Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas

Opinion

Friday, January 28, 2005

Sage Views

By Smokey Briggs

Why women will
never rule the world

I know, I am a male chauvinist pig.

I cannot really deny that - not the way it is defined today.

These days, if you think men and women are different, you qualify as a male chauvinist pig.

And, I do. Men are men and women are women and rarely do these two species resemble each other.

I have 14 years of marriage behind me to back that up.

And, thank goodness. She-who-must-be-obeyed is a great woman and I would hate to suddenly replace her with my good friend Joey in a sexy female body.

First, they broke the mold when they made SWMBO and you could not craft a better-looking woman.

Second, the results of such a union would be a white-trash collection of unclean stuff such as the world has never seen.

But, I digress.

I started off with the statement that women will never rule the world - this earth will always be a man’s world.

I have proof.

Just this last weekend I brought home my baby. Her name is Blue.

Blue is a 1946 special duty 3/4-ton Chevrolet pickup.

I met her when I was eight years old in Murphy, Texas.

She belonged to a man named Ed Thurman who was one of my first trading partners when I entered the world of livestock trading.

Our first encounter I traded him some fine rabbits for a riding lawn mower with no blade.

We had to go to his house to pick up the mower and that was when I saw Blue for the first time.

It was love at first sight. She had nine colors of paint camouflaging her rust, the chrome was peeling off the grill and a rack of bricks was perched in the back.

She was beautiful.

When I was twelve I bought her with no small amount of financial assistance from my Pa.

Now you see, when I saw Blue for the first time, I did not see a rusty 35-year-old truck with blown rings and two stripped gears.

I saw her as she was when she was fresh off the showroom floor - and how she could be again.

I saw her potential.

It is a man thing. Men see potential.

Women do not - except sometimes in men, but usually they are wrong.

She was my only vehicle for years and years. In 2001, I decided to begin the rebuild I had promised her in 1978. When I brought her home the other day, she was in pieces - she is scattered to the four corners of the earth. Body panels here, block on a stand, newly rebuilt head lovingly wrapped in plastic, nuts and bolts in a thousand coffee cans.

When I looked at the collection under my carport, I saw her as she will be.

SWMBO did not.

I cannot print what she said at that moment although I am sure she did not mean it.

But, I realized then why women will never rule this earth.

They just cannot see potential. Everything is cut and dried with women. An item is either useful or junk.

Men see potential and with that vision, they shape the world. Dauntless tasks are not dauntless when you can see the finished product - be it a Constitutional Republic as our founding fathers saw, or a 1946 pickup.

If you can see it, you can build it.

Girls just cannot see it.

And, I guess I possess a tremendous amount of this manly vision.

I have a collection of projects I would put up against anyone’s.

Old Blue, the MG, the Land Rover, a couple of Winchesters, and, if I do not do something with Old Blue pretty soon, maybe my marriage.

But, I still see the potential in mine and SWMBO’s match, no matter what she said under the carport.

Because I can see potential even if she cannot.

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Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net

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