Have assignment – Will travel…

When I was a girl, I used to watch Palladin every Sunday night before the Ed Sullivan show. And now you know how old I am…Anyway his theme was Have gun – Will travel. Richard Boone starred in it. He was a tough gunslinger who went all over the West, righting wrongs, etc. I always found the have gun/will travel kind of weird. And funny at the same time. Not that Palladin was particularly funny. I can still however hear his theme song, running through my brain. “Palladin, Palladin, riding through the West…” I am at the moment a different kind of gun for hire. I am writing about Cadiz. Sometimes after the fact by writing about it after I’m home. Somestimes before. It’s been a number of years since I figured out that I can be paid to go to places I want to see. Sicily, Russia, the Galapagos, to name a few. Once I was paid to sip wine in Napa Valley. Give me an assignment and I will go anywhere. Endlessly restless, we gunslingers need to keep moving. Can’t let any grass grow under our feet. The past couple weeks I’ve been slugging through Spain. My daughter doesn’t feel sorry for me. She actually has this way of playing the smallest violin in the world. I mean somebody had to participate in the Way of the Tuna competition in Zahara de les Atunes. Someone had to have a massage in a 14th century Moorish well. Walk through fields of wild flowers, bow to bulls on the beach, glimpse the lights of North Africa. I recall once when I was on assignment for Spa Finder Magazine (I don’t mind admitting this) and I had just had a mud bath and an herbal scrub and some other kind of massage and as I was leaving the girl of the desk said, “I hate you. I really do…You have the best job in the world.” Tough work yes, but somebody has to do it. I am somewhat addicted to my itinerant life. It feeds a part of me I cannot even explain to anyone, let alone myself. Not a gunslinger, but a pen slinger, I will go wherever the job takes me…And so even now I picture Richard Boone, hands on his holsters, that smirk on his face because who is he kidding. He knows what it’s like to get to do what you want to do in this world. And even be paid to do it.