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.

Nothing ever happens at my house.

I've lived in the same sparsely populated rural neighborhood for over 40 years. Depending on whether you go up the road or down the road, it is five miles to the next farmhouse. Neither of those two families have any reason to drive past my house. About the only people besides the mail lady who use our road are other farmers checking on a field in the vicinity. I see as many tractors as I do pickup trucks. An abandoned farmstead lies approximately one and a half miles southeast from my house as the crow flies. The owners moved away about 20 years ago. It is surrounded by trees and apparently very inviting to dopers who want to get out of the weather while they cook their meth.

The first time I heard that it had been raided (about eighteen years ago) was in the context of a local character who thought the Feds were after him for drinking and driving. When he saw a string of official looking cars bearing down on him, he had visions of being incarcerated for open container, driving under the influence, possibly expired tags and no drivers' license. He was just a good ol' boy taking a leisurely Sunday morning drive while he drank a six-pack of Bud. The guys in the white space suits (bio-hazard personal protective clothing) paid no attention as he threw his beer in the ditch and scrambled for some chewing gum to disguise his breath. 

We heard that the woodwork of the old house was permeated with highly flammable residue from the illegal meth kitchen. Curious neighbors were warned to stay away. Don't light a match!

 A different neighbor who lived off thataway discovered evidence of an outdoor meth lab in his pasture.

In the meantime, crystal meth labs punctuated the evening news. Over-the-counter cold and diet medications containing Ephedrine or Pseudoephedrine were ordered to be kept under lock and key the same as prescription drugs. Clerks at convenience stores received instructions to never sell more than 2 packets to a customer and to keep an eye out for strings of customers coming in to purchase the same product. Especially if they had rotted teeth.

During the same time frame, two counties north of me, hard-to-track mobile meth labs climbed to the top of the national statistical charts. Law abiding folks in the area were looking askance at vans with Barton County plates.

Nearly two years passed from the first time we heard about the meth house in the neighborhood. One evening we answered the phone and it was the sheriff telling us not to open the door to strangers. Law enforcement had raided the house again and a suspect took off on foot. The first thing we did was turn on all outdoor and perimeter lights and turn off all indoor lights. We wanted to be able to see out while no one else could see in. When the coon dogs started barking our daughter freaked out.

We called the sheriff back and he sent a deputy who was there within minutes. He and my husband, both armed, investigated the garage, chicken house and other outbuildings. Finding nothing suspicious, they decided our dogs could probably hear or smell the activity taking place at the raid. A pair of dogs had been brought in to track the suspect. Unfortunately, they lost the scent after a few hundred yards. My husband told them anyone who has ever been coon hunting would know the dogs are useless as soon as the temperature hits dew point.

In the meantime, they were waiting for the airplane with infrared detection equipment. When it arrived we could hear it for hours as it searched the area for the escapee. Eventually, we learned that the suspect was apprehended the next day. He had run twelve miles to town. What good practice for a half marathon.

Life settled down. Every once in a while we noticed a vehicle, a white van, stopped in the road south of our house. Maybe it belonged to a land owner. Maybe our road had turned into lovers' lane. Whoever was in it, they weren't bothering us. One day my husband noticed the plain vanilla van had Barton County plates. Recalling the news about all the mobile meth labs, he called in a report to our county sheriff's office.

The next day all the deputies were laughing about the suspicious van. We weren't the butt of the jokes though. Another agency in Barton County drives unmarked vehicles. This outfit sent an agent to keep an eye on the meth house, but he was to remain inconspicuous. Our sheriff was riled that the KBI was conducting a covert operation in his county. He was amused that a local citizen had turned them in for suspicious behavior.

No, nothing ever happens at my house.

It was a dark and stormy night....

It was a dark and stormy night...  What a trite phrase. It calls to mind campy old movies featuring fearful, defenseless women trapped in a spooky house while the thunder crashes and the knife-wielding murderer slashes.

When I was in high school, I worked part-time at the same restaurant as my mother. It was a pretty good setup because we only needed one vehicle to get back and forth. On a Saturday night, we headed home from the regular 5-9 shift. It was probably 9:30 by the time we left, having everything cleaned up and put away leaving the restaurant ready for the breakfast crowd. 

A fierce storm has blown up, and we drive with extra caution as the wind buffets the car and horizontal sheets of rain beckon us to follow them off the road. At home, the rain has intensified. 

We are faced with a 30-yard dash through the deluge. This involves a Herculean leap over a large puddle where water pools on the slab in front of the garage because over time the cement has settled some. Up one shallow step, through the gate, and a mad race up the sidewalk under wildly whipping tree limbs while nonstop lightning illuminates our path. The biggest challenge is right before the steps up to the door. During my entire life, the gutter has never had a downspout attached to it. The opening is at the corner of the house and water pours out of it onto the sidewalk. Even in a gentle rain a lot of water rolls off the roof. On this night, the cataract resembles the release of floodgates at a reservoir.

I splash behind the curtain of water, which is shooting clear across the walkway. Water is two or three inches deep because it can't flow away from the house as fast as it is gushing out of the gutter. Efforts to avoid puddles have been in vain as cold water floods my shoes. I take the steps in one stride and yank the door open. Mom is right behind me with her head down, clutching her purse and the strings of a plastic rain bonnet protecting her hairdo. Up two more steps and into the kitchen where we stand dripping on the spotless linoleum.

Mom kicks out of her orthopedic support shoes that waitresses and nurses everywhere wear while I toe my soggy white tennies off.  Shivering, we blot our faces and arms on kitchen hand towels, and I help Mom with her zipper as she shrugs out of her sodden uniform. I am reaching behind my back for my own zipper when

BANG BANG BANG.

Someone, disregarding the torrential downpour, is beating on the outer storm door.

Mere seconds have passed since we got out of the car. Our driveway is half a mile long. There were no headlights behind us. No strange vehicles lurked in the circle turn-around in front of the garage. I glance out the window over the sink trying to spy another car, but it's raining so hard I can't even see the garage.

Mom is in her slip and pantyhose, and I read headlines of murdered women in her expression. Thoughts of the Clutter family streak through my mind. A shriek escapes my lips before she shushes me.

Not only is a storm raging; we are also all alone. My father and brother left earlier in the day for a weekend fishing/camping trip. Her horrified expression scares me more than the racket outside. Lightning, followed by another deafening clap of thunder that rattles the windows, reveals two indistinct shapes on the steps. The kitchen wall facing the door is all windows, and my first instinct is to turn off the light so whoever is out there can't see in. Adrenaline surges through my veins as my body prepares to defend itself.

Pasting on an expression that says whatever is out there should be more afraid of her than she is of it, Mom flicks the switch for the outdoor light and yanks the kitchen door open just in time to witness my dad and brother trying to squeeze through the storm door at the same time.

"I knew it was you!" she yells at Dad as he elbows onto the landing in front of my little brother and kicks off his boots. "No self-respecting burglar or rapist would have knocked on the door."

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.

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.

Driving Lessons

My grandfather always drove a pickup with standard transmission and a stick shift. He was one of those old farmers who drove real slow and drifted onto the wrong side of the road while he checked out the crops. He didn't drive much faster on the highway, but he did stay on his side of the pavement. 

Since his pickup had four gears, he used all of them even though he seldom drove more than 30 mph.  Also, he had large feet and was in the habit of resting his size 13's on the clutch pedal. He burned out a clutch on the average of once a year.

He and my dad rented a pasture to graze their cattle. It was a picturesque spot with a creek running through it. His in-laws, my great-grandparents, lived in a modest house on the property.  It was a lovely spot for a picnic or wiener roast.

I was twelve years old on one of the times everyone in the family had gathered there. He took me for a ride in the pasture where he aimlessly drove in circles and figure eights. I knew we weren't counting cattle because they had all moseyed off to another section of grass. He went through the gear sequence a couple of times without ever topping 10 mph. 

With no warning, he took the pickup out of gear, coasted to a stop, and got out. 

"Okay. When you can change gears without making a screeching noise bring it back to the house."  He turned and walked off toward the house with his long legs eating up the ground while I sat in stunned silence.

Wait. Come back. You were giving me a driving lesson? All sorts of uncharitable thoughts whirled through my mind as I contemplated running after him demanding to know why he hadn't mentioned that I was being schooled or that there would be a pop quiz. Instead, I reluctantly slid across the bench seat and adjusted it forward until I could reach the pedals.

I had been driving the car ever since I got tall enough to see over the steering wheel at age ten, but this was a different situation. The car drove itself while I steered and gave it some gas.  Driving the pickup involved an intricate ballet of using two feet to manipulate the brake, clutch, and gas. One hand finessed the stick shift into the proper gear while the other stayed on the steering wheel. 

I already had a pretty good idea that I didn't want to shift from a forward gear into reverse. But how was I supposed to find the gears? Fortunately, the shifting pattern was printed on the knob of the stick. Gritting my teeth and hoping I was shifting into low, I moved the lever up and to the left, gave it some gas and eased out on the clutch pedal. The pickup lurched a little but didn't die on the spot or let out any audible complaints. 

I was a natural at this driving stuff. Before long I was running through the gears although I knew perfectly well from comments my dad had made that one shouldn't use the higher gears at low speeds. 

HA!  Take that, Old Man. Joyfully, I steered toward the gate and eased out onto the dirt road. Everyone was looking at me a few minutes later when I turned into the driveway. I was feeling pretty cocky by then. I was running out of driveway when it occurred to me I didn't know how to make the pickup stop, at least not gracefully. I put my foot on the brake and it died. 

Oh, well. At least I didn't run into my great-grandparents ancient 1940's sedan. I got out of the pickup and sat down at the bonfire. Grandpa didn't say a word to me about my driving, and I didn't say anything to him either.

Years later, sitting around with my cousins, reminiscing about the grandparents, I related this story. My two oldest boy cousins perked up and said he had pulled an identical stunt on them when they were about the same age.

Fly Away

Before the use of designer herbicides that target specific weeds or Round-up® Ready soybeans, a genetically modified crop which is resistant to glyphosate, farmers relied on pre-plant herbicides and  tillage to prevent and control unwanted weeds. In 1984 we had an outbreak of cockleburs in a soybean field we rented which was directly across the road from my in-laws' house.

A weed is any unwanted plant. It might have an economic benefit in some other setting, but in a field of corn, beans, wheat, flax, canola, or milo, for example, they are destructive. (See my 7-16-18 post about pigweeds.) Besides growing in the wrong place at the wrong time, the weed will drop seeds at the end of the growing season creating a worse problem in subsequent years. In our soybean field the cockleburs were stealing valuable nutrients and moisture.

What are cockleburs and what do they look like?  Click this link to see what mature seed pods look like. I believe George de Mestral, the inventor of Velcro®, had similar burrs in mind when he decided to create his hook and loop fastener. The burs are famous for fastening onto animal fur and will catch a ride on most fuzzy fabric as well. I didn't know it at the time, but all parts of the plant are poisonous to mammals. Although they are picky about where they grow, the plants are self-pollinating and like most weeds take advantage of favorable conditions.

The conditions were very favorable in our irrigated soybean field, and a large area where seeds had lain dormant in the ground had sprouted. The weeds could not be cultivated out. Too much damage would be inflicted on the leafy soybean plants. Since cockleburs have shallow roots making them easy to pull and I was young and enthusiastic, I decided to rogue the field myself.

The trouble lay with my two-year-old son. He was at that age when he didn't want to let Mommy out of his sight. He didn't want to stay in the house with Grandma either. He sure didn't want to take a nap. He wanted to help.

I had numerous conversations trying to make a toddler understand why he couldn't help and why it was important for him to stay with Grandma while I worked. I gave up on the project the day I looked up to see my mother-in-law chasing him down the road.

"How am I going to get the cockleburs out of this field?" I asked him.

He had the perfect solution.

"Don't worry, Mommy. The cocklebirds will grow up and fly away."

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.

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.