The Goat

I am a country boy born and raised in Middle Tennessee. My upbringing was fairly well. I was carry a .410 shotgun at age five shooting squirrels and rabbits and such. We would either share our game with friends and family or eat them ourselves. Point being country folk tend to have an extraordinary way to make do with they have. With that being said, there are a lot things that we country folk find rather tasty that would probably be disgusting to average Joe. "Yes I have ate everything from hog guts to squirrel brains and when I was a young boy I found this to be normal and it was not that bad either. ("I don't have a taste for either these days.")

Fast forwarding 15 years later. In a small town Tennessee there were only a few things that a country boy and his buddies could do for fun. I was the one to through the bon fire parties and learned how to "alter my age" when I was 16. I found that I liked cold beverages and with a little liquid courage I turned into the life of the party. The other times we were fishing and frog gigging and consuming cold tasty beverages in the summer and when fall and winter hit we kind of just hit a lot back roads and chased white tails two legged and four legged when opportunity knocked. We played football and cut tobacco, hauled hay, and if you were as lucky as guy like me you landed a job with the hometown contractor building houses in the summer. (The tobacco fields and hay fields were hot hard work and did not pay as much as being a gopher on a construction site.)

After I got out of high school I landed a job driving a beer truck. 18 years old with a cdl and a quarter beer machine at the warehouse I was in a young country boy paradise. My buddies and I really enjoyed having football parties cook outs or whatever you want to call it. We would drink, and cuss and tell lies and just have us a big ole time!

It was the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday in the late 1990's or early 2000's and me and my buddy Dave wanted to do something different for this special occasion. After a few cold beverages I said " Dave I got an idea!" Have you ever had goat meat before? He said "yeah it is good stuff". I said "Do you remember that farm with all them goats that we seen the other day while we was cruising the back roads on the east side of our stomping grounds?" Ole Dave said "Hell Yeah"!

So me and Ole Dave got us a wild hair and decided it was time to get "The Goat"! We loaded up in my 1989 GMC Jimmy and I folded the back seat down for transporting purposes and headed on down the road. Guzzling liquid courage to gives us the balls to carry out our well thought out mission. We were "10 Feet Tall and Bullet Proof" by the time we reached our destination. There was one strand of electric hot wire fencing that was used as the gate. It was probably pushing around midnight on that cold January night. Me and Ole Dave had a plan. He would go in one end of the barn and kind of chase the herd to the other end where I would be waiting an I would just simply grab one and we be on our way. That was easier said than done. As we enter the barn we create this stampede of goats gone crazy. There was goats jumping over goats. Goats climbing the walls and in just a few seconds there were only a few left to choose from. I don't know if it was the liquid courage that kicked in or instinct or both but I did the diving tackle to save day and secure our goat. Me and Ole Dave knew we had to get the hell out of dodge fast because there was a lot of commotion and noise that was generated in the process of capturing The Goat. I had The Goat in my arms in a gentle type bear hug and we proceeded back to the Jimmy. It was all going well until we got to the electric hot fence. Ole Dave crossed over first with now issues and as I The Goat over the hot wire to Ole Dave and the goats leg hit the electric fence knocking the shit out of Ole Dave and that damned ole goat. Dave dropped the goat and did a dance and said a few words that I can not repeat in public. I was doing my best to keep from laughing while trying my best not to let that goat escape. Some way some how we got it together and loaded the goat up in the back my GMC Jimmy. As we were driving down the road I looked in my rearview mirror and The Goat was just along for the ride. No worries no nervous gestures just chilling like a road dog. We get to Dave's brothers house and I realized the fun of the adventure was over and I was not sure if I had what it took to complete the mission. I had a .22. cal. pistol with in the Jimmy. I guess I thought I could just shoot the goat like it was a deer. I said to Dave and his brother "guys I can't shoot this goat." Ya see me and that goat had been through some things together in that last hour and we bonded. We looked each other in the eyes and in a weird kind of way I felt trusted each other. I didn't want to kill it or eat it now. The Goat had Moxy, character and that meant something to me and I will be damned if The Goat goes out like that! By now there was a lot of name calling and arguing about who was gonna finish mission. After several minutes of being called a in nice words a "wimp" I convinced Ole Dave and his brother Dub to let me take The Goat back to the barn yard. Ole Dave said you are on you own now brother I ain't going back to scene of the crime. After calling Ole Dave a wimp in nice terms he agreed to be the driver. Dub, Dave's brother said all hell no ya ain't leaving me out this time. So I decided it would be best if I rode in the back of the GMC Jimmy with The Goat. Just me and my road dog and semi cold tasty beverage. My logic was that when we got to the barn yard I could just dump him in the barn and haul ass. Upon arriving to the our destination I had already had the hatch popped and me and The Goat were ready roll out. What I did not consider was The Goat was facing the front of the Jimmy and getting a confused stubborn farm animal to walk backwards in tight confined SUV was not possible. This was supposed to be quick and easy but it turned into me trying to train The Goat to be a "Dancing Horse" and that is just not in their genetic make up. I went into panic mode and started trying to man handle my new friend out the back of the Jimmy. I was trying to be gentle but firm and I think it may have ended up with me having The Goat in a head lock before it was all said and done. Ole Dave and Dub were laughing there asses. Dub is laughing so hard he starts snorting like a damn pig and Ole Dave can't even breath he laughing so hard and I am struggling for possibly our freedom if we get caught. (I knew nobody in their right mind would believe the truth to the matter and we would be labeled as a goat thief or even worse an animal abuser things are never what they seem). I finally get pissed and said " If you don't give me some help then we are all going to jail!" At this point my two compadres could care less about the consequences to this mission. So I called them a bunch of bad names and made some threats. When Dub got out of the front seat and stepped out of the SUV and proceeded to open the rear passenger side door as if he was opening it for his kids and dropping them off at school. Dub so elegantly opened the rear passenger door and The Goat jumped out and lived happily ever after. I felt like a total dumb ass and I was even awarded a new nickname that night.(The Goat) That damned ole goat probably would have been the best road dog a country boy could ever have asked for but our paths were only meant to cross for a moment 20 years ago. I have to say this was not one of my prouder moments of my misguided youth but there were at least 100 goats in that ole barn and we only borrowed The Goat for a couple hours. No harm was done to any of the animals in this adventure. The moral to the story is things don't always go as planned. Sometimes The Goat wins hands down. It is not because The Goat is smarter or is magical , it is simply the way GOD intended it to be. Maybe The Goat in you rearview mirror is there to teach you a life lesson. To have a lil compassion and empathy for The Goats of the world! Maybe if I would had opened up the side door first my buddies would not got such a good laugh. At the time I had no idea that I would be writing about this 20 years later. So just because things did not go as planned for the big Super Bowl party does not mean that the party is over. I don't remember a thing about that super bowl but I can say this GOD has a since of humor and I think he interceded on that cold night in January just to let us country boys have a great story to tell about The Goat!