Cowboy Petey Patelbow

Although born and raised in the densely populated eastern suburbs, Mr. Petey Patelbow possessed a strong cowboy need for wide open spaces, as well as a powerful streak of rugged individualism, the combination of which placed his spirit more accurately in the middle of the American desert.

Mr. Petey knew this and acted upon it at the first available opportunity. He was sick and tired of the urban rat race with its multitudes of impatient people and so, in utter opposition to their hurry, was determined to pursue his vision of not just a slower life, but a really downright slow life, what some might even call a heroically slow-motion life.

The first step was to purchase several thousand acres in an extremely remote and unpopulated part of central Nevada. High and dry basin and range desert, a world of rock and dust and various shades of ochre baking in the hot sun under clear blue skies. Mr. Petey felt comfortable with this kind of space around him - no one accidentally jabbing him in the ribs with their elbows, no one in the supermarket trying to squeeze their cart by as he was examining peanut butter labels, making him feel as though he were "in the way". No, no one was ever going to make him feel "in the way" again.

In fact, he realized that it was those people who were in his way, and once they got the hell out of his way, he could proceed west to his thousands of undeveloped, sun-parched acres. Here he would be able to live out his version of the American dream in peace and with dignity.

The second step was to acquire a dusty and banged up pickup truck resembling one he had once seen in a movie. No power locks or windows. Just an old Ford or Chevy. This was easily enough accomplished.

The third step was to do his best to grow a big, thick mustache like the one the man in the movie had. The man who drove the pickup truck. Although Petey's mustache never really resembled the man in the movie's, there was no one on his thousands of acres to point that out, so it didn't really matter. 

The fourth step was to change his name from "Mr. Petey Patelbow" to "Cowboy Petey Patelbow", or "Cowboy Petey" for short.

His land included one old well and a shack that would serve as his home.

Now Cowboy Petey was a lover of coffee and he knew that this ritual - drinking coffee in the desert - would be at the center of his new, heroically slow existence. He always had a minimum of two cups a day - one in the morning, and one at 3:05 in the afternoon. In the mornings he didn't mind preparing his own coffee, but the afternoon cup was an altogether different story.

The afternoon cup would be the occasion for him to leave the house, get into his banged up pickup and go for a ride. It would give him a chance to see his land from  multiple vantage points. So when it came time to choose the site for the coffee shop he planned to build, he selected a splendidly flat and remote piece of desert floor located fourteen miles from his shack.

At great expense, Cowboy Petey contracted the Starbucks corporation and had them oversee the construction of a Starbucks coffee shop on the chosen site. Since drilling a well at this location would have proven costly and fruitless, the water would have to be trucked in weekly. This was in no way considered an actual Starbucks store, as it was so many miles from the nearest paved, public road, but it did exactly resemble the ones found on paved, public roads. Instead of the usual paved parking lot though there was just the dusty desert floor, a detail that was part of Cowboy Petey's vision. He wanted to make sure that his truck was covered in a layer of dust at all times.

He hired authentic Starbucks baristas and put them on his payroll. The duties of the job were very specific. Every day Cowboy Petey would show up in his dusty pickup around 3:05 pm. The barista would greet him by saying "Well if it isn't Cowboy Petey Patelbow! Good afternoon!" or something like that, followed with "Will you be having your usual?" 

To which Cowboy Petey would reply "Yeppers. Hot coffee with LOTS of room for cream". He would then sit down and savor his hot coffee, served in a white ceramic cup, for typically an hour. More often than not he would read the latest issue of USA Today cover to cover. In the background would be music that was specially selected by Cowboy Petey. More often than not it would be Ry Cooder's soundtrack to the movie "Paris, Texas".

Sometimes, midway through his cup of coffee, Cowboy Petey would become almost completely still and gaze out the glass windows with an expression that some would call blank, but in fact was full of emotion.

So as to create the illusion of a real coffee house, Cowboy Petey hired some customers. He decided that there should be a total of three additional customers every two days. These "customers" were screened by Cowboy Petey himself. Their only job was to enjoy their beverages as much as, and as slowly as, their employer did.

After his afternoon coffee Cowboy Petey would get back in the pickup and go for a ride around his land, delighting in his blinding sea of sun-parched ochre, an endless world of rock, dust and mountain. Anything this big, hot and dry had to be good, he thought. The only thing he liked wet was his coffee.

And the only thing he liked dark was the roast of his coffee, he mused. But this wasn't exactly true. He also liked his skin to get as bronzed as possible. A self-proclaimed sun worshipper, he was forever determined to get "revenge" on the pasty pallor of his youth. Besides, what kind of grizzly cowboy avoids the sun?

Once Cowboy Petey's vision was realized down to the detail, and he successfully lived  out his coffee routine for two consecutive years, he decided to give himself the honorary title of "Special District Sheriff", thus expanding his full name to "Special District Sheriff Cowboy Petey Patelbow". But no sooner did he assume this title than he decided that he preferred being an elected official to a self-appointed one. To solve this problem he had a few hundred flyers printed up urging anyone who read it to "vote for Cowboy Petey Patelbow for the office of Special District Sheriff". A stack of these flyers was always placed in his Starbucks, and the hired customers were instructed to take one at every visit.

Upon further thought, he changed the flyers to read "Re-elect Special District Sheriff Cowboy Petey Patelbow". That way, he could proceed on the assumption that he already possessed the title, and was simply working to keep it.

Since the election never took place, he always kept it.

A few more years passed and Cowboy Petey was happy as a clam living on his massive sun-parched parcel that at times resembled Mars when he struck upon another idea - to create a similar installation in west Texas. This he did and took  great joy in both the similarities and differences between sun-parched parcel number one and sun-parched parcel number two. Most importantly the coffee was great at both parcels. When the spirit moved him, Cowboy Petey Patelbow would drive the dusty old pickup from Nevada to Texas and back again, depending on his mood and the weather. For the most part he didn't mind the whiff of the real world that such drives provided. In this way, one man in America figured out how to live out his days both enjoyably and with dignity.

     

- Copyright 2016 by P.T. Gachot