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I was doing an interview with The Big Wild, a syndicated radio program out of Madison, Wisconsin, and pretty much thought I'd gotten through unscathed until Big Red and Gundy asked if I hunted and/or fished and would I care to relate a story or two. I'm afraid I went all Oprah on them and confessed to being a victim of PTFD, or Post Traumatic Fishing Disorder. Yes, I am a victim of PTFD but, with treatment and the support of loved ones, I have partially overcome my symptoms, reduced the painful memories, and moved on with my life.

To help explain this anxiety disorder I have to tell you about my traumatic childhood and a father who, if you sat a water-filled, five-gallon bucket out on the ranch road, would have a bobber in it within twenty minutes. The weekends of my tender and impressionable youth were abused by a chronically compulsive and obviously obsessive fisherman who would crack open my bedroom door, and my brother's, well before dawn and deliver the curt, "All right, let's go." Whereupon we would be expected to spend the next twelve hours standing on the bank of some stream or lake to watch a red-and-white bobber in hopes that it might move-or that lightning would strike us and put us out of our misery. You weren't allowed to talk (scares the fish), you didn't eat (we never brought anything because we were going to catch fish), and you couldn't have anybody along (they were all too sane and at home in bed).

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I frostbit my ear yesterday.

There was a combination of mechanical failures involving my old 8N tractor, and I found myself working out there where the little voices start talking to you, with nothing but a baseball cap covering my head. The NOAA radio said that a Canadian Clipper was going to be coming through with a hundred percent chance of snow and seventy-mile-an-hour gusts. Well, as I was hunched over the tractor-it did. I was working on the 6-volt generator side, the generator being the one my father told me years ago that I should replace with an alternator-this being the same man who, when he climbed into my manual transmission truck with the mechanical lock-in lock-out hubs, said, ‘Grow up,' and I got the old tractor started and pulled undercover before we got completely layered with snow and blown to Nebraska. I did that but not before I couldn't feel part of my head.

By the time I got back in the house, my wife leaned to one side and looked at me. "Your ear looks really white." This from the woman who, no matter the physical ailment, from hangnail to headache, always gives the advice that you should go sit on the toilet and it will feel better.

I went over to the fire to warm up. "Yeah, I think it got a little wind-burned."

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I was once cautioned in the strongest of terms by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to not wear my boots in court because we had enough of a problem with the NYPD being seen as a bunch of cowboys. I now have a ranch and live in Wyoming, the Cowboy State. I had a PRCA card at one time and have worked in just about every aspect of cowboying in my youth. So, why is it I feel so hopelessly inadequate in comparison with my fictional protagonist in the cowboy sense?

I started thinking of a framework, a theme with which I could compare the two of us and came across the Roy Rogers Cowboy Code. I thought that maybe I’d go head-to-head with Walt Longmire and by the end, tally up and see who comes closer to being a cowboy, Walt or me.

Rule #1 Always be neat and clean.

I’m pretty sure that Walt comments on his lack of sartorial splendor on a per-book basis; that he’s fortunate that he wears a hat in his chosen profession and is saved from personal fashion disasters by wearing a uniform shirt and ubiquitous jeans, but he’s also in the public eye a great deal. So even if he sleeps in the jail, he must portray a certain professional integrity of person.

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The entire series of books is out in audio, and I thought I was ready for it, but I guess I wasn't. I arrived home from a jaunt back to Philadelphia, where we met our new grandbaby, whose name is Lola (no, she is not named after Henry's Thunderbird), to find a packet on the porch from Viking/Penguin containing four copies of the unabridged, 11 CD, thirteen-and-a half-hour version of The Cold Dish. After hauling in all the luggage, feeding the horses, and making a fire, I figured the CDs were thawed out enough to play.

Tony Hillerman warned me that it would be a strange experience but that I was in good hands with Recorded Books and George Guidall. He was right on both accounts. I went back in the office and put in the first CD, figuring moderation was the ticket in all things. I came back into the kitchen and sat down to take note. I'd spoken with George about a number of the pronunciations of the Crow and Cheyenne languages, and he'd impressed me as one of the most detailed and prepared performers with whom I'd ever spoken, so I was prepared to be impressed, and I was.

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Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine included an excerpt from my third novel, Kindness Goes Unpunished. It's an article called Find Your Mystery: A Collection of Favorite Whodunits, Not Just For the Stories But For the Places. They Make Ideal Vacation Reading, Full of Plot Twists and Travel Tips. There were nine selections that used excerpts, and only two that used dialogue, including the following...

The wedding cake that is the City Hall of Philadelphia was designed to be the tallest building in the world, but by the time it was finished, the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument had surpassed it. On four and a half acres of Penn Square, its domed tower tops out at just shy of 550 feet to the top of Willy Penn's hat. There are two hundred and fifty other statues that adorn the interior and exterior of the building to keep him company.

We got out of the cab at the west side of the building and walked across the sidewalk with Dog as though approaching some fantastic ship that had been docked in the center of the metropolis.

"I hate this building."

I ignored her and studied the façade. "It's Second Empire, the same as the Louvre."

"It's fruity."

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"License and registration, please."

We'd had library events in Park County-- Meeteetse (pop. 351), Powell (pop. 5,354), and Cody (pop. 9,000) and had been away from home for over a week, and I was restless, wanting to get back to the ranch and my projects. We'd just come over a rise in the Big Horn Basin, when I saw the familiar outline of the light-bar on the hill a good mile away.

I slowed and dutifully pulled over to the shoulder to await his arrival. I'd been a cop and understood the chase/chased dynamic; best to just pull over and make the job easier for both of us.

"How fast were you going?"

I glanced at my wife, Judy. "Seventy-four, I think."

She looked around at the dry, russet rock formations seemingly another world in comparison to the lush, irrigated pastures of the Pitchfork Ranch. "Is this the first car we've seen in over an hour?"

"Yes."

We watched as the Wyoming Highway Patrol cruiser flipped around and pulled in behind me.

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I consider myself something of an expert on parades; after all, I was the Grand Marshal of the Meeteetse Labor Day parade. Meeteetse is a wonderful little town in the western part of Wyoming with a population of about three-hundred and fifty. It's the place where I did my debut library event when my first novel, The Cold Dish, was published. When they first asked about the parade, I said no, thinking I was over-stepping my bounds by taking such an illustrious position-but they explained that the parade was only three blocks long and was so much fun that they usually circled back around and did another lap.

I never had such a good time in my life, and I have to admit that it changed my entire perspective on parades. Most of the parades I've witnessed have been in uniform, and there are sixteen parades in New York every year. I know because I worked practically all of them as a young patrolman. There are the ones that everybody knows about because they're on holidays or because people grew up watching them on TV back when there were only three channels. New Year's Day is a biggie along with Thanksgiving where I once saw twenty guys get lifted about ten feet off the ground because Underdog got an unexpected tailwind. But there are also the ones that nobody's heard of.

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Craig Johnson is our guest blogger during the week of March 17th. If you have any questions for Craig Johnson, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some brief information about Kindness Goes Unpunished:

Craig Johnson’s mystery series —starring Walt Longmire, the straight-shooting sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming—is attracting more and more fans with its distinctive blend of humor and action. In Kindness Goes Unpunished, Walt’s pleasure trip to Philadelphia to visit his daughter, Cady, turns into a nightmare when she is the victim of a vicious attack that leaves her near death. Walt is forced to unpack his saddlebag of tricks to mete out some Western-style justice, and the result is another action-packed thriller from this up-and-coming star of crime fiction.

About Craig Johnson