Night Rustlers of the Flying Vegan Ranch

Tofu is a great substitute for meats including beef.

onegreenplanet.org

“Git along, little soybeans!”

As I saddled up my old horse “Paint”–the acrylic one, not the oil-based pinto–I exhaled a sigh of exasperation. It was a constant battle–and a lonely one–that I fought at the Flying Vegan Ranch. Every night as soon as I’d rounded up the soybeans and herded them into the fields, their predators would appear on the horizon. Cattle. Pigs. Chickens. Them I could handle if I needed to, just come out on the back porch and show them a bottle of barbecue sauce and my goofy apron with “Dad’s grillin’–everybody’s chillin’” on the front and they’d scatter like so many dry leaves in an autumn wind down off the Sangria de Cristo (wine punch of Jesus) mountains. No, they weren’t the problem.

Our brand.

It was the damn soybean rustlers that threatened to drive me off the land that my poppa-daddy and grand-poppa-daddy had worked for so many years to turn it into the top-producing tofu ranch in Texas. The most scurrilous, low-down, good-for-nothin’, triflin’ bunch of egg-sucking varmints you’d ever care to meet.

“Giddap” I said after I’d settled in my saddle–and try saying that five times fast–and snapped the reins.

“What the hell does ‘giddap’ mean?” Paint asked, and none-too-politely I might add.

“It’s short for ‘giddy-up.’”

“And what does that mean?”

“It’s an elision of ‘get ye up’ or ‘get thee up.’ Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” Paint said. “You always just blurt it out, you’ve never defined it.”

“I didn’t know I had to.”

“Consultants say employees are more productive when they know why they’re asked to do something.”

It seemed to me it was time to nip Paint’s fresh, “flip” talk in the bud. “What’s the difference between a consulting firm and a flock of starlings?” I asked him.

“I don’t know–what?”

“A flock of starlings will fly into town and shit on your head for a week, but won’t send you a bill for it.”

“Ha ha–so funny I forgot to laugh.”

“Why don’t you stick to horsing, and I’ll take care of the soybeans.”

“Fine, I don’t like them anyway.”

With that palaver under our belts, we reverted to the phlegmatic, taciturn manner so characteristic of the Old West. Not a word passed between horse and man until we reached the fence that separates the Flying Vegan Ranch from the Lazy Slug Ranch–where we both let out a gasp at what we saw.

“Gasp!”

I got down off Paint to get a better look. It was indeed what I thought it was from up in the saddle; a soybean that rustlers had tried to rustle offa my land. They’d botched the job, and the bean looked like the victim of vegetable mayhem, sliced into cross-sections to show its various chemical components.

“Are you sure it’s yours?” Paint asked.

“Sure I’m sure–see the ‘Flying V’ brand on it?”

Paint looked down at the badly-damaged legume. “It looks more an ice cream cone that somebody dropped,” he said.

“You’re looking at it upside down!”

“Oh.” Paint moved around to the other side. “Okay, now I see it–even though I don’t know the alphabet.”

I clucked my tongue and shook my head. All that money I’d spent on horse-training videos over the years–in easy-to-use VHS format!–down the drain.

“Say three Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, and now make an Act of Contrition.”

I looked off at the horizon with a steely gaze, like a non-smoking Marlboro Man. I was too proud to be run off my land, whose bounteous bounty kept vegan tables overflowing from the rocky shores of New England to the sunny sands of California. Contra Woody Guthrie, this land was my land, not theirs.

“Why the hell don’t the cattle ranchers tend to their knitting?” I asked.

“I doubt that they do much knitting,” Paint said.

“That’s an expression. I mean why can’t they mind their own damn business?”

“It’s because you’re a threat to their business.”

“Moi?” I said, lapsing into my high school French for emphasis.

“Yes, vous,” Paint said. “You’re a threat to them. Once Americans discover how delicious, healthful and relatively inexpensive tofu is compared to beef, those guys are toast.”