Buffalo Nickel / Giclee on Canvas / 18 x 18

When I was a very young man, we would play a game called, Touch the Buffalo. The object of the game was to enter the buffalo pen from one side, run up to the buffalo and touch it, and then continue to exit out of the pen on the far side. If you managed to grab a handful of the buffalo's hair and not die, you were considered a bad-ass until a buffalo actually killed you. If a buffalo killed you, we decided you earned the title, Buffalo Messenger. Buffalo Messenger was the Indian name meaning, the idiot who got himself tramped to death by a buffalo because you pulled it's hair. I almost became a member of the Buffalo Messenger Society. I could see in the eyes and grim expressions of the spectators, and in hearing the hoofs of the freight train just behind me as I ran, my life might turn out to be a little bitty short story rather than a epic novel. I writhed in excruciating pain on the backseat as the car pulled into the emergency room entrance. My injuries were not from the charging buffalo, but rather from the poorly aimed dive through the pipe fencing.