Big Luke is Coming to Town

Today, just a little after taking the oath of office, the 44th President of the United States of America, Barak H. Obama spoke to the world. He reminded me immediately of ‘Big Luke’.

At the end of the road, in a one-horse, dusty, western town near Denver Colorado at about the year 1844, lies Jackson’s Saloon. At noon on this day, the saloon only has three regulars downing beers and exaggerating about the steer branding from the morning work when the doors are flung open and a muscular man almost six-feet four inches tall steps briskly in and strode to the bar. The man, with a shadow beard and thick moustache gruffly demands “whiskey, and leave the bottle!” He turns up the shot glass, swallows then fills it again and turns up a second and third. Slamming the glass down he shouts, “Big Luke is coming to town!” Then the man scurried out, filing the swinging doors. The three men that were at the table follow him out only to see him ride towards the west, out of town.

The men went back into the saloon, but the last cowboy sees a peculiar sight approaching the town from the east. There in the distance, amidst a cloud of dust is what appears to be someone riding a “beast of burden”. As the rider became a little more visible, it was observed that the rider was on a bucking Brahma/cross bull. Further the man was whipping the bull with a rattlesnake, which he held by its tail. The observer scuttled into the saloon and the rider dismounted the bull and tied him to the post loosely. Then he punched the bull in the face yelling to it saying, “You’d better not move!” He picked up the spittoon by the door and flung open the saloon doors, stepped to the bar and demanded a full bottle of the best whiskey. He poured the full bottle in the spittoon and turned it up, gulping five times before consuming all its contents.

He slammed the spittoon and then the empty bottle down on the bar, when the bartender, shaking with fear quickly inquired, “Would you like another bottle?” The man looked at the bartender and replied, “Naw man, no time to waste, ain’t you heard, Big Luke’s coming to town!”

One CNN commentator suggested that President Obama’s reference to the biblical verse "...the time has come to set aside childish things..." meant that “someone” should put their “big boy pants on”. See and hear the speech.

Then, I popped to the White House website and, WOW! It’s Already updated for “CHANGE”! Remember Ishmael Reed’s poem “I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra?” “…look out Set…to unseat Set…”

Then I watched him walk away from that departing helicopter, as he strode with that dip swagger that is his genuine trademark, I was overcome with pride.

God Bless the President and the First Family of the United States of America!