Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet

More Commentary by NPR's Cowboy Poet & Former Large Animal Veterinarian

Baxter Black is “good, but indescribably weird,” observes the Dallas Morning News. “The dean of cowboy bards, and the Art Buchwald of the Stetson-and-Levi’s crowd,” raves the Christian Science Monitor. “Mark Twain served up with a little Groucho Marx,” proclaims the Weekly Standard. But the author’s mother has the last word: “Baxter’s stories are just the right length.”

The world’s bestselling cowboy poet, author of Cactus Tracks & Cowboy Philosophy, and public radio’s favorite former large animal veterinarian, Baxter Black is back in the saddle with a hilarious new roundup of essays, commentaries, and campfire verse that speaks to the cowboy soul in us all.

Drawn in part from Baxter’s wildly popular NPR commentaries and syndicated columns, Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet offers a generous helping of his tender yet irreverent, sage-as-sagebrush takes on everything from ranching, roping, Wrangler jeans, and rodeos to weddings and romance, the love of a good dog, dancing, parenting, cooking up trouble, and talking about the weather. If you haven’t ridden with Baxter before, find out what more than a million dedicated fans are laughing about inside and outside the corral. And with the help of the glossary at the back of the book, you’ll soon be conversing in fluent cowboy.

Illustrations by noted cowboy artists Bob Black, Don Gill, Dave Holl, and Charlie Marsh and a timely foreword by historic cowboy sympathizer Herman Melville will charm your chaps off.

The world according to Baxter Black

“It is possible to drive from one end of the country to the other in your enclosed gas-powered cocoon and never smell air or touch dirt. However, on either side of the road, even in what appears to be desolate country, you can find homes, schools, roads, farms, and ranching communities thriving. And cowboys. Lots of ’em! The only thing is, friends, you just can’t see ’em from the road!” —From “The Cowboy Image”

“March is the castor oil of months. The collected drippings of winter’s oil change. The epic flush of the accumulated compaction of salted streets, sanded roads, gravelly snow, and frozen manure. It has its own ides. But what ides are they? I can tell you: fungicide, blindside, cyanide, vilified, terrified, stupefied, snide, hide, lied, cried, died, back you up against the wall and leave you flat and down, afoot and weak, and chapped and squinty-eyed ides.” —From “March Madness”

“I have lived a fairly long time. I have been places. I have seen bears mate, boats sink, and Gila monsters scurry. I have danced till I couldn’t stand up and stood up till I couldn’t dance. I’ve eaten bugs, broccoli, and things that crawl on the seafloor. I have seen as far back as Mayan temples, as far away as Betelgeuse, and as deep down as Tom Robbins. I have been on Johnny Carson, the cover of USA Today, and fed the snakes at the Dixie Chicken. I have held things in my hand that will be here a million years beyond my own existence. Yet, on that dance floor I felt a ripple in the universe, a time warp moment when the often unspectacular human race threw its head back and howled at the moon.” —From “Cajun Dance”