I have to preface this with a warning. This is a long post but it seems to fit with Regional humor - it is a Southwestern story.

The main character is the late Trader Jim Porter. Trader Jim had carried that nickname since he was seven years old growing up on his father's ranch in Bisbee, Arizona where he first showed his ability as a trader. He'd started with a very pretty, clear crystal marble and, after a series of trades with friends, each of whom was pleased that he had received fair exchange, Jim ended up with the pony that he had wanted. After that, Trader Jim became almost one word, like damnyankee.

After careers as a mercenary in Mexico, as a movie stunt pilot (All Quiet on the Western Front), a boxer (bantamweight), and then as an extremely successful automobile dealer in Northern California, he returned to the desert country and got a tribal license as a Navajo trader, just outside of Kayenta at Tsegi Canyon. That's where I had first met him. A friendship developed and I used to visit him at the trading post. He enjoyed life among the Navajo but when he reached his mid-seventies he thought it was getting to be time to retire although he hated that word.

He bought a small place up in Bluff, Utah, only a quarter mile from where western author Zane Grey had lived and written for a while. Grey used the geography and sometimes violent history of Bluff as the setting for at least one novel.

On the other side of Trader Jim's property was a Mormon Church and it is that church that's the center of the story.

Although Jim loved the excitement of dealing with people, he was also a loner in the sense that he believed in self-reliance and he placed an extremely high value on it. As a result, his little three acre "ranch" came as close to being self-sustaining as he could make it. He raised a few sheep on some land he set aside for pasturing. They were his source of meat. He had a complicated series of gates so he could move his little flock around from one field to another without any help. He had a good flowing well. He raised enough wheat to feed himself and Caroline, his wife of more than fifty years, and he had a mill to grind the wheat. He also had a flock of guinea hens that roosted all over the property but he knew where they hid their eggs so his breakfasts always featured fresh eggs.

After the excitement of running a trading post, I guess it got pretty dull in Bluff. On my visits, Jim told told me repeatedly that he didn't like most of the people in town. His opinion of them was that most were stuffy and smug. Jim was one of those people that even though you may like a lot, you have to recognize their blind spots and prejudices. Jim was very willing to attribute any stuffiness and smugness to Mormonism and this was an overwhelmingly Mormon town. At that time, the people living in Bluff had all been born there, their parents had been born there; their grandparents and their grandparents' parents, too, had all first seen the light in Bluff.

Bluff had been founded when Brigham Young had directed a group to go and settle in that area. The settlers had survived drought, and epidemics. They had fought off Indian attacks, been driven from the town and then, six or seven years later had fought their way back. For about fifty years, Bluff had been known as Recapture, Utah. These people were of tough stock but Jim thought they had gotten soft. Whatever the right and wrong of Jim's opinions, Bluff was their town and he was the alien. I'm sure that the fact that he determinedly flamboyant in speech, dress, and action only emphasized his being an outsider.

In order for Jim's plan to have a self-sufficient piece of land to work, he needed to fence in his property and he did just that. To understand the emotional meaning of that fence, you have to know that even though this property was a few acres, it was almost in the center of town. On one side, the new fence ran between the edge of Jim's land and the yard of the local Mormon church. Members of the congregation felt that the fence was "a little unneighborly" and a delegation of Elders came to visit Jim. According to Jim, they'd stood around the living room looking very self-important and official. They asked why he was building a fence. Jim felt "it was none of their goddammed business". Rather than saying that, though, he got a little devilish. On the spot, he started making up a story. He told the Elders that he was planning on breeding a new sort of cattle. That got their attention.

The story Jim spun went on; "They're goin' to be a cross between buffalo and giraffe." The Elders eyebrows went up. He could see they were hooked. "I figure they'll do real well around here. Buffalo used to be all over this country but they don't do so good when there's a drought and the grass dries up. What I want to do, is cross buffalo with giraffes. A buffalo with a long neck'd be able to feed off tree leaves. That'd help 'em get through any drought." Then came the capper, "I'm goin' to call them Bluffalos in honor of the town where they'll be bred."

The eyes of the Elders went wide and Jijm was on a roll. "The problem I've been working on is my breeding stock. I don't know whether I want to cross bull buffaloes with cow giraffes or bull giraffes with buffalo cows." Here he looked serious. "The problem is the mating. If I use a giraffe cow, I've got to get that bull way up in the air. I'd have to put him up on some pretty high stilts. I've pretty much decided that I'll be using a giraffe bull on a buffalo cow. With her underneath the giraffe, I won't have to get her up so far".

When he was done, they stood there, dumbfounded. Jim ushered them out the door and told them that as soon as his breeding program had some results, he hoped they'd come back and visit.

Jim figured that his yarn would provide enough fuel for speculation around town for a while before it would dawn on all concerned that there was a good chance they'd been "had". What he didn't think was that there would be any more to the story.

By a wonderful coincidence, about a week or two later, Jim got a phone call from an old friend in Hollywood. They were going to be shooting a film in Monument Valley which is only about an hour or so away. They would be using a lot of livestock in a cattle drive scene. In addition to the cattle that they'd be bringing up later, they had a small buffalo herd, five or six animals. They needed a place to pasture the buffalo until they were needed. The caller had remembered that his old friend Trader Jim had bought a small place in Bluff and figured maybe he'd board the buffalo for a reasonable price. Jim thought that was a terrific idea!! Thinking fast, Jim said he'd do it for free but there were two conditions.

Jim asked if this guy could get a postcard with a giraffe on it. He wanted him to promise to get a card like that and then turn it over to the studio's Graphics Arts Department for airbrushing. He wanted an artist to airbrush some large male genitals onto the giraffe and then send the card, in an envelope, to Bluff as soon as possible. The fellow in Hollywood agreed to the conditions and said the buffalos and the card would be on their way within days.

The card arrived several days before the buffalo did and Jim went into Phase Two of his "Get the Elders Project". He dug up the address of an old friend in Kenya, put the altered postcard in an envelope and mailed it off. He'd written a message on the card which he had also addressed to himself in Bluff. The message was, "Your bull giraffe is en route aboard freighter, 'American Enterprise'. Scheduled arrival in LA September 7th. Scheduled arrival in Bluff, September 14th. Best wishes, ...etc." In the letter he enclosed with the card, Jim asked his friend to put a Kenyan stamp on the card and send it back, air mail, as soon as possible.

The Post Office in Bluff at that time was an eight foot by eight foot shack. It was also the town's social center. People would arrive midmorning to pick up their mail and stay to talk with the postmistress and with their friends. Jim figured that when that postcard arrived from Kenya, it would set the town abuzz.

The movie buffaloes arrived in a big livestock truck and that got the town worked up. It sure renewed interest in Jim's Bluffalo story. Then, the picture postcard showed up at the Post Office!

Jim said that by the time it made it into his mailbox, the card must have already spent a week in Bluff. It was dirty and dog-eared from being handled by every interested person in town, and that included the Mormon Elders. When he'd told me this story, he was laughing so hard that his eyes had filled with tears. "It served all them nosy bastards right, thinking, 'The Bluffalos are Coming. The Bluffalos are coming!". The thought of Mormon Elders earnestly trying to explain to their friends the theory and practice of breeding Bluffalos was enough to send Jim off into another storm of laughter. Sourdough