Fire

One day last April Jason stood in a pasture and watched his truck burn plumb up.

His one and only truck.

His one and only brand new truck that he has ever owned in all of his thirty some odd years.

His means of transportation and his form of livelihood.

He had been unrolling a bale of hay.  The pasture was soppy and muddy.  He was pushing the hay bale with the nose of the truck to unroll it when his tires fell into a rut formed from a sprinkler pivot.  He was stuck in a rut.....literally.  He was also high centered on the hay bale.  The catalytic converter got extremely hot, and hay is a highly flammable material.  When he saw the smoke, he grabbed a pitchfork from the bed of the truck and tried frantically to pitch the hay away, but it was all for naught.  The hay ignited and all he could do was stand there in a deserted pasture and watch the flames while he waited for the fire trucks to arrive.

These pictures have been scanned and are not of the greatest quality.

But I think you can understand the devastation he felt.

It was charcoaled.

Jason was fine.  Simply by God's mercy.

Nevertheless, it was a bad day.

He came home and made Creme' Brulee.

Have a bad day? 

Eat Creme' Brulee.

That's our household motto.

We're going to have it cross stiched and framed for the kitchen.

His truck is his office.  He drives in his truck an awful lot.  You should see his fuel bill.  That day in April, he lost everything in that truck, including his chinks.

Chinks are short for the word Chinkaderos.  Basically they mean "half chap".  They are  a shorter version of chaps and stop a bit below the knee, whereas chaps fall all the way to the boot, sometimes covering it.  Other than just looking groovy, they provide protection for the legs when riding the horsies in brushy terrain and stuff like that.

So for the past several months, he's just had to do without.  But it just so happens that Jason has a pretty great friend, and I do mean a pretty awesome dude, who ordered him some new hand-made chinks for Christmas.  They came in day before yesterday.

 

They're pretty sharp.

And they have fringe, how cool is that?

They've got a neat little pocket for, hmmm.....I don't know, gum maybe?  Really I have no idea what cowboys carry in their chink pockets.  I'll ask and get back to you on that.

Shiny conchos add a snazzy touch.

But the finishing touches are these cutesie wootsie little four leaf clovers,

which match his boots.


And believe me, he needs all the good luck he can get.