The Machinery of Night

Posted 4:30 PM by Angie Schultz

The Manolo, He Will Be Envious

A long time ago on a blog far, far away, Natalie Solent published an email I sent her about Barbie clothes. (I googled forever for this, not realizing it was on 'Nother Solent, rather than Natalie's Blogspot site, which is what I usually visit.)

To quote myself:

My grandmother had a fur coat--- some respectable fur, soft and silky. Muskrat, for all I know. Lord knows how she ended up with it, because as I've said we did not have much money. It was left to her by someone, but I can't imagine who. Anyway, no one in our family was ever going to have an occasion to wear a fur coat, and it had a very wide hem, so Mom cut away a bit of the inside of the hem to make "mink" stoles and hats for our Barbies.

Now, if we'd been a ranching family, there'd have been no shortage of Barbie hats:

"The branding part is the funnest," [12-year-old] Kindee [Wilson] said, recalling the roping and barbecues of branding days past.
...
As the flame did its work, Bart [Wilson, Kindee's father] sharpened his pocketknife -- his castration tool of choice...
...
Two quick shots of vaccine -- plus, in the case of a bull calf, a castration almost equally rapid -- and the bawling calf was released to rejoin its uneasy mother.
...
Kindee uses the furry ends of bull calves' nut sacks (that's approved terminology on the Wilson place) as Barbie hats.

Clever, eh? If only we'd lived in Idaho. Someone should write Heloise with this hint.

Now at Goode Company Barbecue, which is a local restaurant chain, they sell "bullie bags", which come from full grown bulls, and are purse-sized. Last time I was at a Goode Company, they had 'em hanging up over the cash register.

Fashion advice from noted dandy Festus McMudge at Huffington's Toast.

UPDATE: A mere two months on, I notice that I never linked to the ranching story.