The Man Who Was Born Twice

My father was born in 1933 in Opelousas, Louisiana. His birth certificate says so. His parents, the ones who raised him, lived in Iuka, Kansas. They didn't meet him until he was five years old. In that five year span there is little known of his life. Somehow a woman named Williams brought him to Kansas. There are two likely scenarios. Either his birth mother up and gave him to this woman, or an agency something like today's social services removed him from the home and placed him in the custody of the Williams lady.

Once he was in Kansas, he ended up at the orphanage at Newton with a different name from the one on his birth certificate. This is a mystery.  

My grandparents already had a five-year-old daughter. She was as cute as a bug and had won a pretty baby contest. But they yearned for another baby and they weren't having any luck. Eventually, they made an appointment with the orphanage and met with the administrator.  Grandma told me she could hear babies crying while the woman lied and claimed there weren't any babies available. However, there was a little boy she'd like for them to meet.

Back in the day, the orphanage was situated on a working farm which provided meat, milk, eggs, and garden produce for their sustenance as well as an income from livestock and crops. She and granddad walked around the area with the shy child. Eventually, they came to a pen of cattle, and the little guy climbed up on the fence.

"I like those cows."

That's all it took to convince Grandpa he had found his son.  One look had melted Grandma's heart and kicked her nurturing instincts into overdrive.

Even after reading the adoption decree it is unclear how or why the orphanage had custody of my dad. However, they swore out an affidavit in court that they had the legal right to release my father to my grandparents. I wonder, now that there is no one to ask, if anyone thought to ask that child if he would like to go home with these strangers.

His new parents immediately changed his name to one of their choosing. For several years the family was subject to visits to make sure the adoptee was being treated correctly. Dad was a rough and tumble child and sometimes he was a little banged up. My grandmother lived in a constant state of anxiety that she could lose him.

When dad was nineteen, she had a new birth certificate filed with the State of Louisiana. Nearly all the vital statistics were the same except for the names of the parents. Finally, she had written proof he was her son and no one could take him away from her.

Why cuss when spitting works better?

I never did fall in love with horses.  The ornery Shetland pony we had when I was a kid probably had a lot to do with that. When I was interested in learning how to ride Dad didn't want me around his working horse.

Instead of telling you why I didn't like the phony, um, I meant pony, here are a couple of things I remember about horses from when I was a kid.

Dad had a roping horse he was real proud of. One of the exercises he did to get the horse accustomed to having a steer on the end of a rope was to pull a railroad tie around the corral. Of all the things my brother and I did with our dad, this one stands out as being all around fun.

He screwed a large eye bolt into the end of the railroad tie and tied one end of his rope to it and hitched the other end around the saddle horn.  After he got the horse, whose name I have forgotten, somewhat used to the strange pressure on the saddle horn he let us come in the corral. Our assignment was to add varying amounts of weight to the railroad tie while it was being dragged around the pen.

As you might imagine, most of the stuff we did with Dad resulted in big trouble with Mom at the state of our clothes. He pretended innocence but I'm sure he had a plan when he told us to stand on the tie. It wasn't moving so it was easy. Just stand there, right? He gave his horse a nudge and it took off. The tie went right out from under our feet.

Then he pretended to be mad but gave us another chance. This time we held hands for balance and told him we were ready. We ended up in the dirt anyway.

The game was actually fun when he and the horse got the tie to sliding along. We would run along beside it, jump on and ride until it hit a bump or a little snag. We never did master staying on when he made the left-hand turn past the cow shed into the south corral.

That's my non-horse-lover fun with horses story.

This is a story Dad told me about what a great animal handler his grandfather was.

Dad said he was in early high school and had been riding his horse through some tall cane feed. That stuff is really juicy and his horse slipped and went down. Dad, fortunately, was thrown clear and hopped back to his feet. The trouble began when he couldn't get his horse back on its feet.

It didn't appear to be injured but it wouldn't stand up. Dad pulled on the reins to no avail. He hollered and cussed with equal results. His horse was embarrassed and also as stubborn as a mule.

From the dining room window at the house his grandfather, Bailey, had seen what happened. Taking his time, he walked out to the patch of feed. By then, my dad was in a lather while his horse just laid on the ground. He had been riding for years and had never come across or heard of an animal behaving in such a manner.

His calm, methodical granddad knelt at the horse's head and patiently worked up a mouthful of saliva. He leaned closer and spat directly into the horse's nostril. The horse surged to its feet. Yes, spitting works better than cussing every time.

Turtle Tank

When you were a kid, did you have a critter collection?  Did you catch lightning bugs and put them in a jar?  Or capture baby bunnies and try to keep them alive?  Ours were always dead the next morning.  Something about the shock and trauma of being caught and handled.  Did you fill a bucket with toads?

Our house is not at our farm.  We were lucky to find a habitable dwelling in the country, much less one that was handy to where we worked. That being said, if we needed an item at our house, it was a good bet we could come up with something at the farm and drag it home with us. That is how we got a small stock tank in which to keep the kids’ menagerie.

It was about 4 feet across, and if you propped one side up on a couple of bricks, you could have a pond on one side and dry habitat on the other. A maple tree provided plenty of shade.

My kids were always on the lookout for box turtles. The best place to find them was when they crawled across the country roads.

“Stop the car, Mom!  Can you get that turtle for us?”

One must assume the average person knows why you would never, ever bring a turtle inside a vehicle. If we were close enough to the house, good ol’ mom would apprehend said turtle, roll down the drivers’ side window and proceed to the hacienda holding the creature as far from the car as her arm would reach. Just in case you haven't ever held a wild turtle, they STINK! The turtle itself probably doesn't reek. Its self-defense mechanism is to emit a foul smelling urine that seeps into your hands and takes two or three days to wash off. The safest way to pick them up is from the top and hold the side edges of their shells. Keep your hands away from the tail!

Into the tank it went, while said youngsters raided the refrigerator for pieces of lettuce or carrot tops. It was nothing unusual to have three or four turtles in the tank during the summer. The kids diligently caught hop toads and added them to the menagerie, but they kept jumping out. This mom didn’t know toads could jump that high. Did you know toads also pee in reaction to being picked up? Their urine doesn't smell so bad, although I think that's why dogs don't bother them after one experience. It must taste terrible.

One day, about this time of year, I was rotor-tilling the garden plot with the Massey-Ferguson in preparation for spring planting.  It was cool and the toads were still burrowed in.  I unearthed one and hollered for the kids to come and get it.  My four-year-old daughter came running and took the new find to the tank.

Suddenly, I could hear her screaming over the noise of the rotor-tiller.  

What the heck?  Did a wasp sting her?

By the time I ran to the tank, not more than 20 yards away, the toad was in pieces and my innocent daughter was in total melt-down. Four turtles equal four toad limbs to tear off. Did I forget to remind the kids to feed their turtles? 

The carnivorous turtles were released and the stock tank returned to the farm where we never used it to corral wild animals again.

As God is my witness, I thought all those other toads jumped out.

Go-Cart

Everyone knows I was a tomboy. If I couldn't do things better than the boys, at least I tried to be as good. When I heard that our friends had a go-cart, I REALLY wanted to get a turn driving it. I had never driven anything at all, but what difference did that make? Dad's friend Jim had constructed a round track next to his driveway and had gone to the trouble of banking the edges of the curves. Before he would let his sons drive the cart, he had driven it himself and proved that the ridge of dirt would stop the cart if it left the track.

There was no roll cage on the go-cart. It was long and sat practically on the ground, had a right pedal for the gas and a left pedal for the brake. I believe it had a lawn mower engine to power it. And naturally, a small steering wheel. I don't remember if there was a seat belt. I doubt it.

Jim called my Dad one Saturday afternoon to invite him and my brother to try it out. I jumped in the pickup with them before Mom could make me stay home and practice my piano lesson.

I watched enviously while everyone had a turn. This was after Jim had demonstrated it and assured Dad that it was quite safe. I can't remember Dad actually driving it but the boys all had a turn. It was best driven in a clockwise direction and there were no incidents.

I could hardly believe my good fortune when either Jim or Dad asked if I wanted to try it. I was so excited. Now this go-cart can't have been as large as I remember it being, because when they put me in the seat and showed me which pedal made it go and which one made it stop, I could easily reach them. I wasn't any taller then than I am now. The main warning they gave me was to be gentle with the steering wheel since those little tires way out at the front would make it turn a lot further than expected and it could fishtail.

Well, I went half way around the track with no trouble at all. Then, sure enough, I gave it too much gas or over steered and it did a 180 right in the middle of the track. It seemed to like going the other direction just as well so I didn't stop. I went right past all the guys and things were going fine. Jim was elbowing my dad in the ribs telling him that it wouldn't go counter-clockwise around the next curve and to watch what was about to happen.

By then it was time to turn a little to the left to stay in the middle of the track and it didn't want to go left. Instead it kept going straight. Straight over the edge of the track and the bank of dirt. Now I did have the presence of mind to put my foot, my left foot, on the brake when the go-cart jumped that bank, but, I forgot to take my right foot off the gas pedal. The accelerator worked much better than the brake.

Hardly slowing down at all, the cart and I sped south across the lawn, jumped the ditch, crossed the county road and came to a sudden stop against a utility pole (we called them telephone poles then) next to the local mechanic shop. Jim and Dad couldn't quite catch me, but they were snatching me out of the seat a split second later. Obviously, I was unharmed. The go-cart was a little dented up. Dad stuffed my brother and I in the pickup and returned home. I was mortified and it seems like Dad and my brother told mom we had fun until I was allowed to drive.

About an hour later the go-cart family drove out to the farm to rehash the event. They had taken a yardstick to the crash site and determined that my head had missed the bumper of a parked pickup by a matter of inches. They also speculated that the reason the bank of dirt didn't stop the cart when under my control was that I was so much lighter than the rest of them. The boys never got to drive it again. It disappeared the same day.

You Did NOT Say That!

Like most women who've had a couple of kids, I gained a few pounds. This was before the days of fat shaming and people using their right of free speech to speak their mind no matter how offensive their words.

My husband and I are farmers and naturally live in a rural area. The central gathering place in small towns (think population 200 or less) is the co-op. Farmers' cooperative: A place where you can buy fertilizer, ag chemicals, bulk fuel, and seed. At the Farm Store, you can find tires, batteries, nuts and bolts, and sprayer fittings, as well as candy bars and cans of pop.

In addition to the merchandise, an area at our Farm Store has been set aside for guys to hang out and drink the free coffee. Sometimes they play dominoes at the tables.

A small town is where everyone knows everyone else and their dog. Neighbors are people who will do your chores if an emergency calls you away from the farm. People notice if you miss church and call to see if everything is okay. They notice if you trade pickup trucks or tractors. Forget about trying to keep any of your business private. Your neighbors know what your wheat and corn yielded or if your cattle are out practically before you find out yourself. They cry with you when hail destroys your crops or tornadoes blow your house away. They are also aware of unusual activity around your place and call to see if strangers had any legit reason to snoop around in your shed. You really can't resent the fact they know your entire life because you know theirs as well.

One day I accompanied my husband to the Farm Store. He disappeared into one of the offices to talk about the price of fertilizer with a salesman. The place was strangely deserted with none of the loafers sitting around the domino tables. No employees were hanging about looking for something to do either. I said hi to my friend behind the counter. I was literally standing in the middle of the store by myself. Due to this odd circumstance, only the clerk witnessed what happened next.

A neighbor (I'll call him Johnnie) came out of one of the other offices and started toward the retail sales counter. When he noticed me, he stopped and made a point to say, "Well, I see you haven't lost any weight, Lisa." I nearly burst out crying. I hadn't gained any lately either.

The clerk, whose mouth had dropped open upon hearing him, ducked behind the counter like it was a sandbagged foxhole. She peeked over the edge so she wouldn't miss the carnage. I refrained from committing any violence, but only because he was also a valued business associate.

About that time my husband finished jawing with the other salesman and walked up to me. Trying to pretend it was a joke I said, "Guess what? Johnnie here noticed I haven't lost any weight."

He looked back and forth between us with a wounded expression. I could tell he felt sorry for me but didn't know what to say in front of the other guy. Johnnie left, and the clerk slowly stood up. She looked as near to tears as I felt.

"I can't believe he said that!" she gasped. I couldn't get my mouth to work, so I shrugged and feigned indifference.

Occasionally, we mentioned the incident and wondered why he made such a rude personal remark. Nearly two years later he and my husband were talking crop business on the phone. I went into the office and sarcastically muttered that he should ask "Johnnie" if he had told any other women they were fat. My remark reminded my husband of the occasion, and he said into the phone, "You know, my wife still has hurt feelings over you telling her she hadn't lost any weight."

There was a long silence while I pantomimed that hubby shouldn't have taken my remark so literally and Johnnie consulted his memory banks. Finally, he said, "That was a compliment."

My husband couldn't even think of a response.

In the most backhanded flattery I've ever received, he continued. "Really, it was. No one likes a skinny cow."

Drawing inspired by the Skinny Cow cartoons of Werner Wejp-Olsen.

Snowmobile

Merry Christmas. This isn't a holiday memory, but it is associated with winter. 

We have a cousin in the Oklahoma Panhandle who had all the toys. He probably thought the same about us. During the winter, he played as hard as he had worked all spring, summer, and fall on his farm. 

In the late 1970's, he and his dad owned a set of snowmobiles, a Harley Davidson and a John Deere model. The chances of snow weren't all that dependable in their locale, but they watched the weather reports and traveled to the white stuff if it wasn't too far away.

That is how they showed up at our farm after we were blessed with heavy snowfall. The pasture provided well over one hundred unobstructed acres in which to play if we stayed away from the pond and windmill. The adventurous could catch some air on a couple of small hills. None of us had the proper clothing, but we weren't far from the house if we got too cold or wet. 

To me, the snowmobiles looked like a motorcycle on skis. I never liked riding behind my husband on his Honda. He said I didn't know how to move with the bike. Sitting on the ground on skis, a snowmobile looked more stable, and I had fun sitting behind him, riding around the pasture on the Harley. 

In their conversations about the merits of the John Deere over the Harley, I remember that the guys said the John Deere was faster. In their opinion, the Harley was overweight and underpowered, but it would still get up to 40 mph. I thought that was an excellent benefit since to me it meant the Harley wouldn't get any crazy ideas like doing an unanticipated, motorized ski jump. 

However, it did demonstrate its shortcomings when we topped a hill and found a deep snowdrift. We broke through the crust, and the Harley sank like a skater falling through the ice on a pond. I could see why it wouldn't float on top of five or six feet of loose snow, but I didn't understand why it lost momentum and wouldn't keep going once there were only a few inches of snow between it and the ground. Maybe it had something to do with the skis. As I've mentioned before, mechanical devices confound me. Anyway, it lost traction. We got off and stomped the snow down around the machine. My husband said we'd have better luck getting it out of the drift if he walked along beside it running the controls while I pushed. In other words, we needed to lighten the load and get out of the drift.

It sounded like a reasonable suggestion since I didn't know the brake from the throttle, or how to put it in gear. I was only along for the ride. We got into position. I placed my hands at the back of the seat and got ready to push. He restarted the machine and nudged the throttle. No luck.

He explained I was going to have to push harder, so I dug my cold, wet feet into the packed snow like I was a racer in starting blocks and leaned into the seat. He put it in gear again and twisted the throttle. Before I could jump out of the way, the track (oh, that's what makes it go!) plastered me head to toe with half a foot of snow. I looked like the front side of a snowman.

He pretended to be surprised, but later admitted he wanted to roll in the snow laughing. Trying to defend himself, he said I should have intuitively known how snowmobiles move on snow. I didn't see any signs that warned of rear discharge. He said I looked as good in white snow as I did walking down the church aisle in my wedding dress. He said a lot of outrageous lies trying to calm my ire. 

After that, I don't recall what it took to get the Harley out of the drift. I wasn't speaking to him. I know I didn't 'push' it again. He jokes that I was so steamed up, my clothes were dry and warm when we got to the house.

Once there, the real ribbing began. He was hailed as a genius for managing to appear innocent while getting me into such a predicament. My name and the word gullible were linked quite a few times. To this day he claims he was gallantly protecting me from being run over by the snowmobile. 

Guess What?  That was the last time I rode one. And we are still married.

Father's Day

I grew up on my grandfather's farm. It was a coincidence, but when I was born he built a house in town (population 150), a mile away, and we moved into the farmhouse. A four-stall garage sat between the house and barn. It was originally designed to protect farm vehicles, not cars. My grandfather had built a massive workbench on the long side that only a very tall person would enjoy using. I remember my mom climbing up on it to get to her painting and gardening supplies stored in the cabinets on the wall. 

My brother and I liked to stand outside and throw a ball back and forth over the garage roof. I didn't get any sympathy the time the ball hit my nose because I didn't see it coming. The standard response from Mom for any kind of owie was, "It's a long way from your heart." That was her version of "Suck it up, Buttercup." 

Not long after the baseball in the face incident, Mom or Dad discovered the ball was breaking the slate shingles when we didn't lob it up and all the way over when we threw. That was the end of "Blind Catch" and the garage retired to it's singular duty of providing a roof over the car and pickup.

The doors on this garage were as solid as the work bench inside. They weighed a ton, unlike modern aluminum doors. Perhaps I exaggerate, but they were very heavy. A counter-weight, spring, and pivot system made it possible for weak humans to open them. The weight was a metal box filled with sand and suspended from pulleys by a cable. If the spring tension, pivot point, and the weight were exact, the door would stay in any position.

This was a fine design for anyone over five feet in height. Opening the door was a little like a weight lifting routine. Grab the handle at the lower middle of the door and pull. Walk backward while the bottom of the door swings out and up. Watch out that it doesn't bark your shin and ruin your pantyhose. Once it reaches chest height, turn loose of the handle, take hold of the bottom edge of the door like an Olympic weightlifter doing the clean and jerk, and give it a mighty heave. Momentum swings it all the way up and inside the building where it parks securely on top of a supporting frame. While this maneuver is going on, the counterweight pulls the cable through a set of pulleys and rests inches from the floor.

If you were 6'2" like my grandfather, you just gave the handle a good pull, and the door catapulted into the top position. When my brother and I were little, he would let us hold onto the bottom of the door while he opened it.

For short people like me, closing the monstrosity required a different set of skills. Just jump up like a gymnast mounting the uneven bars, grab the edge of the door and ride it down, while the cable zips the box of sand back to the top.

Like people, even garage doors have a life expectancy. Although the wood was still as solid as the old workbench, the cable stretched and the weight box rusted and leaked sand like an hourglass. The two doors we used all the time were permanently parked in the open position for fear we'd never get them raised again.

Mom was a stickler for keeping the garage closed up. Open doors invited cats, dogs, birds, and possums while dirt and leaves blew in. She tried to keep the garage as clean as her house and didn't appreciate the extra work if she had to sweep it out. Why even park the car in the garage if birds could perch in there and whitewash it?

Sometime in the early 1980's, out of necessity, Dad replaced the worn-out, most-used middle doors with light-weight fiberglass roll-up doors. Mom had the luxury of a remote opener on her stall. A third door was removed from the pulley mechanism and fitted with hinges to swing open from the side. Instead of a farm truck, the lawn mower lived behind door number three. No one used the fourth door.

My mother worked the 5-9 shift at a restaurant for twenty-two years. The only exception was on Sundays when she worked two shifts. She went to town (a real town, not the one my grandparents lived in) at ten in the morning, waited tables through the busy noon hour, and came home at two o'clock for a nap before driving back to the restaurant.

One Sunday, Father's Day, in fact, she was rushing around to get to work. My dad had already been somewhere that morning, probably looking after his cattle, and had left the door open behind his pickup. His was the stall closest to the house. In her haste, Mom just walked through the open portal, jumped in her car and shifted into reverse. The rear bumper just fit in one of the spaces where a fiberglass panel should have been. In her new automatic garage door. The one she forgot to open.

Can you imagine a bumper protruding from the left door, just below the handle?

Naturally, she blamed Dad because he hadn't closed the other door. She would never have entered the garage through that door if it hadn't been open. She would have remembered to push the button and raise the door on her side if he had just closed his door like he was supposed to.

Since her car was wedged into the door, Dad had to take her to work in his pickup. She was late. 

You can't imagine my dad's delight in this minor auto accident since she never did anything wrong. It didn't matter that Mom thought it was his fault.

Mom didn't plan to give Dad the Best Fathers' Day Gift in the history of the world, but she did. He didn't mind the cost of the replacement panel. He didn't even call the insurance agent. He derived years worth of mileage from that incident.

I hope all you fathers have as pleasant a day as he did.

Thanks to my writing friend, J, for helping me with some descriptions.

The Goat Who Ran Out of Gas

My grandfather on my mother's side was a backyard mechanic and ran a little shop from his farm. We're talking subsistence farming on 40 acres, raising alfalfa, a handful of pigs, a milk cow, and hens.  He rented a pasture where he had a modest cow/calf herd. 

In the mornings, when my grandma left for her job in the school lunchroom, half the neighborhood men convened at his house.  After drinking a couple of pots of black as tar coffee made in a glass percolator on the stove top, they adjourned to his shop and wasted away another half of the morning smoking roll-your-own and telling stories. (Boy, did my brother ever get in trouble for repeating a word he heard!) The shop was dark and grimy. Everything had a generous coating of black axle grease or motor oil on it. He didn't own anything modern like a parts washer, so there were dishpans of black, oily gasoline sitting on the floor for rinsing off bearings and the like. I always worried those men would burn the place down with their matches or the ash off their cigarettes. 

Each fall it was a combined effort to chop enough sorghum to fill everyone's silo to feed their cattle through the winter.  Each man had a job they knew very well and they went from farm to farm until it was done. One of the neighbors was also a first cousin of my grandfather. His name was Orle. I don't know exactly what was wrong with him. Easy explanation was that he was 'simple'. He always crowded into a persons space and got right in their face. If he asked you a question, he didn't wait for an answer, but would say Huh? way down in his throat. He kept that up until he got an answer. Once, my dad decided he would just ignore him.  Dad lost. Another neighbor was a cousin by marriage. He had a bird dog named Jack that stuck its nose in my crotch every time I got near it. Not exactly germane to the story. 

These three cousins plus two other neighbors usually filled silo together. They used an ensilage cutter much like this. One day they were taking a lunch break, sitting around on the ground under some shade, and a goat kept trying to get into everyone's lunch pail. My grandfather sarcastically asked his neighbor what he would take for that goat since he was so proud of it. He said a quarter and Orle (the simple one) reached into his pocket, threw the man a twenty-five cent piece and hollered SOLD. The joke was on grandpa, and this bunch made sure the goat went home with him at the end of the day. 

I don't know what kind of goat it was. I expect a meat breed. It had horns that curved back and seemed pretty big to a 7-year-old. It must have been someone's pet. My brother and I named him Billy. He stayed around the yard and didn't get out on the road. We tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to pull a little red wagon by tying a rope from the handle to his horns. Technically, he pulled it, because it moved at great speed when he ran off.  On the other hand, the wagon was bouncing on its side, and my brother and I were in a tangle on the ground. Not to be thwarted, we tried it a few more times and decided Billy didn't have enough training. 

After retrieving the wagon and rope, my dad took Billy by the horns and led him into Grandma's HOUSE. The goat was already upset from the wagon treatment. The results were worse than the time Dad tucked a thirty-pound pig under each arm and let them loose in the kitchen. 

My brother and I had been outside recovering from the wagon wreck. Hearing shouts, we ran to the house. When the goat's hooves hit the hardwood floor, it went spraddle-legged. The more it struggled to stand, the crazier it got. It also lost control and rained goat droppings all over the dining room floor. 

Soon we were laughing, jumping up and down, trying not to step in anything, and generally adding to the chaos. My mom screeched at my dad and took a rolled up newspaper to the goat. Dad told her it wasn't the goats fault, so she brandished the paper at him. My grandpa collapsed into a chair and held his feet off the floor as he clutched his ribs. "It's playing marbles!" he guffawed. When the over-excited animal was back outside, my grandma cleaned up the mess. She never did get mad at my father for any of his tricks. My Mom had serious words with my Dad, but he never did quit grinning.

Billy did everything that goats in children's storybooks did. It ate tin cans, for instance. We thought he was great.  He had one talent, or vice. He liked to hang out with the guys in the shop. He lapped up gasoline out of the pans on the floor. The first time I saw that I was sure he would die.

One sad day we went to see Grandpa and Grandma and couldn't find Billy. We looked everywhere. We were frantic.
 

My dad told my brother and me that Billy had wandered away from the house, ran out of gas, and couldn't get back home. 

My brother and I were traumatized by Billy's disappearance. We imagined dreadful scenarios of him getting run over by a truck, or laying down in some distant field and starving. We talked about him all the time. I mean until we were in our 30's. Really.

Several years ago, I got in my dad's face and told him I was a big kid now. I could take the truth. What happened to Billy?  He laughed and told me. I called my brother up and bragged that I found out what happened to the goat. Then I kept him in suspense for two years before I gave him the answer. Dad played along and kept it on the QT as well.

I won't be so mean to you, dear reader. A neighbor's grandchildren came to his farm for the summer, and they took the goat. From there? I don't know.

Uncle Cephas

In my family, oral history has been repeated and handed down for generations. I am attempting to preserve some of the more colorful stories. A favorite is about my great-great uncle Cephas.

Cephas was born in 1884. He was smart, good-looking and somewhat privileged because his parents had worked hard and provided him with more ease and worldly goods than the average homesteader.

At the age of twenty, he married a beautiful woman from Oklahoma. She came from land and money, but Hattie did not take to country life and hated the farm. She bore him two daughters. Neither infant lived more than a few days. Their farm prospered, but the marriage was unhappy. Finally, his wife moved out of their rural home, and Cephas bought her a handsome house in town where she thrived in the company of other women. Nothing made her happier than ladies’ clubs and hosting afternoon get-togethers and card parties. Nothing made her more unhappy than cigars, dirty boots and dogs in the house. Watching him eat off the same fork with his dog disgusted her.

Cephas accumulated more land and developed retail businesses in town. If he got lonely, he visited Hattie. It didn’t take more than a day or two for him to remember why he lived on the farm instead of with his wife.  He couldn’t do anything right and was nagged incessantly about farting and belching in front of her friends. Frankly, he behaved that way on purpose and seemed to delight in annoying her.

Black Gold was discovered under his land, and Hattie demanded he spend the income on her. Perversely, they continued to live apart. She loved to show off the things his money provided her with, and he seemed to enjoy buying the objects. Thus they remained, blissfully separate, for the majority of their married life.

From 1946 through 1949 the nation was bombarded with an ad campaign which changed the thinking of women everywhere. Diamonds were a girl's best friend. Diamonds were forever. Traveling lecturers spoke at high school and college assemblies, brainwashing young women to expect to receive a diamond ring from their sweethearts.
http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-02-09/the-diamond-myth-how-diamonds-became-a-girls-best-friend/

Courtesy of radio and newsprint, Hattie became convinced by the early 1950's that her husband had been remiss in not beautifying her hand. She needed something with some flash to impress her friends. She began her own not so subtle campaign against Cephas. He allowed the cajoling to continue until he agreed to buy her a diamond ring. But there was a condition. Since she had an inheritance from her deceased parents, he thought it only fair that she pay half the price of the ring. Realizing that was the best deal she was going to get, she accepted the stipulation.

St. John boasted a jewelry store, and Cephas casually told her to pick something out and have the owner send him half the bill. Leaving her house, he high-tailed it to the shop and explained the situation to the proprietor, whose business adjoined one of his own.

Cephas instructed his partner in deception to let Hattie pick out any ring she liked. Intimating that she was probably going to hold him up for the most expensive bauble in the store, the owner suggested he show her salesman samples. They were cheap metal and glass representations of costly settings which he would order from Kansas City.

The conversation ended with Cephas saying he didn’t care what ring she chose. The catch was that the owner was to quote her a price exactly twice the actual value. It didn’t take the jeweler two seconds to catch on. They shook hands and slapped each other on the back at the joke they were going to pull on her.

Hattie showed up at the jewelry store the next day and pored over the pieces in the cases. The jeweler used all his skill at flattery to convince her none of the rings did justice to her lovely hand. Slyly retrieving the samples from beneath the counter, he waxed eloquent as he enticed her to imagine the light glittering from a one-carat diamond surrounded by smaller stones. 

Hattie was carried away by the description and didn’t even blink at the price. When informed it would be eight weeks before the ring would grace her finger, she snidely thought her husband could use a couple more months of income to pay for his half of the one of a kind masterpiece. She would also receive the sample. No other customer could order her ring.

The anticipated day arrived, and she imperiously summoned Cephas to town with a reminder to bring his checkbook. When the ring was slipped onto his wife’s finger, he dutifully admired it and complimented her excellent taste. The jeweler pointed out the qualities of the platinum band and elegant setting. He coaxed her to the window where the sunshine did indeed refract light into thousands of glittering facets.

Hattie wrote a check for her half. As Cephas filled out his check, he thanked the owner for helping his wife choose such a lovely ring. He expected her to get years of enjoyment from it. As they happily left the shop, Cephas offered to take her out to a restaurant where she could show it off. Looking over his shoulder as the door swung closed behind them, he saw the proprietor tearing his check into tiny pieces.




Cephas and Hattie discovered the secret to a happy marriage.  Live in separate houses.

Watusi Cattle

My father raised Watusi for many years. These domesticated African cattle should not be confused with Longhorns. The Ankole-Watusi have been registered as a breed in the U.S. since 1983.  Dad was interested in them for three reasons. The first was his life-long abiding fascination with anything different or unusual. The second was the fact the meat is lean, and much like venison with no marbling. Third, the cows have easy births dropping forty pound calves. Rarely does an owner lose a cow or calf or require a visit from the vet.

There are two ways to describe the Ankole-Watusi.  Foundation Pure which means 100% pure bloodlines.  Or, Native Pure, which means a crossbred animal has been bred back to pure until it is 15/16ths Watusi DNA.

Dad also liked their disposition.  Although they have the most massive horns of any cattle breed, they aren't considered aggressive.  The lyre-shaped horns are the animal's air-conditioner with excess body heat dispersed through the blood vessels in the horns.

      I admit to being a little anxious when Grandpa led the kids among the herd to this baby.

Watusi need their space.  If too closely confined, they will swing their horns at one another demanding more room.  They also use their horns to brush flies away.  Most cattle would use their tail. They can accidentally knock a person down when they suddenly swing their head.

After they are butchered, the skull and horns make great decor. Dad donated a set of horns to many a local fund-raiser.

 
If you would like to see more images or learn more, here are a couple of links.


https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/ankole-watusi
http://www.awir.org/Ankole Watusi International Registration+

Ol' Bill

His short, stiff hair was close to the color of burnt orange or bittersweet Crayolas; the ones in the box of 48. He had a feathery line of longer white hair down his spine from the base of his head to the top of his tail. It was also that orange-y color, with a messy tuft of longer white hair at the tip. His face was white with a smooth pink nose dotted with small black splotches. The outside of his ears was the same color as his body, but the insides had white hair in them. They swiveled and twitched nervously at the least sound. 

He was a little taller than me, but I was only seven years old.  His nose always looked wet because cattle are like dogs when it comes to noses. Sometimes their nose runs like a human, except they don't have a mom to wipe it. One time when I got too close, he swung his head around, and that wet nose got against the school dress my grandma had made for me. I ran to the house and cried until my mother helped me take it off without getting any of those slobbers and other stuff on my skin. My daddy laughed and said it was clean snot since it had never touched the ground.

Ol’ Bill lived in a corral behind the barn with other Hereford steers.  He wasn’t old, but he was special. He had gotten hurt in the truck that delivered the pen of calves to our farm. He limped and didn’t grow much compared to the rest of the herd. When Daddy or Grandpa put silage in the feed bunks, the others pushed and crowded to get all the food they could. Ol’ Bill kept to himself near the fence. Daddy would bring a bucket of the feed and put it on the ground in front of him, while my brother and I reached through the fence and stroked his coarse sides. He didn’t mind that we touched him and we were never afraid that he would hurt us.

I don’t remember if we asked if we could ride Bill, or if Daddy asked us if we would like to try it. On a sunny afternoon after school, the family gathered at the fence where our furry friend was standing in his usual spot. Mom had her Kodak Instamatic camera ready to record the event for posterity.

First, Daddy settled my little brother on Ol’ Bill’s back and stood at the ready to snatch him to safety if the calf reacted badly. He really didn’t react at all. My brother was as tickled as if someone had handed him a new puppy. Mom captured the moment with a grainy picture of his big smile showing he had lost his two front teeth.
 


Then it was my turn. Bill was coaxed closer to the fence where Mom helped my brother step off Bill’s back and I eagerly stepped on. I was surprised. It was nothing like sitting on my pony. His backbone was pronounced and more than a little uncomfortable to sit on. The feather of white hair tracing his spine wasn’t quite long enough to hold onto. The stiff hair prickled my legs through my cotton dress. 

Daddy gave him a tug on the ear, and he took a couple of steps. His thick hide rolled loosely on his body as he moved. I squeezed as tightly as I could with my legs, but that only made the swaying more pronounced. I grabbed for something to hold. Suddenly I understood why people ride horses instead of cattle. 

We begged Mom to take a turn but she smiled and said she was too big to sit on him.

Our initial effort to ride Ol’ Bill was a triumph. Our success yardstick measured the fact that no one got hurt, or ended up on the ground smeared with manure. Dad fashioned a temporary halter out of a length of rope and would occasionally lead us back and forth in the corral at evening feeding time. I think it was to make Bill exercise instead of entertain us. 

Ol' Bill never wagged his tail or appeared happy to see us like a dog would. He stood by the fence and patiently waited to be fed. We didn't grow up with him. One day the pen of cattle were sold and he was gone. Such are the facts of life on the farm.