Monday Blues: Saddle Tramp

 "They call me a drifter, they say I'm no good
I'll never amount to a thing
Well, I may be a drifter and I may be no good
There's joy in this song that I sing

Saddle tramp, saddle tramp
I'm as free as the breeze and I ride where I please
Saddle tramp, saddle tramp

At night, I will rest 'neath a blanket of blue
Doubt if I ever will change..."

(Robbins)

Now, I suppose most anyone would find it rather difficult to do much trampin', much driftin' about, on what little bit of a saddle exists there. A couple o' rails don't give much support where you sit. Well one day Luke had just about all the stabbing, pinching pain he could handle and he rode down south, crossed the border from the New Mexico into the Old Mexico where, so he had heard, the guarnicioneros plied their craft better'n anyone else in the world. There in the dusty calles of Agua Prieta, just up the street from Tortas el Pinky, he found un hombre who stretched a bit of rawhide, and stitched a bit of pliant leather, tacked on some plata accents, tooled on some floral patterns where young Luke would sit his seat, and charged him a fair price plus a torta de piña (it was the birthday of el hombres wife and she did love her some pineapple).

Well Luke, who didn't draw much attention at all on his way into town, sat much higher on his way back out, the gente noticed the shine off the oiled cuero, the gleam of the silver accents, and the way young Luke sat straight and proud in his new saddle, and they whistled and cheered as if watching a one-man parade as the yanqui rode back north across the border.

Luke took that bike, not much to look at perhaps, excepting that saddle, with him to college the next summer and, well... as you can see someone else took a shine to that saddle and ripped it right off leaving nothing but a couple good-for-not-much rails and a bunch of stabbing, pinching space between them.

Yup, the Monday blues alright.

The Monday Blues has been an occasional feature here at the blog since inception; the blues, an emotion, a color, a genre of music, with a cycling twist.