Feed trucks still run through Mertzon heading west on Highway 67. Now and then a gooseneck load goes by on sale days at the auction, signaling some old boy is cutting his herd down again. The rattle of the tailgates and the singing of the tire treads on those ominous wagons cut deeper than the sight of a funeral procession. The ones of us listening know somewhere a heartsick hombre and his mate are watching the skies part and miss their place.

Moisture conditions are spotted in the Mertzon area. Keeping records on the outfit on the highway became so tedious, adding on the tenths to one-hundredths of an inch, I simplified the bookkeeping by using the letter S for showers and WB for wet bugs. The wet bug designation idea developed after I discovered all the tubes were going to catch down there were what we call "rain gauge beetles."

The fellow who works up here at the ranch keeps a police scanner on at night. First thing early of morning, he relays the storm reports from the sheriff's patrol. We don't pay any attention to crime as man's misbehavior is insignificant compared to drouths. The officers locate flooding highways or baseball-size hailstones by the big sign on the entrance to Goat Whisker's the Younger's ranch, or the townsite of Barnhart. For the first five years of this drouth we'd be plenty excited until the sun came up and revealed the rain had fallen farther west or north of us.

In the first stages of the dry spell, I called the recording at the weather station and the USDA market report every morning from San Angelo. Last year during hunting season, one of my sons came in the kitchen and said, "Dad, if that was Uncle Walter you were talking to, I'd have liked to have said hello." (My brother and I converse two or three times a week on the weather and the market.) I don't remember my reply, but I sure do remember being startled into realizing I was talking back to both of those tape recordings.

After my son left for his hunting blind, I ran a test on the market report. I called the reporter by her first name. Set right in disagreeing in a strident voice on the quotes on the cows I'd seen sell on Thursday just like the lady was on the wire. I performed worse on the weather tape. Ended up calling the weatherman at the end of the long range forecast "Old Short Stuff" and slammed down the phone before I remembered I was running a test.

The old cowboy who lived next door in Mertzon for a long time kept the cemetery after he retired. (I've written this story before, but I am going to make it better this time.) Things were hard then, too. The cemetery association furnished a mower worth 35 bucks on a strong market. Shufford Masters — and that was his real name — had coiled lots of ropes in his time. He had a couple of fingers severed as proof. However, "starter rope" to Shufford meant doubling a 36-thread manila and pulling it off of a balky bull or a sullen cow's rear.

In the summer, he cut his yard after he finished mowing at the cemetery. Late in the evening at Merton after the kids go to supper, the town is quiet, so Shufford's depreciation of the lawnmower reached over in my backyard. "You little John Brown Sapsucker of a two-bit brown-headed scissors-billed ..."

Then the motor would pop and run long enough for him to drop the starter rope. "I ought to stomp yore rusty red frame into the mother earth," meant he was going down to one of our neighbors for help.

Alone on that fateful morning, I worried I might throw the telephone against the wall, or have a cussing fit like Shufford matching his lawnmower to a fight. Took the rest of deer season to taper of calling the weather station and the market reporter.

All last week, I checked on the section 201 act against imported lamb at the ASI office in Denver to see whether the President had signed the deal. I did real well until one evening the message reported the President was in Europe, and wasn't expected to act over the weekend.

I lost all restraint: "Well, by gawd, looks like the Arkansas traveler could stay at the White House long enough to give us time to sell our lambs before the needlegrass and heat cook their hides." And then a voice said, "I beg your pardon. Did you need to talk to an operator?"

The lady coming on the line may cure me of talking back to tapes. Going to be hard to stay off the air, however, faced by the Aussies' and New Zealanders stealing our market ...

July 1, 1999