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Show PAGE 24 THE ZEPHYRDECEMBER 89 il Dudepunching confessions of a wrangler by Veronica Egan hired on at Pick Crick Ranch outside Moab last spring, I figured to a nice relaxing summer taking little old ladles In Reeboks for horsey-ba- ck spend like a refreshing break from punchln1 cows up and down the blazing Seemed rides. of southern Utah. Right? Well, I learned a bunch of things real quick. sllckrock I'll tell you. So now, when folks ask me what I do for a living, I tell 'em I'm a When dude-punch- I er! The first and most Important principle I learned was to never underestimate the potential for chaos and consternation when you combine a bunch of folks who are Ignorant about the equine species with a string of equlnes who've figured out the human psyche years ago. Of course, most of these hombres have seen a few western movies, and some have been on horseback a time or two. The most dangerous ones, though, are the ones who mosey up to the corral and drawl, "Gimme a fast one." We saved the slowest, oldest critters Just for them. Another challenging group Is worldly-wi- se teenagers, who range in age from about 12 to 50. If I had a few of these characters In my group, I knew my preride "operator-instruction- s" speech would have fallen on deaf ears, since they Is to know. But Just let one of their horses get his know there generally everything head down Into the grass for a snack or take a notion to head for the barn and they start hollerin' "How do I get this thing to move? or worse, "How do I get this thing to stop!?" I had four such cool customers one evening, come out from Pittsburgh with their folks to see the west. As we started up into the La Sal foothills, the evening was turning golden with the promise of yet another unbelievable sunset out over Canyonlands. The youngest girl, who looked about 13 asked me In a caustic tone of, voice, "Are we gonna see anything on this ride, or what?" I counted to 10, took a deep breath, and replied as calmly as I could, "Only If you keep your eyes open." Later on, thinking I might have been too hard on the young lady, I asked her how she liked Utah. "Well, It's better than Arizona, at least, she pouted. When I Inquired what was wrong with Arizona, she replied, "Not enough swimming pools!" I started to respond with my personal opinions about where people who required numerous swimming pools ought to spend their vacations, but thought better of IL In this business the customer Is always right Speaking of teenaged customers, we did have one group that was as polite as could be. No back-tal- k, no arguing, In fact they hardly spoke to us at all. You come from to Utah Muramoto, Japan, which Is a sister city to Salt Lake, see, they'd to really experience the old West None had ever been on horseback before, only two spoke English, and there were 45 of 'em. We had three wranglers, 15 horses, and an hour and a half to give them each a half-ho- ur ride. Now that may sound fairly simple: three groups of 15 for 12 hour each, right. But none of us lowly dude ranchers knew the Japanese word for "No, no, put your left foot In the stirrup, much less the words for "Giddyap and "Whoa, so It took us over 20 minutes Just to get them mounted and aimed In the right direction. We divided Into three groups of five and headed off on different trails, agreeing to meet back at the corral In a half hour. Well, I finally got my bunch across the creek and as I climbed the first ridge, I turned back to look for them and there they were, three very polite but puzzled Japanese girls seated on three horses grazing contentedly beside the trail. I yelled for them to pull up on their reins and kick their trusty steeds to make them catch up. They smiled blankly up at me and clutched their saddle horns tighter. I demonstrated the technique on my own horse, causing him to bolt up the mountainside and received the same vacant smile In return. In desperation I rode back down the hill to try to motivate my charges from behind like a bunch of heifers while the girls Just giggled and hung on for dear life. These kids were strictly passengers on those horses, and the horses knew IL I half-ho- ur to go about a quarter-mil- e, gave up, Finally, after taking my full horses as the No this time, problem turned around, and headed for the barn. soon This walk. a brisk at figured they'd get off work soon and headed home a turned Into a brisk trot and before long it looked like I'd have stampede on my hands while I frantically searched my severely limited Japanese I with was vocabulary for words like "Whoa" or "Malt. (The best could come up In come have which handy!) might "Honda", "sushi" and "sayonara", full-fled- ged gallery westlight so. 750 main 259-794- 3 original images by norm Shrewsbury X Bring in your favorite picture to enlarge for holiday gift giving m is kVvi Ys if ii, A Reauy , BCCK V. zJLS The legendary STEEL BENDER trail run of 1917 is behind us now, are putting together and the 1990 Moab gathering of fun loving d Events one of the nation's 10 Best family oriented JEEP SAFARI Off-Roa- .... Just like the paper that promotes the activity around Moab, we are doing our best to give you the best. Why not call us NOW and advertise your business or organization in a specialized publication that increases readership every year. It's being called a collectors item," and is seldom left behind. The Printing Place 259-816- GOOD NEWS! 24 hr service on color print film We now offer (from negatives) 5 |