All I know is there’s many hard hours for a good country woman to pass. When you’re not worryin’ about the weather, the harvest, typhoid, havin’ cold hands every second of the day, or what’s a comin’ over the plains next, even the dear Lord up in heaven wouldn’t fault you for desirin’ to get gone down upon, once in a blue moon. Nay, I believe it twas the Lord who once said, “Tis a gentleman’s privilege to go down upon a stout country woman. And tis a perfectly reasonable way to bide one’s time.”

Say you do happen to have the opportunity of havin’ a gentleman at your outpost, perhaps a prospector chewin’ on some hay, sittin’ on a barrel on your front porch or what not, overnightin’ on his way east. Say this situation does come to pass — well, take it from me, this gentleman’s liable to sit there all afternoon without the thought of goin’ down upon you crossin’ his mind even one time! A man bein’ a man, other things might cross his mind of course, havin’ to do with himself and his needs of an intimate nature, but I’ll bet you a silver bit and an acorn shoe that the thought of goin’ down upon you, much less takin’ a leisurely time at it, so’s that it actually has an effect and the outcome is satisfactory, why he’d just as well think of an ant teachin’ a damn schoolhouse!

And that’s the problem. Gentleman around these parts, they just don’t know tis always an option. Me and my fellow country women — I’ve been sittin’ and thinkin’ on this a spell, because there’s plenty a time to sit and think out here — we ought to get together and put out a flier or send a telegram or get the town crier to yell it or have the pony express spread the damn word: ‘Tis always an option, when fixin’ to spend time with a lady, to fuss with her nethers in a leisurely way if she’s so inclined. Don’t think it’s not an option, because this declaration is henceforth meant to clarify that, indeed, it is an option, it is, from now on, to be known, that this activity is on the table, and there’s no pretendin’ that it’s not somethin’ two people could have just been doin’ the whole time, instead of ditherin’ away the day on a picnic next to a tree stump without five words to rub together.

Now, some of my fellow country women, if I were to draft such a declaration, might say I was fixated on the subject, that I’d gotten my bloomers in a bundle over somethin’ that’ll never come to pass, and I’d say to them, well, what’s the worst that can happen from tryin’? That some gentleman might get an inklin’ to make acquaintance with your old mesquite bush for once in his life? It’d be good to give our menfolk somethin’ to do, or you know what they get up to — hootin’ and hollerin’ and kickin’ up dust in town when there ain’t no cause.

But for now, I’m just a woman alone on the prairie, with a house full of chores and a head in the clouds, sittin’ on the porch, starin’ at the same sky, and just waitin’ for the rains to come and loosen up this hard old ground, where a gnat never even dreamed of flyin’…