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.

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.

Mom Left Dad Hanging

If the following had happened today, someone would have taken a video on their i-phone, posted it on Facebook, and in a few hours, it would have gone viral. Soon, people would be tweeting that the entire incident was staged. I will try to convey what happened using words.

A limb had died in the hackberry tree next to our house. It could have crashed through the dining room window if the wind blew it down. The ladder Mom used for washing windows wasn't tall enough to reach the tree limb. It would have been dangerous for dad to perch on top of the ladder while sawing above his head. He decided to bring the utility tractor into the yard and stand in the scoop of the front end loader. It would be much safer.

This restored beauty is very similar to the tractor Dad had when I was a kid.

                                     

Now obviously, he couldn't stand in the scoop and run the tractor controls to raise it at the same time. Nearly every time my mom operated machinery, something went wrong. Nevertheless, dad fearlessly situated the tractor under the offending limb and showed her which lever to use to raise and lower the hydraulic front loader. The scoop just did raise him high enough to comfortably saw the branch off.

My dad never liked objects with handles very much. He wasn't 'handy' at all. I've never seen him do carpentry work. But he was using a rip saw on the limb, so I think the saw must have been something my grandfather left in the garage when he moved to town and our family moved into the farmhouse.

Dad braced himself by wrapping his left arm around the tree limb. His back was to the tractor. The little Ford began running very rough, coughing and sputtering. I think my mom was giving it too much choke. If someone reading this thinks they know what was wrong with the tractor, please don't try to educate me.

The interval between coughs grew until the engine shuddered and died altogether. When that happened, the hydraulic pump also stopped working, and the loader began drifting away from my dad's feet. I'm sure he noticed that the tractor was going to die, but I don't think he expected hydraulic oil to leak back to the reservoir and let the loader down so soon. He should have turned loose of the tree and rode the scoop back to the ground. Instead, with his only means of support obeying the laws of gravity, he was left dangling by one arm from a dead limb. 

It was too high to let go and hope he landed on his feet like a cat. If he had, he would have struck some part of the loader. He dropped the saw and held on with his other hand.

I was outside watching the operation from the safety of the front step. When the tractor died I heard Mom say "Oh." It wasn't her conversational voice, and it wasn't a scream. It didn't sound like 'oh dear.' Or 'Oh My God!' It was a low guttural sound like a monster had fought its way out of her stomach, got caught deep down in her throat, and erupted out of her mouth. "OHH!"

I'm sure terrible scenarios of Dad being seriously injured and questions like how long he could hold onto the limb and would the limb break and should she tell Lisa to dial 0 and ask the operator to send the fire department and why did the tractor die and will it start again and is it out of gas all flitted across her panicked thoughts.

My folks didn't have the type of personalities to remain calm in a crisis. Amazingly, my father kept his composure and managed to explain to my mother how to restart the tractor and get the scoop back under his feet, all the while clinging to the rotten limb.

It all ended fine. The limb was cut down, the house wasn't damaged, and Dad never asked Mom to operate the tractor again.

Once they recovered from the scare, they each had fun with the story. Dad teased her that the only thing she could think of to say was 'Oh.' Mom liked to say to customers at her job, "Did I tell you about the time I hung my husband in a tree?"

I Spy

In May 1981, the entire family gathered for my grandfather's funeral. My uncle and his family drove in from Colorado. My brother flew in from Texas. My Colorado cousins are much younger than my brother and me. Although they had already sat in the car for eight hours the day before, two of them thought it would be fun to ride to Wichita to get my brother at the airport. Mom drove. They were getting restless on the return trip and we decided to play I Spy.

There are a couple of variations on the game. We always started each round saying: "I spy something..."  Another is: "I looked around and guess what I found? I found something..."  My grandkids say: "I spied with my little eye, something..."

It doesn't matter how you say it. The idea is to give a helpful clue, but not too obvious, while also making it simple enough for small children to play. It didn't take too much time for us to go around the players twice spying something green (summer flip-flops) or black (the car dash), or pink (a blouse).

It was Mom's turn again and she spied something silver. Everyone guessed. She had stumped us and had to give another clue. It was something silver and round. We guessed the radio knobs on the dash, the knob on the window winder, the push button on the glove box. We couldn't see anything else silver and round. According to the rules she had let us ask for a hint. My brother asked if it was something outside the car that we had passed five miles back. Nope. I asked if it was inside the car. Yes.

The little girls had tired of the game, but my brother and I were determined to spy the round silver object. We looked harder inside the car. My brother asked how big it was. About an inch. We couldn't find anything that hadn't already been guessed that fit the description. I asked if someone was wearing it. No.

I was sitting in the middle of the back seat. That's my spot. Rule Seventeen: the person with the shortest legs straddles the hump. My cousins were technically a little shorter, but they had elected to rest their arms on the armrest. That's what it was there for.

My brother, in the front seat, looked back with his face all screwed up, trying to think of another question. Finally, he asked what supported it. That was a pretty sneaky question.

Mom thought a minute and said she guessed it was the government. Huh?

I asked if she was talking about money?  A Quarter?

Finally, someone guessed the correct answer.

My brother is looking around on the floor boards, in the cup holder, on the dash, trying to see a stray quarter. He asked where it was. It was in her purse. Naturally.

Hey, Mom. The whole point of I Spy is that the players can see the object.

Rule Twenty-four: Never assume Mom won't change the rules in the middle of the game just to drive you crazy.

Marble, Colorado

Happy Labor Day! I hope you are doing something fun today. Here is one of my fondest memories.


Labor Day 2005

We took my parents to beautiful Colorado to see my son.  Rather, he took his dad to photograph scenery.

 
Maroon Bells is a short drive from Aspen. Even with a layer of clouds, the peaks and reflection were beautiful.

From there we went to Marble.  My mother was recovering from knee surgery. Nevertheless, she was gung ho to hike to the back entrance of the Yule Marble Quarry where some of the whitest marble in the world is mined. We walked slowly, and she held my arm. She was determined to see everything. When we got there, we had some fun. It's hard to tell from a photo, but that slab was about 5 feet tall and at least 8X8 square.

What good sports.

The good sportsmanship didn't last when we got home and printed these pictures. Mom thought they were funny.  Dad didn't.

Rule 19:  Don't out kid a kidder.

More touristy information:

Marble Mine

 This is the chunk I lugged back down the trail to the car.

Vacation Memories

In 1994 my kids and I took my parents on a 10-day anniversary trip. It was their 40th. Our first stop was at Spring Hill near Kansas City where Dad visited with some of his friends from the Ankole-Watusi Association. (See my blog from May 14 about these cattle.) Mom didn't want to make this detour, but Dad pointed out it was half his anniversary, and he should get to see something he liked. These people had Watusi's in their backyard. They took us to their farm to see their prize winning steer. He had the largest horns ever measured at the time.

The huge steer was a pet and didn't mind if someone wanted to scratch his forehead. I forget the exact span of his horns, but one horn was a lot longer than my arm. Dad kept urging us to give him some love, but every time a fly bit him on the rump, he swung his head around and picked it off with the tip of his horn. I didn't want to get flattened, so we passed up the opportunity to pet a World Champ.
I should point out that I don't know for sure this is the famous steer, but doesn't he have a set?

Back on the road, the first interesting landmark we encountered was the Mississippi River. The closer we got to St. Louis the more we talked about it. None of us had seen it before, and we were excited. Suddenly, we saw a sign that said: "Welcome to Illinois." Who stole the Mighty Miss? I wasn't aware the I-70 bridge had high concrete sides which prevented motorists from gawking at the river. How disappointing.

We left the city far behind and sped past fields of maturing soybeans and corn. In back, my daughter was on her knees on the floor with an activity book in the seat. (Think years before mandatory child restraint and seat belt laws.) My mother saw a pond in a pasture. She said, "Look!  It's the Mississippi." My daughter, at not quite 11, fell for it. By the time she had wriggled back into her seat, it was behind us. She cried because she had missed it again. I'm ashamed to admit we all laughed at her.

Rule 36:  Sometimes, when you least expect it, Grandma will prank you.

We had a wonderful time visiting with my brother and his family. They took us to see the sights. Saw the Great Smoky Mountains, walked on the Appalachian Trail, which I might say was nothing like I had expected, hiked in the Cumberland Falls area,

                                                              and explored the historic buildings at Cades Cove.

We decided to look at new scenery on the way home and took a route through Arkansas where I don't remember much except flat land and irrigated fields of rice. This time we saw the Mississippi River.

HOUSE RULES

My Dad's family was crazy for two things: fishing and card games.  The fishing lure (pun intended) skipped a generation with me. I still enjoy a rousing game of 10 point pitch or Aggravation.

I learned to count and add with Dominos. As soon as my brother and I had learned the rudiments of the game with Double Sixes, Dad graduated us to Double Nines. The only indication we ever got from him that we had accidentally played a tile that scored was if he asked if we wanted that count. When we got older, we learned to watch him like a hawk because he would claim he scored when he hadn't or write down 25 points when he had only made 10 or 15.

When we played Aggravation, which was already a fast-paced game, we discovered it would move a lot faster if every player had his own set of dice, instead of waiting for the preceding player to politely pass them on. 🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲

Here are the House Rules for board games.



 Rule One:  Watch Dad.  He Cheats.

Rule Two: Don't let your playing pieces roll off the table.  All other players may move their pieces at warp speed until you get back to the table.  If your playing piece/s roll/bounce into the floor furnace, you are out of the game.

Rule Three: Don't repeat any words Dad said.





A genius invented 10-point pitch. There are an astronomical number of combinations of hands that can be dealt. The human element of players and their bids increase the combinations to an unfathomable level.

House Rules for card games are a little different.

Rule Four: The object of the game is not to win.  The goal is to keep my dad from winning. Period.

Rule Five: If you are in the hole (have a negative score) and shoot the moon (a bid worth 20), and make the bid, you lack 1 point of getting out of the hole. This is a time-honored tradition dating back to the day my grandfather proclaimed the rule when my Dad and my aunt were kids.
Just FYI, going SET means not making your bid. If you bid 7 and fail to get 7 points, you go SET. 7 points are taken off your running score. That's how you can be IN THE HOLE. 

This looks like a good hand. I'm a cautious player. I'd bid 6 in Spades and hope my partner had some trumps. I know people who would bid the maximum 10 on these cards. Why not go crazy and shoot the moon?

Mom and Dad belonged to a card club for about 50 years. They met once a month at alternating homes. In the early years, the host couple gave out prizes for high, low and the Galloper.  If you bid 7 and made it, you wrote your name on the Galloper prize. Whoever had their name on it the most, took it home at the end of the evening. In case of a tie, they drew for high card. Most of the prizes were white elephants, especially low prize. When the lottery was legalized, $2 tickets became popular prizes. 

My folks taught my kids to play pitch when they got big enough to hold the cards. I think my daughter was about twelve before she caught on to what 'going set' meant. We thought it was odd that she didn't react to losing points. One day it hit her that every time she or her partner went set, they lost that many points.  "WHAT!!" she shrieked. After that, when someone lost a hand, my Dad would mimic her.

I told one of my Dad's friends what a low-down cheat he had been when my brother and I were kids.  
"You learned to pay attention to the game, didn't you?" he said.