{"id":20695,"date":"2024-04-03T00:24:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T06:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=20695"},"modified":"2024-04-01T15:25:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T21:25:31","slug":"mumblety-peg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/03\/mumblety-peg\/","title":{"rendered":"Mumblety-Peg"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bryce Angell – The outdoors has always been a large part of my life. My father was an outfitter and guide for 35 years and I was there to shoe and care for the horses and help him do the cooking. We took many great trips into the Yellowstone area. Even now that I\u2019m older, we still ride into the Tetons, Yellowstone and surrounding areas. My poems are mostly of personal experience. I am now retired and enjoying life to the fullest. I plan to do more riding and writing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was thumbing through the Netflix channels when, there it was, the great Western television series, \u201cLonesome Dove.\u201d I eagerly watched, for the tenth time, when five minutes into the episode there was a scene where Newt, PeaEye and Dish were playing a knife game called Mumblety-peg. I had completely forgotten about the game of Mumblety-peg.
\nMumblety-peg can be a dangerous game if you choose to play it that way. One brainless way is to see how close you can throw your knife to your feet without slicing your toes. Newt, PeaEye and Dish were playing the game safely by staying away from their toes.
\nInstantly, memories came flooding in. I was around 16 and my brother was 13. It was early July and we had been hauling hay all morning. My father always took an hour for lunch, so we shoveled in a tuna fish sandwich then went outside to play Mumblety-peg.
\nWe usually kept a razor-sharp edge on our pocket knives and my younger brother\u2019s knife was no exception. However, he was still learning how to control the direction of his throw. We would flip the knife off a shoulder, an arm or even our nose, hoping it would land blade-first in the ground. I\u2019d like to think we played the game of Mumblety-peg in a safe and careful way.
\nBut then, enter Murphy\u2019s Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
\nMy flip of the knife was a perfect dive to the dirt. Now needing to be exactly followed up by my brother. But when he flipped the knife from his shoulder, he mistakenly shot it straight down toward his feet. The sharp blade landed in the toe of his shoe, went completely through and stuck in the dirt. The absolute silence was deafening. I told him not to move. His eyes were bigger than two bullfrog\u2019s eyes in a staredown. I believe that was the first time, up till then, he did what I asked.
\nI felt about as worthless as a nickel waitin\u2019 for change, but I managed to push the knife blade opposite the sharp edge to prevent cutting the skin. I quickly pulled it out. Gus McCrae would have been proud. I expected a gush of blood. But there wasn\u2019t any sign of blood on the knife or his shoe. I nervously yanked his shoe and sock off. The blade had landed between his big toe and the second. The incident gave new meaning to the old saying of splitting hairs. My brother changed his socks and we hauled hay the rest of that day \u2014 this time with a little less cussing and a lot more humility.
\nAnd, as once said by a wise cowboy friend of mine, \u201cMany of life\u2019s problems can be solved by watching and listening to \u2018Lonesome Dove.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thumbing through the Netflix channels when, there it was, the great Western television series, \u201cLonesome Dove.\u201d I eagerly watched, for the tenth time, when five minutes into the episode there was a scene where Newt, PeaEye and Dish were playing a knife game called Mumblety-peg. I had completely forgotten about the game of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-cowboy-poetry","7":"category-commentary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20696,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20695\/revisions\/20696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}