Bill and I were sittin' at the Pack River General Store last night, finishing up our respective pork tacos and chicken caesar wrap when all the sudden, a full-fledged cowboy walked in----well-worn chaps, straw hat, salt-and-pepper stubble, boots, cell phone and all.
He walked straight toward the dessert and beverage coolers.
I could not resist.
"Hey, Cowboy," I hollered through the air over two tables of customers.
Sure enough, "Cowboy" heard me and looked my way with instant recognition.
Other customers stopped chewin' the fat and their tasty food and looked his way, almost as if a good gunfight was about to ensue.
Cowboy didn't have a gun, nor did I. So it was perfectly safe there at the restaurant.
I simply had knowledge of this handsome wrangler from a long time back. Yup, Cowboy was a former English student and a longtime family friend.
In fact, we'd seen Cowboy at the end of a trail up Grouse Creek a few years back, on his horse all geared up for hunting.
Cowboy comes from the Hawkins clan of Litehouse, Inc., local history and photography fame.
When he's not riding Big Red, he's working at the salad dressing company headquarters in Kootenai.
My friend had been out on his mule Big Red searchin' for six cow-calf pairs belonging to the Albertson clan.
In fact, one clan member, who's married in to the family, came in the restaurant with him and soon came another, the younger of Don and Terri's sons.
While Cowboy rode Big Red, his sidekicks had searched for those cow-calf pairs on foot.
Yup, my cowboy friend aka Bill Hawkins and his 17-year-old pretty red mule had eventually tracked down the renegade cows, but it hadn't been easy, according to their combined reports.
Standing near our table, the group talked about the brush and the muck and mud and all that stubborn stuff that makes walking and riding difficult. Their accounts indicated it had been a dirty job.
So, while I ushered Cowboy outside to take a few pictures of him and his beloved mule, the others picked up some refreshment for what I'm guessing may have been a session of strategy or debriefing or whatever comes after chasing cows through rough territory.
They all eventually went their way, while Bill and I went ours, up Rapid Lightning, to Upper and Lower Gold Creek, past some pretty horses and then on home.
Things probably quieted down there at the restaurant pretty quickly.
After several hours for Bill spent in the barn working on a stall floor and an afternoon for me listening to wonderful stories from topnotch 4-H'ers in their required interviews, it seemed like a perfect fit to head on over to the Pack River General Store for a bite to eat.
We enjoyed those bites of the restaurant's fine cooking and a whole lot more. That's pretty much how it is a lot of the time at the store where Pack River runs past.
Local color abounds with the good eats. And, it's all fun. We're fortunate to have such a great eating and meeting spot right in our neighborhood.
Happy Friday.
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