Haven’t really followed this thread much, so maybe I’m bein’ a buttinski here . . . and probably OT at that. This “Stemming the Rose” stuff goes on all the time in environments where it’s all male, two teenage boys up on the mountain all summer by themselves, geez. Joe surely musta’ encountered this kinda’ thing before, or at least the rumor of it between certain “ranch stiffs” (BTW what’s with using the term “stiffs” - he knew whut was and whut wasn’t stiff up there on the mountain, Huh?). I think maybe what had Joe so bent out of shape was the way these guys was parading around IN BROAD DAYLIGHT with their pants down. Shoulda’ kept it in the tent at night, behind a closed flap. Rolling around on the ground in the middle of the day was just too damn queer. So he threw it at Jack just like he thought it had been thrown at him by the boys.
Annie’s just a genius to pull out phrases like this, they show up sprinkled in all over her writing. Just brilliant.
Very good point, jackster! And not so OT as you might think!
If I remember correctly, someone said in one of the early posts that the term pretty much means "goofing off". So Aguirre may have been using this term in an amplified, more meaningful sense.
