Our way of seeing the world is conditioned not only by experience and belief but also by scale: by the distance, angle, and perspective from which we approach and view things. I find it useful to back up from something I am concentrating on—a problem, a memory, an essay—until I am so far away from and so high above it that it exists in that liminal zone between the visceral world of granite and the equally beautiful universe of the imagination. I also find it helpful to begin from far away and high above something I hope to explore—an idea, a way of understanding the desert, a lone juniper—and stalk it through registers of scale, until it becomes solitary, focused, all-consuming. Perhaps the true nature of a desert is veiled by its sage-filled valley, and the nature of its valley is hidden within the arms of its solitary juniper tree, and the nature of that unique tree is concealed within its woven nest, and the nature of that singular nest is a latticed pattern so exquisitely imbricated and minute that one must begin from a distant ridgetop in order to see it clearly.
RECENTLY I WAS shooting the breeze with a friend when, as is my habit, I casually described a prominent politician as being chickenshit, while also characterizing this representative’s disingenuous, self-serving prattle as horseshit. To my surprise, my buddy looked at me quizzically and requested a clarification of the distinction between the feces of a chicken and those of a horse. This struck me as a low point in the history of human communication. After all, it ought to be immediately apparent that horseshit is bullshit, while chickenshit, a different matter entirely, is moral cowardice. What had become of our ability to curse effectively, let alone colorfully? If we cannot communicate through the use of profanity, I wondered, what the hell is left? Have we been reduced to sonnets and tweets?
That evening, over a stout tumbler of High West Rendezvous Rye, I decried the profound illiteracy of my well-intentioned friend, whose lexicon of scatological euphemisms was so tragically impoverished. Instead of supporting me, as a good life-partner should, my wife, Eryn, turned the tables by suggesting that I curse too much. “Are you shitting me?” I asked in shocked reply. “I’m a writer, honey. I invoke profanity only when driven to it by an absolute need for expressive precision.”
At this point, owl-eared Hannah and Caroline joined the conversation from down the hall, affirming loudly that “Yeah, Dad cusses way too much!”
My further protestations precipitated the girls’ suggestion that we set up a “swear jar,” the proceeds of which we agreed to donate to Animal Ark, our local wildlife rehabilitation center.
“Fine,” I replied. “Name your price. And prepare to break the bad news to that crippled sow bear that she’ll have to suck her paws this winter, because they won’t be able to buy her a dam…a damp apple with what I’ll be putting into that jar. Poor thing. She just loves damp apples.”
It was soon decided that each swear word would require a fifty-cent contribution from whomever should so utterly lack self-control as to let it slip. I learned a lot in that first week of living with the swear jar. First, I discovered that I have absolutely no verbal self-control and that my reliance on profanity is not only excessive but perfectly astonishing. It soon became clear that the contents of the swear jar were on pace to eclipse the girls’ college savings, and that was without a single contribution from anyone else in the family but me. Worse, I learned that it was impossible for me to pay only four bits per curse, because immediately upon swearing I would recognize my error, which would cause me to swear anew. So it was a one-buck minimum every time I slipped, which occurred approximately twice each waking hour. And, by the way, I’m an insomniac.
I like to think of myself as a New West kind of guy, but all this regulation and penalizing of what I view as an essential mode of self-expression caused me to wonder what the tradition of profanity in the Old West might have been. Well, I looked into it, and it turns out that the pedigree of swearing in the West—and such swearing was once referred to with the beautiful phrase airin’ the lungs—is in fact quite distinguished. Profanity, slang, vernacular, and hyperbole were once woven deeply into the fabric of western life and manners. In fact, many of the flamboyant expressions pioneered by early cowboys, miners, gamblers, prostitutes, and others are still part of our American lexicon. We all know what it means to be a bad egg or to be bamboozled or to have a bee in your bonnet. And even if we forget the difference between chickenshit and horseshit, we remember what it means to be buffaloed, to be in cahoots, or to get something done by hook or by crook. After all, if you don’t cool your heels, you might end up dead as a doornail. You may have a hard row to hoe (note to Millennial: row, not road), but if you have a mind to pony up instead of being a skinflint and making tracks, you might end up with enough coin to shake a stick at instead of winding up tuckered out and mad as a hornet.
Gold miners taught us that although we all want to hit pay dirt, not everything we attempt in life will pan out. Cowboys reminded us to first hold our horses and then to strike while the iron is hot. Trail cooks suggested, none too politely, that we should quit our bellyaching. Sheepherders helped us see what it means to be on the fence or dyed in the wool; they also crafted their stories into yarns, which they spun, sometimes in order to fleece the listener. As a writer and a certified curmudgeon, I especially appreciate that early printers expressed the feeling of being out of sorts—a term that refers to the grouchy mood brought on when a printer runs out of letters while setting type.
It might be just as well that we have let a few of these old sayings fade into trail dust. For example, it may be wise that we no longer refer to facing a difficult undertaking as having big nuts to crack. All in all, though, we have lost more than we have gained. I wish we still referred to procrastination as beating the devil around the stump. I’d like to be able to say, when I am in a hurry, that I am about to mizzle, burn the breeze, spudgel, light a shuck, marble, cut dirt, put my licks in, or, best of all, absquatulate. And why should I apologize for having forgotten something when I might instead say that I disremembered it—a term that is more honest, since my selective memory is actually a subversive form of passive resistance? For example, I seem to routinely disremember Caroline’s elementary school talent shows—where, if I were so unfortunate as to remember them, I would be subjected to an interminable lineup of kids breathlessly shrieking out awful pop songs in voices that could worm a sheep.
As I began to lamp that, if I did not mend my ways and hobble my latchpan, I was going to be in for it, I fetched up on the idea of just blathering western ’ til the cows come home. (Translation: observing that, if I did not change for the better and be quiet, I would get into trouble, I decided to speak in western slang constantly.) That way I could say exactly what I had on my mind, do it forcefully and colorfully, and not have to arrange for direct deposit of my paycheck to the damned swear jar.
My second idea was to cuss out my boss, just to catch the weasel asleep and acknowledge the corn (surprise him by speaking the truth about his shortcomings). I will swear an oath that this big bug is crooked as a Virginia fence (testify that this self-important oaf is corrupt); truth told, the scoundrel could swallow a bag of nails and cough up corkscrews. He is so weak north of his ears that he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat in three throws, so ugly he’d make a freight train take a wagon trail, and so mean he’d steal a fly from a blind spider. So I swaggered into his office and set to frumping him for a shanny (began mocking him as a fool).
“Tom,” says I, “you’re a no count flannel mouth chiseling chuckle-headed gadabout coffee boiler (no good, smooth-talking, dishonest, ignorant, jawflapping, lazy ass), and if you reckon you can fob me out of my oof with your rumbumptious monkey shines, then you’ve got the wrong pig by the tail. (If you think you can con me out of my money with your arrrogant tricks, you’ve picked the wrong man to mess with.) I’m reverent as a kedge gully washer and death on slimsey, rag-propered lickfingers like you. (I’m powerful as a big storm and dangerous to feeble, overdressed a
ss kissers like you. And here I pause to interject that lickfinger is undoubtedly the greatest euphemism for obsequiousness ever invented.) I will go at you hammer and tongs and exfluncticate you all to flinders, until you plain hang up your fiddle. (Reader, you have this one, right?) Well, Old Tom was not only difficulted by my sayings but downright funkified, so I just sidled out of his office with a satisfied squinny. (He was both perplexed and scared—yes, funkified means scared!—by what I said, so I walked coolly away with a contented chuckle.)
I was feeling above snakes from getting the drop on my boss with my pink westernized lingo, so I trampoosed two whoops and a holler over to the watering hole to check my capital bar dog. (Happy at having insulted my boss with my brilliant regional vernacular, I strolled to the nearby bar to visit my favorite bartender.) “Dondo,” says I, bustin’ through the swinging doors of the Risky Biscuit Hayseed Saloon, “you know plain right that I’m a dabster lapper (know very well that I am an expert drinker), and that I’m here to get corned (tipsy), fuddled (slightly drunk), slewed (moderately drunk), whittled (quite drunk), and, directly, full as a tick (very drunk). Bend my elbow, partner! Set me up (pour me) some of that anti-fogmatic (whiskey), tanglefoot (whiskey), and snake poison (whiskey), and bust out some bumblebee (whiskey), clinch mountain (whiskey), and coffin varnish (whiskey) to boot! I am going whole hog (all the way) to paint my tonsils (drink), until I’m roostered (extremely drunk) and snapped (thoroughly drunk), so spread out a general treat (a free round) of pop skull (whiskey), jack of diamonds (whiskey), prairie dew (whiskey), and rebel soldier (whiskey) for these here lushingtons (fellow drinkers). Set up the red eye (whiskey), bottled courage (whiskey), rookus juice (whiskey), and oh-be-joyful (whiskey) for every last poke down the rail (person at the bar). Now, Dondo, go at it like you’re killing rattlers (energetically)! Crate up the sheepherder’s delight and tarantula juice (put away the cheap whiskey) and bust out some dynamite (whiskey) and neck oil (whiskey). You know I won’t shoot the crow (leave the saloon without paying), so put up the washy stingo (weak beer) and get the scamper juice (whiskey) and family disturbance (whiskey) flowing! Liquor me on sheep dip (pour me whiskey), until I’ve got a brick in my hat (am unthinkably drunk) and I wake with roaring case of barrel fever (a massive hangover)!
Well, I carried on in that style of blusteration for twenty minutes, until I had used up all sixty-seven of the westernisms for whiskey that I had recently learned. When I was finally through, Dondo just handed me a cup of black coffee—and his hoothouse blackwater, by the way, could float a pony—and then he phoned Eryn to ask her to come pick me up.
The downside of my experiment with talking western was that not even my family—or, more important, my bartender—could understand a word I was saying. The upside was that I was able to air my lungs without being fired, or even having to pay into the swear jar. In fact, I soon took up a more disciplined approach to western cussing, adopting such stock terms as crimany, jiminy, pshal, and I vum. But my favorite curse, one that is authentic to the Old West and to which my own identity drew me magnetically, is I Dad! I don’t know what it means, but I know from experience that it is true. Sure, I cuss too much. Sure, I’m ornery as a cross-eyed mule. But even with all my flaws, I Dad! Even my daughters agree.
I reckon at this point I’ve gone to seed. Certain I have been out in the high desert so long I know the lizards by their first names. And maybe Eryn is right that it would be better if I just plain dropped the wonderful expression hot as a whorehouse on nickel night. But right there it is anyway, because I don’t cotton to buckling under when it comes to hammering out ace high literary art. Until the day I cash in and get planted in the bone orchard, I am going to keep after being a scrapping slang whanger who goes across lots to string a whizzer for y’all. And if I do swack up a stretcher now and agin’, I’ll ride a long slipe to be a buster who’s a huckleberry above a persimmon. And that, pardner, ain’t no horseshit.
RENO IS A DESERT TOWN with a river heart. The Sierra Nevada snow-fed Truckee River, which is the only outlet from nearby alpine Lake Tahoe, passes through our little city on its 121-mile-long slide out to Pyramid Lake, which is among the most spectacular desert terminal lakes on the planet. Although the Truckee is the lifeline between these two gorgeous lakes, which are separated by 2,500 vertical feet, it has not generally received good treatment as it passes through the center of this western Great Basin city. Once an old cow town attempting to shift to a new resort economy, Reno had turned its back on its river corridor, choosing instead to focus visitors’ attention on the impoverishing entertainments offered just around the corner, where casinos sprouted up along Virginia Street. The river, so nearby, was relegated to a concrete trough with few access points. Its riparian zone became home to hobo camps, while the Truckee itself was regarded as little more than a thing to be crossed on one of the city’s old bridges. For a long time our river gave sacred water but received profane treatment.
This denigrating view of the Truckee has mostly changed these days, with a series of ambitious and largely successful river core urban renewal projects. We now have a whitewater park, pedestrian bridges, improved access, and more greenspace along the floodplain. And while all this exists in the shadow of towering casinos, it offers a helpful reminder that we desert rats should pay tribute to the Truckee, without which our survival in this arid place would be tenuous. Even in the desert, a city without a home river seems to me a lonely proposition. I’m grateful that we’ve begun to appreciate ours.
Twenty years ago, before the Truckee corridor through Reno had been revitalized, I used to hang out down by the river a lot. At that time I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, and had not yet begun to build our home up on Ranting Hill, far north of the city and out in the remote, high-elevation canyons and ridges along the California line. Back then I was a new arrival in the Great Basin. My desert rat whiskers had only just begun to sprout, and I still felt more comfortable keeping water in view.
It is with the bittersweet sensation of a lost place and time that I revisit in memory those old days and nights along the Truckee. One of my closest friends at that time was Brad, a guy whose aplomb and cool had earned him the nickname “Smoo B” (as in “Smooth Brad”). I had plenty in common with Smoo B, but perhaps most important was our love of playing music together, something we did at every opportunity. He picked guitar and I blew blues harp, and we bonded over the fact that neither of us had ever met a note we didn’t want to bend. As a little, two-man jam band we played out at cheap bars now and then—the kinds of dives that were adjacent to tattoo parlors, and once we even played an acrid-smelling saloon that slung both rye and, in the back room, skin ink. One-stop shopping for Harley dudes. We never used the same band name twice, and I’ve forgotten all of them now save “Jeebies and Stankeye.” I no longer recall how we came up with that name, or which one of us was which, or if we even stopped to ask such questions at the time.
One unexceptional summer day, Smoo B and I agreed to meet down by the river in the late afternoon, just to pick and bend a few notes before dark. We sidled along the Truckee for a while before sitting down on an old concrete landing near the south buttress of the Virginia Street Bridge, in the heart of downtown Reno. A double-arch gem built back in 1905, this bridge became famous in legend as the place from which newly liberated women tossed their wedding rings after finalizing a divorce in the nearby courthouse. In The Misfits (1961), John Huston’s immortal cinematic tribute to the loss of the Old West, a fragile Marilyn Monroe considers doing just that.
Smoo B led, and I followed, as he unfolded a spontaneous set of river music: a surprisingly relaxed take on Neil Young’s “Down by the River,” followed by a meander through Bob Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow,” which segued magically into B’s crazy, mellow cover of the Talking Heads’ cover of the Reverend Al Green’s classic “Take Me to the River”—a tune he strummed with a staccato rhythm that made it sound like it was being laid down by Bob
Marley rather than David Byrne.
“Dip me in the river / Drop me in the water / Washing me down / Washing me down.” As Smoo B finished those lines and looked up, and I lowered my harp from my mouth and opened my eyes, we both noticed something curious. While we were jamming, three people had planted themselves on the landing not far from us. There was an older man, a middle-aged woman, and a very young man. They looked as if they knew one another, and yet they did not quite seem to be together. They appeared to have been attracted by the music, but despite a few furtive glances our way, they made no eye contact with us as they sat staring toward the afternoon light rippling on the river. All were shabbily dressed. The young man had a grimy backpack and bedroll, the woman a bulging, oversized canvas sack, the older man a plastic garbage bag half full of crumpled aluminum cans. It was clear enough that they were homeless. Here, in the long shadow of the casinos, lived the river people whose luck had run dry.
I slapped the harp on my thigh and wiped the face of its wooden comb across my jeans to give myself a moment to think. Then I looked at Smoo B and tipped my head in the direction of our audience. B smiled and nodded.
“We’re worried y’all can’t hear us very well from over there,” Smoo B called to the strangers. “We’ve got some more river music coming up. Want to join us?” The three looked over with surprise and then, with only a slight hesitation, stood up and made their way over to us. With no further words Smoo B built on the earlier reggae vibe with a sweet, lilting strum through Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross,” which he nodded for me to sing. I couldn’t remember the first verse, so I began with the second: “Many rivers to cross / And it’s only my will that keeps me alive / I’ve been licked, washed up for years / And I merely survive because of my pride.” By the time we finished the song, three or four other homeless folks had joined the audience; word was spreading among the poor people residing in the willow thickets and beneath the bridge overpasses of the Truckee River corridor.
How to Cuss in Western Page 9