January 4,1996

Mother took care of the holiday baking all of her life. Toward the end I cooked the turkeys, but she still furnished the cornbread for the dressing and oatmeal rolls for the feast. She apprenticed on a wood stove on a windmill tank water system. The first yeast bread she made failed to rise. Not wanting to give the hands or her husband a chance to tease her, she buried the dough in the back yard. She went on to become an expert at baking breads and pastries. Her cookies and pies spanned several generations of Mertzon's school kids.

Necessity taught me to cook. The Big Boss hired black cooks for roundups, but the rest of the time, the outfit leaned toward single cowboys and Mexican camps. The choices were the skillet or a horseback ride to Felix or Jose's camp for tortillas and beans. The ranch furnished lots of beef, so the choice came easy. Mother sent down loaves of homemade bread. The days were long enough that it didn't take too fancy a fare to make a meal.

Today's refrigeration makes ranch cooking easier. Artificial biscuits and imitation frozen dinners can support life for weeks on end until acute boredom causes the digestive system to rebel. However, I run a top grade batch outfit. The idea it is harder to cook for one person doesn't float around here. In the days when I served as a back-up to feed eight children, I saw the one plate/one fork theory torn to shreds. The action seven boys and one girl, plus their drop-in company, generate around a table will make a good sized army mess hall seem like a Boston tea room.

I still cook for my family and their guests on visits to the ranch. Several days beforehand, I work out in the kitchen. I juggle three pot lids until I can keep all three in the air at the same time. The improved dexterity pays off once pans start sliding off counter tops and dishes try to jump off the refrigerator shelves. I do 40 deep knee bends a day to limber up to hunt for things in the bottom shelves and lower drawers. I plunge my hands in hot water until the skin builds a tolerance against the heat. I spend at least one Saturday afternoon at the mall in San Angelo growing accustomed to the crowded conditions that always confirm the kitchen is the most popular room in a house.

The scene opens like a Norman Rockwell holiday painting. I wear a starched white apron, tied smartly around my waist. Dust from flour dots my shirt cuffs to accentuate the colors in my white beard. I hold my chin at exactly the same angle General George Washington held his crossing the Delaware.

Laughter fills the room as children drink milk and sodas at the kitchen table and adults lounge against the cabinet counters. Telephones ring unanswered; deer hunters drop by to complain of overturned blinds and misapplied gate locks. No hearths exist to roast chestnuts, so everyone congregates in the area between the stove and the refrigerator, leaving a small channel leading to the pantry. "Granddad" and "Dad" are said in deep reverence.

On the morning of the feast, the crowd thins in the kitchen. The rosy-cheeked chef of yesterday mistakes a piece of French toast under his boot heel for one of the children's fingers and leaps into an open cabinet door full-face. The day also sees the first commode malfunction of the season, the guest bird dog howls for attention in the garage, and Granddad's horses fail to come in for feed the first time of the year, leaving the riders idle to drink Coca-Colas at the house.

In minutes, smoke from the oven vent sets off the fire alarm in the hall. One drumstick kicks out of the truss, sending a thin stream of melted turkey fat down the oven door. "Granddad," if uttered at all, is spoken in a whisper.

Not only does the kitchen empty, but adjacent rooms become stilled. One guest comes to help, (and there always seems to be one). She peels onions and mashes the potatoes, asks yes and no questions, warms oatmeal rolls from Mother's recipe, and bakes a pecan pie from her homeland. Her daughter sets the table. On the way to the trash barrel, the old bird dog follows along, nudging my hind leg, reaffirming our friendship.

Deer hunters break camp to leave and watch the football games; the grandson kills his first deer. And down at the barn, his sister saddles Cindy and rides off in the horse trap, setting off a glow of pride that overrides the hardships of a ranch cook...

January 18,1996

The right to carry concealed weapons in Texas came into effect the first of the year, and 175,000 citizens applied for licenses. All applicants must take a gun safety course to receive a permit. Quite a number of other restrictions exist. For example, concealed weapons are forbidden in some public buildings, and private businesses reserve the right to forbid firearms on their premises.

A bishop in San Antonio made a big to-do about forbidding firearms on church property. The church was already protected by the law but auxiliary buildings were not, so the good people posted signs proclaiming their property, of all things, was a place of peace.

Lots of radicalism has seeped into all the churches. Before Christmas, a man of the cloth in Mertzon ordered the congregation to go a full week without talking about each other. For seven days and seven nights, we were ordered not to gossip about our neighbors. No dispensations were offered for hardship cases. He didn't say what to do if we met a Bosnian or a congressman face to face down at the post office, or over at the bank. He avoided mentioning immediate family or in-laws. As radical as the ban was, the pastor evidently knew to leave a few loopholes.

After church, I told him the same thing I told him when he insisted we pray for peace. Well, basically the same thing. That the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech, true or untrue in substance, unfounded or imagined in content. "Even if the Bill of Rights doesn't outright say so," I said, "the document implies we have the choice of listening - freedom of listening, is the doctrine's name."

And to the matter of praying for peace, as free-born citizens of this great republic, we delegate to our executive branch the power to declare war. Go look, but there's not one word giving the president the power to declare peace. Furthermore, some of the world's fiercest battles were fought under the name of holy wars. Charlemagne, or maybe it was King Charles II, packed a big-bladed sword decorated by a gold cross on the handle. Think those guys would have allowed for prayers for peace, or a ban on sidearms in the chapel? Most certainly not. Perhaps his highness might have prayed for peace in the case of the queen's temperament, however, that's a private matter.

But as I complained to the pastor, the habit of gossip is too entrenched to give up for a whole week. Before the dial system, we shared a party line among seven ranches. Every morning a couple of the women opened a three-hour conversation over the wire. Their names were "Jessie" and "Lou Ann". Mother allowed me to monitor the session on Saturdays to see if listening on the telephone improved my attention span for Monday's classes. This was the only homework for which I showed the slightest aptitude, so the dialogue remains vivid.

The conversations went like this: A few coughs and Jessie would ask Lou how she was feeling.

Lou: "I didn't close my eyes all night. Doctor Deal gave me some medicine, but it's so strong, I am afraid I might spill it and burn my skin. Remember what happened to Ester when Doctor Deal gave her the same medicine I'm taking? Her tongue turned black as coal. Remember Louise told us it was too bad Ester couldn't smear some of that medicine on her scalp and turn her hair black."

Jessie: "Golly Moses, Lou, are you gonna be all right to come to my bridge party Wednesday afternoon? You are right. Ester's hair did turn black after she started having it done in Angelo."

Lou: I reckon so, Jessie. Have you decided yet whether to serve toast or biscuits under your chicken ala king? You make the best toast. I always am so jealous of your toast. Do you buy your bread in San Angelo?

Jessie: "Lands sake, Lou, I'd give anything to be able to fix chicken ala king as good as you can. By the way, did you hear what Lucille Garrett said the other morning at the post office to Glad when she picked up her baby chickens from Sear's Roebuck? I can't tell you over the phone, but I bet you can guess if you'll think what your hubby tracks in from the barn."

Coming from that background, the habit to gossip is too instilled to break. The whole news network reeks of scandals. Big-timers in Washington and Hollywood titillate the imagination of the ones of us stranded in the provinces. I don't know understand why anyone would be so unreasonable as to go so hard against human nature.

January 26,1996

Livestock journals often rerun old photographs of show cattle from the stockshows of yore, proving how much cattle have changed over the years. Out in the pastures, no pictures are needed.

Sterile flies to stop the screwworm menace and bountiful sacked goods to introduce chronic lethargy made a dramatic difference in the species. Where once wild old sisters tore off into the brush, teaching their calves to flee at the sound of horsemen or the swish of a lariat, they now stand at tailgates bawling a pitiful tune, identical to the symptoms for deep internal miseries.

I stare in absolute disbelief at the indifference the modern-day cow shows to a calf cut off across the fence. In other times, only ranches having bull wire fences held mothers away from their babies.

Gentle cattle were a novelty. The notion that cowboys sat up on the top rail of corrals must have originated from horned cattle putting the men on the fence. Around the works of those days, quite a number of horses were gored and lots of hombres wearing heavy boots and big spurs discovered bursts of speed hitherto unknown among mounted men. But the bonding of the cow brutes to the feed sack and end of the trauma of doctoring cattle on the range ended those traits.

The newsletter for the Texas and Southwest Cattle Raiser's Association revealed a new breakthrough in animal husbandry not too long ago, reporting how a Colorado research station discovered that cattle having cow licks above their eyes had calm dispositions. The station concluded cattle and horse breeders might use this guideline to breed gentle animals.

The first thing I did was to check for cow licks in our bulls. All of the old ones had bushy brows and pronounced tufts of hair, interspersed with patches worn off from fighting and rubbing against trees to scratch for lice. The way better papered bull dealers shave the bulls' heads for sales to make them pretty, I am unsure whether regrowth comes back as a "lick," or a big swath of coarse hair. Generous handouts of range cubes also rules out assuring an animal is docile. During the winter season, a strong pickup horn and a full feed box make a roundup crew. Telling whether a cow is wild after she has been on feed a few days is kind of like analyzing the patients' personalities coming out of dentist offices. Full of laughing gases and shot up on opiates, the likes of the Wild Man from Borneo could gentle down to a manageable patient.

The best case was a heifer-breeding ox I bought in the fall whose behavior indicates unhappy childhood experiences. He displays a vigorous distrust of man, either in a seated position behind a steering wheel or placed behind the saddle horn. He has a full-grown cow lick, but analyzing his brow has to be done by shooting off his tailhead as he takes off for the brushy draw north of the windmill.

Were he the first low birthweight bull to come on the ranch, the tendency to escape might be linked to birth size, or traced back to a strain of racing bulls. The notion is not unreasonable. Houdini, the greatest of escape artists, was such a small baby that he slipped through the bars of his crib before he was weaned, without ever hanging a safety pin or dropping his diaper. The maternity ward nurses also kept a close eye on Mrs. Houdini to be sure she didn't pull a fast one, like she had tried once before to leave her first kid at the hospital. The fact no baby pictures of Houdini exist to prove or disapprove he had a cow lick doesn't mean a thing. Until color film began to gloss up the cherub's features and hide the mother's disappointment, lots of shots of mom and babe disappeared, especially those of red-headed boys.

We will have to wait to spring to test the cow lick theory. Once the cows slick off from the fresh greenery and the yearlings find new life, we should be able to determine the validity of the research. The only bull rider I know is retired and cuts hair over in San Angelo, making him a good prospect to discuss cow licks. But he stays so outmatched, trying to keep four year-old boys stuck in his chair, I haven't the heart to ask him for an interview.

The next break will be to watch the prodigy of the snuffy heifer bull. They might be just the guinea pig the research station needs to complete their case ...

February 1,1996

Seven unpapered aliens passed north of the ranch on the coldest day we were to have in December. They walked 10 days before taking a chance of asking for food and shelter. The leader knew the ranch country, but found the people gone who once fed the southern foot soldiers.

Over three years have passed since a Mexican stopped at our outfit. From time to time the Border Patrol at Del Rio report mass crossing of illegal aliens, however, the trails across country changed after employment became against the law. In the 1950s and on to the next decades, at least 50 or 60 men a month passed down the railroad by the ranch looking for work. The big drouths in Mexico brought such heavy influxes in the 1960s, the kitchen at the Old Ranch often used 50 pounds of flour a week supplying the transients meals and tortillas for their lunches.

The blame for my yard fence toppling over and the flower beds dying off has been waiting for the immigration laws to change. The heavy office load of running a bitterweed sheep and a sometime cow and calf operation destroys the muscles necessary to dig or bend over on the ground. Sitting at a desk subtracting feed bills, adding on insurance premiums, and deducting taxes discourages doing manual work and encourages rocking in a recliner in front of the Wheel of Fortune show on the TV channel.

Jerking the unpapered guys away from us so quick didn't give us time to loosen up enough to dig postholes or shoe horses. Indoor gym equipment flexes the body, the TV advertisements claim, but who wants to be a rubber man unable to hold himself erect? Also, the male physique develops differently than females. The first part of my walks in Mertzon lead past the teacherage of the school district. The other day I watched a young mother scoop up a kid on her hip in the street and pick up six pecans before she made it back to her front door. Had her husband bent over that deep carrying a 30 pound child to pick up a pecan, the stars swimming in front of his eyes would look like the screen on a rocket ship headed for the moon.

The objections to working wets are dim in my memory. I do recall a worthy rising in the House to declaim that prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens meant ruination to every mom and pop operation in America. His name is lost in the passage of time. Nevertheless, I suspect the "mom" he referred to was his wife over in Georgetown, working a wet Mexican maid and cook to keep from straining her back pushing a vacuum cleaner, or shoving a pack of mean kids out in the backyard to play. And the ruination part was going to be the lifting of "pop's" scalp if he and his colleagues took away her help.

We were so frantic repairing the outside fences using a wet crew of men before the law passed, half the mom and pop operations in Texas may have closed without us being aware of them. About the only contact with the outside world then was buying camp groceries and mailing money off to Mexico.

I think when the "pop" end of this operation became threatened was the first shearing season the captain failed to have enough extra help to put up the wool, and we were too short-handed to round up the sheep. I don't remember "ruination" being the key word. I think "damnation" was in the forefront.

After the law became effective, all the unpapered action centered on construction sites and minimum wages around the hotels and restaurants. This was to be my last opportunity to speak Spanish in the U.S. Several times, I asked bus boys for tips on cabs, or food places. Sheratons and Marriots must not be such a bane to the country's immigration balance as ranchers and farmers are.

Politicians still blab about closing the borders. New proposals are even more strict than old ones. The raises Congress granted themselves cover other sources for nannies and cooks. All the worthies have to guard against on the domestic scene is some nosy newspaper scribe discovering a missing social security payment on $50 worth of babysitting.

No new laws need to be passed on my account. The best bunkhouse burned down six years ago and the one other shack is too far gone to house anything but mice and termites. Old saddles hanging in the shed are half-rigged, and maybe one extra bridle remains.

I miss sitting out in the yard on a summer evening talking to those little guys from Monclova and Allende. Before Christmas, a friend invited me over to meet his guests from Mexico. How good it felt to share the warmth and humor of a forbidden culture...

February 8,1996

The least known unsolved mystery around Mertzon was one reported once before of my son John being hijacked of his third grade report card on a three-block walk to the house. The robbery became a serial-type crime. Several semesters into college passed before a grade report appeared again bearing his name. Do understand the boys walked home from school across several vacant lots of cedar bushes thick enough to hide a robber gang, but the report card case was never solved.

One other long-standing mystery showed a big break in 1995. The mystery goes back to right at the end of the drouth of the 1950s. Two neighbors over on the east side of the shortgrass country attended an Angora goat sale in Central Texas. Things looked better for all phases of the hair and curved horn business. Spring kid hair sales had risen a tad, and stocker nannies showed slight demand for the first time in six years. Drouth-stricken ranges were yet to recover, but the smallest glimmer of hope sends a herder bounding off, thinking in his mind: "A BOOM IS ON!, A BOOM IS ON!"

These two gentleman operated some of the best goat country around. For sure, they didn't want to come in the game too late for the bargains. Consignors to the sale provided big platters of barbecue and a generous supply of cold keg beer to relieve the July heat of the sale barn. Waiters passed through the crowd keeping the glasses full. Be a hardhearted person indeed to criticize a couple of herders for feeling festive, being so close to the beginning of a big boom.

The auctioneer was a young ambitious fellow who brought the crowd under a spell. Mighty prices of as much as $200 per head opened the offerings. Understand, every hoof sold after the first year or so of the Big Drouth went for packer prices, whatever the species. These goats were selling by the head and as high as 60 bucks for a good sire. Caught in the frenzy of the chant of the ring, our two subjects bought three billies apiece. Sales programs are made of slick paper easy to blur under a ballpoint, and our men sat far enough away from ringside to allow for confusion. The light was also less than adequate in the auction lobby by the time the last keg floated, so in a spirit of grand camaraderie, they split the cost of the six billies and took a joint receipt back to the ranch.

Much later under the moon and a flashlight, they sorted the billies on the trailer and cut out three head. The goats had horn tatoos, but like I said, notations on the sales catalogues were blurred and hard to read under the flashlight. Other than truckers, few people have legged a billy goat off a trailer in darkness, but if you have, I feel sure you agree the slightest indisposition from liquid refreshments makes inspecting horn tatoos and eartags very tedious. The next day the two goat buyers stayed at the ranch and the goats probably stayed penned until late afternoon. No efforts were made to straighten out the nocturnal division.

Over the years, I was to hear the story so many times that I began to fill in missing parts, like: "and next you would get out and open the bumper gates," or " wait, you are forgetting the part about dropping the flashlight in the water trough."

But the more the tale was told, the more the herder I knew best began to suspect he might have been cheated. In 1970, he pastured goats joining the Old Ranch. We had a lot of dealings throwing his nannies and kids back across the fence. I think I must have heard the whole story six times a year for over 10 years. Now and then I'd see the other party, but he was working on bigger deals than sorting six head of billy goats.

The loss or the gain must have been inconsequential as they recovered from the drouth and went through a couple of more dry spells without losing their lands or their minds. Over Christmas, I met my main informer at the grocery store. We talked until folks, lapping the store for a second time, began to scowl at us for blocking off a major passageway.

On the way to the ranch, I realized he didn't retell the billy goat story. Slowly, slowly an item popped up. Last spring, his consignment of kid hair topped the market. The dilemma now is to decide whether to tip the other guy off that he must have taken the bad end of the long-ago midnight goat work...

February 15,1996

Federal regulations now require the same hour and a half check-in for domestic flights as for foreign connections. Agents make the deal more sinister by inquiring whether the passenger is carrying any packages for strangers.

By the time I make an hour's drive from the ranch to the San Angelo terminal to wait 90 minutes more, I am so jumpy that strangers avoid my company. Also, as overloaded as I go packing enough gear to walk and wade in the jungle on a trip, I can't address the subject of extra packages, much less carry one.

Safety rode heavy on my mind, too, when I began planning the trip to Peru in January. State Department advisories classify travel as dangerous into Peru. Noonday newscasters delight in recounting the robberies and hijackings north of Lima, one of the places I was headed. The reason for the State Department's precaution is because so many flights to South America originate in Miami. Our foreign services knows if you happen to step outside for a smoke exposed to Miami traffic, you might take your last drag to the tune of a sniper's bullet.

Four or five years ago after the German tourist was shot, the Miami terminal was as quiet as the fairgrounds in San Angelo a couple of days after the stock show ends. Concourses turned into cavernous passageways; hot dog salesmen had to be awakened to fill the buns. The gate areas were lonelier than being off in the pasture at the ranch.

But passing through Miami gives you a head start to adjusting to the South American republics. Spanish custom and language dominates the scene. All the Cuban exiles must launch their careers there. The only English the skycaps speak is "$5 a bag," and, "My gosh, lady, this bag is heavy!"

I made my way around the indifferent service for gringos by choosing the dominant race as table mates. Nobody is going to ignore you accompanied by a mother with three or four children diving off the stools and crawling under chairs. One episode cost three ice cream cones and a big blob of chocolate on my pant's leg, nevertheless, I was able to have a cup of coffee and a refill by sitting next to a big family.

Faucett, the national airline of Peru, only offers one flight a week to Iquitos to connect to my destination on a river boat to go up the Amazon. So I needed to be confirming the next flight and meeting a friend of mine from up on the north part of the Florida Peninsula, instead of drinking coffee in an out of control coffee bar. I was going to have him paged, but Harry Pearson translates so poorly into Spanish, I was afraid I'd summon the wrong hombre and have to hire a translator to work from English to Spanish to Cuban dialect to Haitian patois.

Harry made our deal direct with the outfitters in Peru and saved us a lot of dough. He crosses the equator over a dozen times a year. He flies so much his head is beginning take on the same shape as an airline pillow. Mosquito bites break the pattern of the no-see-um welts on his neckline. He keeps his hands cut and his toenails smashed from wearing diving equipment. His dark glasses reflect cathedral steeples and the peaks of pyramids wherever he looks. I suppose playing tennis at home and writing me every week are the calmest of his pursuits. I never have seen his backhand on the courts, but the postage on his letters makes the program at a stamp collector's club seem dull.

Far from being the competent traveler Harry is, about the time I overcome my provincial bearings, the trip is over. All those smart city guys turning up the cuffs of their white shirts and smiling at the stewardesses is so alien to ranch life, I look the other way. Static electricity off the upholstery causes my shirttail to come out in the back and blouse in the front. The same charges send my cow lick and forelocks flying amiss; smoke from the other section of the plane makes my sinuses drain so bad, my drawl turns into a croaky hillbilly twang.

The lady at the Faucett desk didn't ask what I was carrying on board. The straps and harness from the packs and cases covering my chest probably made her wonder how I was able to carry what I had. She said, "Un Americano, un Senior Pearson, busca para usted." I'd of understood her better if she had raised her head when she gave the message. I did understand the plane was full. I wanted to tell her about the time Harry and I measured Mt. McKinely up in Alaska from a merit badge test we learned in the Boy Scouts using shadows, but she seemed to be distracted by the big crowds of people ...

February 22,1996

At the ranch the names lack meaning - Peru, Iquitos, Amazon, Cusco and Lima. But leaving a 747 to enter a rusty tin roofed, open air terminal housing customs for a major South American power sets the stage for new ground.

The tropics mean excesses to me. A jump-off into dark rums and black tobacco and sheet iron too hot to touch in the middle of the day. A place of raging jungle fevers and insidious fungus; a way to hide out from the rigid laws of the outside world. Peru doesn't require a visa for U.S. citizens. Important jefes inspected the first waves of baggage; however, as the lines lengthened, we were waved on to the final stamping of passports. Outside, the only taxicabs were motorcycles with a back seat to fit a couple of people. Two decrepit school buses belonging to the principal outfitters picked up the main body of Americans.

Iquitos is an island city some 300 feet above sea level. There are no roads, only boats and airplanes for transportation. We hit town in the midst of the big Saturday night celebrations. Much like the cantina scene in Mexico, the din of the revelers and the milling of their drunken dancing rose above the sound of the creaky old bus.

At breakfast, an American biologist from an amphibian research facility on the Amazon said: "On my first visit 30 years ago, Iquitos claimed 10,000 people. The next decade numbers rose to 40,000, laying the foundation for the present size of 400,000. River people," he told us, "use a plant growing wild in the jungle for birth control; however, like other parts of the world, religion creates a problem."

Demography is a sensitive topic around a father of eight children, so I changed the subject by introducing my traveling companion, Harry Pearson, as a professional engineer and my personal navigator on the river trip, leaving in a few hours. Like a lot of doctors of this and that, who spend hours rating the strength of frog legs against the resiliency of lily pads, he wasn't interested in our plans or Harry's engineering career. Harry was in a rush to go exchange money before the black market traders became too busy selling drugs. The doctor left without saying goodbye.

Sunday was quiet until we reached the main plaza. On the far side, four platoons of military and an honor guard were standing at parade rest in full dress uniform. Dignitaries milled around a microphone, but didn't speak a word. All of sudden, the troops came to attention and marched off swinging their arms in unison in a silent goose step cadence. A civilian tested the sound system, "Uno, dos, tres;" the flags remained folded and pressed tight against the chests of the honor guards. I figure the ceremony was a silent tribute to an unknown soldier and fair warning for a gringo not to go around asking questions in a plaza under guard of an army packing automatic rifles.

We boarded the boat at noon. The craft accommodates 16 passengers and nine crew members. Only six clients showed up, all Americans. Harry talked the captain into giving us an extra cabin. All those shots required for foreign travel cause the nasal passages to restrict in the same way a slide works on a trombone. So Harry was able to throw a lot of feeling into asking for a bunk away from my chemically induced snoring.

Boats sailing the tributaries of the Amazon are of modest standards. Baths are shared; 12-inch fans stir the humid air in the cabins. All secondary water comes direct from the river. Compared to the rusty tubs offered in the Galapagos Islands, the "Discover" was a luxury liner.

Harry knew the cook from a previous trip down river. Her reputation is good. Basic supplies come on board at the local market in Iquitos. Chicken and eggs are bartered from the villagers for cigarettes and T-shirts. Also, fruits from the jungle, like papaya, coconut and bananas, are supplied by the natives.

River sailing is a hard life, especially on the Equator. The hands become strong from rubbing on repellent and sun screen. Climbing up and down off the top bunk builds the shoulder muscles, and wading in the slush of the jungle strengthens the calves and ankles. Every time we crossed improvised log bridges or narrow gang planks, the crew members stopped to watch. Nimble-footed porters, unloading cargo off boats, were particularly interested in seeing me clamber up muddy banks that they descend carrying 12 bricks or two stalks of bananas tied to a sling.

Machismo curses the young man. I'd accept the lifeline thrown by an old granny if it'd take me across a bad place. Lots of times when I was looking through my binoculars, I was actually steadying myself, hoping I didn't slip off at the next crossing ...

March 7,1996

By midweek on the January Amazon trip, the roster dropped to four of us, a private charter, so to speak. As mentioned, "The Discoverer" was equipped to serve 16 passengers. So our luck ran high on sharing the bathrooms and receiving extra attention on the excursions out in the jungle under the privilege of a small group. Single supplement charges of a trip are as much as 50 percent higher than the per person double rate. I was delighted to be traveling in a private cabin and paying the price agreed for sharing a berth.

Docking on the big river drew the natives from the forest, especially children. One of the mornings, a small girl in a bright yellow dress came down to the banks to fetch water in a black tea kettle and a galvanized bucket. She negotiated the muddy clay bank as competently as a school girl crossing the playground. Up on the knoll, her mother stood in a soiled kimono thing, as forlorn as if life had finally brought her down.

I remembered a man who stayed out of cigarettes abroad. Every time he saw a person in pain, he'd pitch them a pack. "Tobacco in all its horrors, lends comfort to the poor," he'd say. Once in the India, he nearly perished from a self-induced nicotine fit.

No old people ever appeared. Unlike southeastern Asia, toothless wretches weren't seen sitting on a mat, mortaring betel nuts to feed their habit. South Americans do chew cocoa leaves spiked by a caustic lime of ground shells, but symptoms of degeneration are hard to catch. Upriver, a boy fishing from a canoe reeled in two oil drums lashed together. However, the drums turned out to be refined cocaine worth millions of dollars and a big disappointment to the boy's family, who hoped he had found fuel for their lamps. Jails overflow with drug dealers and poppy farmers in Peru, we were told. To alleviate the problem, the Peruvian Air Force bombs any farm they spot in the jungle. The guide said, "if it is convenient, the crew checks later on to see whether the crop was corn or poppies."

The sailors and the villagers showed a strong attachment. The visits are not staged. Yet, the communities have no money, so they have to believe a boatload of souvenir hunters might float in some day. At one docking, a lad showed up carrying an Anaconda four feet long around his neck, surely not by happenstance. Further along, a family displayed a prehistoric turtle that looked like a smashed salamander. The Spanish name for the turtle is mara mara. Close as the book comes is an Amazon River turtle. He should be called "a side neck" because of the way he brings his pointed head under his shell horizontally, instead of vertically. These impromptu snake and turtle shows are interesting, nevertheless, tourism destroys cultures by handing out coins and candies to kids, turning them into beggars, and later on thieves.

One outpost was a favored trading stop. Before we landed, the cloths had been spread displaying handmade jewelry, decorated by porpoise teeth and porcupine quills, guaranteed to throw a customs officer into a rage over importing natural artifacts. Harry Pearson, my travel partner, knew ahead of time to bring along T-shirts they call "polo". The other two passengers, a mother and son duo, must have raided a New Jersey discount store for trade booty. They had packets of sacking needles, tins of fish hooks, and kits of hand tools I'd like to have to use at the ranch. But the Scout knife I carry on trips wasn't sharp enough to carve a monkey's head, or skin out a bullfrog to stuff for a mantlepiece, or I'd have whipped up an offering.

The woman wanted to trade a handsaw for a blow gun eight feet long, adorned by two four-inch boar's tusks to bring to her grandson. I suppose granny's intent was to teach him to shoot steel arrows across the swimming pool in the park and liven up the homeless element sleeping on benches. Her chrome handsaw in a hard leather case was perfect to tip a cow's horns. She asked whether the blow gun qualified as a weapon under U.S. Custom laws and the restrictions on importing wild boar tusks. I assured her if she'd put a few fishhooks in her hat, mount a casting reel on the blow gun, and stick red and white corks on the tusks, she'd pass through customs smoother than the famous Biblical story of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea.

Harry agreed to take four paperback books and a travel pillow for his shirts to give the blow gun trader for the saw. However, the American backed out when the lady refused to include a quiver of steel points on the deal. I sure wanted to bring back the saw as a souvenir to show those herders around Mertzon the bounties of travel...

March 14,1996

Maps of the Amazon trace close to 3000 miles of meandering stream. The guide on the riverboat in January sold me a detailed map of our trip, colored in by his wife and kids, for 10 bucks.

National Geographic's map shows the Rio Maranon and the Rio Ucayali being the largest rivers running into the Amazon above Iquitos. My travel partner, Harry Pearson, contended the headwater was way high in the Andes. I maintained the river headed at the junction of the Maranon and the Ucayali.

The disagreement made a lot of sense sailing along in an expanse of water so wide, the treetops on shore were barely visible under a powerful set of binoculars. Harry said, "I know I am correct, because The National Geographic carried a story of a rafting expedition starting at a trickle high in the Andes to float all the way down to the Atlantic side of Brazil."

Right then, he lost. I countered by a run of logic that'd have turned the dynamic John Calhoun and Henry Clay debate into a cheap sidewalk argument by a couple of loafers: "If the National Geographic Society is so smart," I retorted," then how come they spell 'Mertzon' with an 's' instead of 'z' on my copy's label?"

And computer error isn't an excuse, I went on to say. "The first thing my Uncle Goat Whiskers did when he came back from college in 1929 was join the National Geographic Society, and their circulation department had 40 years to learn to spell Mertzon right."

One attraction of the trip was watching for pink dolphins. Dolphins roll and disappear fast in the flood waters. After a couple of swims in the river and a few cold showers in river water pumped aboard the boat, pink dolphins look commonplace as your skin and hair change to the same hue. Shaving in a lavatory full of cold muddy water didn't take lather. I'd just mud up my whiskers and scrape until my skin showed through the pack.

The guide told us also not to worry about piranhas attacking on a swim, unless we became wounded and bleeding from a crocodile's bite. As rusty as our skins became, the piranhas and the crocodiles probably thought we were logs floating in the river, instead of swimmers.

Jungle people believe dolphins, pink or grey ones, are spirits. At one place, the villagers were mighty upset over a dolphin killed by their net. Later on a walk, Harry and I found the dolphin's teeth, lying close to the river by a post. We didn't have to be told to respect the people's customs. Firearms are illegal in Peru, however, a puff of air through a blow gun can sink an arrow several inches into a meddling gringo's short rib.

We chugged along for days going upstream, but the current downstream sped us back toward Iqiutos. One night on the return trip, we tied up at Nauta, a town of some 3000 citizens. Over a hundred people gathered on the shadowed plaza, staring at the only TV set in town. Stores looked like trading posts in the old-time island movies. Wooden kegs of rice and big burlap sacks of potatoes covered the floors. Across the square, a vulture roosted on a cross on the church's steeple, validating the third world scene. On the corner, a saloon overflowed into the street with rowdy drunks, fueled by a raw rum distilled a short distance up the river and a brandy called "pisco" that ignites the revelers into high flame.

Harry and I shopped for spices and herbs ground into medicines from sidewalk stands. Folk medicine is no joke in Peru. For example, a German doctor, researching jungle plants, claims the bark off the catclaw vine cures some kinds of cancer. Druggists in Iquitos had the German's medicine for sale, as did the one in Nauta. Called "una de gato," the vine is not the same plant we have in Texas.

Harry stocked up on malaria pills for 25 cents a tablet, some $4 a pill cheaper than stateside. I bought a packet of anato seasoning at about a 1000 percent discount over a U.S. source. Street lighting came from the windows and doors of the small stalls and shops. Flute music, Andean in tune, whistled from the bar. The biggest danger was stepping in a pothole on the dark sidewalks.

The landing back at Iquitos coincided with the docking of the other four boats the outfitter runs. Departure was as impersonal as leaving a ferry boat. Harry rushed to catch a plane home and I was booked in a downtown hotel to continue the trip the next day. We parted without saying goodbye. To this day, the question on the headwater of the Amazon is unsettled.

March 21,1996

The next leg of the winter trip to Peru meant over-nighting in Iquitos and arising at five a.m. to take the plane to Cusco high in the Andes. Part of the layover was needed to shift the winter weight gear to my backpack and store the mud-splattered jungle clothes in a plastic sack in my big suitcase.

The flight is a bargain. It flies over 600 miles of jungle and mountains, gains 11,000 feet in altitude and shows a drop of 40 degrees in temperature.

Repacking to visit a different climate allows time to reflect on all the stuff brought from home. Long sleeved J.C. Penney chambray work shirts are the most versatile clothing I've ever worn for the Sierras, or the equator. The last ones I bought cost 17 bucks, but I always get stung by San Angelo merchants. Khaki cargo pants and combinations of long wool and ankle cotton socks increase the range of comfort. A bandanna handkerchief and a pair cotton gloves take little space and make a cold train ride a lot more comfortable.

No dress costume I know of travels better than a long sleeved sweater and a bow tie knotted around the collar of a clean shirt. Bow ties deflect attention from wrinkled pants and scuffed shoes. Also, a cravat will catch 50 times more gravy specks than a bow tie will.

Umbrellas or raincoats are needed for wet climates. But umbrellas can't be made into a pillow or blanket, so a raincoat is the best choice. An old hand showed me how to roll a pair of rubber boots as small as a pair of sneakers. In arctic tundra and in jungle swamps, rubber boots are like having an ace bandage for a sprained ankle.

Travelers never complain of carrying too much insect repellent. During black fly season, I prefer a well balanced side-by-side, Parker 20 gauge shotgun, loaded in number six shot, but repellent having deet in the formula will make black flies drowsy enough to be outrun on dry ground. On the Equator or on mountain slopes, few people's skins are dark enough to do without high index sunscreen. I sometimes feel like throwing half of my things overboard, but corner drug stores can be mighty scarce in the world's outposts.

I was glad I brought along a set of heavy clothes, because cold mountain rain fell in Cusco the morning we landed. Over in the corner of the claim area, the airline served hot mate' (mah-tay) and coca leaf tea, the local remedy for altitude sickness. The exertion of lifting a Dixie cup is noticeable in such thin air. Tourists claim the coca leaves, the mother plant of cocaine, makes them giddy; however, chamomile tea and milk toast pack a pretty good jolt at 11,000 feet above sea level.

Four American ladies attracted such a swarm of peddlers between the terminal and the hotel van, the whole parking lot was blocked by Indians trying to reach them. Cusco was the ancient capital of the Incas, but these were the Morochuchos seen in travel ads in bright wool shawls and quaint hats. The ones in travel brochures, however, had been sponged off a bit more in soapy water than these street seasoned "Indios." Great actors they are, one minute looking pitiful, and the next overflowing in gratitude from having swindled a tourist into paying six times what a sweater cost downtown.

A huge fireplace blazed with piñon logs in the lobby of the hotel. More tea was served. I stored my big bag and readied my backpack to make the train ride up to the ruins of Machu Picchu. We had been warned the last part of the ascent to the ruins was closed by a rock slide. We were advised to bring only necessities for two nights.

I flinched watching the lady shoppers dragging Pullman suitcases of monstrous proportions, bulging with curios the weight of the hardware section of a Walmart store. The last Noelke to be a porter worked at a German castle in the 17th Century. Uncle Otto's genes are weak. Not one of his descendants is inclined to be a pack animal. On cold mornings, if I don't watch slipping the straps of the backpack on, I'll buck the whole thing off knowing full well what it is.

The choice had been whether to catch the train at Cusco for Machu Picchu, or allow time to travel up the Valle De Sangre by coach to the station at the old Inca town of Ollantytombo. I chose the latter.

The van went through passes over 12,000 feet high looking down into irrigated valleys of lush fields. Thin cattle, staked to the rails, grazed the railroad right-of-way. I am certain the tribes had the train schedules memorized. From what I know of cranky claim agents and free grazing privileges from living on the Santa Fe line, a stake rope would be hard to explain around a dead cow's neck.

March 28,1996

The first night from Cusco, the feed company calendar peeled off my notebook, ending contact with the days of the month. So, all I recorded was two days of January which were spent traveling up to the ruins of Machu Picchu, the highlight of most trips to Peru.

On one of those days, we walked through the old Inca town of Ollantaytambo. Hogs, chickens, goats and Indians all live together. Mountain water flowed down the same trenches the Incas used to supply their houses. Unshelled yellow corn stood in piles right inside the doorways; potatoes, dehydrated by being frozen underground in the winter, hung in sacks out of reach of the animals. The aura is of an ancient village excavated from under volcanic ash, inhabited once again by people willing to live under aboriginal circumstances.

Track conditions prohibited looking off into the houses. Cobblestone streets used as pig runs, goat trails and chicken promenades require constant vigilance to engage the traction of rubber soled shoes, not to mention the obvious indelicacy of the residue of the town's menagerie. On one turn, a long-nosed sow trailing her pigs seized the right of way. A lady, who had demanded to see inside one of the houses and been refused, inhaled loud enough to be heard above the pigs squealing and the sow grunting as they charged underfoot. We might have not been toe dancers, but we sure did a close copy of one, rising and pressing our bodies against the walls.

It isn't known why the Spanish discovered Ollantaytambo but failed to find the city of Machu Picchu some 65 miles away. A flagstone highway wound along the Sierras from Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu. Many of the Inca captives defected to save their lives, yet did not reveal the whereabouts of the place. Augustine monks wrote of a land area called "piccho." Yet, the steep-walled canyons of raging Urubamba River and the 8000 foot altitude of the saddle the ruins rest in must have protected the secret from the conquistadors. It was to be an American, Hiram Bingham, who found Machu Picchu in 1911. He is the one who opened the place to the world.

All I can contribute is that as a visit unfolds to the magnificent ruins, surrounded by peaks reaching 20,000 feet in height, Machu Picchu becomes an illusion — the illusion once projected by a Jungle Jim in a Saturday matinee, hacking his way out into a forbidden city of treasures.

And into a layman's mind comes these thoughts: "Sure, this was the temple and this was the altar and this is an Andean condor carved in the face of a gray stone. No doubt a stubby rock arc placed alone on a pedestal of stone, aligns the rays of the June solstice in a stunning feat of astronomy that scholars say is within two degrees of being perfect."

And the guide adds: "800 to 1000 people populated the city for 80 years. Special people," she intones, "Inca priests and perhaps virgins to be sacrificed to the gods."

One thing for sure, a day trip to Machu Picchu means an eight-hour roundtrip train ride from Cusco, plus a 7000-foot ascent on a slick dirt road by bus to where the avalanche blocks the road, and then a 1000-foot climb up to the hotel and the gate to the ruins. Day visitors spend one hour and a half touring the ruins. The rest of their time is lunch under a big tin-roofed buffet and the descent by foot and bus back to the train.

I took the other choice and stayed at the one hotel. At the rockslide, I declined 14 offers by Indian kids to carry my pack on up to the top. Portage is negotiable and competition keen; however, my back has been strong since I came under Medicare. I hated packing the extra weight, but despise arguing with a pint-sized kid in my language and on his wage scale about a two or three-dollar deal.

The common excuse for not hiring the people is it spoils them to have money. Meaning, I suppose, they are happier foraging for grubworms and wild berries than they are eating meat and potatoes. The truth is, tourists are spoiled, and later on people dealing in tourism become soured and misbehave as badly as the tourists. Once I reached the hotel's porch, I shed the pack and sat drinking a Coke at ringside. The little boys shouted, "Ten dollars, lady; 20 dollars, mister!" The loudest exchange was by a boy waving a dollar bill and a coin, all but screaming his displeasure at carrying an 80-pound suitcase and 20 pounds of cosmetic bag for a buck twenty-five. His client whirled and told the Spanish speaking security guard in English: "Daddy taught me one dollar and twenty five cents was the proper tip for the dray, or a porter." The guard agreed: he ordered the boy to take his money and go home.

By two p.m., the day people were gone. Just a few of us wandered about the ruins. Rains drove me under a thatched shelter. Water gurgled off the aqueduct. On the floor of the hut, prints of so many feet had stirred up flecks of ashes from another time.

April 4,1996

Trips overseas end lots of the time in a pre-dawn scramble to transfer to the airport to meet the two-hour advance check-in requirement for international flights. Folks wanting to leave four hours ahead of schedule are paired with the ones willing to dawdle around until the plane is loading to check their last piece of luggage. The fast getaway set is easy to spot. They chug-a-lug scalding coffee and bolt down cold rolls, setting off a charge of gastric gases unknown outside the rooms of antacid labs. Their mates,(and the fact "the fast" marry "the slow" is an irrevocable law of unions) chat across the tables and invariably have to go back to the room at the last moment.

Foreign hotels serve early breakfast as a matter of course. Tour groups crowd the dining rooms, assured by their leaders all food and services are covered, unaware that breakfast comes in the price of the room. Drowsy waiters fumble for orders in a maze of lingual difficulties. Imperious travelers order three- minute eggs and receive cold toast; wiser heads slip a dollar bill by their plate and enjoy extra juice and the missing orders of soft cooked eggs.

To leave Peru from Cusco in February took a stopover in Lima to clear customs. Connections back to the States were close, so airline personnel helped filling in forms and photocopying the front pages of the passports for Immigration. Drug detection dogs, being harder to bribe than man, caused more delay going over the luggage. And to add to the confusion, the loudspeaker system blared commingled static and Spanish warnings of thieves and smugglers.

The main danger is crossing and recrossing the Andes, not pickpockets or drug smugglers on the ground. Slick fingered artists aren't made as threatening as riding a 727 into an Andean peak. The copilot on one flight told me the airlines weren't the only choice for domestic travel in Peru. The Air Force sells tickets on Russian-built planes he described as being "as ponderous as people's idea of a Cossack soldier." The planes ride on huge tires, he said, "and the pilot might swoop down and strafe a drug hideout on the way from city to city." Sounded like an excellent way to forget lost baggage claims and bad airline food. According to the copilot, no load limits were imposed and parachutes often served for extra seats.

Once in Miami, I kept watching in the customs check for the four ladies who controlled the souvenir market in Peru for the past 14 days. I was expecting to see a dog rear up on his hind legs and howl from the odor of a cocoa leaf tea bag, or an inspector to kick off the alarm over an eight-foot blow gun sheathed in a fishing rod case, or a wild boar's tusk fashioned into a candlestick holder or a watchfob. But the foursome moved through as smooth as is possible packing 400 pounds of luggage, plus the weight of a guilty conscience for cheating the government on the customs declaration.

Before the road hardened me, I used to care whether people purchased matching pairs of cannon balls bound by a rusty chain, or bought 10 sacks of potting soil 5000 miles away from home at a big bargain. But waiting on drafty busses, delayed by obsessed shoppers, became so boring that I started helping people select clocks mounted in sharks' mouths and armadillo shells made into baby bassinets.

If the rain forests and the atmosphere were endangered, I reasoned, then why not exhaust the inventories of the knickknack makers and curio shops in big sweeps of drawn Visa cards and fast-dry traveler's checks. I realized in our country garage sales recycle the world's treasures. Nevertheless, were the chain of yardside tables ever broken by a revival of good taste, a renaissance, so to speak, this major force in our economy might come to a standstill. In time, the fireplace mantles of America's homes would cease to be eyesores and our children would not mind inviting friends home after vacation time.

The customs officers waved people on and few bags were opened for inspection. The Immigration and Naturalization Service promises to soon have a new pass card for frequent travelers to verify identity by inserting your hand in a computerized scanner connected to a printer that issues entry documents. As bad a shape as people are coming home off vacations, the scanner will need to be a quiet machine, or it might set off a stampede the first time it buzzes by an old boy escorting his wife home from the biggest spending spree of her lifetime ...

April 11,1996

A letter from ranch people turned up in a stack of my family's pictures last week. "Turned back up" is more accurate. The body of the two letters, one from Ferdinand Noelke, the other from Patty Noelke Murphey, said the same thing: "everybody is feeding their sheep and cattle. Nobody expects to mark a good crop. The winds blow day and night. Uncle Tom says to tell you he has a bad cold."

Postmark on the envelope is Barnhart, Texas, dated March 22, 1916. At posting, Aunt Patty was a young woman, but great-grandfather Ferdinand had lived through plenty of weather failures and seen a big share of the bad lamb crops from Georgetown, Texas, out to the shortgrass country. Records show way back where he lost 600 ewes in a cold rain.

The important point, as the drouth rages out here in 1996, crumpling the baby lambs into dry skeletons and turning calves into dehydrated tissue, is that had I had the foresight of a ground mole, I'd have taken Grandpa's letter to heart at the first reading years ago. With a little more schooling, I could have become something useful, like a brakeman on the Sante Fe, or a gauger for Marathon Oil Company when the big strike blew in on the Pecos River.

The drouth this time has been a private matter between the ranchers and farmers, plus a neat array of players such as bankers and feed stores and hay truckers. But when grass fires broke out up close to Fort Worth and Dallas in February, the media began to write feature stories in the present tense of a drouth reaching back five years and a cattle market collapse some eight or nine months old. About the time the newspapers discovered the calamity, a hard ice storm the first of March seared the grassland as thoroughly as a treatment by a chemical herbicide. Where a glimmer of hope rested on sprigs of rescue grass and tender leaves of winter weeds from November rains, the hardy six minute grammas turned brown and gray. After the blizzard, the old cows' hair seemed to grow longer overnight and their eyeballs seemed to sink deeper in their sockets. The bawling of the herds became a moan, and rib bones stood out far enough to make an imprint on the dusty bed grounds.

The drouth going so public ended all avenues of escape from reality. I no longer was able to go to a dance or a concert in San Angelo without being reminded of the catastrophe. No sanctuary was left. "Wal, I don't guess it rained out Mertzon after the dust storm Monday, did it? Hee, hee, hee," they'd say.

Unable to respond, I'd think: "Oh, Father of Ultimate Mercy, if You do not think it is time to bring us rain, please occupy the bystanders, and send us orders for light calves." Usually, the silent movement of my lips disturbed the detractors enough, they'd rush back to the bar or seek another circle. The more determined struck off on the drouth of the 50s, following the same old theme of whether this one is as bad as those awful days.

It's impossible, of course, for me to compare the two drouths until the current one breaks. In my case, the first drouth started in the fall of 1952. It ended in August of 1972 upon the payment of the last note for cubes and hay fed during the five-year holocaust. By 1992, my medical records over at Angelo Clinic noted a lower stress index, meaning the emotional damage of the 50s had dropped back to normal.

However, 1955 still stands out in my drouth years. I tried to cheat a herd of heifer calves through the winter on ground corn fashioned into chucks by cheap molasses and fed in troughs. Vitamin A deficiency caused the cattle to go blind, especially at night. The story becomes worse every time I tell the tale, but three or four calves stumbled off a bluff in the Stage Stand pasture on the Big Draw. One was killed and the other crippled.

If the Big Boss hadn't come to my rescue with a load of molded alfalfa hay out of Oklahoma, we'd have lost more of them, including what was left of our sanity. We never were sure whether the mildew in the hay or the slight trace of green left in the bales cured the cattle's blindness. Only one thing is certain about bad drouths: they don't end until your heart and your bankroll are broken.

The Texas section of a big financial journal laughed at mayors asking citizens to pray for rain. Be a pretty hollow laugh were those pundits to see tiny lambs wobbling off looking for their mothers and hairball calves trying to nurse every time their mother stands still.

Great grandfather ended his page of the letter written so long ago by saying: " It makes me too nervous to write any more."

April 18,1996

President Clinton signed the new farm bill recently. Sheep and goat herders' fates were already sealed three years ago by the mysterious crusade of a New England congressman who was dead bent on ending the wool and mohair incentive payments.

"The President," the media reported, "made sure the huge food stamp program administered by the Department of Agriculture was intact." No mention was made of whether Congress or the administration checked to see who was going to raise the food to validate those stamps.

The bill provided a seven-year gradual ending of all supports. After having experienced the speed the three years passed phasing out the wool and mohair payment, farmers better take crash courses in career changes this spring. Like 180-day roll-overs on notes, financial assistance dissolves at the same speed ice cream turns soft at a Fourth of July picnic.

Funding was left out also for drouth feed programs. No note was made how shelled corn for bitterweed sheep and feeder calves had risen 70 percent over the past nine months. However, I wasn't too concerned about the cost of corn for my sheep. So many ewes died in the early part of the winter from renegade coyotes and poison weeds, our feed bill was lower than expected.

Dust was too bad most of the time to tell how the cattle wintered. Except for an old cow's bag, looks don't matter. Unless families having county agents or vocational ag teachers for sons are the case, it is very unlikely range cattle are going to be judged, other than the loan committee down at the bank deciding whether to renew the note the old sisters are backing.

A good cow husbandry tip is to inbreed the herd until growth is stunted, then base the amount of feed on body weight. Reduced to simpler terms, if a two pound coffee can of cubes per cow every other day starts the calves scouring, cut her feed in half and scatter it over more ground. Steers should be weaned at 350 pounds, before the curl in their tail straightens. Seems like an old calf sort of wilts standing by his mother's side past one year. Timing to take the heifers from the herd depends on how sensitive an outfit is to calving out young cattle under pickup headlights, jacking a calf puller in an icy rain. The safest calving practice, I think, is to pregnancy test the heifers at weaning and sell the bred end to your in-laws.

Safety, however, has never been the byword of the cattle and sheepmen. We should have known we were losing out on the Potomac when our game failed to become "ranchism" or "the ranchist movement." I no longer try to reach the city folks to tell them our country needs a domestic supply of food, governed by our health laws. Enough styrofoam containers and pasteboard pizza wrappers strew the sidewalks to show the depth of their thinking.

Hard to believe a farm block once existed, but we have good evidence that no such thing remains today...

April 25,1996

Cold rains and late snow and sleet brought sadness across the land the Indians called "Fallow Nest." Two weeks ago, "a scattered thunderstorm" forecast turned into a 30 degree day of hard sleet and whirling snowflakes.

Fresh shorn sheep and goats humped up and died in droves. Bovine dust pneumonia turned into cold weather pneumonia followed by outbreaks of calf scours. Drouth had once again punished the weary herders. This time with ice and snow and death.

On still mornings by the gate over on the highway at the bottom of Cowboy Hill, I stood stricken as the goosenecks wheeled by, loaded with blacks and baldies and decks of woolies in an eternal stream of last year's hope to recovery. Late of an evening, the same caravan returned hauling big bales of bleached out coastal hay and stacks of blue and brown sacked goods, piloted by men or women as noncommittal as panels of jurors formed into a motorcade.

Sun blinded the drivers going either direction. Faces hid underneath black hat brims and eyes were shaded by dark glasses. The greybeards, I knew, sat on the passenger side, chauffeured by whiteheaded wives in expensive automobiles. The whine of the tires against the asphalt seemed to work like music used to bring on a spell. I waved by custom, but rarely rated a nod.

Names to fit the brands on the trailer noses had to be made up to link to the ranchers. Texas license plates no longer identify the county of origin. Some stockyard reporter I'd make in this age. After the first three old cowboys hobbled by, I wouldn't be able to open a story without waiting for a convention to check the name tags.

News of the death losses was days reaching the ranch. We organized a lamb marking crew as soon as the weather turned warm again. All the men were passport Mexicans. They probably knew right away who had sheared their sheep and goats, but 12 hours in an 85 degree sheep pen picking up lambs to mark tends to postpone the urge to gossip to future dates. Also, I was in such a royal good humor to have an audience and a rain, I didn't give them a chance to spread any news. I started helping mark lambs in my childhood. The way I always figure it, anyone within earshot should be thrilled to know that fact.

Once I wrote of a young cowboy named Frank Lindley, or he was young when the story took place, who rode a bucking bronc down the main street of Sherwood, Texas. His pack horse rimfired the pony and caused the wreck. Frank's Colt six shooter slipped out of his waistband. The hammer hit the saddlehorn and shot a 44/40 bullet at 2500 feet a second to lodge beneath his jawbone. Men rushed out from the front of the post office frightened by the blood streaming from his face. One shouted, "Frank, are you hurt?" "Nah," he said, "this sapsucker can't shoot me off or buck me off, either."

Frank came to mind after I heard of the snow and sleet wiping out the flocks of folks who were trying so hard to raise a few lambs and kid goats on a dry spring. They were shot at the same range as the bullet that hit Mr. Lindley ...

May 2,1996

I was walking off from a marking pen, and heard laughter sounding just like the old days around the bunkhouse after the greybeards had gone to bed. The thought hit: For over six decades, I'd been messing around working sheep and cattle on horseback, unaware of a world of jet airplanes and jaguar automobiles.

From the way I felt then, the time might as well have been spent harpooning whales in the North Atlantic off the decks of a clipper ship, or leading a caravan of camels across the Sahara Desert to trade dry figs for water bags.

However, one reason being out of place never had bothered me was the way I'd been brought up to accept the applause and laughter of the Big Boss and his cowboys when a harmless old colt unloaded me 10 feet out the gate. Rowel marks across the seat of my saddle and gravel burns down the side of my face became a trademark. A personal brand, so to speak.

Rest assured it's much easier to pose as a tailgate cowboy than it ever was to fake being a bronc rider. Lots of the boys fresh out of town were top hands as long as the stage was the bunkhouse table and what they were riding was a sturdy bench. But next morning's long climb up on ol' Slim, or ol' Snake, followed by the fast fall down to Mother Earth spoiled the act.

After college, an old hand at the game helped cover up part of my deficiencies by teaching me to bleat like a ewe to catch young lambs the easy way, and kind of warble a bawl to make an old cow hunt for her baby. Both skills being mighty useful for a fellow handier shaking out a loop than filling it.

However, I learned one new trick on my own this spring. The last pastures we marked were over north of Mertzon in the slick ledge rocks and thick cedar breaks. On dry springs, the winds die over in the brush, releasing a torrid heat to rise up upon the rider and the ridden. The scrape of horseshoes sliding on the rocks makes old men pray at least two of their horse's feet will soon be on dirt. Triangles of sweat on the horse's flanks turn to mud and rolls of hair and fruitless expletives are cast in the direction of fleeing animals holding a big advantage of escape.

The ewes were young and wild and plenty crazy. The first ones I jumped outran me so bad they were out of sight in seconds. By the time I was able to pull my horse up, I was breathing so hard from the excitement, the whistling through my nostrils downwind must have sounded just like the feed wagon's horn. The lead sheep braked and started right back toward my horse. All I had to do was just keep panting and lead them right out into an opening.

So the next round, I changed the orders. I had told the passporters from town not to holler even if they set their shirts on fire lighting a smoke. But after seeing how well imitating the horn on the feed wagon worked, I told them it was all right to sound like a pickup horn as long as they didn't beep like the cabs do in Mexico.

None of this means good horsemen don't exist today. I overheard the greenest dude to ever put his padded self on the padded seat of a saddle, say a trader over at Del Rio had found him a horse to ride. What that meant was this fabled border horse dealer must specialize in locating trick horses smart enough and quick enough to stay under the rider. Any trainer or trader who has a horse able to keep that guy on his back deserves his picture in the front foyer of the Cowboy hall of Fame until they find time to make a bronze likeness for the main rotunda of the tuner and his horse.

The last time I saw the dude he was helping a neighbor work, or "help" was in the work order. It might be more accurate to say "a desperate situation" was being met by "a desperate solution." When I passed by, the greenhorn's horse struck a trot, and he looked exactly like the bundles bouncing around in the back of a laundry truck. I was a little uneasy of the whereabouts of my neighbor. With the drouth and all its miseries, I just had to hope he had the stability left to hold up under the circumstances.

A writer named Clyde Edgerton wrote to this effect in his book Redeye: "Cowboys still strike a chord of adventure and excitement. The skills they honed, the sights they saw can hardly be imagined by us mere mortals." Pretty strong words for a man trying to change from one of the loves of his life.

May 9,1996

"Must of been halfway on to Marfa, your grandpa had us rest his cattle with some folks across the Pecos. The ranch house sat down in a basin; the people had lived there long enough to grow some big shade trees. But when we rode up to unsaddle, we seen a man staked on a chain by his hindleg to a tree trunk. A wild-looking feller. Kept making whining sounds and slobbering like a dog.

"That night when the wind stilled, nobody could sleep from that wild man rattling his chain. There was an Eclipse windmill by the bunkhouse. Chain on the balance arm of the mill running up and down made things worse. Don't nevah run from a drouth, boy. Your grandpa lost his whole calf crop by moving them cows out to Marfa. Nevah did know why that feller was tied to a tree."

— Verbatim story taken down at the bunkhouse of the old ranch in the summer of 1948.

A cowboy we called "Pea Picker" told us the tale. The Big Boss was always bringing old hands out to stay at the ranch to heal up from woman troubles, or to stop shaking from a mean drunk. Part of the mystery is this Pea Picker hombre made me promise to keep his right name secret; the other part was, the Boss sat right through the story, like he hadn't heard of his father's cattle being moved West.

Two or three months later, the Boss left the two of us holding a herd of sheep at a waterhole. By then, Pea Picker could ride a gentle horse. To cement my memory, and to test his veracity, I asked him to repeat the story. Once again, he retold it word for word, the sure test of a big league liar, or a man of exceptional memory.

Grandfather Noelke did run from the drouth of 1917. Sent his cattle way out West to good grass on the Texas side of the Mexican border. Pea Picker was wrong about the losses. He lost more than his calf crop. Bandits from across the Big River stole the cows and the calves on the raids made on the Bright Ranch and other outfits close to the border. Uncle Goat Whiskers claimed the return trip took a lot less help as the herd was smaller and the cattle thinner.

But the lesson had to be relearned during the drouth of the 5Os. The pasturage deals of those times needed a bandit raid to relieve the tedium of big freight bills and short head counts. Whiskers and the Big Boss tried bitter Kansas winters on short-haired Texas cows and lost piles of dough feeding hay on deceptive meadows in alien pastures in Central Texas.

They moved too close to the desert one winter and not far enough from the Gulf the next. Some outfits were too stingy to salt the cattle; others put out salt but cheated on the feed. Toward the end, no score was needed of the successes and failures, as the bankers in Angelo had down the figures in a long tally of fluctuating collateral and devastating overhead.

The Big Boss was determined to save his father's bloodlines, especially the sheep. We ran woollies in places where grassburrs and cockleburs ruined the wool and crippled the lambs. We jumped stuff off upper decks onto old loading chutes propped from the sides by planks and loaded them back to come home off flooring supported by rocks and fence posts. Chicken pens and yard fences were converted to crowd pens at weaning time. We rode so many borrowed saddle horses at these places, our off-side cinches looked like the tack from a riding academy.

One pleasant memory was the amount of ranches that still had women to cook for cowboys. I may have written one time of the old gal who packed a lunch for Jose Aguirre and me down at Cedar Canyon on the Pecos before an all day ride. Jose and I were to have a lot of picnics in the shade of water tanks and under mesquite trees for the five years we trailed the Boss's sheep and cattle across the state. I still flinch driving past a gate where he and I rode together on a morning's roundup, or seeing a windmill off on the horizon where we held a few drouth cattle.

Pea Picker's story ended like this: "We stayed around the outfit three days. Might as well not had our bedrolls along for the amount of sleep we got. The owner sat by the back door of the kitchen. Had a Winchester propped behind his chair. Every time he finished a bite, he looked out toward what he called his 'staking tree' and toward the road in from the river.

"One night at supper he up and said for no reason: 'Little John Will cut Uncle George loose one time. He jist sit moaning and looking at the chain. Maudie here grabbed a six-shooter and emptied it out the door. She never has said why she done it.'"

May 16,1996

Taxpayers in Irion County meet a payroll every year of over $583,000 by the time all the extra expenses are tallied. Compared to what a few U.S. Senators cost in salary and benefits, the local courthouse crowd is a big bargain of some 30 people to rule over a county 1000 square miles in size and populated by 1626 registered voters that shrink down to 600 or 700 head at election times.

Our county commissioners knock down $14,900 a year in salary alone, plus hospitalization and retirement benefits. Bad luck at the polls for a Irion County commissioner means he or she is going to be short close to 60 grand the next four years. Further out west in the rich oil sands and fallow greasewood flats, a winning term is worth over 128 thousand bucks, which is approximately 44 times more than ranching returns anywhere in the shortgrass country.

But when the electorate catches the fever to unseat incumbents, the voters forget about the financial hardship they cause. Three years ago, a new county judge and the first lady to serve as commissioner won without so much as an erasure turning up on a ballot. This year's primary unseated two long-time commissioners. If an officeholder's instinct for rewards and patronage are sound during their term of office, they are mighty tough opponents.

After the primary in the spring, I asked several citizens around town why they thought people voted for a change. I suspected it might be the two-term limit issue. Scribes and wide mouth TV announcers had been blabbing it around all year, embarrassing big league politicians, asking how they stood on term limits. They never shut up long enough to think his honor the senator and her ladyship, the representative, don't want to relinquish their huge campaign chests and fancy secretaries to go back to practicing law in Peoria any more than those scribbling reporters want to be back in the bush league covering Lion's Club broom sales and the new slates of officers at the PTA.

The choices seemed to be hard for the voters I interviewed. Anger and suspicion often set the tone in county politics, so it was no surprise that the squabbles, like the county treasurer resigning last year, seemed to still be on people's minds. The pros and cons of the resignation might not have been as important as the underlying feeling the people's choice had been rescinded and the appointive process had taken over in the form of the commissioner's court. In the South, we still have an elective judiciary, even though we know better. Ever since the Reconstruction days after the War of Northern Aggression, we've been mighty touchy on the sanctity of the ballot box.

Two raises by the county and 11 straight years of ad valorem taxes rising in the school district also were noted. Rarely do tax increases enhance the incumbents' futures. One of our illustrious congressmen said not too long ago he thought federal taxes were about right. I suspect he will be making a career change one of these days.

I sure wasn't taking sides. Herders have too much at stake to make the county mad. According to the county judge's report last month in the local newspaper, .03 percent of the budget is allotted to agriculture for the county agent and predator control. Another 23 percent of the money goes for maintenance of the roads leading out to the ranches and oilfields.

Just any day of the month, a county grader may go charging up the road coming to this ranch to smooth out a spot or two. Livestock haulers complain every load to the ranch about throwing out top decks, shaking the batteries loose in hotshots, and blowing out inside duals, like tires were as easy to reinflate as bubble gum is to revitalize. The truckers also have a fit over every speeding ticket the sheriff gives them on Highway 67. They ought be grateful that natural barriers like our dirt roads exist to make them obey the law. Mexico has a lot of stuff worse than these avenues of potholes.

We reap other benefits from the county. Ranchers horn in on the sheriff's time, reporting strays and grass fires. On court days, we absorb air conditioning serving on juries just like town people. Part of the expense of heating the courthouse can be charged against us, too, for tramping in and out of the assessor's office in the winter to pay taxes and registration fees. And I suppose it's only fair to charge back part of the expense of cleaning up the community center after a dance from all the scuff marks boot heels make on the floor.

The judge's report failed to disclose how many dollars point-zero-three hundredths of a percent represented. It sounded more like a rainfall measurement than a budget figure, but as rough as times have been in the outlands after six years of dry weather, any little nudge will look like a bonanza to us.