A Stranger(ine) Among Us
You’ve all seen them, early stone or clay figurines misshapen blobs that excite archeologists to cite (guess) origins from this era or that. What it all means is that someone, somewhere, at one time, picked up a lump of clay and set to work fashioning some sort of image representing his or her world. Because of their exotic origins, one can never fault primatives for being poor artists.
I’ve worked with clay before…
But with me you can, as demonstrated by an art teacher I once encountered in college. She asked me to make a figurine out of wet clay. My experience with clay to that point included several aborted attempts to dig out a fort in the hard clay of my home town. I soon discovered that dry clay is about the hardest stuff to dig into other than concrete. But I did notice that when it was wet, clay was sort of fun to play with, as it gooshed through your fingers and toes.
Weirdos in her classroom
So there I was in art class staring at a lump of wet clay. Well, what I ended up with was a taller pile of clay, which I thought was a real progressive sign of artistic expression, but to which my instructor shook her head and moved on down the row, muttering something about weirdos. My creation looked more like The Thing than art.
But even the most unusual creations we students made, can’t be compared to this beauty.
A Strangerine lurks among us
Strngerine
I call this six gun pistol-packin’ bovine a Strangerine. I’ve bought and sold several figurines online ins the last couple of years, but this cow takes the gold. It originated with an artist in Big Bear, CA. As you all know, Big Bear has its assortment of wild-eyed eager artists prowling the mountains looking for inspiration.
Boots on all four hooves
So what the inspiration was for this one looks more like drug induced than artistic eye. This pistol-packin’ bovine has a hard, stealy-eyed look, like the ones the heroes have in Western movies. And this cow looks like a hero. All decked out in a blue vest, a polka-dotted neckerchief, cowboy boots on all four hooves (should I call ‘em hoof boots?) Her ensemble is complete with a cowboy hat jammed over horns. She’s strapped with a six gun complete with a belt that wraps all the way around her ample body, just north of her udders. A prominent yellow star adorns her hat, and her steel-eyed look, that firmness of jaw, identifies her as a marshal or sheriff. She’s ready to draw down and take out bad guys.
But the question I can’t figure out is…how does she shoot?
Does she snap her head around and grab the gun by it’s handle and shoot with her teeth? Or swish her tail in a lightning-fast hip shot to take the bad guys by surprise? Actually, her tail is closer to the gun, and since I have had plenty of experience with cows swatting me with their tails when I worked on farms as a kid, I think the tail is what she probably uses. And dos she yell: “Stop *Moo* or I’ll shot!”
But I can’t say for sure
Well, anyway, you can see my dilemma.
Do I market this pistol-packer to western fans? Or maybe lonely dairy farmers. And what happens if she isn’t milked in time? Does she whip out that gun and hold the poor farmer at gunpoint while he milks her? He better hope his hands are warm, or…
Endless possibilities.
I can only hope that this strangerine appears under someone’s Christmas Tree, waiting to be proudly displayed on desktop, table top, or mantle. It’s now lurking on Addoway, waiting for immortality with the right buyer, a person who will proudly display it while waiting for you to ask: “What the heck is that?”
I’d love yo hear that story.
Tagged: Addoway, christmas gifts, cowboys, cows, figurine, lawman, marshal, sherif, six-gun, stangerine, strangefigurines, westerns
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