back home in plenty of time to help with the preparations for the big family reunion.

Now with all these missing family members, I personally took it upon myself to head over to the Bovine County seat in DS106 City last night to flash the Bovine Signal, hoping to summon our local caped crusaders to aid us in finding our lost family members.  Could they have been abducted? Or have they been sucked into a time vortex like Highlander Don? Or met some other sinister demise? Maybe they’re just lost and their cell phone service doesn’t reach out here. Whatever it is, I want to get to the bottom of this.  I’m turning 100 for landsakes. This is a big event for the family.  No evil do-er is going to ruin my party.

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Highlander Don

Don Burgeron stars in Braveheart with his bovine battalion at his side. (Original Movie Poster)

The Family was having so much fun this week riffing on movie posters that I decided this ol’ gal would have to take a go at it. Even Dr. M got in the act by creating a new DS106 Assignment: The Best Bond is a Dog.

With the flick of my Photoshop magic wand, cloning tool, and healing brush Don Burgeron is now starring in the hit film Braveheart with his trusty bovine battalion at his side- Anna Cow in the lead.

But that’s not all, as I was doing my research on the poster and movie I came across something very interesting.  That buzzing sound Don Burgeron heard last week before he went missing? It was quite possibly a time warp forming to pull him back into the 16th century where he first became a Highlander fighting bravely for the Burgeron106 clan back in the DS106 Highlands in 1536. There is a rumor going around that Don is seriously being consider for the starring role in the new Highlander remake that was to start filming in 2014 when lead actor Ryan Reynolds exited the movie  last summer.

Don Burgeron stars in the 2014 remake of Highlander. (Original movie poster)

The Abduction of Don

There was a time when I guess other folks might have said I had been abducted by drink. And to be sure, there were days like that. Even weeks. And I suppose a couple of years were kinds like that too.

But in all fairness, these last 20 years have been abduction free till last week.

I have read about crop circles and I have watched movies about how some space aliens were the architects behind the pyramids. I have even seen pictures of cows being abducted around these parts by saucers flying over these very hills in Bovine. And I have, for all my life, called it all hogwash.

But I am going to tell you now, there is something strange happening in Bovine and I have seen it.

We have been busy here getting ready for the reunion. I have finished the deck and the community fire pit, and even remodeled our garden so we can feed all those coming to the reunion. Often, I have been working till after dark to finish some of the preparations.

Last Sunday night I was working on the yard by the dog house just finishing some raking and putting leaves in a bag when I heard a high pitched whirling sound. At first I thought it was a big ol mosquito because it sounded close. Sort of. It was one of those sounds that you think could be right in your head or a mile away. Just hard to tell.

So I kept on raking and a short time later I heard it again. But it was farther off I could tell.

It was a nice evening and not yet dark so I took off walking toward the river to see if I could hear it better. I don’t recall how far I got or if I went anywhere because that is about where my recollection ends. It was as if time just stopped for a week and I woke up with a dog liking my face and the sun rising over the hills.

I remember jumping up and wondering how I had gotten to be laying on the ground when the last thing I could really recall was hearing the mosquito sounds and thinking I’d go walk down by the river.

I asked around to see if anyone missed me and not a soul said anything. It was like the night had gone by and I just fell asleep there on the ground. The world went on without notice.

But then the strangest thing of all happened and that is why I am telling you about this. I get up off the ground and walk back inside to the trailer. I see it looks like I left it just before I went outside to rake. I felt strange and I know something was wrong, but I could not put it together. I figured a shower would help so I showered and stood there in front of the mirror making sure I was all still there.

I had taken my watch off before I started raking and I picked it up off the bathroom sink and put it back on. The time was right, about six in the morning. But the date was not right. The date said it was the first of the month. When I went out to rake it was eight days earlier.

At first I figured it was just something wrong with the watch. But standing there in front of the mirror I could see a slight indentation in my scalp just below my hairline. It looked like numbers or letters but I had to look close to see it. As soon as I saw it clearly I knew what it was because it was the damn address of the trailer here in Bovine. 106.

“What the heck,” I said to myself in the mirror. Of course I was looking at the reflection of the thing so it made sense as a 106. But to someone looking at me, it was a g01 or maybe if I was upside down a 901. I was so scared and there I was thinking about me upside down and trying to read whoever was pushed into my skull.

I started screaming. Real loud. Standing there in the bathroom I screamed. And screamed.

No one came running to figure out what was going on.

I stopped screaming and went outside. I stood on the porch and looked over at the rake laying there on the ground. I looked down toward the river. I listened. Nothing but some birds over in the shrubs by the dog house. Nothing. Just a normal morning.

I figured I better write thins down so I don’t forget it is something else should happen.
I am back now. And weirdly, life just seems the same here in Bovine. Hotter than all get out and a few folks wandering in and out. It is as if the whole thing was a dream or maybe I somehow woke up in the middle of the night and drank a quart of rum, missed an entire week, and still woke up not recalling a damn thing? I just don’t know.

And I am not sure I want to know.

I just gotta keep at the raking and cleaning.

Don’s Drones for Bovines

 

Don Burgeron continues to use drones to move his cattle.

I just don’t know about that boy!  Don continues to use drones to move his cows,  flying in  the face of the Bovine County Sheriff. And Sheriff B. Good is not pleased at all. I just don’t know about that boy.  Smart yes, but his lack of common sense is going to be his downfall someday.  The sheriff has said, “No!” to his creative cow moving drones. He just won’t let it die. He says using the drones on his own property is no business of anybody else – including the law!

Several members of the Burgeron family have been reporting on his shenanigans and other cows being abducted in the area – more recently with the use of drones to abduct Bovine County cows in the mysterious AREA 106.

Anna Cow showed photographic proof of Don’s flying cows. While Sappho shared a couple of news clippings on the sheriff’s reactions to all of this. The latest being her revelation of the Bovine County newspaper expressing anger with the drone abductions.

I’m not sure if Don’s involved with these new abductions or not. But he certainly hasn’t given up on using the drone’s to move his cattle around at the Burgeron Trailer.

Rumors of Bovine County

 

Burgeron Gnomes hanging out at Nana Lou’s place. (Remix image by Rochelle Lockridge licensed CC by SA, Gnome images from Brent Moore)

Over at that DS106 Daily Create (TDC889) yesterday folks were prompted to:

Tell a story that is whispered in Bovine County. Make it ART.

Miss Cris Crissman / @Cris2B Twitter shared this little ditty. My Grandson Don was able to snap the pic above this morning.  I’m betting that happy gnome on the log in front of my place is drinking some of that Burgeron Backwoods Brew we made a few weeks back.  If Don keeps sharing it with the cows and now the Gnomes, we’re not going to have any left for the reunion party at the end of August.

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Going Bovine

By Cris Crissman

June 16, 2014

There was something unusual about the garden gnome stationed near the peonies at the Burgeron family home. His eyes seemed to follow you around like those of a bad ancestral portrait. And that look on his face, well, could it be disgust? I’m definitely posting his pix on Instagram.

Whoa! How’d I trip? That was quite a wallop. If I didn’t know better I’d say that funky little fat creature didn’t like having his picture made . . .

And that’s how the rumors of the grumpy gnome at the Burgeron’s place began.

With apologies to Libba Bray, Going Bovine

 

Don goes Reminiscing about Dancing Cows and Scarecrows

Today I have been reminiscing about some of the gatherings we have had here on the property and at dad’s old place on the river. I guess nostalgia is a good thing. Some of the memories are just great and they make me smile. Other are a bit confusing and some get me feeling a little down, truth be told.

I recall the 82 Bovine Hoedown we had here in town and how excited everyone was to bring some game to play, some food to eat, and some instruments to make music with! Families practicing songs in the cool breeze of a June evening. You could hear them hootin and hollerin from miles away.

I recall one family that had a teen with an electric guitar. Good lord it was awful. That kid made more noise in three minutes than most folks make in a year or two. I ain’t sure, but if I recall that summer was the same summer the family had a big blowout and the kid left town real unhappy and carrying a guitar case. I don’t know that I’ve seen him since. I don’t even recall his name, just the screechin ripping through the prairie.

I remember that after the hoedown here at the trailer we had a few of the games we had made. One was this silly looking wooden scarecrow with the face cut out. The game was to hit whoever was a standin behind it with a water balloon. The day of the hoedown a kid who didn’t know any better came up to play and I was standing behind the thing. I don’t think the kid really realized what he was doing, he had just seen other folks throwing stuff at me. He had been playing baseball with some friends and he up and through his baseball at me fast as can be! And damn if it didn’t smack me right on the forehead. Knocked me clean off my feet and stone cold out for 10 minutes.

Well, I guess that is what happens at hoedowns. I snapped the picture here of ol Nana standing behind the scarecrow after we got home to the trailer.

I suppose our reunion will be sorta like a hoedown?

I was also thinking about that old Anny Cow and her damn dance studio. I think that is where little Sally Lou learned to dance? I don’t really recall. That damn cow was the only cow I have known to own and operate a dance studio? We have had a lot of good lookin and smart cows here in Bovine. But that Anny, she sure had some initiative. Where else but in a place called Bovine could a cow get a business license?

My Pa (Teddy Burgeron) Kept a Diary

Given the recent conversation about the flood of ’57 I figure I would share a few lines from my dad’s (Teddy Burgeron) diary he kept after losing the house in 1957. I thought it was kind of strange that someone who had so recently lost everything would commit to paper these reflections and take the time to make something that could so easily be swept away with just a bit more than normal rainfall.

Well, there ain’t no explaining somethings and I think that is what my pa thought too. Maybe his way of reconciling his loss was to wonder about things on something tangible like paper. It is hard to say. I have several diaries that he kept. Some are partly filled and some are completely full. Some writing is deep and thoughtful and others are drunken ramblings that are very hard to follow and downright disturbing at times.

The floods here in Texas washed a lot of memories and hopes and dreams downstream with them. My pa was one of the casualties in more ways than one.

This particular part of his diary is from March 12th, 1958.

There was once a Pretty Little River
That roiled up one day,
It took my home, my socks, and my dinner
It took lots of stuff they say.

There was once a Pretty Little River
It watered my cows, my hens, and my roses,
Its taste was not a bit bitter
Now I can’t reach it with 10,000 hoses.

There was once a Pretty Little River
It used to meander right over there,
Now it just gives me nightmares and makes me shiver
Life just ain’t f*&^%$# fair.

 

The Bergerons and the Burgerons

Here in Bovine we have a lot of folks. I think Bovine now has nearly 350 people. Now that ain’t like Austin or Dallas, but in Bovine, a group of more than about ten folks gets us worried. I don’t know why that is, but we ain’t big city folk. I suppose that is why were are here in Bovine.

This morning I headed out to get the mail and I was reminded of one of my favorite stories from my pa and grandpa. I seen this damn mailbox every day and I usually get to thinking about my pa when I do. I miss him.

Back before the flood of 57 the house was in a different spot on the river. Of course, no one could have known that it was not such a great spot, but you know how disasters are, everything seems really great right before them and then, well, everything falls apart.

Dad had completed the ditch and like I said, he owned some acres along the river. Well, in the spring of 53 he got some neighbors. He always said they were Finnish. I was just a kid and I always imagined that he said they were “finished” and for a while I wondered if somehow we were not? Like some folks just got done better than others. Kinda like bread that don’t get baked all the way, some folks were doughier inside than others and you know what that can be like. Pretty awful.

They were from somewhere far away anyway and I imagined that maybe folks from places other than Bovine or Texas were just cooked better. As it turns out, folks in Bovine are cooked just fine. Thank goodness.

So the new neighbors also had the last name of Bergeron. Dad could not figure it out. “How the hell can they have our name and we don’t even know where they hell they come from,” dad would ask the coffee cup some days. No one had an answer. I remember thinking that it was a real cool coincidence that we had the same last name and that we might even be related to them somehow and maybe we had come from some exotic far away land where people were cooked a little longer and more finished.

Well, it did not take long for the trouble to start. Dad was a couple of years away from losing his home and his mind and the new neighbors, and the damn postman as dad would remind us, were about to cause some trouble.

As dad told it, the mailboxes and our same last name caused all kinds of trouble with the Internal Revenue Service and the local chapter of the American Legion.

Here in Bovine we never had actual address numbers. We were just the “Bergerons” in Bovine. If you wanted to send us mail that was all you needed to write. Ol’ Tom the mailman for the last 20 years knew everyone and where they lived. We didn’t need no stinking numbers.

Well, I guess the neighbors had some tax troubles and when they moved in dad started getting their mail. Dad put the mail addressed to them in their mailbox and they denied that the mail was for them. They said they had never had any tax trouble. So there dad was with this mail addressed to him and the letters said he owed a lot of money he did not have. Well, dad knew it was not his and the neighbors refused to take the mail and ol’ Tom was stuck in the middle. Tom was also a member of the Foreign Legion in town and he told the members dad was evading taxes. Well, as you can imagine, they kicked pa out of the legion. That helped a bit with his drinking later on, but initially he was devastated. All three of his friends hung out there all day and night and all of a sudden he couldn’t hang out with them.

It was Tom’s idea to get us number on our mailboxes. He said in the big cites everyone had a number. I remember thinking how important all those folks must be to have their own numbers!

Well, dad kept getting the mail for the Bergerons, of course, and ol’ Tom had to really pay attention because the mail to both places usually just said, The Bergerons. After a couple of years of continually getting the wrong mail, and just before the flood, dad had finally had enough and went down to the county courthouse in Laredo and changed our name to Burgeron. Why he only chose to change one letter I don’t know.

That was long ago but I still remember seeing the mailboxes as a kid and it always reminded me of people who cooked long enough and had been finished.