STORIES FROM AN EAST TEXAS COWBOY

“Tell all them hands out there in the west

These East Texas cowboys are still the best.”

Carroll Langham of Grapeland is one of those rare and fortunate individuals who can have outrageous experiences and relate them with vigor.

He writes cowboy poetry and stories and has put some of them in 2 books. Their titles are THE CUSTOM COWBOYS OF HOUSTON COUNTY and THE RETURN OF THE CUSTOM COWBOYS OF HOUSTON COUNTY.

His wife kept hearing his stories and encouraged him to start writing some of them. That’s just what he has done the past 5 years.

One of his stories is about a friend of his who killed a chicken snake just before the vet came to examine some cows.

”He thought how funny it would be to put that snake in one of them cows that the vet was checking. So he lubed the snake up good and put it in the cow’s rectum. The vet ran his arm in the cow and there was something in there that wasn’t supposed to be. He began pulling the snake out and it was folded up pretty good. When it came out and fell on the floor it started to unfold.

It looked like it was alive. The vet was so scared he turned and ran, scrambling to get away from that snake.”

You just can’t make up stuff like that. Carroll writes poems about dogs.

“I’ve had a lot of dogs and some good ‘uns I’ve had.

But a dog that won’t handle can sure make you mad.

A dog that will find and a dog that will stay

Can sure make you have a much better day.

The only thing worse than a dog that won’t hunt

Is a dog that works behind instead of in front.”

Then there’s the story about his buddy Johnny who had some deer hunters on his land.

“He got to be friendly with them. They had killed a deer and were out there skinning it.

One old big heavy boy was bent over skinning on the deer and his britches were kind of open on the back. Well Johnny had some red M & Ms in his pocket that he had been eating.

So he just dropped about 6 of them red M & Ms down the guy’s pants. He was busy with the deer and didn’t notice anything. So that night when he went to take a shower all them red M &Ms had melted in his underwear.

He thought he was bleeding to death. He went to the emergency room. Johnny said when he got back the next day he was one mad cowboy. They told him at the hospital it was just red M & Ms.”

In his writing, Carroll uses his own vocabulary.