An old cowboy's long ride

For a large part of my childhood, an old cowboy named Hulen Rogers rented a little house next to ours. He was already old when I met him, and just got older.

He was relentlessly in search of a job doing anything cowboy-related. He didn't have a phone of his own, so he'd come over to our house and give my dad 25-cents per call, working his way down the job postings listed in the back of niche magazines like Horse 'n Cow and Ranch Digest and Cow 'n Horse. (Ok, I made up those titles, but I swear something like them exists and he subscribed to all of them).

His phone pitch was always the same:
"This is Hulen Jack Rogers. I train cuttin' horses. I'm lookin' for a job, and I'm standing by ready to come out there to work for you any day."

When he got too old to "train cuttin' horses," he kept calling, saying that he could string barbed-wire fences and exercise the older livestock. When he got too old for that, he kept calling, saying that he could work as a barn man. When he got too old for that, he kept calling, and got a job sitting in a tall tower on a mountaintop watching for forest fires.

All those phone calls drove me crazy then.
Now I look back and feel amazed by his work ethic.

He used to bring his guitar over to our house and play old cowboy songs. Ridiculous awful songs with lyrics like "Bumby-o, Bumby-o, chewin' on your gummy-o," that went on and on, agonizingly, endlessly, badly.

I used to dread the sight of Hulen walking across our driveway carrying a guitar.
Now I look back and realize I met one of the last authentic singing cowboys.

He would start every interaction with "Whatcha doin'..." then end his own question by filling in exactly what you were doing. If you were cooking eggs, he'd lead with "Whatcha doin'...cookin' eggs?" If you were watching paint dry, "Whatcha doin'...watchin' paint dry?" If you were juggling flaming torches with your hands while embroidering a rendition of The Last Supper with your feet, he'd ask "Whatcha doin'...uhhh....whatcha doin'?"

The endless litany of "Whatcha doin" set my teeth on edge.
"Whatcha doin'...bracin' yourself for me to ask whatcha doin'?"
Now I look back and think about a lonely old man who wanted to talk but didn't know how to start a friendly conversation.

I appreciate Hulen more and more as time goes by. The older I get, the more funny and wise he gets. I've visited him every time I go back to Round Valley, because he's honestly become one of my favorite locals. The last time I was there, he spun a long story about the time his least favorite horse bucked him off in a canyon and ran down the mountain without him. "That damn fool horse run straight into a ranger from the Forest Service. The ranger thought he'd do me a favor by catchin' him. I reckon the horse won that one, though."

Today, I found out Hulen died.
It turns out that I miss him.