Penultimately, after repeated inquiries, they acknowledged that I had used a bad word in my profile, which itself had been displayed on the Web for weeks, and that, in their words, referred to "bovine waste matter." Of course, then I accused them of reading my private mail, in which I had used the term "
cowflop" in another context; for instance, as an inadvertent and verbal step into one.
"But this is no drawling yokel with
cowflop on his boots," is how a local reporter sized up the Florida emigrant in a June 1989 Bend Bulletin story.