Here, a man and woman unite for life, but they include in their union all the loves they will live through in their lifetime. But over there, it’s al… - Victor Villaseñor

It was from this day on that I began to notice a real difference between our vaqueros on the ranch from Mexico and the gringo cowboys. The American cowboys always seemed so ready to act rough and tough, wanting to “break” the horse, cow, or goat or anything else. Where, on the other hand, our vaqueros—who used the word “amanzar,” meaning to make “tame,” for dealing with horses—had a whole different attitude towards everything. To “break” a horse, for the cowboys, actually, really meant to take a green, untrained horse and rope him, knock him down, saddle him while he fought to get loose, then mount him as he got up on all four legs, and ride the living hell out of the horse until you tired him out, taught him who was boss, and “broke” his spirit. To “amanzar” a horse, on the other hand, was a whole other approach that took weeks of grooming, petting, and leading the green horse around in the afternoon with a couple of well-trained horses. Then, after about a month, you began to put a saddle on the horse and tie him up in shade in the afternoon for a couple of hours until, finally, the saddle felt like just a natural part of him. Then, and only then, did a person finally mount the horse, petting and sweet-talking him the whole time, and once more the green horse was taken on a walk between two well-trained horses.

A few months back Major Terry and his pet student, Drosen, had brought in a guy from San Diego to play chess with me. I’d had no idea that he was rated and was really good, so I’d beaten his ass real fast. He’d gotten all mad at Major Terry and Drosen for not telling him that I was as good as I was. He’d accused them of setting him up to publicly embarrass him. I’d had no idea what the big fuss was all about. I hadn’t even realized that there was such a thing as tournaments and championships for chess just like we had in wrestling. I’d quit playing chess at school after that incident. Now I only played at home with my dad’s older friends, Roberto and Salvador Montoya, who’d both been very good chess players in Mexico City. I beat Roberto almost all the time, but his older brother Salvador beat me pretty regularly. And I’d recently been told that Salvador had been so good that he’d once gone to Cuba to play and that he’d come in third among some of the best international players in the world.

You just remember, mijito, whenever your wife comes screaming at you that she’s going to kill you because you forgot her birthday, that what she’s really saying is ‘I love you, I depend on you for my life and love, and so this is why I hate you and want to kill you!’ It’s always with our wife, our best friends, and our relatives that we end up having most of our troubles in life, mijito.