In Search of a Bearing

Seven days before the calf shipping in July, a bearing began to squall on the air conditioner on the roof of the ranch house, piercing enough to change the setting on my hearing aids. The occasion honored the ranch law that plumbing freezes in the winter before holidays; the cooling fails before the Fourth of July.

            Services out in the country, however, take days, if not weeks for calls. On batch outfits, little inconveniences like indoor plumbing failures aren’t as urgent as in two-member households. A bucket of water can be dipped from the stock tank by being careful to part a spot in the moss. The same can be pitched out the backdoor from the dishpan if you watch for the cat.

            Six days before shipping, a dentist visit in Angelo provided a perfect excuse to stay in the shade. Directions on the antibiotic he prescribed to arrest the infection in a broken tooth sounded like if the patient became overheated, he would have barely enough time left on this cold earth to conclude more important matters than weaning calves.

            The 14 pills provided insurance to keep from working the two weeks needed to ship and shape the cattle. Gentle as those ol’ black sookies are, they can’t be worked indoors.

            On the day of the dentist appointment, I read a grim poem from my mail run by a grandson dramatizing how sad it was that his grandfather was no longer able to saddle his horse.

            A quick glance for a date on my checkbook linked to a veterinarian’s call showed that three months had passed since I last rode “Shineman.” On the stub side of the checkbook, I noted by numeral one “to saddle ‘Shineman’ first time no one was around.” Under number two, “go back to taking vitamins and iron pills.”

            After the encouraging news from the dentist that the toothache cure was to be by extraction, the matter of extracting the air conditioner bearing and replacing that ache (90 bucks) with a new part was addressed. The big problem was that evaporative coolers are so outdated that the last full-service agency in San Angelo closed years ago.

            Bearing supply houses tried to find a replacement. One outfit went so far as to send a bearing free for the right shaft size (one and three-sixteenths inches), but the wrong mount to fit. On the wire the people responded in a courteous manner; however, on a second try, a receptionist, in an unsuccessful move to muffle her phone, said to service, “It’s that pore old rancher with the broke-down swamp cooler and a toothache to boot.”

            Afternoon temperatures approached a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The tooth only throbbed when jiggled by my tongue, or if the breakfast oatmeal gruel cooked into hard lumps. Jell-O chilled in the refrigerator soothed the soreness. Cook’s Illustrated helped by offering a new milk toast recipe using skimmed milk to avoid the sticky film of margarine on the broth.

            Helpers promised to come, good hands willing to ride horseback. Men so professional, the married brother offered to back his older single brother in the event the early stages of a new love affair turned so serious and he became so dislocated that he lost the way to the ranch or wandered off to the wrong pasture.

            For sure, man and woman, families and bosses, suffered through similar love-fevered trials throughout the ages. Raising eight children, every month featured a Valentine’s Day. Love affairs spread over so far to so many high schools that the long distance telephone bill looked like a recast of Mertzon’s football and basketball schedule.

            The invention of the school bus started the trouble. Problems were so much simpler before young bodies jostled close together in bus seats on long rides. In my tenure on the school board, I’d supported any change from single cockpits to monastery cubicles to correct the situation.

            Desperate for a bearing, I went to a discount joint the size of the holdover trap at the line camp. Once at a border crossing in French Morocco, a customs officer acted as rude as the fellow working in the air conditioner department. The chap swept his hand along a shelf and muttered, “There’s the bearings.” He left before I discovered that one inch was the largest size.

            When I contacted a wholesale house in Llano, a polite lady located the bearing in Little Rock, Arkansas. She arranged for direct billing and shipping to Mertzon. On the call back, she said two aspirin might help the pain more than chewing on toothache bush.

            The extraction comes next week. The house is cool. The calves averaged 554 pounds. And I was able to throw my saddle on “Shineman” in spite of the dietary regimen of milk toast.

July 31, 2008