I've Did It This Time........No Christmas Presents This Year for Me

To start this story, I need to get you up to date with the back story. I've told you about Grandpa Little, but I haven't told you about my mom's dad — James "Cowboy" Mauney.

Now, I was told many different tales about how he got that nickname. The one I liked best was that he worked the rodeo circuit. What I know for sure is he was born in the early 1920s, served in World War II in the Navy, and spent time on a PT Boat in the Pacific. He came home with multiple tattoos — a full clipper ship on his chest and a full portrait of him and my grandma on his back that looked like a painting. There were pictures all around his house: cowboy hat, little black mustache, and his cowboy guns. I was told many things about him, but he was always good to me. And the main thing for this story is — he was a cowboy.

Now, it was Christmas Eve, and like every Christmas, we went to Grandma and Grandpa Mauney's on Christmas Eve and Grandma and Grandpa Little's on Christmas Day. I was 4 or 5 — I don't remember exactly — but Mom had gone to the Buffalo Ranch Western Store and bought me a complete cowboy outfit: boots, hat, chaps, toy gun — the works.

Now, if you were from anywhere close to Concord, NC anytime before the '90s, you'd know about the Buffalo Ranch. It was the idea of a man known as A.B. Cook, who built a tourist attraction on NC Hwy 49 that honored the cowboy era — western store, stagecoaches, longhorn cattle, a petting zoo, shootouts, and of course, buffalos. And I'm sorry to any P.E.T.A. readers, but this was years ago — they had a dancing chicken, a chicken that played the piano, and a rabbit that played tic-tac-toe. It was great. (But back to the story — it really was great.)

So Mom bought me my outfit and couldn't wait for her dad to see her little boy dressed up just like his grandpa. She gave me the outfit early so I could wear it Christmas Eve. She got me all dressed up and told me we were leaving as soon as she got some flowers ready — Mom ran a small florist and had to drop some arrangements off at a funeral home on the way to her dad's.

Now, we lived right next to a vacant lot where they'd hauled in extra dirt for the houses they were building. Us kids played all over that place — and as luck would have it, it was red dirt. It had rained a lot that week, and there was this big red puddle right at the edge of our yard.

And a cowboy has to ride the range.

Yep. You guessed it.

I wound up in the red mud — new cowboy suit and all.

When my mom saw me, she broke down and cried. Now, I should mention — this was Christmas Eve in North Carolina. And once again, I found myself stripped down to my underwear right there on the concrete back porch around 6 PM, getting washed off with the garden hose. Boy, was I cold... well, most of me was cold. Not my backside — that was pretty warm. 🤠

I just knew Santa wasn't bringing me a single thing that night.

However, my mom was quite a woman. She got over it pretty quickly, and my Christmas morning turned out to be pretty good after all.

I bet she wished she'd had some of our Mountain Fresh Soap on hand.

Thank you for your time, and join us next Saturday for our next blog drop. Have a wonderful weekend, and may God bless you and yours.

— Robert "Big PaPaw"