Some things are becoming extinct

One of the things that's supposed to be phasing out is the home phone connected to wires. A recent e-mail stated that one in six homes now have cell phones only. That doesn't come as much of a surprise to me, in fact, if they had never invented the phone, it would be all right with me. All the phone did was speed up life, get rid of writing letters, and interrupt you when you didn't want to be interrupted. And now that cell phones are becoming the only way to go, life is again speeded up, interrupting you in the middle of something important, like where to turn to find someplace un....woops! Even that's included on cell phones, the GPS instructions that tell you where to go and where not to go in some cases. All sold as a convenience to users, but I never found it inconvenient to write a letter, look up an address and a location on a map, or not talk to someone for a couple of weeks or more or not at all. All the telephone used to do was bring bad news like somebody died, was sick, or got kicked by a cow or threw off the horse.

I was just wondering what it would have been like if cell phones were prevalent in the old west. A cowboy herding his herd across the prairie is interrupted by the ringing, buzzing, or singing, or just plain music of his new-fangled gadget. I can hear him cussing now, "What the Hell? Whatcha calling me now fer, I'm in the middle of the Dirty Angus River. Can'tcha wait 'til I get acrost this treacherous water?" or "Damn it! I can't talk to you now, ole so-an-so is shootin' at me, and I gotta bring him in for cattle rustlin'." Bang-bang-bang! "Migod, that was close, almost got me. Look, honeybunch, I gotta hang up on ya. I'll call you back as soon as I get free, if he don't shoot me. Wha-a-at? Hold on there! Don't put in for a divorce 'til I talk to ya!" 

Another thing that's becoming extinct according to the e-mail is wild horses. BLM (Bureau of Land Management) is seeking to reduce the number to 27,000. Most of them are located in Nevada now. I don't know why they just can't leave them alone. I haven't heard of any wild horses getting into someone's back yard like the bears, mountain lions, bobcats, and what have you do and giving some people heart attacks, requiring the local constabulary, fire department and animal control employees to come out and take a shot at them. LEAVE THE HORSES ALONE! is my personal opinion in the matter, at least until they start causing excessive damage to private property, etc. There seems to me to be plenty of room to roam in Nevada once you're out of Las Vegas. The O'Reilly Factor had a piece on this last night with Bo Derek, who said that BLM never did anything right and the original 19,000,000 acres set aside for the horses were being taken over by cattle.

P.S. Bo Derek still looks GREAT!