CAT BATHROOM

In the early 1980's the County repaved the blacktop road that bordered one of our fields. The road engineer asked if we would allow them to stage some of their equipment near the intersection. This included a cone of sand which was used to spread on the road after it was resurfaced and sealed with oil. When the work was finished, we were left with several cubic yards of crushed rock consisting of particles 1/2" or smaller. The road department didn't want the expense of removing it, so we were stuck with the inconvenience of farming around it.

Occasionally, we thought of a use for the sand and chipped away at the pile.

We had two kids, and they got old enough to play outdoors without constant supervision. I thought it would be fun if they had a sandbox to play in. Their dad thought it would be a lot of work to get the sand from the field to our house.

He must have had a boring day because he gathered up empty seed bags and a shovel and transported some of the pile to the house. Did you know you can put 100 pounds of sand in a sack designed to hold 50 pounds of corn seed? 

Ed proceeded to pour sand into a pile in my flower garden. I cringed but didn't say anything. We found some 2x6 boards to make it an actual sand BOX. I gathered up plastic cups and anything else I could think of for our son and daughter to play with and led them outside to see the surprise. As they were walking down the steps, one of the cats was busily staking a claim. The confused children wondered what was so exciting about a cat scraping the sand over the hole he had dug. 

YUCK! 

Even though mom removed that portion of sand along with the cat poop, the two kids never played in it. Not once.

The cats loved it though, and my poor flowers were never the same.

Who let the frogs out?

In the movie Fools Rush In, Isabella's male cousins take Alex out to show him a good time. They bring him home with a second-degree sunburn and a butt full of cactus needles.  When my mom and dad got engaged, her male cousins took him bull frogging. They needed someone to hold the gunnysack, so Mom was invited to go along. She was 16 or 17.

At sundown everyone showed up at my grandparent's house in their grubbiest clothes and shoes. They drove to the creek with Mom sitting on the hard bench seat of Dad's old Chevy pickup. Three cousins, armed with flashlights and dip nets, rode in back perched on the fender wells or sitting with legs dangling off the tailgate. At the bridge, Dad parked off the road, and they all jumped out.

Mom didn't trust any of them when it came down to who was going to hold two strands of the barbed wire fence apart so she could crawl through to the pasture. Either she was going to snag her clothes or one of those boys was going to pinch her butt, even if they were her cousins. Instead, she climbed over the fence at a post. The boys showed off by scissor high jumping over it.

Mom was instructed to be quiet, stay out of their way, and open the neck of the burlap gunnysack when they brought the frogs.  

The wildlife at the creek had stilled when they drove up. After a few minutes, crickets resumed their chirping, cliff swallows under the bridge settled back into their nests, and the bullfrogs began to bellow. They visited quietly while waiting for it to get dark.

The fellows stealthily approached the creek and slid down the steep bank. It had been a dry summer, and the water was less than a foot deep. At a whispered signal they clicked on their flashlights.  Sweeping the surface of the water with the beams, they soon detected glowing eyes.

Dip nets captured one mesmerized frog after another. The guys toed their way back up the crumbling bank of the creek and hurried to where Mom waited with the gunnysack.

"Let's see what we caught."

They directed the lights to the contents of the nets. Mom held the sack open, and three frogs were deposited inside.

"Where's Bobby?" she asked.

They hurried back to the creek. "What are you doing down there? I thought you caught a frog."

"I did, but I can't get back up this bank," he whispered. "Somebody give me a hand."

"Why didn't you say you needed help?"

"You guys told me to be quiet."

"Hey, Laverne, why'd you bring this kid along?"

"Mom made me."

His catch was added to the sack. "Now we're making bag. Look at the size of these grand-daddies. Don't let 'em get away, Eleanor."

"Let's try further down the stream. Sit tight. We'll be right back." 

Back to the water they went.

She could hear them whispering and splashing in the water. She sat cross-legged on the springy pasture grass and held the burlap bag as the moon rose. Frogs crawled around inside seeking escape.

Their whispers carried on the water. "Dang it. Hold the light steady. That one got away. I think we've scared them off."

Lights bobbled up and down as Jack and her cousins returned. "Open the sack, Cuz. We caught three more."

She pulled the mouth of the sack open and four frogs erupted in their faces.

"Damn! You're letting them get away. Watch these nets."

The foursome dove for the athletics amphibians. Two were apprehended. They stomped back to her, stuffed the slippery frogs through a tiny opening and did the same for the ones in the nets.

Thoroughly disgruntled, they returned to the farm. Since Mom hadn't gotten wet and muddy, she drove while all the guys rode in back. They stayed in the driveway where they shucked out of wet clothes and pulled on the dry ones they had brought with them while Mom went in the house.

My grandparents asked Mom if she had fun.

"I guess not," she said morosely. "They're all mad at me. I let some of the frogs they caught jump out of the bag."

The boys came in and straddled straight chairs in the kitchen. Grandma fed them a snack. They collected the catch and butchered the frog legs, keeping up a steady stream of complaints about the two that got away. The third time my future father mentioned that holding the gunnysack was Eleanor's only job, my granddad said they ought to go home if they couldn't do anything but bellyache.

The next morning Grandma found a pair of men's underwear lying in the driveway. She took them in the house and washed them with the family laundry because she knew who they belonged to.

The next time my father came to the house for a date, Grandma said she had something for him. She was holding the surprise behind her back. He held his hand out. She tried to give him the briefs.

He jerked his hand back like a snake had struck at it. "Those aren't mine," he claimed.

"Oh yes, they are," Grandma told him with a grin. "Your mother's laundry mark is right here on the waistband."

During my childhood, the story of how the engagement nearly ended before it began because of the bullfrog debacle was repeated over and over by my dad. The tale of him losing his underwear was told nearly as often by my Grandma. I was a little older before I figured out why everyone made such a big deal over it.

Steadily By Jerks

When I was in high school, my dad was employed by National Trailer Convoy. It was a little different sort of job than picking up freight in one place and delivering it to another. Specifically, he moved mobile homes. A house trailer is a pre-fab structure built on a flatbed trailer. It has a hitch and wheels making it portable. 

The home's owner had responsibilities to fulfill before it could be moved. He should have removed the skirting, unhooked the utilities and made sure the tires were sound. According to the checklist Dad went through with every owner, they also should have secured the cabinet doors and furniture inside the home.

This didn't always happen. Dad came home from one location telling about a trailer anchored in a sea of children, dirty diapers and dogs. The only adult he saw was a young woman. She did not have the trailer ready to move. Some of the tires were flat, but she had spares. He had wrestled the second tire onto the lug bolts when he heard a voice right behind him say, "That's poop."  He looked around and saw a three-year-old boy poking at dog droppings with the handle end of his tire wrench.

Once or twice, Dad was accused of damaging a home in transit when it wasn't his fault. In an instance I particularly remember, the owner showed up during the process of situating the trailer on its new foundation. The guy exclaimed that the outer wall had pulled away from the frame at the back corner. What the heck did the so-and-so driver do to his house? Dad invited the guy to take him inside so they could try to see a reason for the separation. The culprit turned out to be a Chevy engine block in a bedroom closet. The wall didn't pull away from the floor. The floor pulled away from the wall.

Moving a mobile home can be a logistical nightmare. The trailers are over-length and over-width. To be legal, the driver must purchase a permit from the state highway department. Much like an aircraft flight plan, the route and time frame must be observed. It is illegal to pull an over-width, over-length object in the dark for obvious reasons. A front escort car was required to alert oncoming traffic of the road hazard. If the trailer was over a certain length, a rear escort was needed as well.

If one didn't provide their own escort, the driver had to hire one. After seeing his bottom line suffer from paying for an independent escort, my dad decided my mother should do it for him. She drove a bright yellow Mustang. Add a roof-mounted orange, revolving light and a fold-up sign that said WIDE LOAD and what do you have? An escort car. This endeavor provided my dad with years of fodder for wife-bashing stories.

In one incident, National Trailer Convoy had been hired to move three homes for the same company when their employees were reassigned. The distance was far enough the drivers worried they wouldn't get the job done in one day. The evening before the move they readied the homes and got hooked up. The next morning they fudged a little on the daylight hours by going down dirt roads for the first few miles. When they reached the highway, it was still fifteen minutes until sunrise. Dad and the other two drivers had a brief confab and decided to chance it. Mom was driving the lead escort car.

"Okay, we're going now," Dad told her. He turned to get in his truck when the entire area was lit up with strobing orange light.

"Turn that @#$%@#% thing off," he shouted at her. "Why don't you just use a siren to announce our presence? Every highway patrol in thirty miles can see that light."

It must have been nerve-wracking for Mom to drive that escort car. Rules vary from state to state, but she needed to maintain a minimum and maximum distance between Dad's truck and her car. Dad always said she didn't have good depth perception. I expect he was right because she would speed up to get ahead of him and decide she was too far away and step on the brake to slow down. When he saw brake lights, he said he never knew if he should be shifting down or not, so it was equally frustrating for him to follow her.

When someone asked him how his wife did at escorting wide loads, he said she drove 'steadily by jerks.'

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.

The Honeymoon is Over.

1973

My husband-to-be had just graduated with a degree in Nuclear Engineering, and I had just graduated from High School. Yeah, he's a cradle robber. We didn't particularly care where we went after the wedding as long as we had a few days away from work and studying.

In the days when it was common for friends to do despicable things to your car while you were busy getting married, my fiance had the inspired idea to hide his pride and joy in the Buick dealer's personal garage. He gave his brother a new can of car wax and told him if the guys just had to write nasty slogans and paint lewd pictures on his car, at least don't ruin the paint job with shaving cream.

I hope the artists were embarrassed when they brought the car back to the church. We drove out of the parking lot to waves and shouts of congratulations. One of the college roommates tossed a bottle of champagne in the back seat as we rolled past him.

We had decided to go to Wichita after the ceremony and then mosey up to Minden, NE. Minden is a ways off the beaten path, but it has an excellent pioneer museum. By the time we arrived in Wichita, it was sprinkling a little. At Kellogg and Airport Road we were waiting for the red light to turn green.  There were three cars in front of us.


THUD!

KATHUMP!

My brand new husband stood on the brake, but we were shoved into the car in front of us just as the light turned green. Behind us, a new Honda Civic had either hydroplaned or utterly failed to notice the traffic wasn't moving. Our day was ruined, but that driver had a day he'd never forget. An Olds 88 had plowed into him and turned his Honda into an accordion. Miraculously, he was not injured.

The people in the car in front of us were detained while the police investigated the accident.  Their car only had a scratch on the bumper. There was no visible damage to the front of our car either.

There we sat, holding up traffic, with some horrible art decorating the car. Maybe that guy in the Honda didn't hydroplane after all. Perhaps he was trying to read what was painted in wax on the trunk.

I didn't get out of the car since it was raining harder by then. I didn't want to ruin my gorgeous hairdo. A very nice police officer stuck his head in the window and offered me congratulations.

There was considerable damage to the rear of the Buick. Fortunately, it was drivable. When we got to our hotel, we sheepishly called home and told both sets of folks we had been in an accident, no, we weren't hurt, and please let the insurance agent know. I was SO glad we didn't have to ask them to bring us another vehicle to drive, or worst yet, come and get us.

That little chore finished, we decided to sample the champagne. Remember, it was shaken a good bit when it was thrown into the car two hours earlier. Then it was severely jostled in the wreck. I had given the wire muselet (I had to Google that word) one twist when the cork exploded out of the bottle and champagne showered half the room. It drenched the Gideon Bible on the chest of drawers. There was scarcely enough for us to have a taste.

Our room overlooked a swimming pool one or two floors below us. For some unfathomable reason, I thought that sounded kind of cool when we made reservations. At a truly unreasonable hour the next morning, we were awakened by an instructor with a bullhorn running a swimming class through their drills. Before we could even consider burying our heads under the pillows and going back to sleep, our phone rang.  It was our banker/insurance agent/friend.

"I hear you were approached from the rear," he drawled.

Learning the insurance would cover the repairs, we goofed off in Wichita for half a day. We had a mechanic look at the damage before we drove the car very far. At the small town of Minden, Nebraska, the motel clerk wouldn't check us in until we got our marriage license out of the luggage and proved we were husband and wife.

That was 45 years ago yesterday. Someone commented the honeymoon was almost over before it started, but we say it will never be over.

Pigweed Memories

Piggie and his friends and family lived in a big field.  It was their whole world.  None of them could see all the way across.  It was huge. Since they weren't explorers, they would never know precisely how vast their world was. Piggie had been living in this field for several generations. He had seen a lot of changes since he was only a seed. 

There were thousands of his brothers and sister, aunts and uncles, and cousins who stayed in the same field. He had a lot of big, strong brothers but he was the largest, strongest, smartest pigweed in the field. 

He was very fond of his family. They looked to him for advice. He had other friends too. He especially liked Velvet. Piggie wished he and Velvet could get married so he could touch her soft, heart-shaped leaves all the time, but his family had vetoed the idea. That didn't stop him from hoping some of his pollen drifted her way. 

Actually, the original Piggie had passed away several summers ago. He had been the lone survivor of a chemical warfare attack. What doesn't kill you makes you strong. Right? Like a sentinel, he had grown tall and proud in the midst of soybeans. Before he died of a killing frost, he stored up all his memories in his pollen and seeds to teach his children. 

Every year Piggie learned something from his parents who had lived the season before. It was imperative he do so. When the cold came, he would drop his seeds on the ground and hope the knowledge saved in them increased from his experiences. 

Not all of the species living in his field were friends of his. He and Sticker weren't what you would call friendly. Sticker, in his quiet way, did a great service for Piggie. Rabbit hated Sticker with a passion. They were mortal enemies. Sticker stayed close to Piggie and spread a carpet next to him. Rabbit couldn't nibble on Piggie's tender parts without getting sharp barbs in his feet and fur. Since Piggie appreciated the help, he let his shadow rest on Sticker for part of the day so he wouldn't get too hot. It was an equitable arrangement.

The other plants with whom Piggie shared the field were snobs. He didn't like them at all. They must have been in the military because they acted like straight rows were the most important thing in the world. And they were so needy. They needed a lot of food and water. Piggie could survive on a fraction of what they required.  They were stupid and lazy as well. They only produced a handful of seeds, and none of them remembered a thing their parents had taught them when they sprouted the next spring.

Piggie and his family of seeds had grown into a lovely green carpet. As they grew, they got reacquainted. Many were newcomers who had drifted in from other worlds. Not all of them had the same knowledge as Piggie and his family. They promised to teach the newcomers all they could.

One day they noticed a strange noise. It rapidly grew nearer and louder.

"What is it, Piggie? Where is that noise coming from?"

Piggie and most of his family knew at once what the noise meant. It happened every summer, sometimes two or three times. Every year they learned a better strategy for coping. Deep in Piggie's psyche lurked a memory of a huge iron monster with sharp rolling blades sweeping through the field and killing practically everyone who hadn't cozied up to one of the soldier plants in their straight rows. There was little to learn or pass on when that happened. His great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had barely survived. Piggie, however, knew a method to conquer the threat from the sky.

"Spread the word.  Hold your breath and close your eyes until I tell you it is safe. This is important. Do what I say. Hurry, there's not much time. Pass the word."

Suddenly, a noisy metal bird swooped down. It coughed nasty smelling mist that drifted down and covered Piggie's head. He squeezed his eyes shut and told himself not to breathe. Around him, he could hear other plants crying and coughing. He also heard the snobbish soybean plants laughing at them.
 

Most of the plants didn't have the stamina he had developed. Before the day was over, many pleaded with him for aid. Wisely, he did not answer. He would not speak until it was safe. The pampered soybean plants were jeering at them now. 

The noxious odor faded but Piggie's skin burned and he had trouble thinking. It took a great effort for him to whisper instructions to the other plants. "Play 'possum. Pretend you are dead. Just let your head droop over. Let your arms hang down. Go to sleep."

After a few days, Piggie began to feel much better, so he straightened up and looked around. A sad sight greeted him. Everyone in the field was sunburned. Well, everyone except the soybeans. A few of them appeared sickly, but for the most part, they were unfazed by the the poisonous fumes. His family was another story. Their beautiful green leaves and skin had turned yellow. The ones who hadn't obeyed his instructions were already turning brown. In a few days, they would be brittle. Their seeds were lost. His friend Velvet and Sticker were also dead. Piggie could see a few thorns on Stickers dead vines. Even in death, Sticker would keep Rabbit away from him. 

"How bad is it?" Piggie asked. Across the field, reports trickled back to him. Too many had ignored his warning. They were gone, along with a new generation of seeds. There was good news also. More had survived than last year. 

Soon Piggie and the survivors had outgrown the soybeans. The next time the big yellow bird dropped poison on them, they didn't even hold their breath for more than a few hours. The mist burned, but they didn't get sick and turn yellow. 

When the autumn winds came, Piggie and his family said goodbye to their seeds and watched them scatter. The children born from those seeds would carry the memory of this growing season and know how to act next summer. Their numbers were increasing exponentially. Piggie hoped the pigweed species in neighboring corn and soybean fields had learned something as well. Soon, the breezes would spread the smart seeds further away where they could teach new youngsters.

As the cold arrived, Piggie and his family told one another goodbye. "See you next spring," they said, although they knew it would be their children who would sprout to learn more lessons. Those children would remember their parents.

                  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Although the above is meant to be humorous, herbicide-resistant weeds aren't. I hope you weren't rooting for Piggie. Some weeds have become so tolerant to herbicide, the application only makes them mad for a few days. Then they grow back with a vengeance.

Here is a link to a comprehensive site, if you want to know more about it.

http://weedscience.org/

Everyman's Hero

The National Western Livestock Show/Rodeo is held in Denver every January. My folks didn't go every year, and when they did, they didn't stay the entire two weeks. Dad liked to attend several of the events and visit relatives in the area. My mother went along, but cattle weren't her thing. On the other hand, who doesn't like a good rodeo?

Located just east of the junction of I-70 and I-25, the best plan is to stay in an outlying hotel/motel and use the complimentary shuttle service to get back and forth. This isn't a travelogue. I am telling you this for a reason.

Late one bitter evening they stood in front of the main gate with other bull riding aficionados waiting for a ride back to the hotel. In a hurry to get out of the weather, people shoved their way on board the next shuttle. It just so happened the driver had allowed one too many passengers on the bus. My mother had no place to sit. Undaunted, she squeezed her 90-pound frame between the last seat and the emergency exit door.

Now, I'm sure this broke every rule the driver would have studied to get his commercial driver's license. I still have terrible visions of what would have happened if the door had popped open at 70 mph on a busy freeway.

By now I bet you're wondering about my dad's whereabouts since there wasn't any room for my mom, aren't you? Perhaps you are assuming he didn't elbow his way onto the shuttle? Maybe he was crushed underfoot in the stampede? Mom should probably get off the bus and shiver until the next one arrives.

Rule Twenty-One: Don't try to prove to total stranger's that you are a gentleman.

My father made a general announcement to the whole bus. Yeah, he got on.

"I'd give my seat to that lady, but she's my wife."

A man across the aisle who was sitting with a woman, presumably his wife or significant other, leaned over and shook Dad's hand.

"Buddy, you're my kind of guy!"

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.

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.