Listen to those old rustlin’ pines and don’t even try to fence me in

It’s been a chilly one today, especially with that north wind gusting. Before I left for work this morning my lights went out. After I got to work I saw on the Entergy Texas Web site that about 1,000 customers in my vicinity were out of power. I guess I have to remind people who don’t know me that I live on the Upper Texas Coast. This isn’t New England or Cut Bank, Mont. The temp was about 45 when I left for work with the wind blowing for a pretty good chill.

But the cold itself isn’t the worst of this ordeal. I got the ol’ achy-breaky joint syndrome. I suffer from arthritis, all over, and it seems to pour out of every one of my joints. Some folks don’t believe that the weather affects your body. Well, actually, it does.

Maybe if I just bundled up and went out and faced down the demon it wouldn’t be so bad. I’m not a cold-weather guy, but living in the city for so long I forget just how refreshing it can be out in the countryside at night. Looking up at those endless stars while watching your breath float away for a few seconds before it finally escapes is not magic but it seems so if you clear your mind of all those worthwhile scientific notions you didn’t come out in to the woods to enjoy.

It used to seem like magic, listening to the pines rustle like you were alone with the world, even though you might’ve got your best girlfriend to come along. Just remembering those endless East Texas pine forests make me want to hum that old Cole Porter tune, later recorded and made a hit by my favorite cowboy, Roy Rogers …

  “Oh give me land, give me land under starry skies above/Don’t fence me in/Let me ride through the wide open country that I love/Don’t fence me in …

  “I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences/And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses/And I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences/Don’t fence me in.”

Picture it out there: Just you, or you and your gal, or you and your gal and your horse, or you and your horse, or just your gal and your horse … Wait a minute now. Don’t fence me in.