Cadillac Joe and the Rodeo Queen

Cadillac Joe died last week, passing into the oblivion of the grave; surely there will be tales told and exaggerations made of his sins and follies for a few days.  His money, larceny and drinking make limited fodder, and folks will shake their heads:  I guess he was as sick as he claimed.  The Passing of Cadillac Joe leaves a wife bereft and relieved, no doubt in equal measure.  She'll no longer have to make excuses or field awkward questions about questionable deals and who knows what she knew anyway.  A steep fall for The Rodeo Queen of Illinois, 1968.   We all fall, all fall down.  She'll stay on the farm, of course, the occasional neighbor looking in.

He died at home, few friends remained and fewer cared, made his own bed and died in it.  February is a time for dying if you don't have to be buried in the iron hard ground.  No service or memorial, ashes to ashes, all of us each and all.  We lift a cup to the widow and what might have been if not for what was.  A bad bargain, and she's paid the price, ground down into the fine dust of shame and humiliation from what passed for royalty so long ago:  Rodeo Queen of Illinois, 1968.  No child or family to grieve for her, in ill health herself.  One last bleeding memory, him dying there at home, she calling on the one friend who might come over to say goodbye...she had someone to call, after all.

Choices are hard.  They are not fair, they shape our whole lives and we make them when we are young and ignorant and short-sighted and hopeful.  But there you are, she stuck with him.  She was a pretty girl, and like so many pretty girls, might have been better off plain, might not have caught the eye of a rounder like Cadillac Joe.

She'll stay on the farm, dream of the barrel-racing quarter horse in the mists of the pasture, think of that tarnished crown - you're only Queen for a Year, after all.