picking the range (a piece about picking the range when some dumbfuck breaks the cart and angst)
The rangecart broke down weeks ago; the dumbfuck we hired from Powell County broke it. He quit four days before the autumn season began, which, let me tell you, is the busiest time of the damned year. The weather's perfect, the leaves fall in a small town, and you have forty-thousand rich-old-white-men that have saved their vacation days and are ready for some relaxation. It's only suitable that the rangecart is still broken. It's only suitable that the only cart boy left is me. Hoorah.
I'm walking down to the cart barn to gather materials for a hunt. I have to hunt around 500-1000 small white animals. The animals are round. They are hit by clubs. They are hidden in tall grass and dandelion fields. They feed off of my frustration and I can never kill them all.
I slug through the door. There's a pile of large yellow buckets to store my game in. Six exactly. Around 100 balls per barrel. Laying against them are four 'shagbags.' I have no fucking clue why they're called shagbags.
I pick up two buckets and one shagbag; I toss them into a nearby golfcart. I let out an overly dramatic sigh and wonder where the hell my life is going−it's going to the range.
I am paid $7.25 an hour to park golf carts and do other extraordinarily ordinary and mundane tasks. The golf cart goes about 1 mile per hour or just slow enough so that I cannot hit a wall headon and kill myself. The designers of the cart more than likely had this problem envisioned in their head while designing it. I imagine that the cartboy suicide ratio in the United States must exceed 100 for every 2,000.
My Güterwagen makes the transition from concrete to grass. We have arrived at Sobibór and I overlook the killing fields. I must take a shagbag and individually collect golf balls. I require $7.25 and I mustn't disappoint Herr Vorarbeiter. In 500 golf balls I will be rewarded. I take the shagbag out of the cart, set down a few yellow bags, and then begin to wander for white rubber balls.
The process of collecting golf balls by hand is not worth poetic imagery. Circular tube of shagbag hits golf ball. Golf ball goes into tube. A metal rod stops golf ball from rolling back out. Repeat the process. When shagbag begins to hurt your arms, pour it into a yellow bucket. Repeat the process. If an area no longer has white balls in the vicinity, switch to another area. Repeat the process.
I repeat the process. I repeat the process. I repeat the process. I have repeated the process twenty-two times now. Twenty-three.
I keep repeating processes. I cannot find any of the little shits anywhere. They're hidden in the tall grass and dandelion fields.
The sun is beginning to set and for a moment it almost seems like picking up five-hundred plus golf balls is worth the price of a large filet-o-fish meal from McDonalds.
My arms ache. The shagbag begins to emit laughter. The golf cart actually begins to resemble a train.
I catch a white ball running to a flag and I trip stalking after it. The dandelion fields catch me and they're laughing.
I get up and I look for more of the white rabbits and they're running everywhere. A white rabbit around every flag. They're hopping consistently and laughing. I can't catch them with my shagbag so I just throw it to the ground.
I hear a train whistle go off and it's just the Güterwagen.
I see the yellow buckets and they're beginning to look more like yellow stars.
I finally catch a white rabbit and it looks more like a bone.
