Phantom Pain

Amputees sometimes feel phantom pain - sensation in limbs that are no longer there. Latigo Flint can empathize; Latigo Flint feels the pain of a lost way of life, that glorious era of squinty-eyed gunslingers, the Old American West.

Whenever the pain becomes too much to bear, Latigo Flint downs a bottle of cedar barrel whiskey, a handful of barbiturates and heads over to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, located on the eastern edge of Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

I don't see what the big problem was today. What, like 4th graders have never seen a hysterical, bleeding man trying to climb into paintings before? Aren't field trips supposed to expose students to things they can't experience in a classroom?

I turned, weeping, from a particularly poignant Charles M. Russell print that had so far proved impossible to enter, and noticed a row of wide-eyed little faces. I broke towards them in a stumbling run. "Hhhhhey kiddies! Howdy, howdy! Donch you evvvar let 'em run the barbed wire achrosh the open range!!!"

The teacher and the two parent accompaniers shrieked and hastily started herding the children into the next room, but not quick enough, and I was able to snatch one of the cubby little tykes by the arm. "Boy, you tells Latigo Flint rights quick ifins you sees any sheep ranchers or injins round heres parts!" I lifted him off the ground and shook him to make sure he understood the severity of the issue. "The only good sheep rancher is a dead sheep rancher!" I bellowed, fogging his glasses with warm whiskey breath. "So have yuh seen any?!!!" He started crying, and disgusted, I dropped him.

In the courtyard, the statue of the noble mustang started urgently whinnying at me. "You hears that you little buckaroos?" I screamed at the departing children, "Always truscht the keen earch and nose of your faithful bronc. Ol' Stormy there says the lynch mob is a comin'!" Then I whirled, sprinted across the foyer, vaulted over the balcony and crashed head first into Stormy's cast iron ass.

They've permanently revoked my visitor's pass. The judge has ordered me to enter a substance abuse program. I have to pay for the restoration of over two dozen paintings, and while I was out cold, some little bastard wrote "poopie poopie poop" on my favorite pair of buckskin britches. It's safe to say I've had better trips to a museum.