Short Grass Country

January 4,1996

2010-09-19T16:58:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:57:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:54:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:52:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:51:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:50:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:49:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:48:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:47:00.001-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:47:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:46:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:45:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:44:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:42:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:41:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-19T16:40:00.000-05:00

"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

2010-09-19T16:39:00.000-05:00

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.

January 7, 1993

2010-06-24T20:53:00.001-05:00

On the second run of the Southern Orient Railroad, which was formed to buy out the Santa Fe's tracks, our work had moved within earshot of the engine's horns and the clatter of the boxcars. Alone, on horseback, nostalgia brought back how my maternal grandfather and grandmother said they rejoiced when the first train delivered their mail and brought supplies that had been on the docks in Fort Worth nine hours before.

Also of grand impact were the cattle markets, the far away summer pasturage for lanky Texas steers in the bluegrass part of Kansas, and the change in the drayage of wool to the Gulf Coast. Not to be left out in the change was the passenger service carrying kids to college in the East and brining grandmas back west who'd grown to feeble to ride the hacks and stage coaches.

Railroading today resembles that of other times about as much as present day interstate truck stops are like the genteel atmospheres of the hotel lobbies and busy Dobbs Houses of those days. Big booms in sulfur markets, or complex contracts to move oil, or unexpected freight to or from Mexico determine the fate of the new Southern Orient line.

Every time I cross the tracks going to the ranch, I stop, hoping to hear the train coming. Weeks ago, a freight came by made up of a green-and-black rusty engine and five tank cars all bearing a chipped sign, "The Burlington Northern Railroad Company."

It didn't take long for the assemblage to pass, due to the short length of the train. But speed-wise, has our famous train robber Black Tom Ketchum still been around, he'd probably have offered them his horse to go ahead to flag the crossings at Barnhart and Big Lake.

No doubt the train was authentic. Over on the downwind side of ht tracks a locked wheel brake showered a barrage of sparks as sure to set fire to the grown-up right-of-ways as lightning strikes are connected to thunderstorms.

If the train had stopped at our crossing I could have told the engineer he was too late to scare this outfit. In 1956 a coal car derailed 40 feet from the southeast corner of the horse trap at the old Ranch. Fifty tons of coal poured out on the ground and over the fence.

On the day in March when the Atcheson Topeka and Santa Fe Company reserves to set fire to all their mountains of spilled coal, I fell down on my knees in front of a section foreman and offered to pledge one pint of blood a week in his account in San Angelo for the rest of my days.

The plea reached such dramatic heights his tears soaked he red bandanna. We were standing on the tracks, braced against a roaring west wind, overlooking the coal dump. He had within his power to keep coal soot floating into our headquarters for 50 years and create a fire hazard that would last twice that long. Wailing like an Irish actor, I told the foreman that everyone of my little ole kids would grow up with black lung disease from coal smoke.

Fate or luck or high drama saved the day. Months later a gang unloaded a crane and swept the right-of-way clear down to the last chunk of coal.

Hopes are high that the small new railroad can survive and keep the route open to the Pacific Coast of Mexico. It's lucky the Southern Orient hasn't read how much land the state gave to the oldtime railroads, or they'd be up to tricks a lot worse than starting grass fires

June 24, 1965

2010-06-24T16:03:00.000-05:00

It's hard to say whether it was the drouth of the 1950s or a smaller calamity such as the summer of 1964 that paralyzed the portion of my boss's brain where the impulse to spend money is located.

Either way, it was a historic lick because it left a permanent change in his attitude toward ranch expenses.

Probably it was the shipwreck of '64. If I recall correctly, that was when he began throwing such monumental hissies over matters that should have gone unnoticed. Yes, I believe it was that tragic summer because, prior to that time, he didn't raise the roof over every sack of oats we bought for the saddle horses; and if six bottles of catsup on the grocery charge account cause him to thrash about in the manner of a Berkeley, Calif., college riot, I had not been present when that particular item was on the bill.

Whatever damaged his brain, it should have been reported to the keepers of medical history. The experience changed him so that it is doubtful if the frugal guardian of the lights in the White House has ever reached such a passion for strict budgeting as my boss now displays.

Therefore, when he informed me last week that we were going to make the annual ram sale in San Angelo, I wouldn't have been more surprised to learn that Cassius Clay had stood up in a Moslem meeting and told them that being Abdul the Boxing Champion was for the birds and he was off to Hollywood to join the legitimate toe-dancing profession.

Not only did we attend the sale, we bought five stud bucks with gay abandon — just as if he hadn't missed the crest of this year's good lamb market by failing to call our lamb buyer 25 seconds before the market broke.

And as if it were merely myth that every high-priced sire we had ever purchased had either died from charging his reflection in a water trough or became so crippled and exhausted in quarreling with his pasture mates that he passed on without leaving more than a dozen heirs, we sat among the buyers right at ringside.

We bought bucks with fleeces so long that, if the wool could have been transferred to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, he would have looked smoother than a watermelon, and there would have been enough wool left over to make two Navajo ewes look like finewool champions.

It was quite a sale, with the auctioneer chattering in his foreign tongue and my boss far removed from the violent role he assumes at the ranch when he finds that one of us has charged a small length of rope to his account.

Two of my contemporaries were among the consignors — gents who had attended the same kind of country school as myself. But when they began selling bucks for $150 up to $500 easier than I'd peddled some cutback lambs for 15 cents a pound, I began to wonder if they hadn't gone to a night school in later years.

Anyway, we bought the bucks and conned a neighbor into hauling them back to the ranch free of charge. I am still astounded at the change in my boss, but not enough to suggest that, since we own so much high-priced stock, he surely will want to pay better wages to the man who looks after the valuable animals.

As a matter of fact, instead of thinking of a raise, I am more concerned about how he plans to absorb so much capital investment outlay by cutting down on his operational expense.

As you may have gathered, there isn't much left to cut on, unless he takes up the habit of another member of the family who used to winter his hands on woodpeckers killed with a BB gun. —(06/24/65)

September 25, 2003

2009-05-25T11:01:00.001-05:00

The San Angelo Weather Station tried their new flood warning message the last part of August. It was the first time in five years that the station needed a flood warning. Conditions were set for flooding. A tropical storm was off Corpus Christi, and a cold spell was poised to come in from the Panhandle.

The forecast from Mathis Field weather station over the telephone hedged the warning to a call of "possible high water in low-lying areas." Much safer sounding than the one on the radio opening with an ominous growling sound like an old pickup starter cranking the final turn on a cold morning. That one said, "Flooding is imminent in the following counties."

Though I was alone at the ranch in a downpour, it's hard to frighten a shortgrasser of high water, especially a shortgrasser 2550 feet above sea level and three miles within a plateau.

The warning further lost impact after reports on the watershed began to come in of a slow half-inch rain. But up here an inch an hour was falling. No matter how drastic the weather conditions, no one calls the ranch. Alex the cook and I spent five days stranded by high water once down at the old ranch. We didn't know until the water ran down, but both banks of Spring Creek had been evacuated without as much as a curious sightseer checking on us, much less a helicopter. This time, however, I was unsure whether anyone called as rain fell on my tin roof so hard, I couldn't sit close enough to the telephone to hear anything except the lightning making the bell jingle. (Takes a fierce storm to electrify an underground line.)

Way back, Goat Whiskers the Elder's wife, Aunt Ella, reported the rainfall at the Whiskers outfit on Dutch Woman draw to the Angelo paper from time to time. Aunt Ella always held jobs requiring integrity. Scorekeeper at the bridge games and the one to do the room counts at the PTA meetings were an example of the trust placed in her.

Aunt was of Canadian origin. She received wide respect out here in the wilderness after she broke and trained her spirited son. The guy known today as Goat Whiskers the Younger was then known as "The Terror of Upper Dutch Woman." I think had she lived a long life, which she didn't, she'd have been a consultant for the rough string at the military schools.

Her second qualification to report rainfall was that Uncle Whiskers had one of the first rain gauges in the country. Most ranches then used coffee cans and wooden rulers as a dipstick. One hombre on the east side of the shortgrass country stuck his thumb inside the can to measure the rainfall. He had a fat thumb, so he always had more rain than any of his neighbors.

Aunt Ella wasn't responsible for giving flood warnings, or I don't think she was. It would have been a good service to have an armed flagman at every draw in this country to keep folks from driving off in high water. Must have been a latent urge to be submarine pilots, because old boys were always bailing off in cars in streams too deep to cross in a wagon.

Before the highway 67 bridge was finished over Rock Pen Draw three miles west of Mertzon in the 1930s, the bridge builders rigged a cable tow line to pull cars across the draw during rises. Water nearly reached the seat in Mother's Model A Ford the morning we crossed. On the other bank, a worker put the fan belt back on, dried the distributor, and off we went to school.

Weren't any signs on Rock Pen crossing saying "No life guard on duty," or "Children must be accompanied by an adult," or "All boaters must wear life preservers." Fording high water was a good lesson for a redheaded boy unable to even dog paddle, much less swim. It taught self-reliance to plunge off into a raging creek full of brown water in a Ford Roadster. (The first time I remember hearing the question, "Are you all right, little boy?" was in a movie in college. Andy Hardy was gently and tenderly helping this kid off the ground after a fall from his swing. Blonde, curly-headed girl from next door watched Andy with adoring eyes for being so kind to the little boy. I remember wondering whether Andy's mom ever took him for a ride across a flooding draw.)

End of August rain is perfect to grow grass. Good thing we don't have warning signals for all bad weather. A drouth signal would be worn out before the end of the first year. I don't remember when Aunt Ella's job ended. Might have just played out during a dry spell.

September 25, 2003

October 2, 2003

2009-05-25T11:00:00.001-05:00

Reading classified advertisements is a deep-seated habit. First things I read in the Livestock Weekly are the real estate offerings. I study the ranches in Coahuila, Montana and British Columbia, dreaming the dreams of a 20 year-old setting out to spread my brand across the boundless West and run big steers in the shadow of the image of Mr. Goodnight.

I'm always looking for a chance there might be an outfit cheap enough to finance or lease purchase. Men of my advanced years need to think big. Never know when a deal might arise to take the pressure off the coyote buffer zone we are holding as a seedbed for bitterweed and prickly pear and a Mexican eagle flyway.

The influence of this obsession spurred my imagination. I thought of an advertisement for my outfit the other day while waiting for a truck at the gate leading in from the highway: "Historic West Texas ranch with 11 miles of frontage on major highway. Thirty miles too far west to reach 10-inch annual rainfall belt, needs water well rig to deepen wells." (I had just learned there was worse news than buying a new string of pipe.)

Bit more time passed and this one popped up, "Will care and pasture mother ewes for the next 12 months on halves. Need working partner to furnish 100 tons of number two shelled corn, 30 tons of fine stem alfalfa hay, and 15 tons of molasses blocks. No references needed." Hot on the subject of sheep, I wrote this one, "Old time sheep rancher wants ratio of predators to livestock balanced on his ranges to the sheep's advantage. Can assure privacy for eradicators. Please, no telephone calls."

The working partner idea brought back an old advertisement a rancher east of Angelo ran several times a year in the daily paper: "Ranch job open. Call before 5 a.m. and after 10 p.m. at night. Furnish wood and water." Moved forward to fit the times, "Lady experienced in ranch cooking, care of children, pump and gauge oil wells, ride and doctor sick cattle, have grade school teacher's certificate, needs to relocate east and north of the Mississippi River. Farther north and east the better."

So many items came back, like, "Lost or strayed three year-old red and white bull. Last seen in railroad right of way heading east. Gain positive identification by calling 325-835-2113. Keep bull." Or, an offer to sell cattle, "44 head of short bred Angus heifers. Been running with low birthweight bulls two weeks. Ready to go as soon as quarantine is lifted on ranch."

Toyed with offering the fleet of trucks and pickups parked by rusty trailers at the ranch. "Big dispersion of ranch rolling stock. Homemade bumper and gooseneck trailers, half-ton and ton pickups, propane units, tool boxes and grill guards, collection of lug wrenches and high-lift jacks, tow chains and tow bars, used radiator and gas caps, leaf and coil springs. Need time to apply for new titles and license plates. One, maybe two, of the vehicles are ready for state inspection."

Still no truck, and nobody willing to stop to visit on the highway, I remembered "Old Jelly Roll," the kid horse we bought who threw a bronc rider from Fort Stockton so hard, he threatened to turn us in to the Red Cross for fostering dangerous working conditions. "Jelly Roll" should have been, but wasn't, represented in an advertisement reading: "Nine year-old kid horse. Spur Mark and Cold Jaw breeding. Contact owner and trainer at Community Hospital during visiting hours."

On the horse subject, every night the Big Boss and his polo cronies sat in the back yard of the bunkhouse at the old ranch or met at stables or training fields, they traded horses, praised horses, matched races, and did everything about horses except ride and shoe horses. I'd sure liked to have submitted this offering for one of their pets. To wit: "Swap or sell polo prospect named 'Iguana.' Two expert farriers can change shoes in one-half day. Sound on three feet. Goes back to Glass Eye and Albino Brain. Back even farther to Slouchy Slug and Ex Lax."

By the time the truck came, I'd reviewed Border Collies close to chicken farms needing geographical changes: "Free puppies. Come after children's bedtime," to "Complete dispersal of Mary Kay cosmetic inventory 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas. No deal too small."

Part of the new West passed through my imagination during my wait. Never had any luck before writing classifieds, but I never had gone so deep into the truth.

October 2, 2003

October 9, 2003

2009-05-25T10:57:00.003-05:00

Workmen using staple guns powered by the wallop of air compressors are overhauling the ceiling of the air terminal in San Angelo. Only access to the beams is a stepladder blocking the hall to the men's room. Only way to communicate with the airline agent is by pencil and paper. Only reason I found the right gate is there is one gate for departure and one for return.

On our last trip, regulations required we check in two hours prior to departure, as our destination, Vancouver, British Columbia, is an international flight. Extra time is also needed to inspect all checked and carry-on baggage. Plus, I need 10 minutes additional to extract my passport and driver's license from the money belt inside my pants top. Ten more minutes to close the pouch and buckle my belt. From five minutes to 10 at each stop to correct answers to questions I failed to hear at the onset.

My traveling partner acts as a translator except in restricted areas. After passing through the metal detector, I am on my own. The only part I do real well is extending my arms straight from my body to be searched. As I told the officer, that's the way we used to spread our arms doing swan dives off a rock into "Deep Hole" close to Sherwood. He must have been hard of hearing, too. His response was, "Take off your shoes, mister."

The next challenge was on the ground at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The airline from Angelo should award "frequent taxiing miles" to customers. The runway must be closer to Waco than to Dallas. Before recent terminal improvements, the planes had to hunt for a parking space. San Angelo must have ranked way low on the priority, as we used to be locked up for 20 extra minutes hunting for the right spot to unload.

Major airlines claim 55 minutes is legal time to change planes at DFW. I don't think the majors factor in jiggling across the tarmac for miles in a commuter, eyes switching from the seatbelt sign to a yearning for the sign "men only" in their timeframe. The big guys must overlook passengers coming off the feeder lines and galloping for a distant gate with a clamor of screeching roll-on wheels adding to the panic of the moment.

Once boarded on the Vancouver flight, I found the "snack" listed on our itinerary was a granola bar, six ounces of yogurt (fruit-flavored), and four ounces of California (black) raisins. Included was a paper napkin the size of a bandana handkerchief — a big bandana — packets of salt and pepper, and a setting of plastic dinnerware.

Being road-wise, my friend and I sprinkled a pinch of salt and a few grains of black pepper on our tongues to deaden the taste buds. Crushed the granola bar in the wrapper and squeezed the raisin sack until the fruit was a near liquid. Poured the topping onto the yogurt. Shaded our eyes with the big napkin to prevent optical gastric reversal. Took bites as big as possible, ignoring even the most basic laws of etiquette. (At times, we play a game called "I dare you." Like, "Dare you to take the first bite," or "Double-dare you to look at your plate before eating.")

No smoking, no cell phones and little food distance the passengers. None of that oldtime congenial sharing of newspapers, or exchanging tales of bad weather and worse connections goes on. This is the age of head-down, fingers dancing across the computer keyboards writing or playing games, or sprawling in a seat to sleep off the tensions of the times.

One seat mate showed us how to unfold the new neck rests on the tops of the seats. But he immediately withdrew into his collar before I could tell him about a cowboy named "Sleepy Jones" who'd bet a hundred dollars he could slip his head from any head catcher ever made. Might have told you about the time "Sleepy" went through a whole work at the old ranch without ever being located except going to the house.

The change to Pacific Time put us into Vancouver Island at 11 o'clock, or one a.m. our time. Once we reached the hotel, we looked like we had washed ashore on a life raft instead of riding jet planes and a taxicab into town. The security guys had been through my checked bag, but I didn't care unless they had confiscated my pajamas. Yogurt, granola and raisins are powerful sleeping potions. Discounting the taste, the combination has some of the characteristics of food.

October 9, 2003

October 16, 2003

2009-05-25T10:57:00.001-05:00

Travel bargains on the Internet are fast replacing grandchildren stories among the graybeards and granny set. Travelocity.com must be flying lots of folks around, as I hear of round-trip tickets to faraway resorts rich in luxury for less than the cost of a weekend playing dime a card bingo at the YMCA.

On our trip last month to Vancouver Island, I used a booking service to reserve an efficiency apartment at the Meridian Bay Hotel. Allow me, please, to go over the procedure: Me, the chump, logs in "vancouver.com" and clicks on the screen for hotel reservations. Views all the bargain rates. Loses his confidence booking online and calls the service's 800 number. Over the wire, loses his judgement, gives a friendly voice his credit card number for a deposit in the amount of $100 U.S. dollars or $130 Canadian to hold the space.

Then at checkout days later, the polite room clerk presents a bill for less than the rate quoted by the reservation service. Exhilarated by the unexpected windfall, overtips the bell man and makes a departure in a cab with a flourish befitting a northeastern banking magnate. Once back home, reality tolls the sad tune for a sucker in the form of a credit card bill showing the scoundrels at the reservation service charged the down payment payable to their account on the date of first contact.

Don't think I am going to admit to my luncheon group that I was skinned by an upstart of a booking service after all the time I've spent trying to wheedle a discount or an upgrade from every innkeeper on my path. Don't you go blabbing it around, either, how a gang of Canadian swindlers gave ol' Noelke a bitter lesson without ever straining a dot-com or exerting the energy to cradle a telephone for longer than five minutes. Sure makes a good story on a pirate ship to have a guy on board who didn't even have to be blindfolded to walk the plank.

Vancouver Island, however, was so pleasant I don't regret the loss. We rode a small bus around the clean city the first day, locating the museums, the gardens and restaurants. Unlike Toronto, Vancouver's tourist business hasn't been plagued by the horror virus SARS. Hotels showed decent occupancy rates; restaurants required reservations for the prime times to eat.

On the tour, the guide pointed to a grocery store featuring sourdough French bread flown from Paris every night for $90 Canadian a loaf. The lady sitting behind us sighed so deep her arms drew up in the sleeves of her dress.

"My lands, how many slices in a loaf of bread?"

The guide was already talking about Chinatown: Forty percent of the city is Asiatic. Chinatown is the safest neighborhood in all Vancouver. Only things sold under the table are live frogs. Ha, ha. (Tour guide talks in italics; the lady in quotation marks.)

"Good lands, how much is that a slice?"

Ten dollars, lady. Dolly Parton's son lives on Royal Street to the right. Likes to play hockey. To your left is where Henry Bankston, age eight, did the highest "wheelie" ever recorded on a tricycle. Ha, ha.

"Isn't it exciting to know where Dolly Parton's son lives? Wonder how old he is?"

First stop was the Granville Island Public Market. Huge affair of some 50,000 square feet filled with fresh cut flowers, baskets of blue berries and raspberries —plump and juicy — food stalls from all over the world and a solid mass of shoppers filling bags with cheeses and fresh fish.

Be back on the bus at 5:45. Anyone five minutes late will learn the cab fare back to their hotel. Ha, ha.

"May I stay on the bus? Cab drivers are reckless drivers. Cost a fortune to ride. Bad influence; brought my grandson home drunk one night."

As we crossed back to Vancouver Island, the sunset cast a film over the sea water like a veil dyed with rose petals.

We are now going to take you to see Stanley Park, named after Lord Stanley. Off Prospect Point, we'll see large black diving cormorants and beautiful great blue herons four feet tall with a wingspan of six feet. Maybe our bus driver Diane can shine the bus's lights over the water.

"My lands, sure is dark. How we going to see the black birds in the dark?" Before an answer could be made, "My stars, parks sure are dangerous places to be after nightfall."

Cormorants glow in the dark. Diane keeps a pistol and a flashlight under the seat to shoot bandits. Ha, ha.

Must have been 9 p.m. by the time the bus dropped us off at our hotel. Hard to sleep after seeing the street where Dolly Parton's son lives.
Last the lady said was, "My lands, you sure are a good tour guide. I'll tell the girls back home how to find you."

October 16, 2003

October 23, 2003

2009-05-25T10:55:00.001-05:00

During my stop in Vancouver last month, I visited the old railroad hotel where the Big Boss and I stayed on a long-ago trip. The Boss and I had been camping so long in the woods, the room clerk probably thought we were fur trappers or Eskimos fresh from fish drying camp.

Fashions swelled formal in the 1940s in places swinging crystal chandeliers and spreading white linen cloths for china cups. On the afternoon my friend and I had a drink at the Hotel Vancouver, however, the Big Boss and I would have been overdressed among the table of guests wearing dungarees and scuffed exercise shoes. Aerobic exercise gives folks license to dress a notch above a sheep shearer's costume.

To be free to go where I please on the road, I pack a dark sweater for a coat, a pair of serge pants, a somber tie, and a blue oxford shirt. In high-class joints enforcing a dress code, I address the Maitre D's with "indeed," or "I beg your pardon." My biggest success was the "Pump Room" in Chicago; my biggest failure was a dance hall in San Antonio, "The Roaring Twenties." Sure hurts the pride to be directed to the coat rack to be stylish enough to go in a Texas honky-tonk.

But it was the Vancouver Art Gallery across the street from the hotel that lured us downtown to catch the flavor of the country. (Canadians call art museums galleries.) Art museums don't depend on the sun. The shadows are drawn or painted on the work hanging on the walls. The stillness, the quietness of the halls, settles the strain of travel. (I am supposing you want to know why a herder goes to an art exhibit.) On a Sunday afternoon, the visitors are off work. Guards stand mute as figures on canvas. The front desk keeps time. Verities in the weather make not the slightest difference. Your poke is safe. Babies sleep in carriages; mothers find refuge in the colors.

Doesn't mean I am interested in or appreciate all art. After spending the summer at the ranch with my 20 year-old grandson, I am having a hard time keeping from seeing the world through his eyes. A personal matter, but a very serious one for a graybeard to overcome. I'd be standing in front of a huge, classical oil painting featuring cream-colored, red-lipped cherubs, aristocratic ladies in plumed black hats wearing gold sequined gowns, and find myself imagining that a subject winked. Worse, I might offer to help a strange lady dismount from a cab, or fight an urge to pull out chairs for strangers. Go ahead and laugh, but you won't laugh if one of your grandchildren turns into a sorcerer.

On the third floor of the gallery, a prominent Canadian artist, Emily Carr, was on exhibit. What I found was a quote of hers that might explain better why hombres packing brushes and easels paint. "Everything is waiting and still. Slowly things begin to move, to slip into their places. Groups and masses and lives tie together. Colors you have not noticed come out timidly and boldly. In and out, in and out your eye passes. Nothing is crowded; there is living space for all."

On a tip from a guide book, we spent one morning and part of an afternoon in Stanley Park at the Vancouver Public Aquarium. Our focus was on the Beluga whales. The aquarium has three adults and one calf. Braving mobs of kids and harried parents, we held a spot looking through glass watching the underwater antics of the huge white beasts. At times the whales' faces were a couple of feet from our vantage point. Hudson Bay and the strait off Nova Scotia offer lots of whale sightings, but never as close as these in captivity. (Yes, you guessed. The whales are going to have to be released in the wilds.)

Being among so many kids was like trying to sleep in the jungle full of hyena packs on a moonlit night. We gave ground before we hit a baby buggy axle, or stumbled on a rattle. Went upstairs just in time to see a giant octopus unroll into a mass of waving orange tentacles. Thanks to Walt Disney, people are terrified of octopuses. My Aunt Myrtle was a lot like Mr. Disney at making up fantasies. Aunt M had us so scared of tarantulas, we had a hard time coming within BB-gun range to kill one.

I am sure the Boss checked us in at the Hotel Vancouver. I know he bought us each a tweed suit to wear to dinner. I know it was my first time in a Chinatown. I just had to go at night. I was terrified, but then as now, wanted to bring a story back to Mertzon…

October 23, 2003

October 30, 2003

2009-05-25T10:54:00.001-05:00

On the fifth morning in Vancouver, we checked out of the hotel and crossed the bay to meet a ship to go up the Inland Passage. Went to the docks on Granville Island and boarded the Sea Bird, owned by Lindblad Expeditions.

Our cabin was next to the captain's on the top deck. Beds, bedding and bath ranked 10 to 20 times superior to a rusty little German tub we once sailed on in the Galapagos Islands. Sleeping on a life preserver on the deck of the Sea Bird would have been superior to the bunk beds in the hold of the Gallapago vessel.

You may have forgotten us having to carry an oar on the decks of the Galapagos boat to kill cockroaches, but I sure remember swatting those black monsters until the decks were as slick in carnage as a whaling ship. As we were to learn, gulls following the Sea Bird ate better than we did on a cabbage diet on the Pacific trip. Toward the end of that voyage, the passengers would have jumped overboard if they'd had the strength left to climb over the rail.

Right off, the style of the Sea Bird came forth in the salon. At the first briefing, flutes of champagne stood on a buffet among plates of cheese and smoked delicacies. All 45 passengers had plenty of space to eat and drink at tables and sofas. Trained servers whisked away empty glasses and plates. Corks popped; more hot and cold appetizers appeared from the galley. Linblad has a reputation of style among travelers. Here it was first-hand.

The small ship and the reduced size of the passenger list gave us more for our money. Little or no time was spent waiting in line, or the proverbial delay for late arrivals holding up the programs. The economy and the curse of the September 11 tragedy are probably the reasons for the reduced bookings. We docked once next to a cruise ship carrying 3000 people. Lines leading to the gangplank looked like the mobs going into a football stadium for a Saturday playoff. Made the 70-passenger capacity of the Sea Bird sound like a life raft floating into harbor.

In the introduction of the staff, the captain said he grew up in Georgetown, north of Austin. The lakes on the Colorado River are the largest bodies of water close to Georgetown. Whatever talent the captain had for sailing, it sure wasn't an early beginning. He must have been self-conscious about being raised a landlubber, as he pitched in helping the crew load our gear. The few ship captains I'd known considered pulling out the chair for young ladies as heavy duty.

Departing from Vancouver was a slow cruise of the entire harbor area. Rain clouds cleared, arching a rainbow off port side. Decks were not crowded. No demands were made to dress for dinner, or restrictions imposed on seating in the dining room. I suppose such a small ship with a small passenger list was close to being a private charter.

The following days on the Inland Passage going north passed into narrow inlets and calm, deep fjords formed centuries ago by glaciers. Massive western red cedars made 200 foot long reflections in the water. Fragments of clouds fogged the upper reaches of the banks into white streamers frosting a green conifer background. Light mist cooled the hikes in to waterfalls and forest trails. The nautically inclined paddled kayaks in the still waters. Rare was the sight or sound of boat traffic. Ferries ran on reduced schedule because of the lateness of the season. Passengers seeking solitude were able to find empty chairs on the deck.

Servers in the dining room, young adventurous kids, had difficulty understanding my Southern drawl. First evening, my order of roast duck came as a breast of chicken. Table mates laughed until a second order of roast duck turned out to be chicken for an old boy from Boston, who spoke universal English. More laughter and more wine as the other diners carved thick strip sirloins while the Boston guy and I ate an indifferent piece of fried chicken.

Mid-meal, the waitress caught the mistake. Aghast, she wanted to know what to do. Being appreciative of the language barrier and the temperament of sea cooks, I suggested she ask the cook to draw a picture of a chicken as a basic test. The cook may have been at sea so long he forgot the difference between a chicken and a duck. Never was able to catch her eye again to see if he'd comply.

Days became as calm as the water. Hardest work was raising our field glasses to our eyes or removing a marker from a book. A glorious time it was to be sailing the Inland Passage. Thus relaxed, my enunciation must have improved, as I was able to order duck one night for dinner.

October 30, 2003

November 6, 2003

2009-05-25T10:52:00.001-05:00

Before leaving for Canada, I called Linblad Expeditions to know whether we were going to make wet landings on the trip up the Inland Passage. That's important to know, as rubber boots take up a lot of space. Shoes seasoned in the shortgrass country take days to dry on a ship in a humid climate.

The worry was unnecessary. The crew was careful boarding us from the ship's deck on zodiacs (rubber boats). On shore, they had enough people to pull the zodiac onto the bank. So much concern was shown about making the three-foot drop from deck to zodiac safe that on my turn the sailors sighed in relief once I was seated in the middle of the zodiac. The life jacket over my wet suit looked as trim as a deep sea diving outfit. I am sure I won the middle seat to be the ballast.

On one walk, we saw not a feather or a track across the trails. Every clearing was a fresh green meadow. Perfect setting for a deer or an elk. I suspect as late as September, migration or hibernation might be the reason for no game. The city folks invigorated by the fresh air were having a romp like an Irish setter released from his kennel. I didn't want to spoil the fun by asking the guide where the animals were.

The only port where the ship docked on the northward trip was at Alert Bay to go ashore and see the unveiling of a totem pole. We walked a mile or so along the bay to reach the site of the ceremony. Understand, totem poles are only mysterious to white men. The first nation people, or Indians, carve the poles to portray family history, or perhaps go so far as to record the family's enemies.

Appreciate, too, that the potlatch ceremonies of the Northwestern tribes are difficult to understand. When the people gather for a potlatch, the hosts give presents to friends and enemies alike and again present the family history. The family has two years after a death to be at peace before they can hold a potlatch commemorating the dead. (As many estate squabbles as I've witnessed, two years would equal the first round of golf on a miniature course for us to ever potlatch.)

Further proof we can't understand totems and potlatches: in 1870, the government prohibited potlatches in Canada. Came and seized the relics, interrupting historic succession of the families, never to be completely returned. The law wasn't enforced, but the damage was done.

But back to the unveiling of the totem pole. Here we are all standing: guest from the ship, the tribe, the chief, school children, a Mountie and dancers in colorful costumes. Wind off the bay whips and pops a blue plastic tarp large enough to cover a 20-foot totem pole. The chief welcomes us and his people. Calls for a moment of silence to honor a friend who has died today — an English fellow. Claps for the dancers to begin. Gives off a radiant friendly countenance. Next, a few words spoken in his language.

And then the discovery that the wind has fouled the ropes to drop the tarp. The chief laughs and says, "Go on up to the Big House for a dance and food. Fred will come with his bucket truck and remove the tarp." (At this moment, a special thing occurs. Two high school boys start to pass in front of us, then pause and say, "Excuse me." I feel faint.)

Up at the Big House, a log structure the size of a gymnasium with a huge fire burning in the center, the young people dance in costumes. "Hi-yea, Hi-yea," the singers chant to the beat of boys and girls doing more than an act. In the end, the ship passengers join in the line, laughing and dancing. Minutes after the dance, a long table of food is spread so no one can leave without passing by servers. (Laws governing tour operators require one folk dance per trip. The most focused dancers are the wild Huli Wig Men in the Southern Highlands of New Guinea. The pygmies' eyes literally feast on the audience.)

First, I asked the Royal Canadian Policeman about his assignment in Alert Bay, expecting crime statistics to be his answer. However, he replied, "I've only been here three months. I like it. The people serve food at every function." Second, a lady comes over, scolding me to eat. I ask her if her tribe can communicate with the Navajo people as I had read. She laughed and said, "Not only can we not communicate, the ones I tried to talk to in New York were so solemn I gave up talking in English or the dialects. Now, get some food."

Several times during the trip and in supplemental reading, there were explanations of totem poles and the potlatches. I suppose if we could defend our death customs, then we would understand why a generous tribe of men exists.

November 6, 2003

November 13, 2003

2009-05-25T10:50:00.001-05:00

The only family along on the Inland Passage trip last month was a mother/dad/grandmother combination and two children from Mexico. Delightful people, friendly and in full control of the vigorous eight and 10 year-old kids.

The grandmother, grayed to a regal black-eyed beauty, was careful to trace the family's origin to the Basque of Northern Spain. Her son, a tour representative for Linblad Expeditions in La Paz, Mexico, became an ally early on the trip. He recognized my ranch orientation from my Texas drawl and Northern Mexico Spanish. Our final bond tied when he said in privacy, "I understand your secrecy; ranching today is nearly as unpopular as bull fighting."

I had told the other ship's passengers that I was involved in hunting buffaloes and smuggling flax on the Mexican border in exchange for duty-free burros and authentic adobe bricks. One chap wanted to know how long it took to skin a buffalo bull.

"Takes four experienced men 45 minutes with sharp knives," was my reply, "plus time to salt the hide. You wanna buy one?"

My friend warned me to tone down the smuggling stories, as the ship still had to pass through U.S. Customs from Canadian waters in the San Juan Islands. I had an open tube of Canadian toothpaste and 30 blank postcards to declare against the $5000 cash limit. I needed to make $4960 in U.S. currency in the next three hours taking orders on buffalo hides to reach par. Had the agents searched my billfold, they'd have thought it was a leather case to press flower petals or collect silk thread.

After sailing into U.S. waters, the crew lowered zodiacs to search for whales. Only the naturalists were allowed to go on the hunt. Guide books say Orcas are the same as killer whales. The Orcas are the wolves of the ocean, killing gray whales, seals or big sharks for no reason. After reading the restrictions on swimming, I read further proof favoring the warning that killer whales fancy the tongues of gray whales, leaving the rest of the carcass for carrion.

The fellow who asked about skinning buffalo found a pod of whales. (You who work crossword puzzles know a school of whales is a pod.) By the time he returned, we sighted 20 or 25 black and white Orcas swimming, backs arched and triangular fins exposed the way porpoise swim close to the surface. Smooth skimming motions cut the water without visible ripples. Then came an explosive "spy hop" above the surface, a white belly and broad black stripe arising to plunge back and breach the sea with a big splash, setting off camera shutters by all on deck. The drama of an eight-ton sea mammal pitching straight up from the sea can't be described, or why the beast so performs.

At dinner, the naturalist who discovered the whales startled me by bringing up buffalo hunting again. He asked if all buffalo hunters wore red bandannas and crushed safari hats over white whiskers. I explained that hunters wear red bandannas to mark and claim the kills in a racing herd of hairy beasts, throwing dirt clods in the riders' faces in a death-defying ride to enact the slaughter.

Still puzzled, he continued, "But why do you wear bandannas at sea?"

"Because I come from timid country stock. Being prodigies of the soil and prisoners of a provincial background, doctors say, manifests itself in bright if not absurd costumes."

A lady I barely knew to my right gave me a stiff elbow blow to the ribs befitting a 300 pound Japanese wrestler. The only sounds at the table were crab claws cracking and napkins dabbing away the residue from the crab dinner.

The occasion was the Captain's dinner. "Why," I thought, "won't old Cap speak?" Not since Miss Green Gross' retirement speech at the end of my sixth semester in the fifth grade had guilt cut such a deep wound. All around at other tables, glasses clinked and diners' merriment pitched to a higher peak over the succulent steamed crab meat, buttered corn on the cob, and fine French vintages. At my table, the sounds of napkins threading through a ring were loud as an anchor rope dropped at sea.

Out on deck in near darkness, I strained to understand why I couldn't tell city folks I was a herder and behave like a normal person. Remembered how ashamed Mother was when the third grade teacher told her of my report that a blue-eyed albino rattlesnake had chased me to school, causing my homework to fly from by book satchel.

Feeling the presence of my friend who knows me well, I recovered and wondered if Old Cap had seen blue-eyed albino rattlesnakes in his school days in Georgetown, Texas. Vowed the next morning to ask the naturalist if he'd like to organize a whaling adventure to set sail for the San Juan Islands.

November 13, 2003

November 20, 2003

2009-05-25T10:48:00.001-05:00

On the last morning of the September trip on the Sea Bird, the ship docked in Seattle. Cabins had to be vacated by 8 a.m., all our gear removed to rest on the sidewalk above the dock 30 minutes later. Goodbyes were hurried, as shipboard friendships have short shore lives.

Walking down the gangplank for the last time, the urge hits to look back up on the deck to your cabin door, closed and locked to become a memory instead of your floating residence. In minutes, young stewards bearing a tray of disinfectants swipe away your fingerprints and spray away your image from the mirrors. Shake your dreams from the pillows. Dump the check lists for the final packing; toss the shopping bags in the big black plastic bin without appreciating treasures once in those white and green sacks. And return the space to an impersonal piece of rent property.

Our hotel was 10 blocks from the harbor. Might be four floors in the small hotel. The clerks and bell men are trained to be polite and give full service. The restaurant and the bar are lined with books from the floor to the ceilings. The only door guests open is the room or bathroom door. Receptionists take pride in remembering guests' names.

Big test came when my granddaughter drove from school down the coast to visit us. She roared into the hotel's garage, took a ticket, and instructed the attendant to charge one night's parking to her grandfather. On the way to dinner, a starter out front asked her if her grandfather had a name. After giving my room number, she said, "His real name is Granddad."

Parking granddaughters was just one of the services. Every evening in the lobby on the coffee tables, the hotel stacked blank postcards and water colors for guests to draw or color and mail home. Took more than one allotment to cover my postcard business. I post two or three dozen cards a month. I wasn't able to illustrate my cards, but I was able to fill in the front side, spreading the word of seeing killer whales so big the calves weighed half a ton at weaning.

One morning, the book next to my side of the breakfast table was titled The Last Days of Buffalo Hunting. Couldn't have been a more timely topic as I had just written about telling the people on the ship I was a buffalo hunter. Per chance, the book opened to a chapter on a buffalo hunter in Oklahoma winning the state of Texas in a poker game. Seemed a Tennessee farmer named Hiram Johnson, turned buffalo hunter, fell in with a poker table full of sharpies and lost all his dough from selling hides.

After the game, one of the sharks said, "Mr. Johnson, I feel bad about you losing all your money. Got more land than I need, so I am going to write you a deed to the whole state of Texas."

After regaining his stake and growing tired of hunting, Mr. Johnson decided to visit his lands in Texas. Traveled across the state visiting his tenants without disclosing they were beholden to him for using the land. Would play with the kids and brag on the women's cooking. (I have to make up a little of this story. The book didn't say he played with the kids or bragged on the women's cooking, but didn't say he didn't, either.) Died and was buried in an unmarked grave in San Angelo, Texas, in 1891. (According to a friend in San Angelo, identification on many of the graves was lost when the cemetery was moved to its present location.)

I was ashamed to steal the book with my friend sitting across the table. Also, she had had a full course of buffalo hunting before leaving the ship. Part of the book, however, was appropriate to buffalo fatigue. Said a common lament of buffalo hunters exhausted by the trade was to say: "I'm going to start walking with a buffalo tail over my shoulder. First place I hit they ask 'where'd you get that rope,' I'm going to settle down."

The Big Boss gamed all his adult life. Never told a story of a man winning Texas in a poker game. Knew lots of tales about chicken fights, foot races, horse races, dice games, and big stake games that ended in matching chicken fights, foot races, horse races and dice games. Shame Mr. Johnson didn't file his deed. Part of the state is pretty good ranch country when it rains.

November 20, 2003

December 4, 2003

2009-05-25T10:43:00.001-05:00

Only my hands smell stronger than the ranch kitchen. The whole room reeks with the sour pungency of a nursery after a bad siege of colic.

Where Mother placed a sweet little porcelain figurine of a blue and white shepherd boy rests a big jar of powdered milk. Where she kept a vase of flowers on the window sill stands a corral-stained milk bottle with a big red nipple. Down at the barn where her gentle yellow Jersey cow nursed dogie calves, a high-strung black Angus momma kicks her adopted calf with blows more akin to a bucking chute than a milk pen.

We are 28 days into heifer calving at this writing. At the rate we are delivering calves and bottling mismatched and unclaimed calves, by press time, I'll be so stooped I'll have to lift my head to see eye to eye with the keyboard of this word processor.

But don't be swayed by my ill fate. I had better opportunities than ranching. The old barber where I shined shoes offered to teach me to cut hair after high school. In those days, too, the railroad line running through the ranch hired young men to work on section crews, help in freight depots, and live and ride on work trains to such exciting places as Minerals Wells and Brownwood.

Oh no, Eugene Manlove Rhodes and later Elmer Kelton combined with J. Frank Dobie sang my love song. Hadn't been for those word purveyors of the Western myth, I might have done something useful with my life. Instead of dreaming of owning a big ranch west of the Pecos River, I would have been a lot better off trying to buy Pete's gas station at the crossing on the Pecos and devote my days to serving man by filling the gas tanks of short-sighted travelers crossing the broad alkali desert.

The heifers were bred last January to four low-birthweight bulls with high weaning weight scores. Bought the bulls in November 2002 at a sale patronized by the wealthiest heifer bull buyers in Texas. Only time I ever spent that much money on cattle before was the compound interest on a herd I bought in 1950; I didn't retire the paper until eleven-odd years after the old cows were sold.

The bulls' offspring do have an early weaning date. We never have had so many calves born to mothers not ready to give milk. By the time we have pulled her calf, the cow is so upset she acts abnormal. Her calf has been through such a traumatic delivery he just wants to collapse on the delivery slab. And we, the unlicensed doctors and nurses, are so exhausted, we aren't any consolation, tearing around taking the halter off the new mother and moving the calf to safety. In so much excitement, the black and white cow on a Borden's milk carton couldn't come to her milk, much less a range cow only knowing man from six feet away on the feed ground.

One problem for an old hand selecting bulls nowadays is understanding the scoring and ultra-sounding. The secretary of the Angus association spoke before the last sale, imploring us to ignore a bull's looks in favor of his EPD. Said the buyers looked for cattle rated for gain. Off-color or white-bellied calves from black cows must tip the buyers that a bad EPD is hidden under the hide or in the white hair of the flanks, as my pintos and brindles always sell at a discount. Being "too full" or "too short" must also signal a poor EPD, as my sales sheet comes back marked down worse than a horse player's race card.

The rating goes farther to label bulls suitable for buyers who sell their calves through the auction, or the ones who choose to feed their own cattle. I sure like the idea. I look on it as insurance: if I only buy bulls for raising auction ring cattle, it might keep me from trying the feedlots one more time. (One herder at the last bull sale claimed to have made $253 a head feeding his last calf crop. Be his good fortune to find a memory drug strong enough to erase that deal.)

Don't guess all our problems are the bulls. Might be the good year causing the calves to grow bigger. Having sheep for so many years, I can't judge cow grass because the woolies kept the ground slick as a new Oldsmobile's hood. But I am going to run DNAs on the calves we've pulled and the four heifer bulls to see whether we can find the culprit. If it works, it will be our first scientific success.

I don't know whether Noah took along first-calf heifers on his Ark, but if he'd made a second voyage, it's a cinch he'd have left them to drown.

December 4, 2003

December 11, 2003

2009-05-24T17:05:00.001-05:00

I always leave the stamp of origin to the last peeling fruit. Brings a deep sadness to hold an orange or apple from New Zealand, knowing a farmer down in Florida or up in Washington State needed to make the sale. Feel guilty betraying the future by supporting foreigners. Only consolation in all the imports is that Hong Kong men's pajamas drape better than Taiwan pj's.

Last month the hotshot financial paper, The Wall Street Journal warned consumers to expect higher prices due to the cost of freight on ships coming into our harbors. The article omitted the price consumers will pay the day the ships dock in the harbors offering the highest price for the load. The definition of "open seas" will take on deeper meaning if Japan or Singapore has a better market than, say, the West Coast of the U.S. (I am going to play this dirge to the hilt. Last chance before Christmas.)

Over Thanksgiving, I warned my grandchildren to help their mothers and dads hold onto my estate after my last call. Six or seven percent of the ranch can be tilled. Damp spots around the edges of the concrete tank are especially fertile. On the years the annual rainfall shoots on up to 10 inches, part of the arable ground grows white squash and black lentils dry enough at maturity to store in a cellar without any more protection than a paper sack. Squash and lentils mortared into a paste will sustain life to a peak that would reduce a power bar to the same scale as a lollipop.

However, an audience was hard to find and hard to hold once located. Deer hunting kept the boys in the pasture. The girls sat outside in the late fall warmth watching birds land on the yard fence and yellow butterflies make the final stand before cold weather. "Need any help" guests passed through the kitchen wary of pans falling from steel cabinets. An exhaust fan roared over my head as I fired, parboiled, scalded, burned, and boiled on four burners backed by an oven door opening and closing on heat more attuned to melting iron in a foundry than roasting a 20-pound turkey.

Somewhere and sometime in this wild melee, a granddaughter and daughter-in-law began to peel potatoes. The granddaughter broke the spell: "Granddad, what's the agenda?"

Granddad (me): "Granddaughter, a famine looms over your future is the cursed agenda. One percent of our countrymen raises food. Watch the squirrels and woodpeckers storing hard-shell pecans. Live not in the images of Wal-Mart, but copy the thrift of the lowly pack rat who replenishes and relines her nest with the waste of the world."

Pots scrape against the grill guards. A stove lid rolls out and under Mamaw's cabinet. The oven rack in an overloaded state jams and tilts the turkey pan enough to send brown grease dripping down between the oven door hinges.

Granddaughter: "Granddad, I mean today. What's the plan for this Thanksgiving Day?"

Granddad: "The plan is for 20 of us to eat 20 pounds of turkey, 40 scoops of dressing, 60 strings of green beans, one pint of cranberry sauce, five pans of oatmeal rolls… and my gosh-a-might, I've stepped in turkey grease."

Hunters crowd into the kitchen, bringing the pungency of early-rising young males too obsessed by antlers and backstrap to use Palmolive products. "Saw one 1200 yards away that'd make a Boone and Crockett spread look like a grade school pocket ruler. Nearly had my sights on him."

"Out of my way," the cook roars (me again). "Scat, vayate! Get the hell out of my kitchen."

Potato peelers switch to peeling onions. Granddaughter: "Granddad, tell me a Thanksgiving tradition." (Open table shot, side pocket on that one.)

Granddad: "Hon, be forewarned, for anon we have known if you take a nap after the Thanksgiving feast, you will want to take a nap every afternoon until Christmas."

Daughter-in-law sighs; granddaughter begins to peel onions at a furious pace. Timer rings for no cause. Double boiler goes dry, stockpot boils over. Acrid burned grease smoke from the oven vent sets off the smoke detector in the back bedroom. Hunter bearing deer liver and heart to wash in the sink yields to vegetable peeler's feet blocking path. Guest arrives, asking how soon the oven will be free to start cooking her rolls. Smoke detector stops, telephone rings.

By Saturday afternoon, every guest left, even the black bird dog. Alone at the kitchen table, I tried to eat a cold spare rib on a crumbly piece of day-old cornbread. Nap shadows began to cloud my vision. Chin weight caused a deep dip to my chest. So be forewarned: if you nap on a feast day, you will want to nap from then on to Christmas.

December 11, 2003

December 18, 2003

2009-05-24T17:00:00.001-05:00

Two trips to the wool house in Mertzon Christmas shopping for socks have been wasted. Demand is so high for mohair socks there must be a plethora of hombres staying below the sensible $10 limit on gifts.

After the second trip, I scanned the mail order catalogues for presents for my brother and sister. Prices are dreadful. The company offering fill-in-the-blanks thank-you notes has shot the price to $9 from $6.50 for 48 cards packed in a pretty box. Repeat customers should be favored. Until high school seniors and newlyweds stopped sending announcements, I gave fill-in-the-blanks cards to all parties. Never received a card back from a recipient, but if you preach gratitude, you should use symbols of gratitude. One of these days, used fill-in-the-blanks thank-you notes are going to be collector items, I think.

Next gift idea came in a strange way. One of the ranch families down south of the ranch requested their father be memorialized by donations to a college scholarship fund for the West Texas Boys' Ranch. Mellowed by the church dinner afterward, it sounded good to help the Boys' Ranch kids go to college.

Back home, I found the scholarship office in the directory listed at an impressive address in the Wells Fargo Bank building in San Angelo. Renting an office in the bank building answered the question of whether the scholarship funds were separate from running the Boys' Ranch. I learned right away that five of the boys were in college. I did not learn why the scholarship fund needed an office in the bank building, but didn't need to ask as I read the Wall Street Journal and stay up with trusts and such like. (Back when the building housed the Central National Bank, the jugkeepers taught herders advanced lessons in finance without scholarship funding. In dry springs, you'd see old boys leaving the lobby marching stiffer than a rusty-jointed tin soldier.)

Once I reached the office on the wire, I promised the next time I was in Angelo I'd come by and peel off a 50-dollar bill for the family down south's memorial, a Christmas present for my brother and sister, and help for the five college students. Didn't tell him my prior limit for college students was new two-dollar bills, as I didn't want to boast.

Thought for minute we'd lost connection. After a silence, he asked, "Anything else, Mr. Noelke?" (He'd been calling me "Monte.")

"Yes sir," I answered. "Don't use my dough to send the boys to Angelo State University. Not only are my brother and sister-in-law professors at the college, several of my friends teach at ASU. All are strict and cranky. If I have a conflict of interest, I want the conflict and the interest to work in my behalf, not have the kid I'm sponsoring flunked by known taskmasters."

Not much happened after my stipulations. I understand. Back when I bankrolled college students, my patience was thin. If I started a semester with a sense of humor, it dimmed the first six weeks and disappeared the next six weeks for good. For further proof, a fortnight ago I sent my grandson studying in Santa Fe at St. John College a novel. His dad dashed a scalding note the next week, stating in blunt language that as long as he was paying the bills to send his son through college, I should keep my books at the ranch. From the way he carried on, you would have thought I'd sent my grandson a case of absinthe with a road map to the Mexican border on the lid of the box.

Took a lot for me to offer to contribute fifty bucks for higher education. Higher education emptied the saddle racks at the barn. A doctor and his wife gave more than 10 million bucks for a new building at Angelo State this year. Had he and his wife used one-fiftieth of that amount building a big pool hall with snooker tables and pinball machines handy to a draft beer spigot, a few lads might have been forced to drop all that college nonsense. I told Doc the same, but he didn't seem to understand. Of course, it is difficult for a brain surgeon to relate to a herder who can do his most tedious job without taking off his White Mule gloves.

Christmas sure loosens us up. The day I went by the wool house for vaccine, the warehouseman was ordering more socks. I hope the Boys' Ranch sends nice cards. Strange the administrator didn't ask for my address. Guess he has it in an old file.

December 18, 2003

October 27, 2005

2009-05-24T13:16:00.001-05:00

October 27, 2005

Somewhere in Colorado

Grids projected to latitudes and longitudes won't help in locating where my pal and I stayed in Colorado last month. Better to stab the topographical map west of Denver close to the south slope of a big snow-peaked mountain with brush cleared around the base than take a reading.

Forty years ago, my editors insisted readers cared for such details. Four decades of covering personal weather failures and individual market sorrows slanted in an appeal for charity without receiving one card or one nudge of support, assigned readers to a general rule. To wit: the Black ranch herd of llamas over at Ozona care more about the plight of scribes than the general public.

All said, the closest outpost fits in a narrow valley with space for maybe 60 citizens. A big blue post box serves as the post office. The general store's floor space might be 20 by 40, including the space covered by the bases of shelves and potato sacks slumped over in the aisles.

The general store keeps more reliable hours than the one café. Never was sure whether we were going to shop for fig bars and potato chips on a Wednesday at the store, or eat out every day except Monday at the café.

The lunch and dinner menu offered the same nine choices every meal. No, eight choices were listed; scratch the meatloaf and brown gravy. Going way back, my credo forbids eating meatloaf with or without brown gravy in months having the letter "r".

Last time I broke the rule was helping ship lambs on Dove Creek in 1946. After a lunch featuring grease-jelled meatloaf, the boss cut me a horse called "Trotting John." Two hundred yards from the barn, the boss struck a lope. Two hundred yards and 10 steps form the barn, old John hit a gait so rough, the meatloaf fumes from the tomato paste and dried sage surged up my gullet with mighty force. Such force that my taste buds became so numb for years thereafter that couldn't tell the taste of a chili pepper seed from a grapefruit seed.

Bands of sheep passed down the valley by our place two weeks previous to the visit. The smell of the woolies lingered on the trails and set off a yearning for those sharp fall days shipping whiteface lambs at the ranch. Woolie operators are among the world's most sentimental people. Just humming "Mary Had A Little Lamb" might bring tears — especially to an old herder who had just taken a whipping on his lambs over at the Angelo market — that'd make a ship flying the Jolly Roger look like a rescue vessel.

Fellow in an art studio close by said his boys had to be kept indoors on the days the flocks passed down the road. The herders use big fierce guard dogs to protect the sheep from bears and coyotes. The artist said the dogs must think his sons are a threat to the sheep, but he didn't know why.

To know why guard dogs behave so, I needed to know how the boys behave, like maybe lobbing a few jagged igneous rocks at the sheep over the yard fence or from the pickup bed. Also, Pyrenees dogs are high enough off the ground to see over a car door or a yard fence. Be plenty shocking to an old dog used to seeing his master wearing a hat with the brim pointed in front to see a kid wearing a baseball cap backwards for the first time. I'm not saying he would want to bite the kid, as at early stages of maturity, the normal response of canines to the odor of pubescent boys is to fall over and roll in the dirt.

He said after the boys reached school age, whether to bus the students to a big school or hire two teachers for a small school became a hot issue in the district. Part of the cry by oldtimers was a lament that 10 years ago, the community got along — worked out differences.

Lacking the temperament or the inclination to enter a political battle, he said he audited previous elections going back past the 70s. Found the vote to be split evenly 16 for and 16 against every issue and every candidate. That ended any contention that the community was ever in agreement and confirmed that the Colorado outback is no different than small outposts in Texas. (I didn't check this. It just suited my purpose as a way to end his story.)

Every morning, the aspens gilded the fingers up the fissures or chasms to the mountain tops and at times draped a cloak of gold on the slopes. Light frost began to loosen the white petals of the wildflowers. And sometimes as often as every three days, news came of the misery of heat waves and hurricane in Texas.

Oh yes, don't be peevish about me omitting my location. Chances are I'll let it slip when I get home.

November 01, 2005

2009-05-24T13:15:00.001-05:00

November 01, 2005

A Deep Understanding

Our closest neighbors in the mountain phase of the Colorado trip were a newlywed couple and a big black pup. The couple stayed secluded, but the big black pup pranced about, eager to be seen and heard day and night. He had yet to realize in his youthful exuberance that being a watchdog for a honeymoon cabin is a lonely assignment.

Dogs were at mind. Before leaving home, my doctor pal bought a Cavalier King Charles spaniel to share a big apartment in Angelo in the Christian Village. Seems the dog's breed's name outclassed his behavior and his welcome to the village. The good doctor claimed the dog ate the stuffing in a goosedown feather pillow, defying pedigree incrimination or justifying tracing his DNA.

Further, beyond the experience or understanding of a layman's interest in canine feather-eating, Doc verbally traced the feathers through the nine-pound dog's alimentary canal at a weekly lunch meeting in an Angelo dining room, including detailed analysis of the quills and plumage in the fecal matter. Did such a remarkable and audible job that people at the table next to ours decided to move to the player's lounge to lunch on steamed hotdogs and canned beef chili.

The vacationing pup, however, showed no symptoms of eating down feathers. He displayed more aptitude at dragging his master's rubber fishing boots off the front porch of the cabin down onto the road than eating the pillows on the porch swing.

Not wishing to show disapproval and chance ruining the couple's celebration, I put on a big act of being delighted to share the grounds and the environment with the black pup. Petted him and called him "Sugar." At the same time, under my breath, I warned him not expect rewards for marking all four of my car tires in canine code, or to win approval for defecating on and around the bird feeder in the back yard.

No wonder the pup was invigorated and excited by the outdoors. I don't know where he was from, but the slight frost and wisps of fog floating in and over the valley of mornings, breaking into a special light to illuminate the aspen's gold leaves, sent charges of energy to my desert mind and body.

Morning walks changed from the routine of the lowlands to bounding off to the rushing stream to kick loose rocks off the low bluffs and watch them roll and tumble in the swift water. Affected by the pup's behavior, no doubt, I found myself pulling tree limbs over to smell the sharp fragrance of pine needles and rubbing the sap off my hands on my pant leg with no thought of the stain.

One morning, an English couple staying downstream at a hotel stopped to ask directions to a foot bridge across the river. Jolly people, burned by the unaccustomed mountain sunshine so different from their foggy homeland, they understood — but barely — my drawl.

As is the custom between the "Yanks" and the "Brits," there had to be a joke common to our historic relations. So to the question: "Where are the cowboys and Indians?" I replied, "We always, first thing, drive the good people out of our country."

Unsure whether they understood my Southern Inland accent, I quoted a book I was reading, explaining that the Ute Indian nation claimed all this country in Colorado for centuries from the mineral springs downriver to all the mountains and passes down to the lowland, miles in grand size. Laid the tale on in a big way, how after exploration and the big movement west, we (the white eyes) couldn't spare the Utes (redskins) so much space. Further, we needed lots of land to plant the low country and mine the mountains to make big bags of money, or "bags of wampum" is what we told our red brothers.

Those British guys speak 26 or maybe 36 different dialects. However, have you ever noticed how they sort of roll the word "tut" into a gravely sound with a lot of "r's"? They make the sound when puzzled, or perhaps doubtful of the story. Saw the couple once more at the hotel, but they seemed too occupied reading brochures to look my way.

The pup became lonesome. Every morning he waited for an invitation to go for a walk. Upstream, bear tracks spotted a shallow trout run on the river. I figured if a pup jumped a cub or the mother, I wanted the bears to understand that I was a pacifist not associated with guard or hunting dogs, so I declined to take him along even for short excursions.

All that was left of summer was one night of a dramatic thunder and lightning storm. Heard the pup howl once, I think, in the pitch of rumbling thunder crashing in the canyons. For such a short amount of time, he and I developed a deep understanding.

July 31, 2008

2009-05-24T11:33:00.001-05:00

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

Thursday, July 19, 2007

2009-05-24T11:29:00.001-05:00

Thursday, July 19, 2007

A Storyteller's Introduction

By the time we registered for workshops at the University of Iowa, the college hotel was booked. One downtown where we had stayed previously offered the same rate, plus complementary van service to the campus. So we took a comfortable room close to restaurants and a 10-minute ride to classes.
First morning, a Sunday, one of the two elevators stopped elevating. Big wedding party scattered among the six floors decided to go home at the moment of the failure. I came in the lobby from a walk as the mob of recovering celebrants shuffled out of the service stairway, carrying bags instead of plastic cups of champagne of the night before.
Through the door in top form from the cool morning walk, the twirling of my walking stick cast such a windmill shadow in front of the reception desk that one ol' boy shied so far off course, his roll-on spun into a deep, screeching wheelie. I considered comforting the lad, but remembered how long a fit lasted for a hot-blooded colt fearful of shadows.
Twirling a walking stick goes back to walking in Mertzon before all the town dogs started sleeping indoors and stopped biting walkers outdoors. The shadowmaker I carried in the hotel came from the lost and found closet. The cane or stick wasn't a cane or a stick at all, but an abandoned piece of telescoping aluminum tube for short-statured lightweights applying for disability benefits, or caught in a tight corner and needing a walking stick for a stage prop.
On purpose, I leave mine home. By the time I pack different weight clothes, rain coat, sunscreen, parasol, chap stick, extra shoelaces, and maybe a sewing kit, passing through inspection feels like an imposition on the government agents. Asking the inspectors to scan a walking stick, plus my other necessities like arch supports and corn pads, files and clippers, inhalants and eye drops, dental flosses and pastes, and ammonia swabs and chloroform patches to meet emergencies, seems too much.
Descending the four flights of stairs earlier allowed time to review the best places to borrow a walking stick. Underneath bar stools is one spot where they are forgotten. Streetcars and buses net a few. Old grannies grow careless in casinos and at horse races but are poor losers and the worst of sports, if you are caught nicking one. It was a stroke of good fortune finding the cane in the lost and found after weighing the possibilities.
The first class met after indoctrination on Sunday afternoon. The University of Iowa writing workshops rank among the best in the country. The catalogue listed my class as "The Art of Metaphors." Omitted was the fact that course attracted students experienced in launching rockets, medicine, research, law, libraries and education.
As each person gave an opening resume, the reason I was admitted became clear. I was admitted to make the rolls well rounded, to add a common country touch — the old Norman Rockwell, Carl Sandburg "aw shucks" flavor. Heartland America mixed into urban sophistication to balance the roles, to bring out true democracy in the classroom.
Self-introduction to an unknown audience is too much temptation for a storyteller. I was already using my full first name, Montgomery, for a dodge to keep folks from thinking I was saying "Bob" for "Monte." Further, Oscar Wilde warned, "Keep telling the truth and it'll catch up with you."
Twenty-five years — no, longer — ago, I learned not to admit to being a journalist, or more precisely, a scribe at a livestock journal. Writers unable to parse the syntax of Mary Had A Little Lamb scorn newspaper people.
The rocket scientist drew the most attention. He admitted that President Reagan ending the Cold War ruined his career at Cape Canaveral blasting off rockets. When the busybody of a peacemaker, (my version) Mr. Reagan, made a pact with the Russians, he lost his job to shower the heavens in explosives.
Second was a guy who majored in cell research. Like many students, he wanted to write his memoirs, except in non-technical language. As my turn came closer, ideas arose like offering to ghost a treatise for the cell guy and the rocket shooter. Offer a deal in the most commonplace language away from and outside the dock workers' hall in Galveston, Texas.
At my time, I lowered my head a bit. Said, "I'm Montgomery Noelke from the eastern edge of the Chihuahua Desert in Texas." Raised my head. Continued in deeper dialect: "Ah raise sheep and cows, git my mail at Mertzon, fear the Almighty, and trap coyotes for extra income."
The teacher replied, "Thank you, Mr. Nolek. Class dismissed." The classroom door was a lot further walking back than coming. Can't say whether my classmates grew quieter as I passed, as my hearing isn't that acute.

January 5, 2006

2009-05-24T11:23:00.001-05:00

You cannot turn your back upon a dream/for phantoms have their reason when they come. Robert Lowell in his poem "Ghost."

            Someone in the family, perhaps a grandson or granddaughter, needs to know that a five year-old dark sorrel mare lies 50 feet due north of the railroad at Noelke Switch in an unmarked grave. The westbound midnight freight of the Santa Fe Railway killed her on Christmas Eve of 1952 at the Noelke Crossing.

            The engineer's report described her standing on the main track, blinded by the light of the onrushing train. The engineer said further, "I switched off the lights, blasted my whistle, but she never gave an inch."

            Christmas morning, the section foreman called, offering to bury her right away. I deferred. The section gang, we agreed, needed the day to medicate on menudo and bed rest. Christmas Eve had been a big night in Mertzon.

            On the 26th, the section crew buried her in a hand-dug grave on railroad property, according to company specifications for interring farm animals. On the same morning, Jose Aguirre, Elton Howard_, Feliciano Rocha, and myself rode across the tracks, driving 800 ewes, facing a north wind, heading for fresh pasture to hospitalize a flock of bitterweed poisoned sheep.

            The tail end of the herd wobbled across the rails, afflicted by the poison. We looked some better than the drags, concealed in white salt sacks tied up under the chin straps holding hats in place, over faded green overalls braving the winds. Our task, however, was better than that of the six-man section crew hitting the hard-packed red clay with shovels and picks, jarring their scalded eye sockets and hammering on tender nerves.

            We took turns walking behind the herd, using the woolies as a shield to warm a bit from the high winds blowing off the iced-over mesquite limbs. Part of the time, one rider held back the lead to wait on the sick ones.

            As I remember the ride, no one spoke or rode close to me. Don't recall the horse I rode. Couldn't have been Badger, as he was too tall for me to reach the stirrup while wearing a winter costume. Would have been a blessing if that old fool spent all his limitless Christmases on railroad tracks, county roads, and U.S. highways. Would have been my pleasure to free him to range on the Dallas-Fort Worth turnpike if there had been a way of cooling the Big Boss's love for such a deranged mass of horseflesh directed toward making cowboys miserable.

            If motorists had been able to look off from the icy track at the highway crossing, they'd have thought we were a band of horsemen looking for stray camels to play a part in the Lawrence of Arabia movie, instead of being simple herders. By then, the white salt sacks had worked loose from around our necks and the baggy coverall pants strangled our legs under our chaps. Lucky indeed was the one of us who hadn't lost a glove, or even owned matching gloves. (Saddles don't have an instrument panel. Way to tell below freezing is when breathing the cold air hurts as bad as a tonsillectomy.)

            But move forward to this past Christmas of '05 and a midnight trip by Noelke Switch on the way back to the Divide. I stopped and pulled over in the space directly across from the railroad crossing. Grew still and watched the moonlight reflect on the rails as I had many times before in the old days.

            Suddenly, dust began to rise from the shipping pens. Poke sticks long as lances aimed by mounted men, punched cattle up the alley to the loading dock on the railroad.

            Heard a horse set back tied to the big mesquite in the run-around tuned to a manila rope snapping. Heard a Mexican cowboy's cry, "Hi-yai cabrones." Heard hooves tapping the chute floor in a rapid staccato of the successful drive.

            Boxcar doors slammed; a rusty brake screeched under a massive wheel. Smelled coal, creosote, smoke, tar and wet sand — all part of the dark, dingy, rigid, black world of rails. Thought for a minute I heard Elton's voice singing the hymn he sang on the ride to the house. Longed that last moment in the moonlight to once again to feel the might of a horse under a tight saddle and to be the horseman looking down on a railroad hand on shipping days at Noelke Switch.

            The mare's name was Doll Town. I guess I liked her. I know I liked to ride her better than the ones that kept me in a state of disgrace among the riders and the ridden. I know she was buried with the sweat marks of my saddle on her back. Can say for sure she was a better horse than Ol' Badger. He was so sorry and mean, he'd have wrecked the train upon impact.

            I followed the tracks four more miles to the next crossing. I read after Christmas that families become stronger when they know the parents' past. Guess I will tell a grandson or granddaughter where Doll Town rests. Maybe some night on Christmas, they'll see the replay in the moonlight.

January 5, 2006

January 12, 2006

2009-05-24T11:21:00.001-05:00

On the trip back from Fort Worth before Christmas, burned grasslands spotted the roadsides. First notice was outside the city limits from a rig accident on a gas well. Others fires on the right of way appeared to be from catalytic converters sparking the dry vegetation — a guess later confirmed by a highway worker.

Sure took away the jingle bells from the trip as my pal and I drove west. Every roadside firecracker joint symbolized that the stands outside the city limits of San Angelo were laying in loads of small explosives to light the skies and scatter incendiary fallout in all the surrounding shortgrass counties.

Bolstering my sense of dread was the fact that Mother's old home in Mertzon, in addition to adjoining overgrown vacant lots full of fuel, sits to the east of a row of six 30-foot pine trees. Beautiful yet drouth-responsive, those trees hold dry needles aloft in upper branches perfect for a skyrocket to land.

Came to mind, too, the deer camps and oil rigs too close and too many to rate the danger. Powerlines and high-pressure pipelines joined us on the ride, strung and laid across the countryside to create aerial and subterranean arson. (Okay, I apologize. Kind of got carried away.) Unpapered aliens cooking by water tanks and oil transports backfiring off the road came on board. The specter of ruin riding in the car became so real, we began to plan backfires to save the ranchland — to save the whole county.

Irony of all irony_, we passed through the small town that later would suffer huge losses of homes from grass fires. I never thought of the land east of San Angelo being dry enough to burn. Now, west of town, the ranches had always had big prairie fires.

The worst times for us were the World War II years, when practice bombing set off fires before fire departments existed to put them out. Like a lot of life's history, that era has been covered in the 40-odd years I've been a storyteller in print. Wish now I had coded my material, so I'd know the made-up part from the truth. Would help, for example, to know if 10,000 head of sheep burned in one big fire east of the ranch from bombing practice in the 1940s, or I imagined the 40 or 50-section fire burned a hundred ewes.

One point is for certain: writing the big fire story today, feeling safe that no witnesses remain, would be a sure way to contact all the fellow firefighters. It would only take setting the scene as three days and three nights over there in the rocks and playa lakes stumbling over prickly pears, whip mesquites and burned sheep carcasses to all but bring back the dead to dispute my story in an onslaught more fierce than the roll call that fateful night.

Just last year I felt safe enough to slip in a ringer about a picture of a 1920 model chuckwagon that the editor of Vogue Magazine knew more about than I did. Three days after the posting, a lady in Vermont wrote an e-mail saying the cowboy described in such detail, standing by the lid of the chuck box, was her father. I couldn't have felt worse if I'd ridden up on those cowboys in a buggy wearing a pair of golf knickers stuffed in knee-length socks.

No time was spent in Mertzon after reaching home. I knew I couldn't sleep with firecrackers popping until midnight. We'd already passed the Twin Mountain stands proclaiming "Buy One; Get One Free" to provide enough nightmares to last several Christmas naps. We'd already flinched at the long line of cars trailing out to load the home powder magazines and bombard the lake beds, subdivisions and any other areas unprotected by laws prohibiting shooting fireworks, like farms and ranches.

Once unloaded at the ranch, I connected the hose in the back yard used to fill the livestock sprayer. The hydrant made the sucking noise related to an empty pipe. Then it hit me that the guy working on the plumbing killed the water line going to an old wash house. Would have been a fine start to fighting fire to throw the hose over in the sprayer without checking the flow of water. Instead of being angry, I was grateful for the warning.

Our fears were justified. Big fires and bad fires hit all around. The blazes ranged from 50,000 acres burned in one block up in the north end of the county to fireworks in Mertzon burning the city blocks close to the courthouse and library while the fire trucks were at the big fire.

Until rains fall, it won't take but one ring to reach the ranchers. The smell of grass burning still lingers in the air. I plan on having a fire drill as soon as the back hydrant is connected.

January 12, 2006

January 6, 2005

2009-05-24T11:20:00.001-05:00

Over the holidays, a new plan developed for handling guests at the ranch. Discovered at Thanksgiving how to delegate power along with delegating work. I appointed my Austin daughter-in-law, Holly, to assign bedrooms but reserved the authority to handle complaints from the assignees.

The issue covers the ranch house and the Mertzon house bedrooms, also the couches and the floor space in the two living rooms for the student bunks. Second floor, or the loft accommodations at Mertzon, serve weaned and near-weaned kids still in playpens, cribs, baskets, or papoose frames. I learned years ago that the strain on a mother of capturing a child just before he plunges down the stairwell shortens the stay. Any trick to get the Pabulum set on the road, dirty or fair, beats Grandpa being crippled from stepping on a toy crocodile or steel top.

            However, the unplugged TV set and computer downstairs comply with new findings by baby healers. The American Association of Pediatricians just released a warning that children should be two years of age before allowed to sit in front of computers, VCRs, and TV's more than two hours a day. They recommended freeing babies of sitting in Mom's lap while she plays games on the Net or spit-curls her hair in front of the television screen. Made me reconsider giving my new grandchild her first laptop.

            My daughter-in-law qualified for the reservation job in an indirect way. Her coffee recipe reduces the need for sleep. After a cup at breakfast, the morning paper's print waves like a six-point Richter reading on a California quake. One cup contains enough caffeine to give a 65-pound sloth insomnia. Once, on a half-cup cut with milk, I did a pirouette so high up on my toes that I bumped my head on a fixture flush with the kitchen ceiling.

            My experience dealing with holiday complaints goes way back. The Big Boss spent a lot of his Christmas holidays at the old ranch as an intermission between his principal interests of polo tournaments and big game hunting trips mingled with prolonged winter stays in cabanas on the peninsula of Florida and summer vacations to the Colorado mountain slopes.

            Always complained how he disliked the holidays because it wasn't possible to get any work done during Christmas. Came to breakfast grumbling about mechanics stopping work and the hardware store closing for two days. By lunch he had read enough in the day-old newspaper to be incensed over the Mertzon drugstore failing to open to deliver his latest edition. The season he ran short of seltzer water and Travis Club cigars is hard to relate to in this age of all-night chain stores filled with chasers and stogies.

It took four cowboys, two wagons, four mules, and two 300-acre traps and a bunkhouse to hold the riders, the ridden and the harnessed stock required for the feed run at the old ranch. His orders were to feed the cattle double on the 24th. On Christmas morning, feed the horses and mules and do the chores. (Milk the cows, feed the hogs and chickens, and doctor the hospital pen.)

            Over and over, he said how sad it was for an old pony to be without a bite on Christmas morning. The ones of us riding those old ponies were tenderhearted, too. The times we arose in the cold bunkhouse after a Christmas ball, unable to hold solid food on the raging stomach fires and brave thunderous throbs in our temples, we developed a compassion for man and beast as we pitched a saddle on a horse or collared a mule. The tenderness was so strong, the undertow would make Mother Teresa seem hard as a faro dealer.

            The complaints I handle are current ones, however, not those of 1950s times. Suppose a grandson says, "Granddad, my face and chest were cold where I slept last night." A good answer would be, "My son, turn over from time to time and sleep on your stomach." Might be, "Granddad, I'm starving." Sure to be, "Look on the bottom shelf of the cabinet for a stick of sugar-free gum. Excellent remedy to curb hunger, my boy." A likely event, "Granddad, 'Aurb' fell off Kate." Standard script, "Go catch the horse before she breaks the new reins J.R. made last week."

            Hardest to please are grown sons. "Dad, the furnace was too high last night. Couldn't sleep." The solution, "Oh, I am sorry. Tonight, go down before bedtime and sweep the barn. Odor of fresh hay straw is an ancient cure for insomnia." Might be a whispered reminder that his guest is a vegetarian: "Dad, please, please carve the rib roast in the kitchen." And Dad (me): "Sure, son, if you will ask your guest to stop eating seaweed and raw okra in the living room between meals."

            We are making big progress. Fielded fewer complaints over Christmas than ever before. I sure missed having my daughter-in-law on the ground, but followed her policies and was able to bed the crew…

January 6, 2005

January 13, 2005

2009-05-24T11:19:00.001-05:00

Best not to bother trying to put this story in the right timeframe or sequence. Learned years ago that folks object to my being at the ranch overburdened with calving heifers before one deadline, only to be fretting with airport security far away from the ranch the next week.

But I realized the morning I checked the heifers and left the front gate to the yard and the front door to the house open in the chill of a December morning that I needed to make a business trip to Austin. "Business" meaning eating on white linen, sleeping on high thread count sheets, using Turkish towels to dry in a big hotel to address business in a newspaper left by the hotel room door every morning at 6 a.m.

            The part that's hard to connect is that during the business trip, my friend and I moved to a private residence across Austin from the hotel. First night there, we discovered a raccoon lived in the attic — a heavy-footed, restless, light-sleeping raccoon. The kind of varmint, though nocturnal, given to walking in his sleep. Think of a clog dancer rehearsing over your bedroom, or Hogarth the dreaded Viking of the North Sea walking in hobnails overhead.

            At daybreak, investigation showed the coon had gnawed a hole in the roof by the rock chimney. Had opened the attic to all of the protected fauna, endangered flora, and global warming climate currently on defense in Austin, Texas. Standing in the backyard looking at the damage (second raccoon offense against her roof in '04) and clasping my friend's hand to support her, the image of a blue steel, snub-nosed .38 Special Smith and Wesson pistol Jose and I smuggled into Mexico so many decades ago flashed. Felt the checkered wooden grips; recalled the broad target sights and the recoil from a heavy grain load.

            Back indoors, I called my son Ben to borrow a shotgun and a couple of shells. He stalled my request by asking what I needed a gun for on a Sunday morning in the Capitol city? Became specific by saying: "Dad, you two aren't on your Crockett County grounds. Whatever you are planning to shoot is protected by law and by a vast majority of the town's citizens."

            Deterred, I requested he bring us one of those urbanite heart-something-or-other traps to catch a coon long enough to repay the sapsucker for eating a hole in my pal's roof. I told him not to worry over public opinion, or city, state, federal, or common laws. "Once that merriweather sapsucker is captured," I said, "I'll read him his rights and mete the sentence."

            By mid-morning, Ben arrived with a big rusty cage opened on one end by a trap door set by a trigger to bait in the other end. The trap goes by the name of "Have a Heart Trap." Sure was well named, as the next night the coon ate a big can of sardines, digested the bait on the trap floor, and escaped without tripping the door or turning a hair the wrong way.

            Called my son George next morning: "George, been planning on going on a little hunt at your brother Lea's ranch in Llano County. Need to borrow your four-ten shot… Oh, you heard about the coon." I paused; it was not necessary for him to repeat the identical admonishment as Ben's on how Austin folks treat swatting a garden gnat as a major breach against the balance of nature.

            On the second or third morning, my friend contacted a pest removal service. At 10 a.m. a neat young man arrived carrying a clipboard, businesslike as a stock broker. In fact, he smelled more like a stock broker than a trapper. He was late, but his excuse wasn't that he'd been tracking a phantom bear, the dreadnaught of Onion Creek, or making a set for "Old Three-Toe" the wiliest coyote bitch on the Colorado River. Further, he made me suspicious not trying to top my story of the winter of '36, when "Polecat Edward" caught 63 bobcats on Spring Creek without losing one bait or one trap. Knew he was a phony when he smoothed his hair and checked his fingernails.

            In the windup, my pal hired the metro humane trapper for a price many times over what 10 coon hides brought after World War Two. Ben came for the sardine buffet trap that leaked grown coons. A carpenter closed the hole to the coon's den. (Not sure, but mark this 300 bucks on the bill.) George promised to check on the roof after we left for home. And Lea Noelke rang, puzzled why I wanted his legal assistance to inform the city government of my rights under Article Two of the Constitution.

            Last day in the city, I read a touching article of the woes besetting Lakeway residents from marauding coyotes. Thought as we packed of sending the city slickers a pack of soft rubber bands to shoot at the prairie wolves. Last I heard, Prince Charming hadn't caught the raccoon.

January 13, 2005

January 20, 2005

2009-05-24T11:18:00.001-05:00

The cowboy working closest to Barnhart helps patrol Highway 67 for loose livestock toward Mertzon. A bit closer, Aunt Annie, Goat Whiskers the Younger and his staff take over to support my outfit on around to the big curve paralleling the railroad tracks. From there, we share the responsibility with other neighbors and the sheriff's department.

            Whether our efforts save lives depends on how much importance is placed on a Honda station wagon overloaded with kids and Christmas stuff sideswiping a 2000 pound black oxen on the shoulder adjoining Whisker's Holiday Inn Ranch. Also to be considered is the right of way of a Volkswagon loaded with teenagers celebrating the holidays by plowing through a herd of escaped hair goats, or fleeing weaned calves.

            Herding strays off County Road 131, or the old Barnhart-Mertzon Highway 29 is the dominion of the cowboy living at Monument Ranch and the small scattering of us herders left on the 09 Divide. Our responsibility extends to pairing calves weaned from mothers by cattleguards one day after motorized roundups to dragging dead sheep from the road to reorienting lost deer hunters. We further put kid goats back with their mothers, report grass fires and fight the same, and leave the keys in a 1983 pickup for stalled or water-bound motorists on the county road.

            During the holidays, the San Angelo Police Department became active in estrays by capturing and containing a humpy bull over on the north side of the town. Made big news in the daily paper. Rich material, including the rodeo bull's name, "Dirty Deeds," plus the police firing shotguns so haphazardly the bull handlers became backstops for a scattering of the buckshot. "Old Dirty Deed" had to be sent to a merciful death at a veterinary clinic, but not before a graphic news photo showed his dreadful head wounds.

            No mention was made of the fate of the men brave enough to work a rodeo bull on foot, or tough enough to deflect steel shot. Probably they were so tense and excited the shot bounced off their hides. Way back, some of us smarter kids aspired to be bull riders in a little bush and thicket rodeo association at Mertzon. Swarms of horn flies and mosquitoes plagued the rodeo grounds that wet summer, but as we waited our turn behind the chute, there wasn't a stinger or beak sharp enough to nick our skin, much less draw blood.

            First trip to San Angelo after the holidays, I met a cowboy herding a white heifer down the county road late of evening on the railroad right-of-way. Dismounted in my dark blue pants, white shirt, and dress shoes to help him put her through a neighbor's gate. We herded her within 50 steps of an opening before she came back over us. My dancing shoes lacked the traction to head her in the slick winter grass. Fell and stained the elbow of the white shirt light green and added the same color to the knees of my blue pants.

            We finally headed her to a locked cattleguard. We planned on jumping her across the guard, but it was too dark by then to read the combination on the lock. Did find the wire gap connected to the guard half open. On the third try, we put her in the pasture.

            Later the same evening, Aunt Annie Bailey from the Whiskers Holiday Inn ranch reported a white cow out in the same spot. She asked my advice. Told her I'd try to find an off-duty Angelo policeman to come work the cow back in the pasture on the weekend. Thought we'd have plenty of time to recruit a gunner. Asked her to please not remove the evidence (She knows how to herd cows, having served her apprenticeship shedding the Whiskers goat herd.), as I have claim against the cow for a pair of blue pants and a white shirt.

            I expected the animal rights people and Humane Society to give the bluecoats over in Angelo a stand-up lesson in restricting and containing humpy bulls that'd last until the youngest member on the force retired. One fair-minded citizen wrote she was furious at the police for shooting the bull and angrier at the handlers for being rodeo people and owning a bull. Appeared she had spunk to spare. Was glad she wasn't around the night we captured the white escapist, as she sounded too impatient to work a cow through a six-foot opening shod in dancing pumps and using blue serge for knee pads.

            Our road work promises to expand in the new year. The railroad announced that its tracking is now sound enough to raise the speed limit from 10 miles an hour to 25. That adds eight miles by 250 feet more width to watch. Just hope we don't have to work too many cattle in such a narrow space.

January 20, 2005

February 3, 2005

2009-05-23T11:25:00.001-05:00

After two months of calving heifers, interest wanes so much among friends and family that no one asks what's going on at the ranch. Might have started before heifer calving, as ranch life is a mighty steady program. Hard to participate in the jet age if putting beans on to soak at night is an important topic.

            Son John, the sculptor, stayed around several weeks during Christmas. First time he's been lucky enough to be part of a few small cow works in a long time, or been privileged to share in such excitement as jacking the feed wagon out of a seep muddy enough to mire the old buggy below the hub.

            His reintroduction to the romance of the range began with a casual request to pick up the mail in Mertzon. I smoothed that into him hauling a load of mineral from town — a coveted job he never experienced as a young cowboy. Expanded the next morning to: "John, reckon you could help Tom and your brother Ralph mark a little bunch of baby calves in the Devil River pasture? (55 head of kicking, 100-150 pound black calves.) Should be through before lunch." (Check for time miracle here to gather three sections plus mark calves to be worked two ways.)

            The first delay came when the Devil River count was incorrect. The books were right. It must have been a typo that caused us to carry the cow with the crippled calf on the Devil River count instead of booking her in the horse trap. Caught the mistake too late to stop John from re-riding the fence a second time. Would have honked him in with the feed wagon horn, but the battery short kept cutting the heater on and off, chilling the cab. Nothing on four wheels as cold as an old pickup with the insulation worn from around the doors. Was plenty brisk up in the air on a saddle, but John lives in Connecticut, where zero weather is considered a balmy day.

            Before lunch, a second audit discovered the crippled cow's calf, but showed one cow to have a full bag and another to be dry. Crippled bull in the hospital pen pushed under a gate at lunch. His contribution mixed the cows and calves back together. Second audit showed the full bag cow to be sucked and the dry cow to have a calf and not much milk.

            Didn't take long to separate the cows from the calves a second time, but the six head loaded on the trailer to go over to my son Ralph's place had to be unloaded to set the calf chute. In the process, the trailer door flew open and caught either John or Ralph's hand against a pipe rail. Was hard to think with a west wind rattling the barn roofs. Believe it was John, as later on he had a handkerchief tied above the knuckles on his right hand.

            We finished too late to warm supper. Cows kept coming back bawling for calves after dark. The old fence in the back of the trap leaks cows like a turnstile to a subway train, but I didn't want to mention working on the fence until I knew how much time John was going to lose while his hand healed. (Seems like my boys are always poking their hands in the wrong place at the wrong time. Son Lea injured his hand Thanksgiving snubbing a cow in the chute. I remember Ben or George one in high school allowing a big calf to knock his hand into the path of a vaccinating gun.)

            Day after Christmas, John's pal from Washington DC came for a visit. He works for the EPA. Good thing he arrived after marking. The new automatic syringe misfired every other dose. Had we been apprehended shooting two milliliters of seven-way into the atmosphere, there would have been a lot more trouble in the corrals than bruised hands or bad counts.

            I was so nervous at breakfast the first morning with the new guest that I buttered my eggs instead of the toast. Was unable to decide whether to peel an orange or eat it peel and all. Lady helping clean the house stripped a bed before I checked to see if the mattress tag was in place. Living so far from town, you overlook serious laws like those that prohibit removing a mattress tag. Would like to know someday the limitations on such tags.

            The guest turned out to be a personable chap, well traveled and widely read. Helped John finish filling mud holes in front of the garage, made a hand in the kitchen, and entertained a second guest by conversing in French after dinner.

            I was glad John had a rest from his last assignment. Ranch life is slow, yet restores and rests the mind. I could tell when we said goodbye at the airport that his hand was healing. To save myself, I can't figure why my boys get hurt so often …

February 3, 2005

October 27, 2005

2009-05-23T11:24:00.001-05:00

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Somewhere in Colorado

January 8, 2004

2009-05-23T11:22:00.001-05:00

Countdown for the U.S. hollow-horn operators began when we became aware that a black and white milk cow in Washington state tested positive for mad cow disease the day before Christmas — a slow, dreary count set to the beat of a hangman's footsteps climbing the gallows. Feedlot hombres and herders alike are bound to have heard a dirge like Nero tuning his fiddle to play for the finale for the fall of Rome.

As the press worked overtime to spread the news, the big-time dailies stayed current with each country banning U.S. beef and each possible site of contamination. Words spewed from Washington assuring that the domestic supply was safe. Photographs flashed on the 'Net of Japanese butchers removing U.S. beef from the shelves.

At the ranch, my son and his friend left on the morning of the 26^th. The Royal Guard of the French army never witnessed such an emotional farewell. Surrender and defeat cast a spell over the parting. My son Ben kept repeating, "Now, Dad, this is not the end of the world, just the end of a good cow market. As soon as the Secretary of Agriculture convinces 290 million Americans and one half of the world's population that beef is safe, you will be able to sleep past three in the morning and go back on solid food."

Ten head of heavy-bred Angus heifers watered at the horse trough before I went indoors. These pampered beasts needed to rinse away the dry grass and cottonseed meal taste before going over to lick a free-choice $440 a ton mineral. Fifty-five head of weaned calves bawled across the fence, bemoaning the late start of the feed wagon as if the life of a black calf is in danger if she misses a handout on Christmas day followed by a delay the day after.

I tried to stretch before my morning walk, but my body was so tense from the bad news, the only parts loose enough to flex were the joints of my little fingers. By noon, sage newscasters predicted some repercussion for beef producers from the contaminated milk cow. Might as well have reported that Far Eastern insurance companies are considering refusing Saddam Hussein's option to increase the size of his accidental death benefit.

The guests left a half-gallon of organic whole milk in the refrigerator. This was the first organic milk on the shelves since my friend insisted we milk the colostrum from a heifer to feed dogies. By lunch, I felt my stomach was stable enough to sip warm milk. As bleak as the future seemed, I hoped the organic milk might have come from a Washington State dairy.

Takes a big dose of Cow and Scientist Madness (CSM — Please let this slip by to see if a new label floats.) to outdo the sadness at the end of the best cow boom since work oxen had a flush season back in 1860 when all the horses were off in the war. Takes more than your mother's training to keep from being resentful about the sick milk cow, harboring a hunch she came from Canada. Lots of those big Holsteins in Canada. (Fidel Castro was so impressed with Canada's dairy cattle, he imported a herd of Holsteins to improve milk production. Hungry as the Cubans are for meat, they probably can verify Canadian milk cows are safe to eat, including the horns and the tails of Canadian milk cows.)

The only inkling I had of the lurking fear of Disturbed Cow Disorder (DCB — I am going to continue to downgrade the label) was at a resort hotel in Kerrville, Texas. The German lady running the restaurant refused to serve us a rare steak, claiming "Wild Cow Disease" was the reason, which I supposed was the same as Bovine Fury Reaction (BFR).

She was wrong, but I'd rather try to change a federal judge's mind on tenure than so much as disagree with one of those Teutonic Central Texas products only three generations removed from the homeland. I wanted to tell this purveyor of myth and panic that 20 people worldwide had already died from the Cow Fury Disorder, (latest label; CFD) or advise her it was a lot more risky to park at the grocery store than to have a full body message in ground beef followed by a rare steak dinner for four.

At this writing, the news was improving. My hunch the milk cow came from Canada is being investigated. Her two calves have been destroyed. Next time I go to Kerrville, I am going to carry a lunch of carrot sticks and rhubarb stalks. Might as well be a vegetarian as risk the palate eating well done meat, and if the cafe lady was scared two months ago, she's going to be frantic after this fiasco.

January 15, 2004

2009-05-23T11:20:00.000-05:00

At first light on the feast day in the Christmas kitchen, cookbooks lead to familiar paths: "Sauté the chopped onions until golden, add the garlic before the onion turns, slowly dribble the oil for the broth down the sides of the pan, preheat the oven.

Next, the "hunt and chase" phase; must stop mixing and turn the knob to see if the pilot flickers on the burner; where are the gosh-a-mighty hot pads — oh, hiding under the tongs; and aside and apart, rush to the east door to see the sunrise over the mesquite plains.

Once too proud to allow guests to bring food, I now all but beat on a tambourine and ring bells over a swinging pot asking for help. For every mile of distance between the ranch and a grocery store, I save four or five dollars a mile staying home and imposing on my friends and children. The hardest items to remember or find in San Angelo hit a mean of between two and three dollars an ounce. Wild rice and piñon nuts, for example, are hard to locate, yet white hominy and crushed red pepper flakes all but fall over in the cart.

Big void in the menu is wines. The package store close to Angelo is on the wrong side of the highway going to town and sets off the road too far coming home. I don't drink wine, but lots of recipes call for wine.

The ones who drink wine, I've learned, have to have long-stemmed glasses and a piece of paraphernalia to lift the corks. Have to have red and white wines. Can't be mixed into a blend of colors to make a pink. All the wine drinking I ever knew was just breaking the seal and unscrewing the top to take a swig.

Told my friend who buys the wines that if I have to add high-priced glasses and a fancy corkscrew especially for wine drinkers, I am going to charge a corkage on every glass, like, say three dollars on the first glass and six bucks on the next one.

Cooking, however, wasn't all that was happening Christmas morning. The last 10 heifers to calve grazed around the yard fence in stillness so profound the clipping of the dry grass crunching was audible at the back door. As I dumped the trash, it seemed the only concern a first-calf black bovine has the last term of pregnancy is tormenting her nurse to the very last hour of her time.

Guests began to arrive early. Grease popped in the roast beef pan. Bright tissue paper checkered the living room rug like a ribbon race at a Scout camp. Foods hit the serving table. The welcome speech and the blessing of the food came swift and abbreviated. At family gatherings, yielding the floor may mean making a choice of hearing, say, the story of the Grandfather and Frank Harris roping a bear on Devil's River and eating a congealed gravy over cold bread, versus praying so long the gang is speechless.

Our after dinner tradition is to read A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. Mother left the book when she moved to town as her eternal gift to civility and love. We set a fine holiday scene gathered in the living room, passing the book from reader to reader. My sister napping in her wheel chair; her driver nodding on the couch. Red tapers burning on the big table. The dishwashing crew rejoining the circle to give a smug glow of service and sacrifice to the backsliders shy of soap and water.

There are no fireplaces. No firecrackers popping, however, a cork exploding interrupts my train of thought, but that might just be an idiosyncrasy, not a real distraction. The white mountain sheep skin the Boss left comes the closest to having a dog sleeping on the living room floor. Sprigs of mistletoe serve for pine trees, wreaths and music. We aren't heathens, just country people who seek the solitude of the ranch to celebrate in our way.

I am sorry, but passages are too long to read you a portion from Mr. Capote's book. When my friend and I were in the San Juan Islands in the fall, we bought an extra edition at a bookstore in Friday's Harbor. But if you want a copy of The Christmas Memory, bookfinders.com might be the place to order one.

February 19, 2004

2009-05-23T11:18:00.001-05:00

A fellow pumping gas in Mertzon observed last week that motorists no longer yield the right-of-way to skunks. He thought the 70 mile an hour speed limit turned the highways into a free-for-all road kill if not even an animal as odoriferous as a skunk slowed traffic.

Next morning, Goat Whiskers the Younger called to report he was loose herding one of my cows off the pavement, waiting for the sheriff to halt traffic. By the time I arrived, red Hondas and shiny crewcabs roared by, tires singing as if the three men, the three vehicles, the flashing lights and the one black cow in broad daylight were the starting gate for the straight-away track.

We hadn't stocked cattle on the highway since 1992. We lack one half mile of replacing the right-of-way fence on each side of the highway. The only weak points are the 14-foot cattleguards that oil companies so graciously left us to maintain.

We tried to clean the fill from one guard using ranch equipment. Neither the hydraulic lift on our tractor nor the blade on the steel track would budge one end of the heavy pipe frame six inches, much less lift it. After the tractor stalled and a hose broke on the steel track, a neighbor suggested hiring an oilfield workover crew and a winch truck to do the job. I told him if they'd work for the salvage value of the two tractors, I might give the idea a try. Otherwise, 12 feet of wire gap was going to have to block the cattleguard.

Restoring this guard was not only important for keeping my cattle off the highway, it also gave fossil fuel miners complimentary access to their leases. It was further convenient for the general public to whip in off the hot asphalt for a few cans of beer to fight road fatigue, take a stroll over to hunt arrowheads in the flint beds close by, or have a handy spot to dump ashtrays and litter bags.

My cow venture got off to a bad start without cattleguard problems. The first cattle we moved pushed over a wire gate in a corner and escaped onto my brother's pasture. Took two men on horseback three trips to gather the cows. During hunting season, there are only four hours in the middle of the day when a man can ride without being a backstop for a hunting blind, and midday is the most difficult time to see a black cow shaded under a cedar bush, unless you search after dark.

The second bunch were the light end of the heifer calves from on the Divide. Four red bulls were turned in on the eighth of January. The pasture waters on the highway. On the tenth of January, a neighbor called and said, "I saw four old Mexico steers in your cattle on the highway. Wonder how the heifers are going to gain weight with the steers running with them?"

The insult had a short life and shorter attention span. Along with the cow jumping into the highway and the ones escaping onto my brother's pasture, a five year-old cow nursing a big bull calf changed from a sleek, fit mother into a listless brute too weak for her calf to nurse in a week's time. She'd come to feed, but wouldn't eat.

I knew this was a desperate case. When a black cow loses her appetite, it's too late to call for the doctor unless she's also connected with the rendering plant. I've seen Angus cattle slip their hair, lose their teeth, go blind, scour, take hoof rot, swallow beer cans and fan belts, drink oil and salt water, run fever and have chills, and do a combination of all those ills, and still consume four chips of hay and 10 pounds of cake at a feeding.

Four different men thought the sick cow had hardware disease. Enough trash blows off the highway right-of-way to dam an irrigation ditch, much less block the alimentary canal of a cow. However, the diagnosis was unclear. Did they mean hardware or hard-wear? Range doctors blame all mysterious aliments on hardware disease, but shortgrass cattle also suffer hard wear disease from grazing in between small stones and licking the moss around big rocks.

Two prominent hollowhorn and goat specialists in Ozona denied hardware or hard wear as the illness. Admitted they were stumped. Kept the cow two days in the hospital. Agreed her two month-old calf must be weaned. Closed the case in the bookkeeping department.

Tonight at this writing, she's bawling down at the barn for her calf sleeping at the auction barn. Cow ranching on a major highway is a perilous life. Probably part of the trouble was the 13-year intermission for the drouth. My red bulls may look like Mexico steers, but the song will change, chorus and verse, when the judges at the auction pass the ribbons next year at the feeder calf sale.

February 19, 2004

February 26, 2004

2009-05-23T11:16:00.001-05:00

It would be a big risk to tell this story to an unfamiliar audience. However, I know that from the editing level to the readers, all have been in enough trouble to be understanding, or at least too nervous about their past to comment.

To be a successful whistleblower, you have to be able to pucker your lips without flinching, or dropping your head like a black swan posing for a picture. That said, the story begins on a cold Sunday morning in Mertzon. For a long time, services in the small mission church across the railroad tracks have ended just at the time the other churches' services begin, at close to 11 o'clock.

The first serious cold front of winter is building up in the north, with purple cloud banks promising a relentless icy wind to rattle the doors and window panes and fill the air with dust. On the way back from church to the Mertzon house, my pickup veers to the left and stalls by a rick of sawed wood owned by a householder who just departed to go to church on the hill.

Don't anticipate the worn excuse, "I don't know what got into me judge" — or wife, or sheriff. Don't buy that one. I knew what I was doing; I was driven by man's ancient and overpowering desire to warm his dank cave and fuel his feeble body. To prepare a rich broth of marrow bones and shoulder meat to bubble over hot coals. To heat and bake his bread on a black iron skillet in the gray ashes of the aftermath. To sit afterwards, heating the soles of his feet in front of a crackling blaze, warming the hearth to induce a cricket's song and temper the bitterness of the raging storm outdoors.

Not until the wood was unloaded in my woodpile did the consequences hit. No, I can do better. Not until the wood was unloaded in my woodpile did I realize that as long as the wind blew westerly, I couldn't risk the smell of smoke wafting down on my donor's place, giving him a smokescreen to trace to my chimney.

It is, I've heard, the hog rustler's creed to warn, "Don't slam the trap door too quick. Give all the pigs time to join the sow, or the squealing will alert the owner." (In the Big Depression, some of the county's finest citizens trapped unmarked hogs on the Middle Concho River. It was only considered stealing if more hogs were taken than the family needed for winter meat.)

Seemed as if instinct guided my actions. Told you once how the Big Boss and his pal Oral camped across the Spring Creek on Dove Creek one winter, subsisting by breaking horses for the public. Subsisting also on burning the chopped wood snitched from the box of a young married couple who befriended these two scalawags by feeding them supper a couple of times a week.

As I stood in the backyard holding the last stick of wood and trying to decide whether to take an armload inside, an old hymn from childhood chimed from the steeple of the very church the wood owner attended. And perhaps he and his family stood, heads bowed and eyes clinched, in the very pew where my dear mother plopped me down in a basket so long ago, covering as much of my face in a wool blanket as she dared, but hoping to hide as much as possible.

The wind whipped around the storeroom, signaling a change from the west to the north. Chips and bark swirled in the pickup bed, cleaning away the evidence. Sheltered by the storeroom, the chimes silent, safe in the thought of how deep Christian charity reigns over Mertzon, I laughed at myself, realizing the wood cutter meant to share the wood.

Once inside, the mirth increased. I wasn't even guilty of a prank. Been lots of wood given away on the ranch. Wouldn't make me mad if, in the face of a storm, a poor soul on the way home from church cut limbs hanging over in the highway right-of-way as long as he didn't damage the fence. Big Boss was always giving away kid goats and range hogs. If I had any hogs or goats, I'd pick a fat one to give the old boy for the wood.

I burned the last log over the weekend. Noticed Sunday that the remaining cut wood was inside a chain link fence on the near side of a big, spotted, glass-eyed dog's territory. The weather man says all next week will be in the 70s. Hunters left a little jag of wood at the Old Barn Camp. If I can find the help to load it, I might be able to finish the winter on that supply.

February 26, 2004

February 19, 2004

2009-04-27T18:50:00.001-05:00

A fellow pumping gas in Mertzon observed last week that motorists no longer yield the right-of-way to skunks. He thought the 70 mile an hour speed limit turned the highways into a free-for-all road kill if not even an animal as odoriferous as a skunk slowed traffic.

Next morning, Goat Whiskers the Younger called to report he was loose herding one of my cows off the pavement, waiting for the sheriff to halt traffic. By the time I arrived, red Hondas and shiny crewcabs roared by, tires singing as if the three men, the three vehicles, the flashing lights and the one black cow in broad daylight were the starting gate for the straight-away track.

We hadn't stocked cattle on the highway since 1992. We lack one half mile of replacing the right-of-way fence on each side of the highway. The only weak points are the 14-foot cattleguards that oil companies so graciously left us to maintain.

We tried to clean the fill from one guard using ranch equipment. Neither the hydraulic lift on our tractor nor the blade on the steel track would budge one end of the heavy pipe frame six inches, much less lift it. After the tractor stalled and a hose broke on the steel track, a neighbor suggested hiring an oilfield workover crew and a winch truck to do the job. I told him if they'd work for the salvage value of the two tractors, I might give the idea a try. Otherwise, 12 feet of wire gap was going to have to block the cattleguard.

Restoring this guard was not only important for keeping my cattle off the highway, it also gave fossil fuel miners complimentary access to their leases. It was further convenient for the general public to whip in off the hot asphalt for a few cans of beer to fight road fatigue, take a stroll over to hunt arrowheads in the flint beds close by, or have a handy spot to dump ashtrays and litter bags.

My cow venture got off to a bad start without cattleguard problems. The first cattle we moved pushed over a wire gate in a corner and escaped onto my brother's pasture. Took two men on horseback three trips to gather the cows. During hunting season, there are only four hours in the middle of the day when a man can ride without being a backstop for a hunting blind, and midday is the most difficult time to see a black cow shaded under a cedar bush, unless you search after dark.

The second bunch were the light end of the heifer calves from on the Divide. Four red bulls were turned in on the eighth of January. The pasture waters on the highway. On the tenth of January, a neighbor called and said, "I saw four old Mexico steers in your cattle on the highway. Wonder how the heifers are going to gain weight with the steers running with them?"

The insult had a short life and shorter attention span. Along with the cow jumping into the highway and the ones escaping onto my brother's pasture, a five year-old cow nursing a big bull calf changed from a sleek, fit mother into a listless brute too weak for her calf to nurse in a week's time. She'd come to feed, but wouldn't eat.

I knew this was a desperate case. When a black cow loses her appetite, it's too late to call for the doctor unless she's also connected with the rendering plant. I've seen Angus cattle slip their hair, lose their teeth, go blind, scour, take hoof rot, swallow beer cans and fan belts, drink oil and salt water, run fever and have chills, and do a combination of all those ills, and still consume four chips of hay and 10 pounds of cake at a feeding.

Four different men thought the sick cow had hardware disease. Enough trash blows off the highway right-of-way to dam an irrigation ditch, much less block the alimentary canal of a cow. However, the diagnosis was unclear. Did they mean hardware or hard-wear? Range doctors blame all mysterious aliments on hardware disease, but shortgrass cattle also suffer hard wear disease from grazing in between small stones and licking the moss around big rocks.

Two prominent hollowhorn and goat specialists in Ozona denied hardware or hard wear as the illness. Admitted they were stumped. Kept the cow two days in the hospital. Agreed her two month-old calf must be weaned. Closed the case in the bookkeeping department.

Tonight at this writing, she's bawling down at the barn for her calf sleeping at the auction barn. Cow ranching on a major highway is a perilous life. Probably part of the trouble was the 13-year intermission for the drouth. My red bulls may look like Mexico steers, but the song will change, chorus and verse, when the judges at the auction pass the ribbons next year at the feeder calf sale.

February 19, 2004

February 12, 2004

2009-04-26T20:42:00.001-05:00

For the first time in 30 or 40 years, Mid-West Feed Yards in San Angelo failed to send an Ace Reid calendar in December. Hard for an order buying and yardage firm to justify the price of a six-inch ruler on an outfit as low on volume as mine is today, much less an embossed collection of cartoons.

Months are not all that important, anyway. So it's said, old Felipe, who lived and died on the Aldwell ranch South of Sonora, dropped a rock in a five-gallon bucket each working day. My maternal grandfather opened his saddle house door to reach his records. Used an old saddle blanket to erase the blue chalk marks. His entries opened: "Sheared 1600 sheep spring of '27," or "Fourth clip of unsold mohair stored fall of '34."

Jose, who worked for the ranch over 40 years, never owned a watch or a calendar. The infamous Angel, the witch doctor, camped on the big draw in the Stage Stand pasture all one long winter without a timepiece or a scrap of paper. Angel cut notches in his tent pole in the middle of the day to count the days. Claimed he knew by mid-day if he was going to charge a full day's work. Angel's books were perilous to audit, as the yellowjacket wasps he fed syrup in the summer hibernated in his tent in the winter.

In the lawless era of unpapered aliens, the old ranch worked deep interior Mexicans too simple to notch a stick or drop a rock in a bucket. Every first of the month, we bought cashier's checks to send the payroll home, less the few dollars of personal items the men drew for tobacco and toothpaste. Paid whatever they presented, be it a notched stick or crude pencil marks on the flap of a carton of tobacco.

Big ranch bookkeeping problems arose after shearing capitans stopped counting sheep off the shearing boards, relying entirely on the metal tabs or checks given the sheep peeler for each sheep. Required further difficult mathematical challenge to triple the ram count to pay extra charge for those big brutes.

Every spring at Goat Whiskers the Elder's sheep peeling and woolie stampede, it took more time to audit the counts than to load and freight the wool to the Mertzon wool house. Whiskers carried a big handicap, entering as an engineering major from Massachusetts Institute of Technology matched against a gent who might have been allowed to go to grade school after the cotton harvest ended in the fall and before the shearing season began in the spring.

Put another way, the match was a school of fractions and decimals against a school of hard knocks and slim margins. Whiskers carried a slide rule in a scabbard; the capitan packed a grimy sack of metal checks. Shearing cost 30 cents a head. Closest the two accounts ever came to agreeing was a difference of 20 sheep on a harvest of over 3000 head. Whiskers refused to split the difference. After advancing the capitan five hundred interest-free, unsecured dollars and giving him six additional mutton goats to feed his crew, the victor stalked back into the house, muttering over all the world's incompetent shearing crews and bookkeepers, and adding flaming slurs aimed at surveyors, bankers and school teachers.

Whiskers used green ledger sheets and filled his accounts with precise lettering. His brother, the Big Boss, kept his inventory on his glove or the flap on his chap pocket. My contribution to the Boss's system ranked somewhere between the dates carved on flat rocks by early explorers and Daniel Boone recording a bear kill by carving the notation on the bark of a tree. However, I brought a shoe bag back from college with six empty pouches to use as a filing cabinet. The glove box and the sun visor in the pickup stored the rest of the paperwork.

In those times, checks were stubbed on the pasteboard backing of free counter checks. I don't remember having a copy of the financial statement at the bank. After registering for the draft, my only government business was filling in the agriculture census every 10 years and doing a short form for the IRS every April.

I miss having a new cartoon of Ace's every month, but honoring the four seasons is accurate enough to run a bitterweed ranch. The few tally books and a couple of ballpoints the feed mill sent compile the perks to start 2004. One field of accounting I keep current is the rainfall. Don't need much more than the back of a glove to cover the whole year.

February 5, 2004

2009-04-26T20:41:00.001-05:00

Time for a herder to flee from his home range is the day neighbors start selling land without bothering to call. Next sign is a dead telephone on a rainy morning. It's too late to leave after the deer fences rise on tall posts and the big gateways hang the new owners' brand from a black iron arch.

In Texas, red-caps are buying land to stop paying leases. A big land boom is in full pitch. Prices rise every month, it seems. Instead of worrying if the neighbor's bull breeds your heifer calves, nowadays the problem is whether he is going to choose Russian boars over, say, bringing back the buffalo and the gray wolf.

Last week, we turned four Longhorn bulls into a pasture of heifers on the highway where cow brutes last grazed at the start of the dry spell in 1992. Before releasing the sleek, rambling oxen, the risk of introducing a new bloodline in the neighboring pastures had to be considered. Difficult to stay current on who runs ratites for feathers and who is into antler harvesting from African deer.

My son rode the outside fence. Whether the cattle escaped wasn't as much the problem as what beast might break into the pasture and eat my bulls. Every hunting season, hunters see huge mountain lions. Also, as fierce as wild hogs are, there might be a boar loose ferocious enough to gobble a Longhorn, starting at his forelock and ending at the switch of his tail. (Tempting as it is, I am not going to retell Uncle Mark's story about a boa constrictor in Brazil swallowing a Longhorn cow head first.)

The breeder tipped the bull's horns before delivery. After realizing we might be moving into a wilderness area, I began to wish he'd left the tips sharp in case the "Save the Gray Wolf" group moved to Mertzon or the "Free The Bengal Tiger Association" set up camp.

But if the horns were to be tipped, the work needed to be done in the breeder's chute. Ours are designed for working Angus cattle and proving how many times a piece of pine lumber can be patched. One of our chutes dates back to the horned cattle times, but the boards are so rotten, there'd be a danger of a bull poking his foot through a crack and spraining his ankle. (The status of downers changed after December 23. If cattle start limping, the safe thing to do is to shoot the cripple on the spot. My pistol is in the bank box at Mertzon. Be unhandy, but I guess I could run to town during banking hours to make a kill.)

I wasn't aware at the time, but a compadre of mine specializes in handling Longhorn cows for insemination. He is an old hand at wrapping wet chain on drill stem beneath the derricks of the world's oceans. Faced with helping to work Longhorn cows without a chute, he devised a rope and chain method to snub the cows' horns to a pipe fence rail. (Breaks my heart to have missed the sight of a Longhorn cow bucking and snorting snubbed to a pipe rail, especially if the most exciting event of your day is watching a black cow licking a yellow salt block.)

"Night Train" sired the last Longhorn bulls we bred to heifers. They were evil-tempered beasts unwilling to stay home at night and unable to remember the way back the next morning. Before we shipped those fence and corral hurdlers, we had the original cost of $600 a head, plus another 200 bucks' freight trailering horses to pick up the bulls on neighboring ranches. (Too sensitive a subject here to review how many grandsons of "Night Train" hit the ground in the neighborhood the next fall. However, if it hadn't been for calves on the neighbors' cattle, we'd have been unable to run a color test on the bull, such less a quality test, as we calved fewer than 10 head of his offspring.)

The only cattle joining the pasture were across the highway on my brother's ranch. To avoid the migration problem of Night Train's sons, we shot the heifers with lutalyse for estrus synchronization. Figured the bulls' attention needed to be on the heifers and not on the open road. With all the ranch traffic of trucks and trailers on Highway 67, be a big risk the bulls might catch a whiff of their home turf from the other side of the Pecos River, and head west.

My son didn't find any bristles or alien spoor along the fence. Prospects for Longhorn cattle sound good. I read in a journal the other day of a ranch cloning eight offspring of a $79,000 registered Longhorn cow for $59,000. Might be the reason behind my pal inseminating the cows on the fence rail. Sure is nervewracking waiting every day after the feed runs to hear whether those open range bulls are settled…

February 5, 2004

January 29, 2004

2009-04-26T20:33:00.001-05:00

In an older part of San Angelo, an eatery called Mr. T's feeds big crowds of Wool Capitol citizens. Folks not attuned to franchise houses flock into the former grocery store. Business is brisk; many prominent citizens are regular customers.

My favorite time to eat at Mr. T's is after my annual physical at the clinic, so I can visit hombres my age sitting around worse off than myself. I enjoy going before the momentum of springing free of the doctor's office wears off and I'm back to fearing every throb from my navel to my adam's apple might be a coronary attack.

Last week I ate at Mr. T's because I had a new set of hearing aids to test during the lunch rush. The din of the noonday crowd reaches a peak as high school students barge in to gulp down hamburgers, mingled with bridge players training on tuna salad for afternoon matches and working guys handicapping football games fueled by bowls of beef stew.

I chose a table close to the counter in the noisiest part of the building and folded my jacket over one chair to keep a margin of space. I took off my hat, hoping to signal that I was an outsider too aloof to join for company, and unfolded a newspaper for further protection.

No sooner had the stage been set than a big red-faced, gray-bearded guy bounded over, asking to sit down without waiting for an answer. Not waiting for an answer, I soon learned, was his forte. At the scrape of his chair leg, he blurted, "I know you, Noelke. Leased land in Irion County from your family 50 years ago. Did you know the county judge?"

"Yes," I replied. "I was shining shoes the night His Honor shot at a man three blocks behind the barber shop. Judge's aim was bad. Sheriff pried the bullet from a porch rail way off …"

On he came with, "This may make you mad, but do you think the economy is recovering? 'Cause if you do, you are one of those dumb-heads who watch the Dow Jones and don't know the State of Texas, along with San Antonio, is as broke as the United States of America."

A slight pause … "and Noelke, do you know the spacing on those gas wells down in Sutton County? Make a guess how much one family makes a day in gas royalties. I've found a gas field in Edwards County. Did you ever see an ownership map? Bet by gawd you haven't."

The waitress interrupted the grilling long enough for me to set my hearing aids on channel two, hoping to drown the background noise. The drink machine dropping ice cubes hurt worse than hubcaps and tire tools careening off a mechanic's stall.

And here he came again: "You don't know it, Noelke, but bigshots come in here every morning who'd be driving a dump truck if their dads hadn't left 'em a ranch with oil wells. Been a multi-millionaire twice. United States owes more money than any country in the world. Didn't know that, did you?"

The counter thinned as a cousin of mine came for an outside order. Hooked a chair leg, but still was able to invite him to come meet this wildcat of a mad hatter of a fossil fuel miner. He caught the urgency in my voice, so he joined us.

No introduction was allowed past saying my cousin was a CPA. He launched the same questions used on me. When my cousin flunked the first one, I intervened, "Just one minute; Cousin is an honor graduate of one of the finest universities in the South. For the first time in his life, I am giving him a failing grade."

Right on he shot his questions: "Mr. CPA, how much did the richest client you ever had make per day? Bet you can't guess what a family in Sutton County's royalty check is per day."

I whispered the answer, but "Cuz" had cut off his hearing aid to allow for the ice machine resounding like a winch rolling in the chain. Didn't matter, as our interrogator had produced his ownership map from under the table.

Before he unrolled the map, I trumped him. "If you unroll your map, you are going to have to cut us in on your gas field. We've got plenty of money to gamble on gas wells." The shock struck so severely, he rolled the map of the enormous gas field in Sutton County, forgot about his stake in Edwards County, and followed my cousin out the door, telling him a joke.

My cousin's answers scored less than my new hearing aids. Remembered too late that the richest dump truck driver ever known was an old boy who drove for the county the year he sold a big New Mexico ranch. However, I sure couldn't have matched that old guy. Mr. T's attracts all kinds and year models …

January 29, 2004

January 22, 2004

2009-04-26T20:31:00.001-05:00

Days after the holidays, my sister called; she was sending her table leg elevators to the ranch so her wheelchair would fit under the dining room table. Point being that at Thanksgiving and Christmas, she ate sidesaddle at the end of the table, packing a handicap of one against 18 at one feast day and a full nine at Christmas. My first response was to remind her that at age 13 she started eating at my table in a series lasting on and off until she graduated from college.

For support, I turned to an etiquette guide at the ranch — a gift offer from the Book of the Month Club that Mother ordered after World War II. Mother's edition didn't address the conduct and hosting of long-term guests, so pertinent during the Great Depression times of in-laws and cousins dropping by for a couple of months or maybe a layover of 90 days. (In the 30s my stepdad and mother attracted non-paying boarders like a Harvey House on a busy passenger line.)

Mother's book was also too early to cover behavior at guest ranches. Try as I might, was unable to recall the exact wording of my invitation for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Remembered telling her dinner was at one p.m. for each occasion, but couldn't recall offering to board her during 2004.

I returned to the book and paged back through the guest etiquette. Then I researched the chapter on packing lunches the night before to speed departure of overnight guests. Browsed out of curiosity a chapter headed, "Sleeping Potions Suitable for the Late Hour Guest." Failed to find any reference on altering the dining room table to meet the guest's dimensions, or preferential seating arrangements.

On her next call, she reopened the discussion of elevating the table, ignoring my question about whether the other guests were going to be resting their chins on the table edge, leaving kids to stare underneath the table. Refused to even listen to my suggestion that she saw the arms off the wheelchair or deflate the tires to make it accessible to all tables.

"No, no," she replied, "we are only going to raise my end three inches. Is three inches too much to ask on a plateau 2560 feet above sea level in a ranch house settling on its foundation that many inches a year?" (Visualize temper here — hot, smoldering temper. Unreasonable temper.)

"While we are disputing who runs this ranch house you are deprecating, my dear little princess," I said, "I want to remind you that as pitiful as the ranch is, I run a sheep and cow outfit, not a guest ranch for dudes demanding special tables." (Score this as a fulfilling retort, a slam from my side of the net.)

On she came: "Nobody said you were running anything. I bought the elevators to go under the dining room table legs at my ranch from The Vermont Country Store for $18 plus shipping. You, big brother, are going to put two on my end of your table. If the table tilts, write The Big Anchor Gift Shop for a set of heavy-bottomed dishes suitable for sailing the high seas."

From there the conversation wound to an end. She knows I am too good-hearted to refuse her wishes. But give in on the table and the next thing will be reserved parking for her wheelchair in the living room.

Next time she's invited to the ranch, (and it may be awhile) a waiver is going to explain the conditions of the premises and services offered. Then if "little miss princess" is dissatisfied with the table height, she can use her Vermont Store elevators as shims under her wheelchair for a safe landing at Dairy Queen.

January 22, 2004

January 15, 2004

2009-04-26T20:30:00.000-05:00

At first light on the feast day in the Christmas kitchen, cookbooks lead to familiar paths: "Sauté the chopped onions until golden, add the garlic before the onion turns, slowly dribble the oil for the broth down the sides of the pan, preheat the oven.

Next, the "hunt and chase" phase; must stop mixing and turn the knob to see if the pilot flickers on the burner; where are the gosh-a-mighty hot pads — oh, hiding under the tongs; and aside and apart, rush to the east door to see the sunrise over the mesquite plains.

Once too proud to allow guests to bring food, I now all but beat on a tambourine and ring bells over a swinging pot asking for help. For every mile of distance between the ranch and a grocery store, I save four or five dollars a mile staying home and imposing on my friends and children. The hardest items to remember or find in San Angelo hit a mean of between two and three dollars an ounce. Wild rice and piñon nuts, for example, are hard to locate, yet white hominy and crushed red pepper flakes all but fall over in the cart.

Big void in the menu is wines. The package store close to Angelo is on the wrong side of the highway going to town and sets off the road too far coming home. I don't drink wine, but lots of recipes call for wine.

The ones who drink wine, I've learned, have to have long-stemmed glasses and a piece of paraphernalia to lift the corks. Have to have red and white wines. Can't be mixed into a blend of colors to make a pink. All the wine drinking I ever knew was just breaking the seal and unscrewing the top to take a swig.

Told my friend who buys the wines that if I have to add high-priced glasses and a fancy corkscrew especially for wine drinkers, I am going to charge a corkage on every glass, like, say three dollars on the first glass and six bucks on the next one.

Cooking, however, wasn't all that was happening Christmas morning. The last 10 heifers to calve grazed around the yard fence in stillness so profound the clipping of the dry grass crunching was audible at the back door. As I dumped the trash, it seemed the only concern a first-calf black bovine has the last term of pregnancy is tormenting her nurse to the very last hour of her time.

Guests began to arrive early. Grease popped in the roast beef pan. Bright tissue paper checkered the living room rug like a ribbon race at a Scout camp. Foods hit the serving table. The welcome speech and the blessing of the food came swift and abbreviated. At family gatherings, yielding the floor may mean making a choice of hearing, say, the story of the Grandfather and Frank Harris roping a bear on Devil's River and eating a congealed gravy over cold bread, versus praying so long the gang is speechless.

Our after dinner tradition is to read A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. Mother left the book when she moved to town as her eternal gift to civility and love. We set a fine holiday scene gathered in the living room, passing the book from reader to reader. My sister napping in her wheel chair; her driver nodding on the couch. Red tapers burning on the big table. The dishwashing crew rejoining the circle to give a smug glow of service and sacrifice to the backsliders shy of soap and water.

There are no fireplaces. No firecrackers popping, however, a cork exploding interrupts my train of thought, but that might just be an idiosyncrasy, not a real distraction. The white mountain sheep skin the Boss left comes the closest to having a dog sleeping on the living room floor. Sprigs of mistletoe serve for pine trees, wreaths and music. We aren't heathens, just country people who seek the solitude of the ranch to celebrate in our way.

I am sorry, but passages are too long to read you a portion from Mr. Capote's book. When my friend and I were in the San Juan Islands in the fall, we bought an extra edition at a bookstore in Friday's Harbor. But if you want a copy of The Christmas Memory, bookfinders.com might be the place to order one.

January 15, 2004

January 8, 2004

2009-04-26T20:29:00.001-05:00

Countdown for the U.S. hollow-horn operators began when we became aware that a black and white milk cow in Washington state tested positive for mad cow disease the day before Christmas — a slow, dreary count set to the beat of a hangman's footsteps climbing the gallows. Feedlot hombres and herders alike are bound to have heard a dirge like Nero tuning his fiddle to play for the finale for the fall of Rome.

As the press worked overtime to spread the news, the big-time dailies stayed current with each country banning U.S. beef and each possible site of contamination. Words spewed from Washington assuring that the domestic supply was safe. Photographs flashed on the 'Net of Japanese butchers removing U.S. beef from the shelves.

At the ranch, my son and his friend left on the morning of the 26^th. The Royal Guard of the French army never witnessed such an emotional farewell. Surrender and defeat cast a spell over the parting. My son Ben kept repeating, "Now, Dad, this is not the end of the world, just the end of a good cow market. As soon as the Secretary of Agriculture convinces 290 million Americans and one half of the world's population that beef is safe, you will be able to sleep past three in the morning and go back on solid food."

Ten head of heavy-bred Angus heifers watered at the horse trough before I went indoors. These pampered beasts needed to rinse away the dry grass and cottonseed meal taste before going over to lick a free-choice $440 a ton mineral. Fifty-five head of weaned calves bawled across the fence, bemoaning the late start of the feed wagon as if the life of a black calf is in danger if she misses a handout on Christmas day followed by a delay the day after.

I tried to stretch before my morning walk, but my body was so tense from the bad news, the only parts loose enough to flex were the joints of my little fingers. By noon, sage newscasters predicted some repercussion for beef producers from the contaminated milk cow. Might as well have reported that Far Eastern insurance companies are considering refusing Saddam Hussein's option to increase the size of his accidental death benefit.

The guests left a half-gallon of organic whole milk in the refrigerator. This was the first organic milk on the shelves since my friend insisted we milk the colostrum from a heifer to feed dogies. By lunch, I felt my stomach was stable enough to sip warm milk. As bleak as the future seemed, I hoped the organic milk might have come from a Washington State dairy.

Takes a big dose of Cow and Scientist Madness (CSM — Please let this slip by to see if a new label floats.) to outdo the sadness at the end of the best cow boom since work oxen had a flush season back in 1860 when all the horses were off in the war. Takes more than your mother's training to keep from being resentful about the sick milk cow, harboring a hunch she came from Canada. Lots of those big Holsteins in Canada. (Fidel Castro was so impressed with Canada's dairy cattle, he imported a herd of Holsteins to improve milk production. Hungry as the Cubans are for meat, they probably can verify Canadian milk cows are safe to eat, including the horns and the tails of Canadian milk cows.)

The only inkling I had of the lurking fear of Disturbed Cow Disorder (DCB — I am going to continue to downgrade the label) was at a resort hotel in Kerrville, Texas. The German lady running the restaurant refused to serve us a rare steak, claiming "Wild Cow Disease" was the reason, which I supposed was the same as Bovine Fury Reaction (BFR).

She was wrong, but I'd rather try to change a federal judge's mind on tenure than so much as disagree with one of those Teutonic Central Texas products only three generations removed from the homeland. I wanted to tell this purveyor of myth and panic that 20 people worldwide had already died from the Cow Fury Disorder, (latest label; CFD) or advise her it was a lot more risky to park at the grocery store than to have a full body message in ground beef followed by a rare steak dinner for four.

At this writing, the news was improving. My hunch the milk cow came from Canada is being investigated. Her two calves have been destroyed. Next time I go to Kerrville, I am going to carry a lunch of carrot sticks and rhubarb stalks. Might as well be a vegetarian as risk the palate eating well done meat, and if the cafe lady was scared two months ago, she's going to be frantic after this fiasco.

January 8, 2004

December 12, 2002

2009-04-26T20:27:00.001-05:00

Stop staring at your boot toe, little cowboy; the post office is no place to cry. Fold the cow receipts back into the envelope. Lift up your chin, and for the last time, stop staring at your boot toe. The post cow sale litany of opening the mail from Box 636, Mertzon, 76941.

Charge the above against me on a Friday afternoon trip to town to pick up the receipts from the first gooseneck load of old cows from the Divide place. Only 12 head and a light steer calf, but a big deal for an operator my size. The problem, however, is that six of the cows tested dry.

Here's the way the bill of sale read: "6 head pregnant at $510 per head; 5 head of open cows cut in 3 orders averaging 1100 pounds at .35 cents, and one open cow weighing 750 pounds at .28 cents." (Mark the last old sister at a gross of $222.60.) The steer weighed four and a half and brought 87 cents, making my guess on the price 10 cents too high and off 30-plus pounds on his weight.

Trucking came to two hundred dollars for a 70-mile haul. Allowing the steer calf to ride free, the freight on the cows ran over 16 bucks per cow and the nick-knacks like stockyard board and passing through the ring cost another 16 or 17 dollars a head. But again, the distressing part was that 50 percent of the old cows tested dry in that draft.

Stop staring at your boot toe. Move; you can't stay in the post office all night. Who, pray tell, is going to lead a song of salvation at the ranch on the final day the chute is emptied and the last cow tested?

Out on the parking lot, head resting on the steering wheel, the investigation began: "Twenty-nine head of eleven year-old cows were cut into the best grass on the ranch September '01. Three different bulls ran with the cows from February 12 to May 30. The cattle went on range cubes the first of November; the last feed run was the end of May. From September '01 to last month, 22 dollars per head worth of free choice molasses tubs enhanced the ration. In August, the herd weaned 29 calves."

I never noticed a steering wheel feeling hot before. Reckon this darn Ford burns so much oil, the steering wheel overheats from carbon expulsion. Was it last winter or winter before last that the feed wagon had to drag a trailer to the north side for extra feed for the old cows? I must be having a nervous chill. Now the steering wheel is cold — cold as the bars on an oldtime teller's cage.

I tossed the rest of the mail on the dashboard. Watched the postmaster lower the flag to the tune of the rusty pulley grating from the motion of the descending banner. Thought of a new sign for the lobby door: "In Observance of Pancake Tuesday and all subsequent Tuesdays, no mail will be delivered from this office." Thought deeper as the conveyer of post turned toward the building how soon he'll be going to a post office in a comfortable resort town to pick up a handsome pension check, unencumbered by commission, yardage, feed, testing, trucking, chute charges, checkoffs and insurance.

Took five days to arrange the testing. Actually, five days and five nights, as after the bad news, I flounced around in the bedclothes the way those elephant seals sun on the beaches of California. One thing certain: If that many old cows were 50 percent bred, I wasn't spending the holidays wondering how many of the young cattle were open, especially the second-calf heifers.

On the fateful morning the test fell, I checked the calving heifers at five instead of six. Stopped by the pecan tree my stepfather and mother planted. Realized the sounds of heavy cows sighing and groaning in the darkness set an end of the trail scene fading away in the dissolution of ranches that'd make the image of the Indian slumped on the buffalo nickel seem light as the froth of the meringue on a chocolate pie.

By noon, we tested 104 head. My report card shows the oldest cows, counting the twelve head sold, hit 75 percent. A pasture of mixed age cows ran 95 percent; a group of young cows reached 83 percent. As I grabbed the last pipe to catch the last cow, I must have jabbed a splinter under my thumbnail. I can't be sure, as I didn't notice the pain until I pulled off my boots at the house.

Drouths demand their toll. A herder must pay his dues to the dry devil. All pastures aren't in yet, but my thumb is healing and it's a better crop than I thought ...

December 12, 2002

December 5, 2002

2009-04-26T20:26:00.001-05:00

The hardest problem storytellers face is that witnesses live forever. No matter how old the story is, or where the story was set, up pops a busybody who knows more than the writer does.

Write about ol' "Six-shooter" falling on a line camp cowboy named "Rowdy" in a 60-section pasture before the patenting of land, and darned if an eyewitness won't come forth to claim the horse's name was "Screwdriver" and the cowboy's name was "Percy."

And the way readers abuse writers, you'd think the license to create ended with the Mother Goose rhymes. Every week, I eat lunch with a table of guys as naïve as the treasurer of a Girl Scout troop. The first thing they want to know at the ending of a story is whether it's true. I became so discouraged, the last time I went to Austin I brought back a true story.

Please listen to the story first. The very exalted officer of the Austin Independent School District, the superintendent, was ticketed for driving 27 miles an hour in a school zone. According to the article on the front page of the Austin American Statesman, he called the news desk on his cell phone immediately and reported his crime. (Speeders have to drive faster than 27 miles an hour to hit an Austin kid, especially one raised close to the University area.)

Omitted in the news report but pertinent to the case is that the superintendent's confession was the first time since the founding of the township that a public figure failed to have an alibi at hand. For example, state legislators caught in embarrassing nocturnal activities often blame the cursed after-midnight shock that causes man to lose his memory in smoky taverns and questionable lodgings.

The only comment in my audience was, "I don't ever know when to believe you, Monte." They lost me there. Try as I could, I couldn't recall asking anyone to believe me. Look at this, please: the average age of the table is three quarters of a century, or 75 years old. Suppose I claimed to have witnessed the incident and said, "The superintendent, idling his red Mercedes blocking traffic, held a brown bottle in his right hand and slipped the cop a green-colored piece of paper with his left."

At the table are a land man, an auction owner, an ex-senator, a rancher, a doctor, an insurance broker, and a builder. Is a slight embellishment going to corrupt these august gentlemen, who passed their twenty-first birthdays close to the middle of the 20th century?

If I understood what they meant by saying they can't tell when I am telling the truth, I'd rewrite the story, researching the files of the Austin American for the exact wording of the article. But it beats me how you are going to tell a good story without adding some action.

I try to keep from being cornered. A scribe with the Fort Davis newspaper wrote asking the bloodlines of the stallions my Grandfather Noelke used on the hundreds of head of mares he ran on his lands. Nature of her craft made it risky making up a "Steel Dust" ancestry, or trumping up a line of "Blow Ditch" colts. ("Blow Ditch" was the famous race horse who lost a hind foot from kicking the Ferris wheel over at Sherwood one Fourth of July.) So I wrote her that by the time I came along the registration papers had disappeared. And all I could remember of the branded horses at the old ranch was that they trailed bridle reins real well and left a lot of cowboys on foot.

I referred her to Paul Patterson at Crane, Texas. He worked for my grandfather. I knew Paul spun yarns wound in tight enough balls to make the creator of Harry Potter think the ink was dry in her word processor. He said, "They were sorrels and duns, the mares showing a Spanish bloodline."

Paul helped drive 500 head of Granddad's horses from Monument on Spring Creek to across the Pecos River. The drive allowed time to study equine ancestry over his saddlehorn — a very accurate position from which to view the horse world. It was also an excellent opportunity to adjust to alkali dust and direct sunlight reflecting off alkali soil to peel the hide from a cowboy's nose.

Sad to think of corrupting a table of graybeards by enlarging the truth. Be too bad if I was a bad influence on those seasoned gentlemen, as well thought of as they are in the community and state. I imagine ol' Paul loaded the lady writer to full tilt on the horses. Wish there were more guys like Paul around. Sure would take a lot of pressure off my tales.

December 5, 2002

November 28, 2002

2009-04-26T20:25:00.001-05:00

The longest high water confinement at the old ranch was the flood of 1957. Spring Creek Draw ran wide and deep for five days. By the end, an African American cook named Alex and myself rationed tobacco and skimped on the coffee. Alex was the cook famous for telling us, "The time to get the pie is when it's passed the first time," a rule that works a thousand times out of a thousand tries.

In October on a Gulf Coast trip, a short recollection of being stranded by high water came to me in Corpus Christi. Six and a half inches of tropical rain fell on one afternoon, spiked by an electrical storm and a tornado that killed one person. My friend and I were in a mall bookstore constructed, I'm sure, with side walls and flat roof every bit as strong as the straw hut of three little pigs fame.

Rain fell in such solid sheets that the big windows turned the green of Mexico glass. Cars parked at the curb faded from sight. Clerks hovered in the employee's lounge. We were left to read on small stools. Coffee pots emptied early in the storm to smolder on hot plates brought back memories of old Alex and me sitting at the bunkhouse table, watching brown flood water wash into the front yard, telling and retelling old stories.

At five, we wound around the flooded mall to a hotel. Detouring high water, we parked 200 feet from the front entrance. The hotel had no rooms. Telephone calls from the desk confirmed that all the other hotels were booked, and high water on the access roads prevented returning to our place on Mustang Island. Returning to the bookstore would have been precarious.

Our only hope for a room was a cancellation at 6 p.m., our only choice to wait in a lobby dominated by a television newscast flashing pictures of the damage the tornado wrought five miles away. The repetitious weather news was broken by campaign ads of the most disgusting verbiage and projected images man can assemble short of portraying the degradation found on restroom walls.

I told my friend that if the TV continued, I was ready to drown. Ready to risk the road back to the island in Port Aransas if it meant crossing the Bay on the open deck of a ferry, lashed to a mast pole in pouring rain, braving 20-foot waves backed by a roaring headwind. For every three minutes of weather news, the station showed 10 minutes of such delightful play of politics as a short on a staggering candidate being tested for DWI on the highway to a claim that one of the hopefuls was connected to the Mafia in Mexico.

Minutes after the six o'clock deadline, the clerk ended hope for a room in any of the hotels. Forced to leave Corpus, we found one access road open to the freeway. Traffic crawled over the long arched bridge crossing the Bay; water lapped on the edge of the highway. Using binoculars in the falling eve-tide, we made wild guesses at the bumper depth of the cars ahead of us.

Nobody should feel sorry for people who have ranch houses on the high ground of the 09 Divide for washing away on a trip to the Coast. Once in dry clothes, I remembered reading on the bulletin board at St. David's Church in Austin how the organist, Fanny Croaker, took her first vacation in 15 years to be washed away by the Indianola hurricane of 1886. How the Big Boss claimed his Uncle Joe never missed Sunday church in Cuero, Texas in his whole life span of some 80 years. Thought also of a neighbor way back, taking his family in a new Mercury automobile to see the Gulf of Mexico for a summer vacation. He arrived at the coast just before dark, allowed time for a good look on the beach and started back home to be at the ranch to milk the next evening.

My son's Port Aransas house stands 12 feet above ground on telephone pole stilts. Wrapped in a blanket, covered by a raincoat, a panorama opened off the balcony facing the beach. Lightning illuminated the massive white-capped waves hitting in such force to splash over the green-topped sand dunes. Shells, water and seaweed sloshed ashore, dropping cracked Japanese fisherman's floats mixed with broken cords of shrimper's nets, destroying a day's work of abandoned sand castles to end a kid's dreams.

Crescendos of thunder shook the stilted house to elevate my exhilaration. "By gosh," I thought, "this is the way to get the pie the first time around." Fannie, the neighbor, and Uncle Joe cut their own trail. Alex never was caught on the wrong side of Spring Creek again. And from now on, the only time my conscience is going to hurt is when I miss a chance to take a trip.

November 28, 2002

November 21, 2002

2009-04-26T20:24:00.001-05:00

Way back, we scheduled heifer calving to hit after the leaves fell from the mesquites. As the land became a solid thicket, we shifted to bringing the heavies to a trap to be penned every night. By opening a calving hospital, we stopped losing cows and started losing sleep.

Penning the cattle every evening and walking through the herd horseback makes for gentle animals the rest of their lives. This year's class is so sack broke and so accustomed to humans, at night I have to be careful to keep from stumbling over one. Black cattle blend well into a dark night. The cost of flashlight batteries converts so poorly to the price of steer calves that constant illumination of a big holdover pen is unaffordable. I just blink my light toward the tailhead and make fair guesses.

One Saturday night after a dance in Angelo, I checked the cows in a light rain. Missed 13 of the 21 head the first lap around the run-around. Second try missed the same amount. Gave up on the third count, as my flashlight wasn't strong enough compensate for the rain fogging on my glasses. Wet weather ruins hearing aids, so I had left them at the house. Harder rain began to fall.

The only support left was my sense of smell and my sense of touch. In the shortgrass country, the odor of wet cow hair is as unfamiliar as privacy to a doorman. I didn't know whether wet cattle smelled like cedar bark or grape jelly. Feeling for the missing cattle in the darkness was out of the question. Doesn't take long to discover what defense measure replaces horns for a muley cow. After one work, you learn to watch the heels instead of the head. Blinded by the rain and unable to hear in the downpour, I gave up and went back to the house.

My friend called as I reached the door to see if I had made it home over the dirt road. Being a cow person in her own right, she wanted to know if my heifers were all right. Not willing to admit I'd missed about as many as I'd found, I said, "Oh, I think they'll be okay until morning." Certainly a safe guess, considering the time was 1 a.m. and the closest I'd come to resting was resting my hand on the top board of a wet gate to steady myself in the mud.

Just at daybreak I checked to find all the heifers gone. But I did find the gate open to a trap. I couldn't read the signs in the mud. I wear a size 13-D rubber boot. I'd made so many rounds sloshing in the mud, I'd obliterated any ruts smaller than those of a dually truck tire. So no clues were left as to how the gate latch came unsnapped.

Custom reigns to blame crows and ravens, unpapered aliens, raccoons, or deer hunters. Crows and Chihuahua ravens are prime suspects for any mysterious crime, as those black devils are deft enough to unlace a pair of high-topped shoes. Unpapered aliens circumvent the shortgrass country, believing we are bad luck going back from the way the Border Patrol used to keep us under vigil. Coons have grown so fat and careless of habit since the fur markets ended that about all they deface or destroy is at ground level. Red-caps are nimble-fingered fellows from squeezing triggers, lifting bottle openers and twisting corkscrews; but the ones around the ranch have been careful to close gates, especially ones tied open to pen livestock.

The advent of low birthweight bulls brought a big improvement to calving heifers. Be better, as I have written before, if cows laid eggs. Robert Petty, a prominent black oxen raiser up at Nolan, Texas, has added a bloodline named "Sleep Easy" to his herd. His catalogue does not say whether the man or the beast sleeps easier.

Among we better manipulators of obstetric chains and chrome calf pullers, a question continues whether to breed toward heavy sleeping or light sleeping cattle. Until I dropped checking my heifers twice a night, awakening the cattle caused more births in darkness. For a solution, I stopped keeping the heifer calves from the first-calf heifers. I also added a bloodline named "Cloudburst," a bull famous for rapid presentation of a calf. The first calving season, I'd hardly have time to awaken before the calf was on the ground.

The gates are wired closed. The moon changes next week. Might be a good idea to cull the cows that don't bed down early. A cross between "Sleep Easy" and "Cloudburst" might be the solution to spending less time in the darkness checking heifers and keeping me safe in bed on the early Sunday morning shift.

November 21, 2002

November 14, 2002

2009-04-26T20:23:00.003-05:00

The move from the Mohonk Guest House in New Paltz to a bed and breakfast at West Cornwall in western New Jersey was a dramatic change in my September trip. My small room was right over the kitchen. The chef specialized in caramelizing onions to a thin enough vapor that the odor made a cloud bank in the room.

Hard rain pelted the thin walls. Four wire coat hangers on a hat rack served as a closet. It took a fancy sidestep to enter or leave the bathroom. When I called West Cornwall for the room, I visualized an English ivy-covered quarried stone house with a big fireplace in the living room, sizzling pine logs and pewter tankards thumping on oak tables served by saucy maidens wearing lace caps and aprons. Instead, I was stuck in an asbestos-shingled loft in a cold rainstorm wondering if my clothes were going to smell like cooked onion the next day.

The colorful names on the map lured me to West Cornwall. "Jinny Jump Mountain," Bull Bridge, "New Village," Washington, and the likes of the Housatonic River start the mind imagining crossing grounds connected to our early history. Notably close to West Cornwall is Bull Bridge, a red wooden covered bridge linking a road General George Washington used to go north to seek support from the French for the Continental cause. It was important also as the spot where the rescuing of the general's horse from a fall off a bluff into the Housatonic River cost $215, a hefty expense item for the Continental Congress to review.

As the father of our country, Mr. Washington could not tell a lie. However, as General Washington, he might have had broader latitude in regard to veracity, say "a fib." All the guide book said was "At Bull Bridge, General Washington, on the way to seek aid from the French, was delayed while his horse was retrieved from a fall into the river at a cost of $215."

I understand why he didn't tell lies. If General Washington had been a storyteller, he'd have left a whopper on how his old pony skidded off the bluff at full speed, barely giving him three seconds to kick loose from the stirrups and swing free from the saddle on an overhanging branch. How he tore his velvet hat, lost a pearl-studded snuff box, and filled the air with a dust as potent as sneeze weed pollen from his wig hitting a tree limb.

Close to the townsite of Washington, I found the Institute of Native American Culture on a side road. Just as my friend and I parked, five school bus loads of kids vacated the museum. The sudden departure of so much bedlam sent the staff scurrying to the coffee room. The two of us stood in free reign of large glass displays of Indian artifacts and wall murals of tribal scenes. The Muzak sounded several notches higher than normal to compensate for the eerie stillness left over from the departing mob of children. Stuck on the menu was a recording of Indians imitating the sad call of loons — a chilling sound electrifying the nerves.

The music had a deep effect. Close to the reception area, an auburn-haired lady walked through the room, only pausing long enough to say, "Admission is free for the rest of the day; so is the coffee." At that moment, the loon cries peaked. I stopped her and said, "Beg your pardon, Ma'am, but that loon music haunts me. My mother left me as a mere tot to be raised by schoolteachers. (long pause) In Texas in those days, redhead, freckled-faced boys could be left without any recourse or penalty by the state. (deep sigh) There was a lost child department in El Paso, and six hundred miles to the East at Beaumont, there was a found child department. The most dreaded of all was to be put in a claiming race in the first grade."

Before I finished telling her that the cry of loons is identical to schoolteachers' nightmares, I felt the gentle touch of my friend's hand on my coat sleeve, increasing to a firm grip moving me away from the stunned curator. At the same time, she was saying, "Now, now Monte, people up here don't know about storytellers."

I caught the staff people peeking from the coffee room once, hoping we were gone. I'll end with an Onondoga Indian prayer I copied at the museum to bring home:

Oh Great Creator whose voice I always listen to in the winds
Hear me
I am a small part of You; I need wisdom
Let me walk in your beauty
Keep my ears ever sharp for your voice
Help me travel a path of wisdom, so I may understand all people
I seek knowledge not to be greater than my brother, but to learn to share a great understanding Make me always helpful and ready to come to all earthly causes with clean hands and clean thoughts.
Amen.

November 14, 2002

November 7, 2002

2009-04-26T20:23:00.001-05:00

Fellow named Wayne Greenstone from Newark, New Jersey, made a good suggestion for a side trip last month in New York state that brought the Catskill Mountains into full autumn focus.

I called him at his law office and asked where to see the Catskills without doing a lot of driving. Modern traffic codes nationwide turn the driver's side on automobiles into cellular telephone booths. Once I leave the dirt road leading to the ranch, at any second a busy signal or a wrong number is apt to send the oncoming traffic off the road.

He recommended the Mohonk Mountain Guest House close to New Paltz, New York, some 65 miles from New York City. A "mountain guest house" turned out to be 300 rooms cornered by castle-like rock spires on 2600 acres of forest land by a private lake. Grounds blossoming in a flush of red and yellow fall flowers blended into a setting of purple vine arbors tended by 10 gardeners. At summer high season, the guest house employs 600 people, or enough staff to make a ratio of one employee to one guest.

The last addition to the lodge was a maple wood paneled dining room in 1907. Rates include meals, valet parking, porter services, guided nature walks, lectures, and a room looking at either the lake or the mountains. Fifteen percent gratuity plus seven per cent state tax is added at a checkout so informal that the feeling is of having been a guest.

When Alfred and Albert Smiley, twin brothers, bought the land in 1869, they gradually turned it in to a commercial establishment. The reason the brothers had the money to buy property after the Civil War is that the North won and also that they were Quakers. From what the books said in the library, Quakers don't crouch in trenches or return from battles dragging a hind leg from deflecting a barrage of grapeshot.

In 1869, the year the Smileys raised $28,000 to buy lands, citizens in war-shattered Texas tried to rustle enough maverick cattle from the dense thickets of East Texas and the cow jungle of South Texas to buy flour and beans. The only chance of raising 28,000 bucks down here in 1869 would have been finding the Bowie mine, or maybe a sunken Spanish ship off the Gulf Coast.

But back to nowadays ... early in the mornings hot tea and black coffee are served on the wide verandah by caned rocking chairs overlooking the private lake. Amber shale in the lake bottom purifies the water. Enormous gray boulders lining the shore form perfect crevices for little boys to risk breaking an arm or shattering a kneecap. Aluminum canoes thump moored against the wharf, with ka-whomp, ka-whomp resounding from the modern world. Above and beyond, a pileated woodpecker, Woody Woodpecker size, knocks off pieces of thick chestnut bark in chunks the size of shoe heels, hammering away in a thumping staccato, pile-driving her sharp beak to intercept trunk-burrowing ants.

My room without a private balcony was in the more modest wing of the resort the Smileys leased to a boy's school during the Great Depression. Must have been a desperate situation to allow students on the grounds if they were like the guys I knew in Texas private schools. One morning, I caught a whiff of the smell of dormitories of old. Later, however, outdoors I located a muskrat's nest upwind from the open hallway, wafting in the powerful pungency of young males.

Sitting on the big open porch or retreating indoors to a soft velour-covered sofa in front of the fireplace by the stairwell saved 65 dollars a day by forsaking a private balcony. Each of the six floors had built-in bookshelves, plus a reading room filled with books on the first floor to further assuage the hardship of no balcony. Television existed on the ground floor, but I never heard the speaker sound or caught a flash from the screen.

Take warning, however; balconies or no balconies, rooms don't have TVs or air conditioning. Wines, spirits, and beer may be purchased at meals. Folks in need of late-hour diversion may choose listening to the grandfather clock chime in the big ballroom, or move outdoors to hear the lake water lapping on the shores. Movies are shown every night in a theater. Dances are held during holidays. Ice skating on an enclosed rink up the hillside offers winter diversion, as does cross-country skiing. As mentioned, lecturers and performers provide evening programs.

The days passed walking in autumn sun illuminating green to red-gold boughs drooping over the paths. At breakfast, the leaves floated across the big picture windows, framing a background of tall conifers fading into hazy mountain slopes speckled with white clearings. At night, a five-course dinner was served to ladies and gentlemen dressed for the affair. Bless ol' Wayne for finding a record of man's gentility frozen in time.

November 7, 2002

October 31, 2002

2009-04-26T20:21:00.001-05:00

The two-section Mertzon townsite was the heaviest stocked country in the county in the 1930s. Milk cows grazed staked to cedars; burros ranged free to bray at the saddle horses contained in small traps. Chickens vied for room claimed by turkeys and geese and ducks. Dogie lambs bleated a mournful cry on the dry springs. Rare was a dwelling without a collection of dogs, cats and maybe a rabbit hutch. And I wrote you about the old man who wintered over two hundred ewes on town lots.

Open range law still prevails in Mertzon. Over west of the school, a fellow keeps chickens. His inventory runs heavy on roosters. He might be more of a sportsman than an egg producer, as Mertzon has a strong history of successful game chicken operations. (In Texas, cock fighting is against the law. Raising or owning chickens is not, be they fighters or layers.)

San Angelo is in the process of enacting a difficult-to-enforce pet law. Proposed is a statute to prohibit citizens from owning more than four dogs without having a kennel license. I haven't read a paper in a week, but the last edition I read had some plenty hot letters complaining over the size of the allotment. In one letter supporting a ceiling on canines, goats were included. Once in the summer, the City Council considered — and may still be considering — limiting goat ownership to 40 animal units, or two hundred head. If the limit is correct, the odd 10 square miles of the Wool Capital are destined to be a goat ranch the likes of which haven't been seen in Texas since the glorious days of the Angora reigning over the hill country.

One lady wrote that she loved her six dogs as much as she would children. Little does she know, but equal love was the theme of the Big Depression for kids and dogs. Parents loved dogs as much as they loved children. Neither party was showered with affection. It was all a distant love, keeping the kids and the dogs out of sight in the back yard or in the pasture, or down on the river bank.

If the issue continues, balancing dog legislation against goat regulation is going to be tedious for the Council. Red and white Boer goats do twin. But Boers don't have litters, so a citizen with six dogs is going to out produce the goat man with six goats at the rate of 20 or 30 puppies every three months to a dozen kids every six months.

Boer goat husbandry makes raising woolies look like the downside of a penny arcade. Eleven thousand of all breeds of goats were slaughtered a week or so ago nationwide. On the same week, four thousand sold at the Tuesday sale in San Angelo. The way every patch of ground nowadays is a goat ranch, seemed like 11,000 head were pastured between San Angelo and my turnoff out of Mertzon. Any space large enough to unroll a big bale of hay is considered large enough to raise goats.

Must be a way to resolve the issue of how many dogs people living in San Angelo need. Might be a solution to permit transferring the quota from goldfish lovers to dog lovers, or maybe to give credit for not having a backyard stocked with Boers or a laundry room full of Siamese cats. (Watch for a coalition between the National Audubon Society and International Goldfish Bowl Association attacking feral and domestic cats. Bird watchers have already endorsed leghold traps in California, much to the chagrin of the Pan American Council of Tabbies Unlimited.)

Even four dogs per household will make goat ranching pretty tough in town. Dogs sure like to hear the piercing death cry of goats. Boer goats are probably as high-strung as the hair variety when facing death.

I know I sure was emotional in the days when I tried to raise more Angora goats than the bobcats could eat over north of Mertzon. I'd be driving down the road on a beautiful day and break down sobbing so hard I couldn't see to hold my pickup on the road. A merciful post-shearing rain removed my misery. All that remained after an August cloudburst was 20 head of spoiled nannies we missed in the brush and a mortgage at the San Angelo National Bank on 300 dead Angora goats.

The Mertzon dog catcher says he misses the days when citizens looked after pets and practiced their own animal control. He'd just set a live trap in front of my town house for a black and white cat on the loose after biting a school kid. He asked the color of my cat in case he trapped her. I tried to remember. Last I saw of her was in either '94 or '95. He must be awfully busy running his trap line, as he drove off before I could finish my answer...

October 31, 2002

October 24, 2002

2009-04-26T20:20:00.003-05:00

In 1950, the R.E.A. strung wires across the 09 Divide, bringing an end to generators, wind chargers, and Coleman lanterns. Doorbells and door knockers were the only appliances separating us from city folks. Had we wired in a bell, the clapper would have rusted from disuse. Living 22 miles from a post office with 15 miles of dirt track, we'd bound from the house at the sight of dust or the sound of a motor, to meet guests at the front gate.

Nowadays, the office is in the front of the house. People go to the back door, out of range of my hearing aids. Absorbed in a word processor on the days the winds rage across this big plateau, I could be the most popular man in northeastern Crockett County without ever noting the attention.

University Land employees frequenting the area know the handicap. They hammer on the back door a few raps, then shout from the kitchen, "MONTE, I KNOW YOU ARE HOME." Takes a few minutes to shut down the computer. I have to hurry or they'll shout again, thinking I didn't hear the first outburst.

In August, a UT land man came to the front door, signaling something important. After a brief greeting, he said, "There's a couple of guys with the Corps of Engineers out back looking for the old World War II bombing targets. We need your help to find the targets. And, Monte, no act, please. These gentlemen don't understand ranchers."

I selected for my hat a 16 year-old Laredo straw, fitting for an antiquarian familiar with war relics. Walked out the back door to face two men dressed in slacks and short-sleeved summer shirts, carrying rolls of maps. They looked out of place, were out of place, so much out of place they didn't know the difference.

Without introduction, the oldest said, "We want you to show us a bombing target at grid so and so."

I replied, "I picked this hat to look my age. I lived here during the bombing in 1943. Every part of Crockett County was a target, along with portions of Irion and Schleicher counties."

The University man might have laughed, but the two Government guys stared as if being addressed in mystic tongues. I continued, "The closest target is over south of this house, about a hundred and fifty yards away from my bedroom. Can't tell where the targets start and where the limits ended, as bombs dropped in all directions and in all pastures."

I paused, searching for a smile, then continued: "Mr. Bode Owens took a hundred-pounder, or maybe a five hundred, to as far as the old drugstore in Barnhart to have it explode in the back of his pickup. Burned him real bad. You'd of liked Bode. He was a good fellow. Barnhart is 18 miles from here. The old drugstore is called the Yellow Rose now." (No response.)

Right quiet, the University man interrupted and asked if I was going to locate the target on Kathleen St. Claire? Audible, I answered, "I'll show you the target, but only if you start laughing at my stories."

Again the faces froze to Mt. Rushmore frowns. Noted right then to never accept an assignment to address a government agency, especially the Corps of Engineers. Might as well have used my material on the next band of missionaries to come by distributing pamphlets as I had those frozen faces. In short, I'd wasted some good stuff on a bum audience.

The drive over to the old bombing range took 10 minutes. Seemed like four hours riding with those muted city guys. In the lull, my thoughts wandered back to the flares floating on silk parachutes, lighting the winter skies over the ranches and the targets, starting grass fires that lasted as long as three days. Twin-engine planes thundering close to the ground, shaking the earth. Bombs hitting with a thud, followed by a sharp clap.

Remembered the Wade brothers losing a big, big string of yearling ewes piled up in fence corners of 40 sections of burned-up ranch. By the time damages were settled by Congress, interest consumed the brothers' equity. I was so distracted I forgot to ask why the Corps of Engineers felt the need to cold trail bombing targets abandoned 60 years ago.

I am no closer to putting in a doorbell than Mother was the day the R.E.A. brought us electricity. The Engineers did disclose that one target had three bombs buried in the bullseye. Must have been planted by foot soldiers, as the student bombardiers of my memory had a hard time hitting within the boundaries of the Pecos and Concho rivers and staying away from the banks of the Rio Grande.

They also found an unexploded bomb. If they hadn't been so unfriendly, I'd have warned them to be sure not to take the bomb to Barnhart and risk being burned like ol' Bode...

October 24, 2002

October 17, 2002

2009-04-26T20:20:00.001-05:00

General rains fell over the shortgrass country Sunday night, the eighth of October. San Angelo weathermen made a call for a 70 percent chance on the Sunday morning forecast. Giving a 70 percent chance of rain in this land the Indians called "Thin Promise" falls in line with predicting that 70 percent of the people who went to Las Vegas last year are going to open savings accounts this year and stay home to study Mr. Greenspan's advice.

The 70 percent from my vantage point at the ranch was coming in lopsided over the taped message from the weather bureau. The tape said, "At 5 a.m., it is raining in San Angelo. Five-tenths of an inch have fallen since midnight." At 5 a.m. the gauge on the south side of the ranch house held two and one-tenth inches. My friend 12 miles south of me had two point seven inches. An ol' insomniac coot of a herder south of here reported three inches.

I had to wait until 6 a.m. for the late riser report. Over north of Mertzon, where the dust has been settled nicely in the past 18 months, two inches were recorded. One cagey hombre played his hand tight against his chest by claiming they'd had a slow rain all night at a river town called Christoval. A rain so slow, the last drops hadn't dripped down the tube of his gauge for a final reading at 6 o'clock in the morning. The fact that his wife was grumbling in the background to unplug the telephone before another idiot rancher called to find out how much it rained shaded the story.

Oldtime shortgrassers denied being in bed for a call three minutes after midnight, much less before daylight. In the days of rising dust, deep tracks and thin residue over the ranch land, a strong belief reigned among the herders that 14-hour days were going to reduce the awful balances on the mortgages and chattels hanging as heavy on their necks as blacksmith anvils. An old fellow ranching up the Big Draw from us in the 1950s burned up an enamel coffee pot every six months boiling coffee from two in the morning to daybreak. He became quite social about two a.m., cranking his telephone into action on the party line, the only outlet possible in the days when the central telephone office closed at nine at night.

He always spoke well of me. One Christmas season, he roared up to the old ranch to borrow a Mexican cowboy. He caught me in his headlights going to the barn carrying a milk bucket. In those days, the only dances we made were Christmas and Fourth of July. Even as well versed as he was in the mores of the neighborhood from eavesdropping on the telephone, he didn't realize I was up because I hadn't been to bed. Milking the cow ahead of time was a ruse to get more sleep.

However, all ranch citizens become restless close to tax deadlines, during documentation and audit of sworn statements on the application for government payments, before 180-day cycles of demand notes, and the combination of all of the above. Those awesome events tend to cause hombres to arise way before dawn to be on the lookout for trouble like the Indian fighters of old. Hard to slip up on an old boy packing a $40 note on a $20 ewe nursing a 30-pound lamb on his pillow. And even less likely if he's soaked a herd of nine, 10 and 11 year-old cows deeper than Old Ned's basement to pay the lease on an outfit where the buzzards scout year-round for its bounty.

Late as it is, the rain is going to make us all feel better. I am attached to the recorded voices from the weather station. I've met greaseball mechanics from Barnhart and tight-handed jugkeepers from as far east as Mason scurrying around following the hollow horn and woolie trade. But I never have met a weatherman. Weather forecasters must be like those shy bittern birds hiding in the reeds in the wetlands.

Could be the meteorologists stationed in San Angelo are being punished for making bum forecasts in climates where a stock broker could hold the job. Weather forecasting is a cinch out here as long as rain is left from the forecast. All the weather prophet needs to say is, "High wind advisory on area lakes. Dust storms possible in the river beds. Whirlwinds likely on the golf courses and public flower gardens. Low in the morning such and such: high in the afternoon a miserable so-and-so."

Weeds and winter grass will soon be covering the bare spots. Pillows will have deeper creases; wives will be able to sleep longer once the novelty of rain wears off. It sure pumps life into the shortgrass country. I'd like to meet the weather people before another weather failure befalls us...

October 17, 2002

October 10, 2002

2009-04-26T20:18:00.002-05:00

The second time my helper brought in the cow to dig out green prickly pear leaves lodged in her throat, he dispensed with the sophisticated mouth spreader and hooked a crude set of nose tongs to elevate her head and used a tie rope to pry open her jaws. (If this sounds brutal, go take a short nap or a quick bath, as rescuing pear-eating bovines is not for folks of delicate nature.)

He released her from the squeeze chute just as I appeared to watch her reeling and regurgitating cactus in the hospital pen. She heaved to the point that all four stomachs pulled together. Her number brand showed her to be seven years old. Her weaned calf stood in the next pen. He was her fourth or fifth calf. From the looks of her dead hair and shriveled udder, the black birds scratching in the pens were better choices for mothers.

"What you wanna do with her?" the helper asked. An audit showed we still had one 50-pound sack of dehydrated alfalfa cubes left from feeding the last pen of prickly pear-eating ewes. (You can relax. The dreary graphic part is over.) We had enough hay in the barn to feed the first-calf heifers overnight for 60 days. The overhead bin had a thousand pounds of range cubes left over from spring, plus approximately 16 or 17 ounces of black-headed weevils per hundredweight. (Black-headed weevils test the same protein as their feed source, but they are poor in Vitamin A and low in energy.) Deer hunters' corn strewn over the floor by raccoons and ravished by mice completed the inventory.

So if we soaked the alfalfa pellets overnight and sprinkled in corn, we could soften the ration so old bristlehead could swallow and also double the bulk of the feed. To satisfy her roughage requirements, we could drop a bale off the heifers' allotment for however many weeks or months necessary to put the old sister in shape. She was weaned in 1995. No records exist of what her share of the hay came to in the weaning period, but hay was cheaper, so she still might have credit for her part.

Looking at the marketing choices short and long range, shipped next sale, she ought to hit three hundred bucks gross, less $15 worth of commission and trucking. For the past 12 years, the Angelo cow traders have seen lots of drouth cattle in worse shape than the road kill on the way to town. Those ringside gents of pivoting chairs and pungent stogies know bovine ribs and hipbones better than the Houston doctors know human hindlegs and kneecaps.

Makes a hard choice. Take about $110 to feed her hay and cubes a month. Say she brings top money for a gimpy cow of two bits a pound after healing from her addiction. No, that's not right. The way I figured the deal sitting on a feed trough on the fateful day she was hoping to die, overfeeding her hay and giving her 10 pounds of cubes a day, by Christmas we'd have a $400 feed bill in her. By selling her on the thirty-first of December, the sale could fall in either tax year. Counting those advantages, we could recover half of the feed bill and be a candidate for being humane to animals.

We'd had rain. Death loss had been high over in the oilfield. I was pretty tender on the subject of turning her out to die. I thought, and think, someday the drouth will end. Maybe enough herders left foolish enough to buy cows to cause a boom. I keep betting on the come. Sitting in the hospital pen on a feed trough, staring at a sick cow, however, makes the stark attached to reality an understatement.

No longer able to decide, I told the cowboy to keep her in the pen. I felt so lousy, I decided to go to the post office and eat in town. On the way, I stopped to look at cows along the public road. A strange cracking sound caught my attention. Hard to locate until an old sister raised her head to try to swallow what I'd guessed to be a bone. Infuriated, I picked up a stump bearing three prongs of dead roots. Hurled the stump at her with such force that had the missile landed on target, she'd have fallen to her knees. Instead, she whirled, spitting out an aluminum beer can in the motion. I thought, "Gosh-a-mighty, with deer season coming, the ungrateful black sapsuckers are going to be choking to death on the trail of cans going down this road."

Right then sealed the fate of ol' Granny the suicide prickly pear-eater. Hollowhorn beasts are going to ruin us all. I skipped lunch and read the newspaper in the city park. Left for the ranch determined to contribute one more carcass to the pet food people. One for sure to taste of raw prickly pear ...

October 10, 2002

October 3, 2002

2009-04-26T20:18:00.001-05:00

A boy dressed in a tattered orange suit, disheveled as windblown newsprint, walked right by me in the corner grocery store on the Tuesday morning we left San Francisco. Muttered these words to a wall lined in six packs and 20/20 wine: "Woe-be, woe all the misery be, using an ash can for a headboard and the morning sun for a blanket. Woe, woe, deep this misery be, using the curbstone for my doorstep and the black asphalt for my yard."

I've written before that 750,000 people live on the 47 square-mile township of San Francisco. Two hundred fifty thousand more pour into the city to work during the week. Ten thousand make up the poor, homeless wretches. I called the office of statistics for the percentage of Asians in the population. The man who knew the answer was on vacation. His subordinates had never bothered to find the sum.

But without knowing, I'd guess the largest Chinese population in the U.S. lived in San Francisco, judging by walking down the streets of Chinatown. The Japanese section is much smaller. We ate lunch one day in the Japanese section. Must have been mating day on the Asian calendar, as all the tables except ours were taken by young lovers eating the traditional fish and rice dishes accompanied by Coca Colas.

Contact by the males amounted to elbows on the tables offering open hands, fingertips facing her across the table. Females responded by brushing fingertips from the same pose against his. Impossible to gauge the thermal energy rising from the finger brushes. Eating with chopsticks, herding a mushroom cap and a piece of tuna as a buffer to corner rice kernels, I couldn't appraise the force of the hormones swirling in the young diners' bodies.

Five Japanese businessmen passing from the bar through the dining room held less of the mystery of the East, or the West. The youngest of the five showed his companions a reverse karate kick, setting off an explosion of laughter by the other four men common to any culture fueled by liquid refreshments at noon. Finger brushing stopped and the click of chopsticks ceased. The hostess whispering and cajoling the five into postponing the floor show was the only audible sound in the dining room.

One display of Caucasian culture we missed was a young lady protesting the tigers being caged by the circus in town. Her photograph in the San Francisco Chronicle showed a comely lass crouched quite naked in a galvanized mesh cage, black stripes painted on her bare skin. Just my luck to be leaving town too soon to go by the protest site. In the 40 years I've written for a newspaper, a caged naked lady would rank high among the coverage. Other than once being on the scene in Mertzon during a gasoline price war of two hours' tenure, my beat extends to raccoons causing fresh-weaned heifers to stampede at night to an account of the day Les White brought an 82-pound yellow catfish into the Mertzon Locker Plant to be butchered.

The Chronicle gives animal rights and animal happenings good coverage. A lead story in the second section of the Sunday edition wrote of a new patient rights bill before the city council in San Diego protecting dogs and cats at veterinarian offices. Side issues came to mind, like age of consent, full knowledge of procedure, warnings of consequences of procedure (i.e. should a puppy be told about docking his tail beforehand?), and a vague mind boggle whether in cases of artificial or natural breeding programs, should the issue of consenting adults be addressed.

Somewhere in Connecticut, I think it was, folks were too scared to take off their clothes to protest about tigers. A tiger lover was running his cats loose on his farm, or play place. The neighbors were plenty nervous being so close to free-ranging tigers, but I don't think the caged tiger lady in Union Square wanted the circus to turn the tigers loose in the city. I hope she didn't stay in the cage so long the sun rays deflected by the mesh spoiled her stripes.

By January of next year, the City of San Francisco promises to have completed a subway line from the International Airport into town. We might have saved a little dough riding a van to make our flight. San Francisco is an exciting town filled with good food and grand sights. But it'd be a bit easier to take if the homeless people were spread over more space.

October 3, 2002

September 19, 2002

2009-04-26T20:17:00.001-05:00

Imagined or real, the style of a city or the image of a city influences a visitor. Novels and plays set a scene — a mindset, so to speak.

Under the spell of my idea of a gracious San Francisco, I kept slipping on a sports coat every morning before leaving the hotel, thinking I needed to be dressed for a snappy lunch. A cold crab salad served on a crisp white linen table cloth, for instance, graced with heavy silverware at a table close to a quiet water fountain bubbling in an ornate pond under the yellow, red, and blue stained glass atrium of the likes of the old Palace Hotel.

Looking in the bathroom mirror, I debated whether to wear a tie or fold one in my breast pocket. (This isn't going to take long. I dress in a hurry. Always have.) Might just be the day my friend said, "Know what I'd like to do? I'd like go to tea over at the St. George Hotel in time to dance to the new combo." Thus inspired, I turn to the closet for a bow tie and knot it into a daunting butterfly of a bow in front of the closet door mirror before I can change my mind.

And how does the day unfold? We are out all day. The Palace Hotel Garden Room is closed for renovation. As for tea at the old St. George, by tea time, we are five miles away at the Museum of Natural History, drinking powdered coffee from a styrofoam cup in a cafeteria framed in plastic and chrome. All the tie adds is more respect from the waitress. Poor kid, she probably thought I was a director of the museum, checking on the cafeteria.

Nightfall brings a different atmosphere. Mounting one of those four-wheel rocket ships of a taxi cab I warned of before, we race over to the Legion of Honor building for the second performance of the Summer Mozart Festival of Music. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, copied after the 18th Century Palais de Legion d Honneur in Paris, was built in 1924 to commemorate the dead of World War I.

There the imagined elegance becomes genuine. We find our way down wide, gray-white swirled marble staircases, making an entry to an oval-roofed hall of grooved pillars that frame arched doorways fit for a queen and her entourage. Here are the ladies and gentlemen of my imagination. The ladies range from the sleek in black dresses cut to show white pearls or glittering jewel necklaces to the thicker dowager shapes of abundance in skirts of a purple hue displaying heavier stones and longer strands of pearls. The men go from tailored dark suits to doughty ol' gents wearing thick tweeds bought in England 40 years ago. All drink yellow-gold champagne fizzing in flutes as thin as the stems of the flowers in her majesty's centerpiece.

The lights make a polite blink for curtain call. Only one blink to summon such a high class crowd to the concert hall. Not, blink, blink, blink, but a gentle wink. The wine flutes land on napkins on the bar or on the waiters' trays. I hold in my stomach and walk loose and casual, guiding my friend's elbow into a concert room upholstered as soft as the texture of cashmere. The feel of her elbow steadies me. However, that same old doubt returns: "Gawd-a-mighty, little cowboy, who would ever believe a chunk of the roughest grade of coal ever measured in Mertzon was at a chamber music concert in San Francisco?"

Oh, how fine and light, the musicians fiddled and feathered the bows across the strings of the violin and cello. I was far enough back to study the audience. "Here must sit the best educated and best oriented people in the whole city of San Francisco," I thought. Yet, as we all sat under the fragile sky blue ceiling of the concert hall, close by, beneath the homes of the elite, the sides of the San Andreas fault line were grinding together to bring on another earthquake some day. (One of my pals claims the reason for the elan of the San Francisco person is the rumbling, earth-shaking destiny lurking in the city's under berth.)

At intermission, a polished attendant assured she would see that a cab picked us up after the performance. For a bow, I substituted the deepest nod possible, to avoid scraping my chin on my starched collar. My cup of decaf looked ordinary in such high style of thin flutes filled with sparkling wine. But I continued to hold in my stomach, smiled the way Mother said to do among strangers, and allowed my imagination to feed on a true story...

September 19, 2002

September 19, 2002

2009-04-26T20:08:00.001-05:00

A time and date check shows the dateline to be a Thursday in July in San Francisco, 2002. The prompter on the notepad for the day reads: "As a last resort on a trip, ask for directions." My friend and I are sitting on a bench in a park one block from the Grant Street gate to Chinatown. We are resting from a hard, needless climb up on the highest hills in San Francisco. The real reason we are resting is because I remembered a shortcut from downtown to Chinatown.

The park has changed from the 1980s. Back then, around the block at a Chinese joint offering takeout orders of dim sum dumplings, a couple of bucks purchased a nice picnic lunch. Now six or seven bucks makes a small ding on the cash register in the same place. After a short rest, we walked through the gate to become part of the throng of tourists shopping for bargains.

Thursday is marketing day for the citizens of Chinatown. Grandchildren lead the crumpled ancients from grocery market to grocery market to stalls of dried mushrooms and tubs of live turtles hidden from the hordes of visitors. Try these descriptions, please: "the implacable oriental faces of the weathered ones" or "the inexorable movement of the ancient ones." Comes close to the sight of frail solemn grandparents guided so carefully by youngsters who might be great-grandchildren instead of grandchildren. If words are exchanged, the exchange is too quiet to detect in the hubbub of the market. To peek in the shopping bags would be too serious an invasion to risk.

One set of directions I do follow is Fromer's guidebook. In the Guide To San Francisco, page 63, the book states, "The New Asian Restaurant serves the best food in Chinatown." Fromer's misses noting that 95 percent of the customers at lunch are Asian locals. Nor does the book explain that the busy restaurant refuses credit cards at lunch. Once the routine of ordering dim sum dumplings from waitresses unable to speak English is mastered, the method of payment doesn't matter. All the Chinese needed to translate is to point on the menu, or point at a steaming dish of dumplings on the cart. The New Asian, by the way, doesn't suit the Betty Crocker palate. The Chinese are very clean. However, the adventure of eating shark fins instead of chicken might be too much the first time.

Later, I was taught a lesson on adventurous eating. One night in the Thai restaurant, a ginger-flavored soup made from giant prawns and a red pepper used in Thailand to singe the fuzz off the Buddhist monks' heads turned my mouth into an inferno. An inferno that'd make Zoro the flaming sword eater think he'd been slipped a branding iron. The reaction was so intense, I dreamed I sat on the sunny side of the bullfight ring in Acuna, Mexico, drinking straight jalapeno juice, too broke to buy a bottle of Corona beer. The gastric attack struck so fierce that dissolved bicarbonate of soda hitting the boiling caldron of my stomach solidified.

On another jaunt, in contrast, we found a Persian restaurant dedicated to cooking such delicate food, Persians must be akin to stove fairies or light-fingered kitchen nymphs. The roast lamb turned from a spit onto a deep red sauce of pomegranates and walnuts made such a fine touch that a serving in the right place could bring world peace. Nut flavors and maybe ginger enhanced the marinades. The waitress stood poised about six feet from the table, ready for command. My napkin slipping off my lab caused such a flurry of attention, I felt I'd committed a major insult to the management.

We used city buses for long rides and climbing the hills. Using public transportation gives a city flavor to a country guy. Makes us smell of chlorinated water and carbon pollution mixed with burnt grease off a hamburger grill. The hotel was also effective at calling cabs. Years ago, the then mayor cut licensing requirements for taxi drivers to solve a shortage of cabs. His honor should be remembered as the father of four-wheeled rocket ships. Took half a dozen rides before we learned we could be anywhere in the city in 20 minutes, make the first curtain calls, and still have time to read the billboards in front of the theater. On one ride, the back seatbelts lacked buckles; in frantic improvising, we knotted the webbing into a surcingle and still had a tough time staying on board.

The ascent to Chinatown tabled my shortcut plans. Be hard to convince a chicken fried steak man how good those Persians and Chinese cook. Fromers did a good job showing us around. I am sorry I missed the opportunity to clock one of those rocket ships on the straightaway, but to use a stopwatch, you have to be brave enough to keep your eyes open...

September 19, 2002

September 12, 2002

2009-04-26T20:07:00.001-05:00

Three choices are available to make side trips outside of cities on vacations without private transportation. In San Francisco last month, the choices were: rent a car, join a tour, or hire a guide and his car. Business was so bad for the small companies, the latter was the best deal. Also, we needed to be in Muir Woods in the redwoods before the tour buses arrived. I wanted my friend to have a better angle of view of this natural magnificence than peeking between some guy's ear and his head, or shooting around the bill of a baseball cap on a trail too crowded to move.

To avoid this, we left the hotel before 7 a.m., escorted by a hired guide. In an hour, we were on the trail underneath the giant redwoods alone. So early the light was poor, nevertheless the privacy reigned sacred among the mystic creaking of branches and flicking sound of black and white woodpeckers swooping in short flights from trunk to trunk, tapping a mating call at every landing.

Sounds don't echo in such dense and tall coverage. It's my nature to whistle on a walk. Under the redwoods, the tune barely left my lips. Trilling "Can't Live Without You Baby," my favorite, under the grove means the sound waves hover around three feet or so in circumference. Until I caught on to the phenomenon, I was walking in a mass of broken whistles stifled by the forest.

Mr. Muir, the early protector of the woods, explored the grove so thoroughly he tied himself in the treetops during a lightning storm. Alone by the sign telling about Mr. Muir's lightning experiment, I peered into the trees with binoculars, wondering how deep lightning reached down the trunks. Tried to imagine being tied aloft in a big thunderstorm in a 250-foot redwood.

I stood in the stillness below the snapping of the branches and heard the very stream rushing that Mr. Muir waded his horse across to reach the wilderness. Mr. Muir remains a renowned naturalist. Deciding whether he used good judgment depends on how many trees you've seen in your life split to the base of the trunk by a lightning bolt.

An hour into the woods, voices came from the parking lot. In 30 more minutes, small chattering groups hit the trails. By the time we reached the car, all the parking spaces where filled with buses and oversized vans. Big women wearing baggy white shorts and wrinkled tee shirts matching green flip flop rubber sandals squished around, herding wild kids and driving every chipmunk and wren deeper into the forest. The chance of communing with nature, like Mr. Muir, would have taken quite a tree climber. For the next six hours, few pine cones or pine needles free-fell from the trees without being deflected by human form.

We drove from Muir Woods to the lighthouse at Point Reyes. Part of the Point Reyes National Park permits stocking cattle on lands called a "pastoral zone." Black and white Holsteins and small herds of beef cattle range on lands as windswept as the islands off the coast of Ireland. Tule elk grazing on the hills add an Old World aura to the scene. Better, the tall antlers of the elks are reminiscent of Old World paintings of stags being chased by hounds in royal forests.

"Pastoral zone" is National Park terminology meaning the pastors relinquish the testamentary rights to pass the land on to their heirs and learn to live with the public until they die a natural death, or the experience kills them. Once before at Point Reyes, I left the road on a trail to discover a group of tourists gathered around a Holstein having her calf. If the old cow surrounded by sightseers was an example of a "pastoral zone," the pastor and his black and white milk cow had to be mighty patient to produce any milk and butter.

Once at Point Reyes, we stood on the observation deck, watching visitors climb and descend the 300 steps a lighthouse keeper once transversed to keep the lamps burning. On stormy nights, (and there were and are many on this point jutting out in the Pacific,) he had to hold on to a rope to keep from being swept over the steep cliffs. Below we saw seals and sea lions sleeping on slick black rocks under swarms of cormorants and gulls. The black, jagged rocks broke the waves into white pinnacles of spray. At hand, a kid transported by his parents at a great cost in money and time to see Point Reyes showed his appreciation by rattling the coin return on a pay telescope.

September 12, 2002

September 5, 2002

2009-04-26T20:06:00.001-05:00

Way early on the morning walks last month in San Francisco, I watched policemen make a route, using batons for alarm clocks to rouse the homeless people from any indentation large enough to shelter a human form. Down by the square, heard a fiddle whine to find a tune for a forlorn voice singing: "Mustang Molly, better slow yore mustang down. One of these early mornings, you gonna be wiping yore weepy eyes from riding too fast around dis town."

Country boys from Mertzon make low scores on street knowledge. Yet we learn to stay back from outbreaks of human misery until the scene becomes homogenized by workers joining the idle ones. Go bogeying into early morning rehearsal — or worse, early morning withdrawal tremors — and chances run high that you will be ruled out of bounds and punished for the indiscretion.

For a long time, I thought the buskers around train stations and sidewalk concert halls, playing those deep wracking Southern blues on warbling saxophones or palming pain-enshrouded harmonicas, were the reason train rides and train whistles made me sad. Blamed the subway dirges for my sadness until I made this last trip to San Francisco to ride the train across the Bay to Berkeley. Waiting at a station, a fragmentary memory returned of how Mother used to mutter as the passenger train passed through Mertzon, "Just wish he was on that train." A second flashback followed of a small boy I helped in a big train station in southern France, with a tag tied around his little neck giving directions to his grandparents' home.

My friend thought the impending train ride underneath the Bay was causing my apprehension. I denied being scared. Blamed being uncomfortable on meeting the new people over in Berkeley. See, my old pal Horace Kelton discovered he had a sister living in Berkeley two years ago — a poet, just like he is. A redhead so full of life, she writes church music after juggling sick babies around in a pediatric hospital on the graveyard shift as a nurse. Horace and I have been friends for 50 years. I wasn't going to take a chance of missing meeting an extension of a guy I liked as much as I do him.

And she was fun; knew how to entertain us, too. Took us to a book store run by a codger not quite as old as his books, but in overall contrariness and seasoning way ahead of any human to ever walk in or out of a California book store. His inventory, all collector editions, reached such huge proportions that the 12 foot tall polished wooden shelves rolled on rubber wheels, propelled by a crank to open and close spaces. "Old Dominic," or whatever his name was, might be rolling open a section for a customer and at the same time be threatening a reader nearby with being squashed by the adjoining shelves coming together.

Regular customers delighted in watching newcomers bound from an aisle that Dominic was fast cranking closed. I was looking for a copy of Conrad Richter's "Sea Of Grass," but once he hit the crank, I didn't want an extra copy bad enough to become a compressed book lover. At checkout, I told the curmudgeon of a book peddler I wasn't coming back unless he put a warning whistle on his shelves. If he even smiled, I missed it.

One guess why the book dealer was so soured is that he was close to the vigor and energy of the youth being expanded on the nearby campus of the University of California. Be hard on an ol' cuss to be around such a lively student body.

Horace's sister took us up on a high point overlying the university's magnificent facilities. Overlooking the red tile roofs of the cream-colored stucco buildings and filled with the pungent Eucalyptus odors wafting in sea air around us, I understood why student discontent festered down there in the 1960s. Man's burdens aren't limited to the squalor of the ghettos. Backpacks laden with pamphlets strapped on the shoulders chafe the skin. Hands blister and fingers cramp carrying protest signs. Sit-downs are no joke on hot sidewalks. Life can be mighty difficult now knowing whether your next check will come from your parents or your grandparents.

Going back on the 10 o'clock train to San Francisco, no musicians or abandoned kids boarded our car. At the downtown station we scurried up the steel steps, ignoring the crusaders, the panhandlers, and the guy selling the homeless newspaper. (I wanted a copy, but couldn't risk losing the momentum of escape.) Broke free up into the everybody world of tourists strolling hand in hand and young lovers walking the crosswise gait of the entwined. On the last turn, the fiddler blocked the sidewalk confronting a competitor over dominion of his corner. Smart as a city guy, we dodged into the street and avoided the fight, continuing a bee line for the hotel...

September 5, 2002

August 29, 2002

2009-04-26T20:05:00.003-05:00

What is it like to be in San Francisco the fourth week of July staying in a small privately owned hotel? It's looking down the street at the corner of Taylor and Post at a black blind man dancing a jig at the beat of his brain-damaged mind.

It's climbing the hill to Taylor and Pine as a mad, mad mamma comes boiling onto the walk, unable to defend her stool against the bartender's rage.

It's climbing Nob Hill, so steep your chin is as close to the concrete as your kneecaps. A climb so steep the change in your pockets rolls over in one corner and you can't pause to rest, or trust a smile of encouragement in a town of so many hustlers. (Ten thousand street people are activated and audited the first of every month by a $400 per head dole from the city.)

Late yesterday on a push to make a play so close to curtain that no time remained for dinner, I bought a pint of milk at the corner store. Fell full force in the climb to reach the theater and meet my friend. Had brown-bagged the milk to carry along to curb my appetite and thirst. Didn't realize the bottle looked like a "tall boy" beer until two long-haired gents carrying backpacks saluted, "Hang in there, buddy."

But please hang on for a blunder turning into a new experience. The hotel's play bill is incorrect. Tonight is dress rehearsal at the theater. Looking for the restroom, I walk into a downstairs dressing room — a long hall with benches and clothes hooks on the wall. If I run, they'll suspect I am one of those "tom peeping fellows," who ogle the theater girls all the way from the box office to the ushers to the stage. But no one pays the slightest attention, so I sit down and drink the bottle of milk.

What a sight the actors and actresses are in gray tails and gaudy dancing tights. Painted faces and abundant wigs vie for small face mirrors. Black mesh stockings and red and black ruffled collars are pulled and patted in place. Upstairs, dancers slide and stomp in unison, counting off a beat to a faint sound of music. Dust sifts from the ceiling from the impact above. Faded and threadbare curtains provide the only privacy for dressing. I sit tight, using the pint of milk as a prop. Signal to leave comes as a security cop arrives, bringing a big order of coffee and doughnuts. His glare is wasted on my back going for the street.

Next morning, the choice was sending my clothes to the Chinese laundry two doors from the hotel and staying in the room, or wearing a travel-weary wardrobe as wrinkled as a camel's dewlap. Too, descending the city's steep hills plunges toenails into socks, cutting dime-size holes that slowly strangulate the digital to the point of fatal gangrene. Closest supply of new socks to the hotel is an Australian store. Wool argyles imported from Australia cost fifty-nine dollars a pair plus sales tax, or 10 staple fleeces of Texas wool in the bale. No offer posted of trade-ins for used socks on such a fancy price. So I opted to send my clothes to the laundry and use the down time to darn my socks.

Laundries were just part of the services in the neighborhood. The hotel also owned the building next door. One tenant was Miss Donna, the fortuneteller. Not really a "Miss," the room clerk said she was paying the hotel damage for the aftermath of a big battle she and her husband pitched celebrating the Fourth of July. (Fortunetellers are very patriotic. Reading star charts links the seer to the field of stars in our country's flag. "Mr. Donna's" patriotism was probably questioned, thus causing the confrontation.)

Fortunetellers can help make short-term plans. Senior citizen discounts are hefty, as reading out the future takes only a small space in a crystal ball, or just a short hand of the Tarot cards. I suggested to my friend that we split a session. We were having difficulty deciding the best days to go to the coast and what nights to try for tickets to the plays and concerts. But before I acted, the front desk denied connection to Miss Donna's, unless Miss Donna trying to steal one of the hotel's vacuum cleaners counted as a partnership by disassociation.

Yes, being in San Francisco the fourth week of July is watching a wisp of a drug-crazed girl dance in floppy boots into the headlights of fierce traffic to hail a cab for the theater crowd. A town of inconsistencies where Tony the shine man opens his theater stand at 8 a.m. to close as the box office folds for the night. Click, click goes the reel next door at $165 for a front row seat; a final pop of the cloth and four bucks goes into Tony's poke. The cable cars screech a block away. Sidewalk evangelists pray for the salvation of the lost and the found. And the city roars into the night, split into human gaps as wide as the fault line causing her earthquakes.

August 29, 2002

August 22, 2002

2009-04-26T20:05:00.001-05:00

Instilled in mind is a rule my editors hold sacred in stories: "Be sure the reader knows the time and place." I agree, but be patient this trip. I'll be up and down the Coast from San Francisco, California and back again to a small hotel on Post Street, still owned by Mr. Andrews today. Keeping time ruins a vacation. What possible difference does it make to you whether I am in Chinatown on a Thursday or down on the Bay the next day?

So as an opener, set the scene in a concert hall in San Francisco, where a jazz combo plays on a modest wood stage of one by twelve pine lumber. An old gray-headed bird pops into the next chair and asks, "Did you ever have to work for a living?" Sitting around bunkhouses and in saddles on long rides teaches how to think sitting down. Be clear on this, the saying "The truth will make you free" guides man over quagmires until he's caught and put under oath on the witness stand. Making a half turn to keep my good ear toward the music, I reply, "If breaking oxen to lay the rails to build a railroad in Texas is considered work, then the answer is yes, I've had to work for a living."

Wasn't hard to pull up the oxen-skinning yarn. Before leaving home, I read how hard men worked to train oxen to pull freight wagons to build the railroads. How teaching "Ol' Bully" to make a turn while "Ol' Molly" held the traces tight tested the skill and patience of men as tough of will as the hides of those powerful beasts. The oldtimer at the line camp in the 1940s told and retold his stories of breaking wild Arkansas-raised mules up on the Cargile Ranch on Rocky Creek in the 1920s. It's not a long hop for a storyteller to change a mule's collar to an ox yoke.

He wasn't interested in an answer. Over and between the music, he launched a resume of his rise from a tutor for high school students to president of a big university. His was a life filled with rousing academic honors and thundering accolades that'd make the ceremony and decoration of the French Legion of Honor match a tarnished version of a Cub Scout awards banquet. He looked the part of a college president, or he did from my limited view of such important persons. Oh, one time in San Angelo, the kids' pediatrician introduced the president of Angelo State University. I wish I had remembered his name.

But the trumpet player was from Australia. (Remember, this is taking place at a concert.) Musicians from the huge continent of vast wastelands develop forces of sound strong enough to rattle the slats in empty chairs. Fat chance Mr. President, the stranger, could have heard if I asked if he knew the college president at Angelo State University in 1979.

I was already too hoarse to shout above the music. Early in the day, before I left a resort up the coast of San Francisco, an obliging fellow arranged a canoe ride down the Russian River. (I warned you the timing isn't in sequence.) He was an "obliging fellow" until we discovered we were too deaf to hear each other 14 feet apart in an aluminum canoe. The Russian River doesn't have a rapid rating in the summer. Having been raised on the eastern edge of the Chihuahua Desert, I don't have a boating rating, winter or summer. Taking the keel, I was supposed to watch for snags and guide us away from the shallows. I could see and hear the boat drag, but I couldn't holler loud enough to warn him.

In swift water, the canoe threw us in reverse. Seemed going backwards, the sound carried better on the water. To catch his attention, I started saying, "One, two, three, four, testing." All us hombres muted by time-rusted ear canals and burst eardrums respond to the litany of sound engineers testing their equipment. Often the countdown is the last thing we hear on a program. For the rest of the trip, we stayed in contact by a loud cadence of one two three fours. The lady at the docks meeting us heard us so far ahead of time, she thought we were racers sculling around the bend.

Be awhile knowing whether keeping dates and places straight matters. I make notes and mark a calendar away from home. Seems people think I'm from Mertzon wherever I am in the world. Few wait to learn how long I've been away from home. Riding backwards in a canoe might be the reason for the indifference to time or place ...

August 22, 2002

August 15, 2002

2009-04-26T20:04:00.001-05:00

At the next convention of the American Association of Retired People, I am going to propose we adopt a secret handshake. Pulling my membership card from the crowded pockets in my billfold at busy airports and hotels to prove such an easy case is ridiculous. Just a slight variation of the Boy Scout's handshake would be enough to open the doorways of the world to AARP.

Masons and maybe Elks and Eagles have signs and passwords. AARP needs to catch up with the secret fraternal organizations. We need a distress signal in case we are at the airport at gate call and a bifocal lens fogs the departure monitor, or a hearing aid microphone switches over to a satellite signal, blotting the sound of the flight information. Backed by a universal handshake, a slight brush of hands will call for help. If the contact has a dead battery, or a sprung earpiece, we can form a quick alliance and find a lip reader or a Braille translator to help us.

Before going any farther, realize that as long as people are living today, the AARP is going to make those other clubs and lodges look like a miniature golf tournament postponed because of an undersize course.

Another idea I am going to present is to make larger association bumper and window stickers for our cars. Any symbol or symptom a senior driver is at the wheel nets four lengths of space on the freeway in all four lanes on all sides and directions. Explains why the freeway traffic last month in Austin faded and opened a right of way wide enough for an 18-wheeler to pass every time I pulled on the fast track.

True, part of the free space yielded to my directional signals blinking all the time, plus a seatbelt looping outside from the bottom of the door on the driver's side, yet a lot of credit is due the AARP bumper stickers. Austin drivers rank nationwide as intrepid daredevils, especially the University undergraduates, but the wildest of all those clowns of reversed cap bills and gold earrings won't crowd the ol' granddads and grandmothers loose on the road.

A mystery is why, when I was stopped on a parking lot dead still, passing cars kept hitting their horns. Instinct must make young guys honk at the sight of gray hair from following so many Town Cars and Sedan de Villes piddling along five miles per hour above stalling speed. I thought of borrowing a baby seat to cast a different image, but I was afraid they might think I was a kidnapper instead of a father.

At Mertzon, drivers can be over-educated and over-qualified. Ones of us holding several certificates for driver's education courses (court-ordered matriculation) have to be deprogrammed. Stop signs, for example, are octagonal shape, painted red with white outline the same as elsewhere. But a driver has to know that S-T-O-P in Mertzon translates into a full phrase of "pause at highway and railroad crossings" and "floorboard it", or "skid and brake" at the off streets.

One of our citizens a few years back lost his sight and his hearing, but not his car keys and driver's license. Neighbors became concerned about his weekly trips to the liquor store across the county line on the busy highway going to San Angelo. He seemed to do all right driving around Mertzon. He knew the townsite well enough to miss the oak trees in the middle of the road and the big boulders on the side. Being a dry year, if he hit a hackberry tree, the trunk snapped right off. But it took a friend of his over at Sherwood named Johnny something or the other to solve the highway problem. Johnny said, "I can't drive anymore, but I can see well enough to guide Jack to the 'licker store' and back."

Before going to Austin last time, I bought a set of glare protection lens to wear at night. Had my hearing aids tuned so sensitive a dime rolling on the sidewalk sounded like an iron hoop bouncing down a hill. As final preparation, I rode to the grocery store a couple of times with my 18 year-old grandson at the wheel. Made myself keep my eyes open and breathe normally. (In motion, this grandson drives resting his bare left foot out the window on the driver's side, so he can flash the mirror with his toes at girl drivers. Very sporting, but hardly suitable for a grandfather to watch.)

Big changes, however, hit us all. I was touched years ago by Carl Sandburg saying "Life is a series of relinquishments." Nowadays, I am not touched, but sorry Mr. Sandburg was so right.

August 15, 2002

August 8, 2002

2009-04-26T20:03:00.001-05:00

My son from Connecticut, John, flew home twice this summer to attend to a commission for a sculpture over in San Angelo. The subject of the work is Saint Angela, the namesake of the city. A second figure is Angela de La Garza, the wife of the original grantee of the land to build the city and also a namesake for the town.

The whole project has been a hardship on my part. He stayed several days each visit, but he was so preoccupied that he didn't help us once at the ranch. June is a busy month. We sprayed the cattle twice for a new drouth-resistant fungus that causes the cows to look like severe cases of lice infection. Been a big help to his old daddy if he'd stayed around to gather and doctor the cattle instead spending all his time over at the art museum in San Angelo.

Folks over in Angelo were making a big splash of the sculpture, how the two figures are going to be bronze one and a half times life-size, or nine or ten feet tall, standing in front of the new visitors' center on the river. I wasn't so carried away. At Mertzon, we have a native stone monument commemorating war veterans and a granite slab with a bronze plaque honoring the Dove Creek Indian Battle in front of the courthouse right by a tall flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes and the banner of the State of Texas. The Mertzon work is unsigned, yet whoever the artist was, he probably stayed in touch with his dad during the sculpting in case the old man needed to work his cattle, doctor his sheep or haul hay.

In the first place, sculptors should stay home — have a sense of place. The famous Michelangelo was a homebody. Pope Julius II had to threaten the Lord Mayor of Florence with excommunication for all of Florence to get Michelangelo to come do the murals in the Sistine Chapel. Means Michelangelo put his hometown above the very Vatican City of the Diocese of Rome. Had the Lord Mayor not knuckled under, Michelangelo might have had time to do another beautiful piece like his David.

At the unveiling of the model on the big night my son was chosen to do the sculpture, over and over all I heard was: "I just can't believe he's your son." Hand it to Wool Capitol citizens, there's no fooling those hombres. They know ranchers. Know the only speck of color that ever comes into ranch life is a piece of red marking chalk to stripe an old ewe's back. Know further the only exposure to color and light in our past is the swirling front of a nickelodeon in a cowboy joint, where art appreciation refines slow — real slow.

But I didn't expect any town person to appreciate how much I contributed to his being prepared to be an artist. Artists need retreats. Several summers, I allowed him to live at the line camp in complete solitude. Gave him the chance to appreciate nature, to sleep out on the back porch and eat his lunch in the pasture. Also, Goat Whiskers the Younger deserves credit for shaping his life. Whiskers introduced him to the ring of a steel crowbar resounding against flint rock. Showed him the freedom of taking the outside swing on dozens of pre-daylight roundups. And best of all, kept him in the country on weekends, away from the wasteful frivolity of the cities.

One of the reporters for the Angelo daily asked me what schooling or training influenced his career the most. I told him old Cecil Parks on the Whiskers ranch taught him more about gathering stock and throwing a quiet, quick loop at the correct moment than all the days he spent working in my sheep-scattering episodes. The fellow looked puzzled. I explained that unless a hand learns the right move at the right time, he can be more trouble than help around livestock. Hard to tell a city fellow how much time it takes to learn to be a cowboy.

One night sitting in the front yard at the ranch, he admitted how different his brothers in Austin had become. How back when they dug rock holes for Goat Whisker's highway fence, they never hurt each other's feelings. "Sometimes," he said, "we'd become plenty upset over hitting rock six inches below the ground instead of 12. But as far as tender feelings, our backs and palms ached too bad to add a hurt." (The fence they built for Whiskers stills stands over where I join his horse trap.)

He's returning in the fall for more art business. I wrote him a postcard telling him that if he came a little earlier, we needed to wean the calves and ship the old cows. Be a good chance to reattach to the spirit of the land. Pope Julius sure knew how to deal with artists. Maybe I'm using too soft a glove.

August 8, 2002

August 2, 2002

2009-04-26T20:02:00.003-05:00

Two or three times, I've come close to being a cowboy. Problem was, horses don't buck one jump and quit, and all roping contests have a two-loop limit. Been to my benefit, too, to ranch in a catch tank county, or have river front. My score on catching the bottom check valve or fishing for broken sucker rods on windmill jobs matches to a tee the amount of loops I've thrown and jerked up the slack on air.

Learned the language, though I couldn't ride bad horses or rope wild cattle, or qualify as a windmill man. Wherever cowboys gather, be it Montana or Musquiz, I am sure I can serve as a translator. Know all their bunkhouse stories beforehand, too. Can make a good guess ahead of time why a puncher misses work on a Monday morning, or why the saddle horses didn't come in to feed. Even know a bunch of cowboy songs, except for fitting the words to the tunes.

Hiring day hands is another of my skills. Took 20 years to learn to wait until 6:45 a.m. to roust an old boy from bed to bid for his time. Call earlier and the whole household is alerted a herder is looking for help. Call later and the whole household will be awake enough to have a good excuse to refuse a job. Call much later after his wife has gone to work, and you'd be better off dialing "dial a prayer" than gaining even a promise to work a few days. But to prove I know what I am talking about, I'll relay a skit of a call I made last week to a cowboy we call "Jack Dime Time," who was the last prospect male or female in the whole shortgrass country the week I needed a day hand.

Here's how the request went:

Me: "Hello. Jack. Don't you need three days' rest next week starting on Monday and finishing early Wednesday?"

Jack: "Huh?"

Me: "Need to work a little bunch of sheep early in the morning while it's still cool. Thought if you'd drive the feed wagon to bait the gates until we made a round on horseback, we should finish in time for you to be back in town to go to the bank and pay your insurance in San Angelo."

Jack: "Who is this a'talking?"

Me: "Ah, Jack, you're kidding me. By the way, I checked with the clerk and jury duty is postponed next week. Same party said the driver's license renewals are week after next. All four Mertzon churches are having revivals later in the summer. No christenings or baptisms are scheduled for children or grandchildren until then. And the wool house doesn't have any wool to weigh next week. Sounds like the cafe is going to be closed for the next 10 days."

Jack: "Well, I am sorry but I promised Mother I'd mow her lawn next week before the grass grew so tall the poor old soul might be bitten by a rattle snake." (His mother lives in a garage apartment.)

Me: "Jack, I took your mother a cat for snake protection last Sunday. Tears came to her eyes thanking me for giving her son a chance to work."

Jack: "Gawd-a-mighty, I know who you are — Monte Noelke. Last time I helped you, I lacked 30 minutes putting in 24 hours the first day. I am looking for a steady job, but I do want it to break at sunset. Goodbye."

Study those points covered in the interview. I failed to hire Jack, yet every excuse is covered except failing health. Working wives make good doctors for husbands. Sometimes I'll get a break and talk to the woman before the man comes to the phone. However, young brides and girlfriends are a handicap. Mothers of more than five kids working at the cafe or the laundry 60 hours a week are the best bets as strong motivators for a husband to find a job.

The Big Boss was an early student of DNA. He tried to find my place in a long line of horseman. He couldn't believe I was his son, my being so inept at riding bucking horses and throwing a rope. As I have written before, Mother covered her disappointments (over social ineptitude and academic deficiencies) by saying: "He's an orphan. Don't ask questions."

And how did it all turn out? The horse tuners who laughed are about all gone. The last time I remember throwing a rope was at a peacock standing in the gate of a leased place the other side of Mertzon. Best part of the story is that last week after a cool rain, I took a ride on a gentle horse without a critic around to appraise my style.

August 2, 2002

July 25, 2002

2009-04-26T20:02:00.001-05:00

Sheep numbers are so few nowadays that unloading at the scales is a private affair. One San Angelo terminal, Mid-West Feed Yards, once had lines of a dozen trucks waiting to back into the loading chute. Those of us waiting to weigh our lambs were willing to help other shippers unload to reduce the lost time and shrink of our delicate product.

Volume at the auction barn remains high from the ewes coming from the north to go to Mexican buyers. Bound to be times the auction docks are congested, as few truckers today know how to handle sheep. I am lucky in knowing two men who can load lambs on their trucks as fast as we can count into the loading pen. Before we start gathering or taking bids on the lambs, I contact those two fellows to know the days they are free. Makes a tremendous difference in weight loss to have a good truck driver.

Range conditions and condition of the sheep plus the weather on shipping day are big factors. Every work has an advantage and a disadvantage. July is a bad bet in the shortgrass country, especially if the humidity is high. Sheep, men and horses pant breathing wet, hot air. Knock the spook ("spook" might be too flavorful, so try "scare") out of a string of lambs on a moist, warm morning, and you may find yourself watching the shadows change from morning to overhead sun to mid-afternoon. Five and one-half hours is the record length for helping load a triple-deck truck with a pot. However, the lambs were sick and the trucker was a goat hauler from Central Texas.

The challenge this July was a race to beat the prickly pear apples ripening. Old ewes were already eating pads and green apples while standing in good sheep feed. First move was a mistake. We penned the adult addicts to remove their influence on the lambs. I rushed over to Mertzon to buy 20 sacks of chicken mash to feed the old sisters in the pen. Chicken mash is all a pear eater can eat after their lips become so swollen and filled with thorns. In the rush, I just asked for chicken feed. The warehouseman, disturbed by my urgency, pitched the feed on the pickup in a big rush. I left without signing the ticket.

At the ranch, I backed into the barn. Rolled two 50-pound bags to the feed pen to see if the pellets were soft enough for the ewes to swallow. Stood awhile and watched them foraging the feed around, holding their heads up to allow for the cubes to pass their swollen tongues.

Next morning, we had to leave early. One of the men opened two more sacks of feed for the hospital bunch. He came back into the horse lot shaking his head, saying, "I never saw a sheep imitating a rooster. Never in my whole life." After I had pitched my saddle on, I walked over to the same spot where I had stood the night before. Instead of throwing their heads up to swallow, the goofy old sisters were throwing their heads up and straining the neck muscles like they wanted to crow.

By the time we penned the first bunch of sheep, the feed pen was back to normal, if you can call bobbing their heads and lifting their heads up to swallow the feed "normal". But the next morning at the first glimmer of daylight in the east, the same neck-stretching act happened except that up close a gurgling sound was audible from them straining so much.

The only cowboy in the country to ever call me "Mr.Noelke" hollered from the barn: "Mr. Noelke, that's not chicken mash. Says on the sack it's 'Game Cock Conditioner.' Must mean it's for fighting roosters, not laying eggs." After he found the trouble, I remembered hearing that the old boy raising fighting chickens on the river had sold out. I didn't tell the warehouseman at the wool house why I wanted chicken feed. He must have thought I'd bought all those Spring Creek fighting roosters.

Took 48 hours to stabilize the feed pen. We diluted the rooster feed with shelled corn. I didn't dare try to work the ewes as long as they scattered in all directions every time we walked in the pen. I am not going to say one of the stronger ones didn't try to jump up on the fence, but several head bedded in the tall cow toughs in the pen.

Once the lambs were weaned the trucker came on time and loaded the lambs as easy as racking a table of billiard balls. The work is over. The ewes are on feed. Wish now I'd fed the game cock conditioner straight, just to add a little life on those determined to die pear-eaters.

July 18, 2002

2009-04-26T19:41:00.001-05:00

Gulf clouds have been bringing serious thunderstorms inland. Radio reports claim flooding in Central Texas. Dark clouds float over us without much more than a mist, but we have had strong rain odors off the front.

In 1955, on the Fourth of July, a storm adverse to rain boiled in from the Plains, so heavily laden with brown dirt that we hovered down underneath a bluff by a small hole of water on Spring Creek to finish our barbecue. After the meal, three of the families followed us to the old ranch. Took nine dustpans full to clean the dust off the kitchen floor to dance. The west wind blew so fierce, the screen doors tapped a two-step beat against the sills. A brown stream of dust spewed from the electric outlets. Took every decibel the Big Boss's record player raised to reach above the storm.

For three days before this Fourth, clouds tormented the shortgrass country. Teased us into a state of nerves as tense as the electricity in the atmosphere flashing into dark purple walls. Late on the evening of the second, the saddle horses came running and pitching to make a circle by the tank and out the double gates of the water lot to go back into the trap.

I puzzled over the behavior. Was it possible these simple-minded beasts, surer of foot than mind, suffered from a pre-storm hysteria? Lots of times before and after a rain, horses stampede into a fence or take a fall from slick ground. I may have told you how the long-legged, sorrel misfit of the Boss's named "Peacock" met a barbed wire death in a mud-slick race to collide into the Santa Fe Railroad's right-of-way fence. We never rode by the place afterwards; we didn't feel grateful for taut barbed wire.

If the horses knew a rain was coming, their prescience was 12 hours in advance. On the morning of the third, six-tenths to an inch fell on the ranch. Conditions were so good good that more than one-tenth fell on the cursed grounds down on the highway. Hearing of heavier rains built up hopes that I might escape from my own planning.

Last fall, I started betting the drouth was going to be over this spring. Bet the old cows were going to be worth more money as pairs on a wet spring to come. Kept all the heifer calves, big ones and light ones alike. Turned bulls in early and left them out late, gambling on selling a bred cow on one end of the gestation period or the other. And took one more long shot on wintering ewes too old to keep on grass.

The spring didn't gel. In May, we started working off the tail end of each category of mistakes. As I confessed in a previous article, or should have, drawing to an inside straight on your longest losing streak in a lifetime beats trying to rebreed those mysterious dry cows that miss their first calf. But where I caught on to my mistake was the morning it rained. I thought we were going to have a flood. My inner thoughts, however, revealed a dreadful miscalculation. On all these wild bets, I was anteing up the last of my grass and tossing 2100 bucks in the pot every time the feed truck augured in a load of cubes without other players calling my bet. Came to mind that the lady at the Barnhart convenience stored offered to sell me a chance on a lottery prize worth $71 million for a buck. Here I was rolling molasses tubs on the dry ground at $43 apiece, thinking making $50 a head more on 28 old cows was going to be hitting the jackpot.

"Jackpot" ended here in 1940, the year the neighbors moved to town and the small goat roping arena at the Devils River Mill fell to ruin. I tried to remember if I even thought in terms of a jackpot. The dream I know was this: "Comes a wet spring, Angus cattle are going to be higher than mink stoles in Dallas before the opening of the opera season."

Sitting on a feed trough in late autumn waiting for a heifer to calve, visions floated by of Angus heifers going through the ring at San Saba to the golden tune of a wooden hammer tapping the final bid. "Sebenteen hunert and fifty dollars a head for Mr. Monte Noelke's cattle out at Mertzon. Let's give him a big hand."

Six-tenths of an inch isn't going to cover my action. The old ewes are eating prickly pear too bad to ship. Angus cattle may have slipped in price, it's been so long since rain inspired buyers. The big lottery prize was cashed weeks ago. But I am not going to gamble my money away, especially on a game that doesn't take a rain to be a winner.

July 18, 2002

July 11, 2002

2009-04-26T19:40:00.001-05:00

During the Depression years of the thirties and into the next decade, ranch wives were identified by their baking skills. "Miss Myrtle," they'd say, "can shore bake cornbread, but her biscuits would sink a trotline to the bottom of the creek." Or, "I'll swear, 'Miss Ruby' makes the lightest biscuits, but when we were helping shear out there, the hound dogs wouldn't eat her cornbread."

Note, too, that another quirk was calling married women "Miss so and so." Likely the reason was to be formal without being too formal and to use "Miss" to avoid the slightest reference to the women's ages. Both ideas are suppositions, as the ones of us following the shearing and marking crews were young and plenty dumb, yet knew enough to be polished diplomats at the kitchen tables. For an extra break at the bread plate, we'd called the cooks "Her Highness."

Mother used specials pans and crocks to make bread. She said the first batch of yeast bread she made became such a dismal failure, she buried the dough in the back yard. As the day warmed, the dough rose through the dirt cover to reveal her shame not five steps away from where the cowboys washed their hands at a faucet.

Part of her equipment was an old silver spoon. Her grandmother had worn the scoop in half, stirring dough and batter for three meals every day back in Kentucky. My stepfather further utilized the spoon as a symbol to prove how hard our ancestors had to work. His nephew stayed at the ranch in the summer. We were more interested in a walking cane his grandfather brought from Oklahoma that concealed a long thin sword in the stem than we were a worn silver bread spoon. We knew about Oklahoma. One halfblood gunman had camped on the Middle Concho from the Territory a little before our time, but close enough for us to know that we needed a sword more than a bread spoon.

A ranch on Dove Creek was the first outfit to serve store-bought bread for breakfast, or it was the first one I knew to do so. Was a blessing, too, as the foreman got us up so early in the morning and kept us in the pasture so late, the kerosene fumes from burning lamps in the darkness flavored the food. The bread was so precious, the lady kept the wrapper sealed too tight for it to become contaminated.

For old times' sakes, I reassembled Mother's baking pans and measuring cups. The worn spoon and the walking cane were lost a long time ago. However, I found the white crock mixing bowl and the blackened barrel lid she used to cook cornbread. Just as I heated the bacon grease, it hit how I ought to be wearing a spoon down making bread like ol' Granny did to leave the grandchildren.

Started whipping the corn meal and eggs and buttermilk so furiously the stroke became a frantic beat of metal against glass. As the batter turned to a yellow mush, a horned-tailed grasshopper jumped from the shelf and hit right at the moment I made a powerful swirl of the spoon. Before I stopped, I pulverized the hopper into bits too small to separate from the brown specks in the corn meal.

All the grasshopper left in one piece was his hooked tail. I went outside and caught another grasshopper the same size. Estimated he'd make two teaspoons of chopped grasshopper meat, excluding the horn tail I'd extracted in one piece. Mother's recipe is the one on the corn meal sack. A footnote reminded me that if bacon or cracklings are added to the recipe, the prescribed sugar and the salt have to be reduced. I wasn't up to tasting the captured grasshopper raw to see if he tasted sweet or salty, so I just cut the sugar and salt the same proportion to allow for the two teaspoons of chopped grasshopper.

Cooked, the cornbread tasted of roasted almonds. Only comment by a guest was how she liked ranch food, as the flavor always seems to be "a wild one." I kept my mouth shut. Only person I ever saw eating grasshoppers was a fisherman camped on Lake Travis who deep-fried a batch once at a beer fest. He claimed fried grasshopper tasted like fried cricket and a little like popcorn. I guess I need to add that when a fisherman starts eating his bait, it's a good sign he needs to change hobbies.

Those ol' ranch gals deserved more title than "Miss" for being up so early and staying up so late cooking for roundups. Work was hard enough for everybody to have a good appetite. Wish Mother was around to laugh at the grasshopper-flavored cornbread ...

July 11, 2002

July 4, 2002

2009-04-26T19:28:00.003-05:00

On one of my walks last week in Mertzon, a hard-working welder stopped to talk. He was hunting for the high school student who had been helping him weld on a tough job under the direct summer sun. All I could tell him was that if he wanted to give the lad a scare, just say "ranch work."

I did give him a tip that the boys hired to paint and hoe weeds at the school might be lured away. Not that sitting under the dark shade of an oak tree puffing on cigarettes and talking would meet his job qualifications, unless he was going to open an art school and needed models to do still life portraits.

When the summer reading program was announced for the school library, a further drain hit the youth labor market. The cool stacks of books and magazines hold a lot more appeal than the wool house. I don't know where the idea comes from that kids are supposed to read in the summer. Looks like they'd get enough written work in the winter studying the TV schedule and reading the gas gauge on the family car.

One of my problems is spending too much time at my house across the street from the school. Taxpayers should never live in sight of their dependents. In April, I watched so many football practice sessions from my front porch that I learned the numbers of the plays. I found myself going around the yard, muttering: "Get em, Kill em, men, break their legs! But don't crush those helmets. They cost a lot of money."

The worst began, however, after I became conscious how early the security lights flashed on before dusk and how long they burned after dawn. Also, I became aware of the laps the superintendent made from his office, purring to a stop in the school's silver Buick under a carport attached to the brick house the district furnishes him. Began to flinch at the motor revving in the sprawling motor pool of vans, buses, pickups, a huge coach, and a spare automobile. It's a scene I think I once likened to the Shah of Iran's private parking lot.

I calmed down by admitting that all eight of my children graduated from this school able to pass the entrance exams to enter college. I myself spent a lot of years behind those quarried brown stone walls in rapture of "the three R's," spellbound by maps of the world on a spinning glove of blue oceans and orange continents, captivated by the teacher's pointer tapping the spelling words letter by letter on the blackboard, and invigorated by dusting erasers and dumping ashes from the black wood stove outdoors in the brisk winters of those childhood days.

But now I had to admit I was out of step, of another age; "behind the times" is the best definition. Promised the next time I was in San Angelo, I'd go by Wal-Mart and buy a big box of bubble gum to give to the librarian to reward the children. Swore I'd stop moving the water off the grass on the practice field at night to water the oak tree across the street in front of my house. Vowed I was going to be a good neighbor. Be a good citizen willing to pay my part to have winning football and basketball teams made of students smart enough to master the intricacies of the games and smash our enemies into smithereens on the gridiron and the court.

My good intentions lasted until the daily paper in San Angelo carried a story of a complaint that the school's spring examinations for the Texas Board of Education were graded unfairly. The superintendent denied the claim by saying, "The problem was caused by an inadvertent error in the scoring and testing procedures." He must have fared well, as no follow-up story was printed.

But it put me to thinking that if in the new century, wired to the finest technological equipment designed made "inadvertent errors in testing and scoring procedures" possible, just what kind of little song and dance was going on those three years in the red-penciled copies of Miss Greengoss' grade book charged against Monte Noelke in the fifth grade?

First, I have to check on the statute of limitations on inadvertent testing and scoring procedures for fifth grade. Next, before matching a fight, I want to sell my wool to pay on my tax bill. Then when the time seems right, I am going to walk over to the superintendent's office and say right casual, "I'd like a look at my transcript from the fifth grade." I think I can make a big change, but I'll let you know when I have the results...

July 4, 2002