Its the morning after and I am taking a lazy day morning doing absolutely nothing, but sipping my coffee on my back porch barely awake and watching all the fine feathers feed on bird seed at the bird feeder. The heat is also rising but the breeze is still soft and cool. Ive decided to take the day off at least the morning off and be slovenly and lazy and not do one single thing except enjoying nature and the rising day which will be another hot one. I am listening to Johnny Cash belt out Luther played the boogie woogie, Luther played the boogie woogie and Don and Phil singing Till I kissed you last night along with an assortment of great oldies including Bob Luman and his Lets Think About Living, Marty Robbins and El Paso which was once the official song of the city of El Paso and a record when he recorded it all those in the know said they wouldnt play it on the radio because it was too long (5 minutes) but they did anyway and he sold over 4 millions copies and it was a song he wrote coming back from a concert in El Paso in the back seat of his car with his family. Which goes to prove conventional wisdom isnt always right. And when you have a great piece of music they will play it. The clouds today are a little wispy and the sun is going to be all ablaze later in the day but we are to soon have some relief as the current heat wave is supposed to break by next Thursday. Ah, it actually hasnt been a bad summer all in all. Reminds me of the time when my dad took a job running the Seven Hills Ranch north west of Spur Texas (so named because there were seven hills between Spur and the ranch) and we arrived at Spur late one night about this time of year. It was hot and when we got up the next morning my mother marveled at the fact that the sun seemed to be arising from the southwest. And that fact never changed for her the whole time we lived there. Of course it came up in the same place it always had but my mothers sense of direction was always a little bit skewed as she lived in Vernon Texas for over 50 years and still got turned around from time to time in a city that was approximately 2 squares miles from one side to the other and essentially flat straight streets running from east to west and north to south. Spur was a fun place by grandfather lived there with us and kept bees. I remember him robbing the hives with me standing a watching him covered from head to toe in the little busy bodies and not getting stung once. Marveled at that actually. Loved the fresh honey though. We kept a large jar of pure honey out at the barn and I would often after I finished milking the cows pour me a glass of very fresh rich jersey cow milk and add a little honey to it and maybe even have two glasses full. We also kept molasses in a 55 gallon barrel to feed to the show calves to help slick their coats up for show time at the county fair. Seven Hills Ranch was a fun place to be except once when my dad put me to work chopping goat heads (bad weed not real goats) and I almost chopped a finger off when I broke the hoe and got mad because I had and grabbed the offending bush and whacked at it and missed and hit my finger instead. Walked the near mile back to the house bleeding all the way and my mother was entertaining the boss lady when I showed up and when Mrs. McGinty saw my finger she fainted and mom dunked my finger in some coal oil and then attended to Mrs. McGinty and after she had regained her composure they doctored my finger bandaged and mom gave me a new hoe and I went back to chopped more goat heads. The ranch was also subject to a lot of rattlesnakes since this was towards the south end of the Palo Duro Canyon and at the edge of the famed Staked Plains or the Llano Estacado they were plentifully abundant pretty much wherever they could find shade under a mesquite tree of which there were a lot also. We were admonished from the beginning when we went from one pasture to another to first unhitch the gate and toss the post away and if we heard no rattle then go through the gate get off of our horse and relock the gate. Just from a practical safety stand point you understand. Well when we arrived at the ranch it was in the so-called dog days of summer and the rattlers were in the process of shedding their skins at which time they become a little blind until the process is completed and they are often prone to wander about aimlessly not being able to see things clearly and all. They wouldnt normally do that as they tend to be a bit reclusive and not overly prone to enjoy the company of humans that much. Anyway our trash barrel was about 50 or so yards away from our house and one evening just at dusk my mom and I having cleaned up the kitchen she decided to take the trash out to the barrel. Our porch had 4 steps on it and she made it all the way to the barrel when a not so friendly rattler popped upon the scene at about the same time as she. A scream trash flying in the air all about. My mother crow-hopped in about 10 steps running at top speed back to the house taking the steps in one giant leap. I was amazed at her speed and agility although I did know at the time she had been county long jump champion in Blaine County Oklahoma 3 years running I wasnt previously aware that she could run so fast. My dad got the pickup started and he and I went hunting for the errant rattler never finding it of course as my dad allowed my mother had scared it so much with her Cherokee Blood Curdling Indian War Whoop that it had probably either died of fright or was like as not in the next county over by then. I always think about those days whenever we hit the end of August and remember those as really fun times. The world was a lot of fun and my dad had a job for a change that paid us a good living. We all worked at it although my dad was the only one who actually got paid. But he got $125 a month, a house, all the eggs and chickens we could eat. All the milk we could drink. Fresh from the cow. Fresh honey. We had a large garden, a hog every year, half a beef every year and the work wasnt all that hard. I had my first pony there and my first show calf which won 3rd place in the county fair that year and I bought a Rip Repulski 1st Basemans Mitt with the $15 prize money, took myself and my brother to the movies to see Alan Rocky Lane and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy played scaringly by Boris Karloff and still had enough left over to buy a banty hen and her 6 little chicks. Fond remembrance on an otherwise lazy day! Bob Bearden
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 15:25:15 +0000