Pete's News

ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT 
AND SOME THAT AIN'T

Howdy folks! This here’s ol’ Pete and Rosebud comin’ at you again!

How’re you likin’ this weather we’ve been havin’? I got to thinkin’ about it the other day, and me and Rosebud has both been settin’ around up here not doin’ nothin’ and gettin’ fatter’n a couple of ol’ hawgs. Seems like I do that ever winter. We need to get out and move around some, get shed of some of this fat, but I ain’t fixin’ to get out there and freeze myself half to death. If it ain’t got to be done, it don’t get done as long as it’s wet and cold like it is right now. Besides, it’ll come off when spring gets here. We’ll get out to workin’ and it’ll come right off. At least some of it will.

I used to didn’t pay no ’tention to puttin’ on weight in the winter. It wasn’t no problem. I’d put on ten pounds from settin’ around not doin’ nothin’, but I didn’t never have no trouble losin’ it once I got to doin’ somethin’. I didn’t even have to try. It’d all come off in a week or two. But not no more. Now I’ll put on ten pounds and when spring comes I don’t lose but about half of it. Ever year I get bigger and bigger.

Rosebud gives me a hard time about it. She acts like it sorta makes her mad. Says she didn’t sign on to tote no fattenin’ hawg around. Says if I get any fatter, I’m gonna find myself walkin’ wherever I go ’cause she ain’t breakin’ her back for me. Specially when it’s all on account of laziness, ’cause somebody’s too doggone lazy to move around enough to keep from gettin’ so fat you can’t see their eyes.

I guess I can sorta see her side of it. If it was me was havin’ to carry her up and down the road, I’d want her to shed a few pounds too. But she don’t have to get so smart-mouthed about it. I mean, it sorta hurts my feelin’s, her talkin’ about me bein’ lazy and all. There ain’t no reason to get snotty about it. She could’ve got her point across just as well by sayin’ somethin’ that sounded a lot nicer. Like, “Maybe we ort to try and get a little exercise today.” That would’ve been okay. Or, “What say me and you move around a little today and see if we can’t get rid of some of this extry weight we’ve put on.” That would’ve been even better. If she’d a tried, she could’ve sprankled a little sugar on it and it would’ve gone down a whole lot better than it did.

I told her that. I told her that’s what she ort to have done, that I’d a follered her around like a puppy dawg as long as she was nice to me. But when she gets snotty like that, it makes me want to dig my heels in and just set here in my rockin’ chair ’til the fat oozes off of me and puddles up on the floor.

Then she told me she couldn’t be sub-tile dealin’ with me, that I never took her hints when she did drop ’em. Said she spent the better part of two weeks tryin’ to get it through my thick skull what she wanted for Christmas and I went and got her a dad-gum magazine perscription. What kind of Christmas present was that? Said she might as well have been talkin’ to a fence post, that she’d have been better off if she’d just kept her mouth shut and not said nothin’. At least she wouldn’t have wasted her breath. All her hints just bounced off of my ol’ hard head and sailed right out the winder.

Well they didn’t. I didn’t say nothin’, but I heared her ol’ hints loud and clear. I got ever one of ’em, but I’d already made up my mind about a magazine perscription before she started droppin’ ’em. And it wasn’t just any ol’ magazine neither. It was a good’un, Pop’lar Science, not one of them silly ol’ hairdo and makeup magazines like she wants to stand around and look at down there at Silas’s store. I mean, what’s a mule need with a hairdo magazine? Or that stuff about how to hold on to a man. She couldn’t hold onto a man if he had a log chain around his neck. Yeah, I knowed it wasn’t what she was hintin’ for, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hear what she was sayin’. I just wasn’t gonna get it for her.

I wasn’t about to buy her no bracelet neither. And it wasn’t just any ol’ bracelet. No, she wanted one with diamonts stuck all over it. Diamonts, no less. No, the last thing she needs is a diamont bracelet.

Besides, even if they’re fake diamonts, them bracelets cost way too much. That magazine perscription I got her cost more’n I wanted to spend and I shore wasn’t gonna spend all that much money on a bracelet. Not for a mule. If I had bought her one, you wouldn’t have been able to see it when she put it on her ol’ hairy laig. The thing would’ve been covered up by all that hair. And one thing just leads to another. Next thing you know, she’d be shavin’ her laigs, puttin’ on lipstick and all that kind of stuff. She’d get more uppity than she is already. Lord knows she’s bad enough without gettin’ any worser.

Well, things’ll get better when spring gets here. Our problem – mine and her’s both – is that we’ve spent way too much time cooped up together in the house up here. We need to get out, get some fresh air and move around some. Maybe I’ll hitch her up and ride down to the store after while. Takin a mule-back ride ort to be a good way to get a little exercise, don’t you think? It’ll be good for both of us.

You can contact Pete and Rosebud by email at

bstover43@yahoo.com