Buffalo Stampedes!!!

What, August already?  How did that happen so damn fast?  Geez, I just start getting back on my feet, and some joker bumps the calendar's selector switch up to 78rpm's.  Sigh.

Besides the obvious of being summer's peak, our eighth month always gets me to thinking about Buffaloes.  No, not just the familiar four-legged kind.  I'm talking a couple different other varieties of the species.  First and foremost is a mechanical variety I became fascinated by around the age of 10 or so:

This odd beast belonged to the Union Railroad.  It started life as an ordinary Baldwin DRS-66-1500 that looked like this:

Around 1960, it was shipped off to GM's then-Electro-Motive Division {now E-M Diesel, owned by Caterpillar}.  EMD put a new prime mover in place of the original, and added one of their own hoods to the long end of the carbody.  The short hood remained as-built, but nine years later it was cut down for better visibilty.

This fact, coupled with the down-sloping panel that joins the taller EMD hood to the shorter Baldwin cab, gave this unit, and the rest of her sisters the look of a "buffalo grazing," hence their nickname.  They survived in service until 1980, when they were retired and scrapped.  Although I never got to see one in person, I did stumble across a very similar Chicago & North Western rebuild, being scrapped in the old St. Louis Auto Shredder's complex between Granite City, and East St. Louis,  Illinois around August 1985 or so.

As locomotives go, I've always had a soft spot for such "Frankenstinian" units - they gave the railfan hobby a great dash of spice, and were also a pretty good illustration of railroads making the proverbial lemons into lemonade.  Not all such "freaks" worked well, or lasted very long post-surgery, but the Buffaloes sure did.  As one shop foreman said, "An EMD motor with Westinghouse electricals is nearly indestructable."  Since the Union was at the time a subsidiary of US Steel, their Buffaloes literally had their hooves - er, wheels run off them as they lugged heavy ore, coal, limestone, and finished steel trains 24-7/365 for a score of years.

Although I only briefly glimpsed a mechanical Buffalo in person, the more organic varieties soon made presences in my life, with considerably more impact.  Classic was the incredibly tame and friendly one who "adopted" me during a visit to Grant's Farm in St. Louis when I was in my 20's.  See, I had some sugar cubes in my pockets that I was going to feed to the always-present Clydesdales in the stables during my tour of the park.  Before I could, I was waylaid by a frisky bison who was most curious about what was in me pocketses; he literally started nuzzling my hip when I visited his part of the range.

Now, having a 2500 pound, seven-foot tall {across the shoulders} beast nuzzle you like a puppy-dog is not an every day experience.  One half-forceful butt from his muzzle alone would have given me compound fractures, and let's not even think of what the rest of him could do, if even mildly preturbed!  After quickly bogarting the whole of my sugar-stash, my new bison-friend decided that this hairy toothpick wasn't a bad sort, and proceeded to follow me all around the park for the remainder of my visit!

Me and my new one ton shadow traumatized the stables, petting zoo, tram-ride station, and Michelob-sampling pavilion before he was finally corralled by the staff, allowing me the chance to escape.  I don't think I've ever seen SO many stunned faces, outside of a gig situation!!  All in a day's work, far as I'm concerned.  A critter's a critter, and I dig critters, so 'nuff said.  However, there was one more Buffalo destined to  cross my path, in the tradition of "good things come in threes."  Regular readers of my old MySpace blog will know what's coming next, but for my new Friends here, consider the following:

That's me on the right, alongside my Great Friend Buffalo Bob.  We first crossed paths around 1989 or '90, bumped into each other again in 2003, then finally began building a proper friendship starting in 2008, which continues to the present, I'm proud to say.  BB digs the real buffaloes too, and whenever we get together onstage somewhere, it's fair to say we both cut loose with our best stampede-impressions!  Aside from music, we see eye-to-eye on a lot of other things, and BB's take on all of 'em reminds me very much of that frisky bison with a sweet-tooth at Grant's Farm.  If the hairy toothpick is into it, he'll get into it as well.

Of course no friend of mine - Great or otherwise - is entirely safe from my legendary teasing-habit, and BB is no exception.  We got to talking about buffaloes {of all things} one day, and he made some remark about the Sacred White Buffalo that turns up in many Indian legends and customs.  Curious, I did a quick Google image-search - and nearly fell out of my chair in helpless laughter.  Five minutes with good old MS Paint gave me a hilarious take on "separated at birth?"  

For his part, BB took my joke in stride when I slammed him with it on my old MySpace blog.  Oh, he's clobbered me back several times since, but I think this incident was the start of a lot of silliness between the two of us, which is ongoing as I type this post.  BB's sense of humor is just as broad {and warped} as mine, and we go to great lengths to regale each other whenever the opportunity arises.  My favorites have been the times we've gone after each other onstage.  BB lays down a lick he knows will set me off, I obligingly go off, and then we try our best to baffle each other with some of the craziest musical tangents one could imagine.

Afterwards, he'll always slam me about drinking too much Tea, or having a flashback or whatever, and I usually toss a "serves ya right" right back at him, always with a huge grin on my face.  BB's not afraid of much as a musician; if I want to try something silly, he'll go along with it on the spur of the moment. He's one of perhaps four other musicians out of the hundreds I've encountered in the last 25 years that has that special quality.  It makes for some magical times onstage, believe me.  Hopefully, we'll have some more good times together in the not-too-distant future, now that I'm slowly coming back to life again.

So, that's my tale of the Buffalo Stampedes.  Animate or inanimate, I've yet to encounter a more fascinating species.  Strong, no-nonsense {well, maybe a little nonsense}, and steadfast-to-the-last; I consider myself very lucky indeed to have them as a part of my life experience.  These hot August days always remind me of the noble Bison, and how much I dig 'em, even if they do think that jazz smells funny.

More shortly............