Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 42 T H E O L D B R O K E R A N C H E R B Y G A R Y S H E L T O N T HERE WAS A TIME IN MY LIFE when I was as thin as a reed. I could hide behind a telephone pole and all people could see was my nose and maybe the tip of my adam's apple. When I sidled into a bar and sat on a stool, the bartender would size me up and say, "What'll it be, slim?" Well, not anymore. Now when I walk into a bar they di- rect me away from the stools, telling me that they don't want to be legally liable should the stool fail to hold my weight and send me tumbling onto the floor or even into their basement. "Please sir," they beg, "sit in a booth!" Yes, you might say that I've gained a little weight in the fifty-two years since I was 19. I'd like to think that I've gained one pound for every IQ point smarter I've be- come. If that were the case, I'd now be in the super genius Einstein/Sherlock Holmes range, if not beyond. My family physician, Dr. Pisberg, tells me that I'm obese. Dr. Pisberg is our family doctor, and sometimes I won- der about him. Mostly, I wonder if he can account for his whereabouts from 1933-1945 or so. He takes what I would consider to be an inordinate amount of pleasure and sat- isfaction from my suffering. Like any true sadist, he also knows that words can hurt much worse than sticks and stones or reflex hammers and tongue depressors. "I'm not obese," I tell him, wounded. "Those people on TV who can't get out of their beds so that they have to take their roofs off to airlift them out? They're obese." "Ja," Dr. Pisberg agrees, "those people are also obese." He explains that it's a matter of body weight to height. I explain that it's all muscle, and then he pokes at my waistline until I giggle uncontrollably. "Stop that," I say. "This is muscle? Ja, und I am Pablo Picasso. Very funny." He tells me, basically, that if I don't lose some weight, I'm liable to be- come a creature less man than blob. My only option is to feed myself to a bear or become a circus freak, and there aren't many circuses anymore. So I survey a list of the trendy diets avail- able to me—the Atkins diet, the Dukan diet, the no-fat diet, the all-fat diet, the HCG diet, the ketogenic T H E O L D B R O K E R A N C H E R T H E O L D B R O K E R A N C H E R I N V E N T S T H E I N V E N T S T H E L E W I S & C L A R K L E W I S & C L A R K D I E T D I E T

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