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Keep the Bunk Clean

November 1, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

If there is one thing I want my boys to learn, it’s that. Although you would really need to talk to my friends, Phil or Sid, to see if it holds any value or if it’s just a bunch of fodder.

In some ways, I really wonder if we know what we are doing starting calves. We’ve done it now for close to 15 years, but in a lot of ways, it still feels like we are beginners at it.

We started with two little red bottle calves that we (surprisingly) kept alive and later sold at small profit. We soon moved on from bottle calves to buying a few calves locally and turning them out on the pasture for the summer.

Later, we expanded to start calves that we had shipped in.

It felt good to get a few loads from Texas. For some reason, Texas and cattle are synonymous in my mind. As we worked those calves and grew them up it seemed like we were part of a long line of cattlemen, past, present, and on into the future. I felt bad for one load especially, they came from a sunny mid-80’s south Texas day to a misty cold Kansas day hovering in the mid 20’s. They did exceptionally well health wise.

We got a few loads from Alabama. They were some sharp looking calves. Austin thought we could walk a load from one pen without an alley to another, straight off the truck. I disagreed. But we tried it anyway and about 30 of them split off to go find their mama. It took most of the afternoon and some good-hearted neighbors help to get them all back in. I wondered if they would make it or not, as hard as we had run them, but they all did.

But my heart turned to mush when I saw our loads come in from Pennsylvania. The Alabama calves looked a lot classier, so it wasn’t the Pennsylvania’s looks that drew me in. They were good looking calves, don’t get me wrong. It was the long journey I knew they were on that tore me up. That journey had pulled them off mama 5-6 days before, then to a strange sale barn lot for a couple days that had every bug known to make a calf sick. Next it put them on the truck for a solid 30 hours, and finally offloaded them here. Ahead of them waited viruses that were even then maturing inside them, ready to lay them flat out if they ever gave in. Ahead of them waited pneumonia, so potent they stood gasping in its straight jacket for 3 days before finally giving in to that final, fatal gulp for air. Ahead of them waited excruciating heat, wind and dust. Ahead of them waited foot rot, pink eye, and millions of flies. Ahead of them, humans, with good, but sometimes flawed, intentions. Ahead of them all this waited, and they had been on such a hard journey already. I think that is why my heart turned to mush when I saw them offload, and why, when they died, it took something out of me.

Whether they came from Alabama, Pennsylvania, or Texas, one thing remained front and center in my mind when I was out there, getting them started during their first few weeks here.

Keep the Bunk Clean.

Sure, they have some high-powered drugs out there to save your sick calf. But those drugs can’t begin to turn their trick if your calf’s stomach isn’t working.

If you see your bunk has more than crumbs in it 4 hours after you fed them, you have something wrong. And the first thing you need to do is scoop your bunk clean.

I don’t care if you think that feed is still good. Get off your bum and get busy. Scoop it out. That feed in the bunk says one of two things—either you over fed, or someone out there is getting sick, and you had better start giving them all a hard eye until you see who it is. If you leave feed in the bunk, chances are, it’ll start tasting off and then the ones thinking about getting sick for sure won’t eat.

Face it. Your calf has four stomachs. I don’t know what percent of its body those stomachs take up, but if they aren’t working right, because of too much feed or they are sick, that’s four times more trouble than you and I have when we go off feed. And the sooner you can get the problem fixed the better.

Now I don’t feel like I need to keep on sermonizing necessarily. I’m quite sure I ain’t got the qualifications of a preacher. But I venture to say, if each one of us could do the same for ourselves, be rather diligent, so to speak, about making our mistakes right on the same day we made em’, and keep an eye out for any sickness starting to happen, that life might spin along quite a bit better than we thought.

Keep the Bunk Clean.

Oven Doors

October 29, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

I walked into the kitchen the other day, only to discover that my sins had found me out.

And who else to show me, but my dear lovely wife. It’s a wonder some unseen force didn’t stop her mouth cold when it came to uttering the words that sealed her life with mine.

Her life since that day has surely had its questions, much as her parents have had.

She had notified me, only a few times, maybe 3 or 4, that her oven door handle was getting quite loose in its fastening to the door and wondered if I could take a look at it.

I told her I could.

I know I did.

But I didn’t.

And so, on the aforesaid day, the day of my reckoning, I walked into the kitchen with a light and merry heart.

Until I saw the oven door.

It didn’t resemble itself anymore. It was completely divested. If a Western Kansas tornado had ran its path through our kitchen, it couldn’t have done a better job of dismantling that door.

And there sat my dear wife, on the floor, with pieces of it in her lovely hands, and a perplexed look on her sweet face.

Me. Me to the rescue.

I could do this. Hadn’t I worked at John Deere for 7 years and been referred as a somewhat competent mechanic? (Of course, depending on who you asked.)

We’d have this in a couple of minutes.

The challenge soon presented itself in the form of a small marital spat.

My good wife had taken it apart, and she felt compelled to tell me what piece went where. I felt just as compelled to tell her that something wasn’t adding up with her descriptions.

For one thing, she was quite sure she knew which hole that the screws were to go in. The problem being, the hole didn’t have any threads.

I pointed this out to her. (Very kindly of course)

She just as righteously told me that was exactly where she had taken it out.

We carried on, back and forth for a few minutes. She was guiltless, like usual, and I was guilty, like usual.

Crowding my mind was the continual thought that if I had tightened that handle earlier, it would have taken only two twists with a screwdriver on two very visible screws and . . .

I didn’t blame my good wife for taking it all apart. She was doing the best she could.

I finally said we might have to call the local hardware store service man out to put it back together for us.

Our back and forth solutions weren’t solutions, after all, and 20 minutes into the project we were no farther along than at the beginning.

But then I saw it. She had been right all along about where those screws went. She didn’t realize, though, that she was holding the piece they screwed into against the door backwards of what it should have been.

In a couple of minutes, we had it.

And I was able to play the hero after all, because the spring hinge required me to hold the door piece in place with my forehead and chin, whilst aligning the hole with an icepick with one hand and angling the screw through and starting it turning with a screwdriver with the other hand.

All in one motion.

Just now, the cat aroused himself from the invoices he was laying on and gave me a look.

I had better get busy, or I’ll have another oven door on my hands.

Damocles Sword

October 25, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

I went under the knife again the other morning. Or maybe it was a scissors this time. I’m not sure.

But I am sure of several things.

It hurt.

It caused me stress.

I won’t do it again.

Or if I have to do it again, I’ll ask them to kindly knock me out, in whichever way seems best to them.

I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal, really. I hadn’t worried about it much, if any at all.

I have had several surgeries. I had a surgery to my stomach. The shot straight into my gut after the surgery and the threatening stare by the male chauvinist nurse had me helpless and I knew it. Funny thing though. As she was charting said shot, I complimented her on her extreme typing speed. She melted down almost immediately and ventured that she wrote as a hobby. I told her I wrote a bit myself and we talked over the nuances of the trade. After that, she was back in the room every few minutes, just hanging around, chatting about life, her family, and asking if I needed anything. When I was discharged, she walked with us as far as she could go. I know they train the folks who work in hospitals nowadays how to care professionally, so that even if they aren’t caring one bit on the inside, they have you thinking you are their one and only concern for the day. But I suspicion her care was a tad more personal than that.

Not long after that one, I had two surgeries to my right knee, (the anesthesia buzz afterwards wasn’t half bad) and one surgery to my collar bone. Oh yeah, I had that Lasik surgery done on my eyes years ago; that one was actually rather enjoyable.

I know you didn’t ask for a spill on my health; I felt compelled to tell you, nonetheless.

I really expected to be in a hospital long before the first time with my stomach, at age 40. Afterall, those around me say I’m accident prone.

But since that first surgery, I’ve been doing my time in those sterile halls. It doesn’t take anything to call up the memory smell of hospital food by now. Still, with all the practice I’ve had, I can’t seem to make the gowns work. The front of them does okay, it’s my backside that gets so cold for some reason. I once took the liberty to tie another one of those gowns on to the back of my front gown; that worked fairly well until the nurse saw it. I got cold back there again after her remodel job. I have a sneaking suspicion those female nurses spend a fair bit of time conniving together when they know they have an ultra-sensitive, positively bashful, forty something male like me coming in for a surgery. And I’m sure their suppressed titters turn into gales of laughter once I’m out cold as they poke and prod my excesses, watching the ripple effect shimmy along their shiny table.

A guy loses all sense of manliness and ego in those situations.

And then the wife and family tell all sorts of preposterous stories when it comes to the recovery room. (Bless their heart)

But this last one was different.

And I don’t want to do it again.

Ever.

Several weeks ago, Austin called me up and asked if I could help him get a bearing race off one of the axle shafts to our trencher. I said, sure, I’d be right over.

I told him there were two ways to get it off. Try punching it off with hammer and punch first and if that didn’t work, we’d torch it off.

I was just starting to show him how to punch it off, and I was getting ready to tell him that really, we needed to wear eye protection as bearing races are made of extremely hard material and tended to splinter off at very high rates of speed.

And twang. I felt it drive deep into my left eye.

I went out to the pickup mirror and looked but didn’t see anything serious. We ended up torching it off and I was back at our house when I had another look since my eye was feeling rather irritated.

I saw a nice little blood pocket, under what appeared to be the outer layer of the white of my eye.

The eye doctor said come in right away, even though it was after closing time.

He looked it over. He thought whatever had hit hadn’t entered the eye. He gave me some antiseptic ointment that closely resembled Vaseline. The only way I could get that into my eye was to pull the bottom lid out and lay a ridge of it in there. Even then it wanted to slide right out, and it hurt like sin. The Doc told me I must use it, because if my eye got infected it could transmit straight to my brain and I’d have brain infection.

I told my good wife I thought I had had brain infection for years already. I think she wanted to agree with me. It would explain so many things about everything.

*****

A few weeks passed on and all seemed to be doing better. My eye was still quite red, but there are other things about me not quite up to par, so it rounded out the general picture.

I was combing my hair one morning, looking in the handheld mirror, working on the cowlick that I’ve worked on for forty some years, when I saw it.

Right where I had felt that pain when I got hit, was a rather ugly looking blister, grayish colored, that my bottom eyelid had to climb up and over when I blinked.

I got me back to the Eye Doctor.

He said, “Whatever hit you is still in there and needs to come out.”

He made me an appointment for the next morning with an eye surgeon, saying, “We don’t have the proper equipment here if it’s going to need stitches, or goes to bleeding really bad.”

The stitches thing kind of registered, but not really.

The lady eye surgeon took a deep look into my eye and said that it was either a blood clot or the piece was still in there and we would definitely need to go in and see what was up.

“So, if you are ready, we’ll go over to minor surgery and dig it out.”

“Sure,” I said, “Let’s get it done.”

Except the chair she had me sit down in in minor surgery was a dentist chair.

And she was talking about giving me a shot right in my eye to deaden it.

And she had me flat on my back, almost at negative g’s.

And she put this thing, called an expander, under my eyelids to hold them open so I couldn’t blink.

With a blinding bright light inches away, and now that I couldn’t close my eye at all, we were all set.

She dropped some pain deadening eyedrops in and asked if I was ready.

She told me I needed to hold still.

“MMMHHHMMM” I thought. “Hold still or lose my eyesight.”

“We’ll go in here between these two blood vessels. You still doing okay?”

“I’m going to slit the outer layer of your eyeball and get under it with a Q Tip. I’ll see if I can work out whatever is in there with that.”

And it starts hurting really bad and I can’t move.

She didn’t know it, but her left hand held her instruments, and they kept gouging into my forehead.

“Okay, I’ve cleaned out the layer underneath the outer layer,” (after what seemed like 30 minutes of alternately clasping and unclasping my hands, crossing and uncrossing my legs, and hyperswallowing) “Now I’m going to go down one more layer deeper and swab around in there. I’ll just make another slit here.”

I saw that knife (or scissors) coming down again and got ready to depart. No matter that I was going to spend the rest of my life with that expander propped in my eye like an old-style monocle exposing a full circumference, blood red eye. It would make a good gag for the upcoming Halloween, I figured.

I gingerly talked myself down from the state of levitation I seemed to be in, and, as effort to calm myself and get my mind on something else, said, “You sure have steady hands.”

“Yeah, you have to in this line of work,” she said.

By now I was watching her take the suture needle and suture, bring it right down close, and saw the graceful movement of her hands as she worked it through the layers. Until the needle got stuck and she asked her assistant for a forceps to pull it out.

Her assistant wasn’t very sure what a forceps was, unfortunately, and the needle staid stuck long enough that by the time she pulled it on through, the numbing drops had to be applied once more.

She finished up and I asked her if I could see that suture needle and thread for interest’s sake.

“Sure. We’ll get an envelope, and you can take it home with you.”

I have it with me today, and if I can get a decent picture of it, I’ll attach it later. It’s smaller than an eyelash and the suture, she told me, smaller than a human hair.

“You did so well,” she said, “You were so calm, (chuckling) you even told me I had steady hands! Most people aren’t that collected in here.”

Lady, if you only knew.

Atypical

October 20, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

Years ago, one of my schoolteachers had us journal. I didn’t catch the concept very well, and I quit the thing entirely when I found out my teacher was reading it and disciplining me accordingly as to what she read in it. (Or so I thought)

And so, I still don’t journal, but by now I can see some value in it.

The journal idea was holding me up a bit from jotting something down that I wanted to. And then Della says, “I think a blog is like a journal loaned to friends to read; it’s not a published book.”

That gave me two things to think about. 1. If I blog, then technically I journal. 2. If I blog, which I do, and if that means I journal, per se, then I have permission to write what I wanted to, even though it smells a bit of journal.

*****

I awoke early, seems like that is happening more and more these days, and was thinking about starting the day. My good wife rolled over and asked, “Are you going to go back to sleep?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Then I’ll try to stay awake, because I shut the alarm off,” she replied.

I smiled to myself and started my mental stopwatch. At approximately 1 minute, 43 seconds, she was back fast asleep.

I got up and filled the water pitcher that heats my water for coffee. I set the temp to 195 degrees. My boys tell me this temperature is critical.

I turned the kitchen scale on, set my little plastic cup container on it, and zeroed the scale. I measured out 25 grams of beans, listening to them rustle their way out the bag. (I do this listening process every time I make coffee. It’s quite therapeutic.)

I tossed the beans into the grinder, noting the cheerful clatter they made as they landed, and started the grinder.

I set up the pour over kit on the scale, got a new filter in it, and poured the ground beans into it. I zeroed the scale once more and began to pour the 195-degree water in a circular motion over the coffee grinds until the scale registered 250 grams.

Once it had drained out, I poured half of my brew into my coffee cup and filled it the rest of the way with 195-degree water. (My sweet daughter later claimed the other half of my brew for her own cup)

The taste was everything you are thinking about and more. Smooth, complete body that is meditation all by itself. The Costa Rica beans came from my friend Emery who has the roasting thing perfected. Come over sometime and I’ll brew you a cup, and we can talk about journaling.

I sipped my coffee and read the Word for some minutes and later joined my wife and daughter for breakfast. My partial cup of joe left was the perfect mate to the two Walmart donuts I consumed.

So far, everything had begun in a normal way.

I stepped outside to a cool, crisp fall morning. The sky was still dark, and I breathed deeply of the fall scent all around.

I climbed into Ole Kate, our feedtruck (two-part story on her some other time) and flipped on an overhead light so I could see the scale. I zeroed it and walked around to the switch for the auger and started it running. It was running in a mixture of rolled corn, dried distiller’s grain, and numerous other ingredients that are meant to make calves gain weight and stay healthy. I rounded the truck again and watched the scale climb until it was at 870 pounds. I walked back to the switch and shut the auger off. The truck scale was toggling between 920 and 930 pounds. My target had been 920.

I started Ole Kate and she and I went over to the grind pile and parked. I climbed out of her and into the tractor and fired it up, noting as I did, that the sky had lightened up some, and I could just make out the grain elevator and city lights of Copeland, 10 miles to the west. I got a scoopful of ground hay and dumped it into Kate, keeping an eye on her scale as I did so. 1300 and some odd pounds. I got another scoopful, and this time carefully tipped in more until the scale read 1660 pounds. My target was 1670. Kate and I made our way to the faucet to add water and finish the feed mix weight out at 2000 pounds. I engaged the mixing augers in the feed box to begin mixing while I added water. Eighty-eight black and four red calves grouped up tight against the fence, noses in the air, eyes bright, all waiting for their next meal.

I got the hose running into the mixing box and idly scanned the western horizon once more. By now, Copeland was clearly defined.

So far, everything fairly typical.

And then I saw her.

She looked tired after being there for me all night long. Even frumpy.

Her hair was disheveled, and strands of it were hanging off the sides of her pretty face.

But her work wasn’t done yet, and she knew it.

I watched in awe as she gently turned to me and slowly, ever so slowly, transformed from a tired looking lady into the most beautiful vase. A slender stem anchored firmly in her base sculpted its way in a smooth curve up to a flawless round brim that was perfectly proportioned to the rest of her. She drank in the morning’s goodness, and filled with it, breathed a gentle sigh and laid her down to rest.

Tonight, good lady, I’ll see you again.

*****

I have read that the difference in atmosphere density, coupled together with temperature inversions, can sometimes put the on the show that I witnessed as the Moon set this morning. And, it is the moon I refer to as the lady in this post, not my good wife, as some may think.

Brahma Cowboyin’

October 18, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

According to a quick Google look up, anything bovine has been considered sacred in India since at least 1,000 years before Christ visited this earth in person. Originally, any milk producing bovine was considered holy; it soon morphed into anything bovine. Most cattle in India are Brahman. The breed gets its name from the Brahman cast of people who were priests.

Today, for sure in the northern part of the India, cattle live in smug preeminence. “You can’t touch me,” they say, while lazily chewing their cud. They gaze with impunity upon lesser mortals such as you and I. We came upon them lying down in the median of a busy four lane highway. We slowed, we were already going slow, to a cautious speed, knowing that should the whim possess them, they might just get up and amble across all four lanes of traffic, and nary a scratch would be inflicted upon them.

I’ve seen them sleeping half the day away in the middle of utter chaos and mind-blowing noise. They don’t care, and neither do their little ones. No one is going to rustle them up from where they chose to lie down.

They learn their importance early on.

I once saw a 1,100-pound bull make his way into one of the vendor’s stalls at the open-air market we were walking through. Crates of merchandise were bumped and toppled. The two men haggling a deal were jostled. But not even the slightest hint of annoyance was shown by the two; neither could they shout at, prod, or kick the beast like I might have done. He was holy and he knew it. One of them grabbed up a handful of vegetables and tried to coax the lumbering deity away. But not so. He had found a place to park himself and that was that.

Someone, somewhere, had an idea. And I will give it to whoever had the idea that the original idea probably wasn’t such a bad one. But somehow, the implications of that idea were never thought out, or, if they were, perhaps the one who thought them out quickly escaped the country in which he had the original idea.

The idea, as I have it, was acted upon in 1885 here in the United States. The thought was that if one of these super important, super holy bulls from India were bred to a super open minded, up to any challenge, half rebellious, half wild Texas cow, the beginning of an almost indestructible species of cattle would result.

(The idea had good intentions. The Indian brahmas are known for their thick skin, resistance to heat, and ability to withstand hardships.)

What resulted is a U.S. recognized breed. Following are a few of my observations of some of the traits of Brahma cattle. I seriously doubt the cattle magazines of today would agree with me, but so be it. The Brahma of today retains a severe amount of pride and impunity from its long succession of holiness and worshipful offerings given it. It’s thin, almost deer-like legs have tremendous power and spring, which, when coupled with the rebellious, challenging blood of its mother, give every opportunity for defamation.

Of the one who purchased them, that is.

When you come within 10 feet of one of these creatures, you get the feeling of being looked over, sized up, looked down on and a guttural, almost satanical chuckle directed at you, all in a mini second of time. And, if you stand there long enough, they can’t resist showing off a little. They’ll start jumping and prancing around, making near misses as they run past by you, and then cleanly sail over the top rail of the fence.

Just for spite, they’ll sometimes give a quick teensy little kick as they go sailing over, and your beautiful top rail goes to smash in a splinter of a second. With their little head held high and that big flap of neck skin raking from side to side they’ll quickstep away from you a decent distance, spin around on their hind legs and face off to you, daring you for another go around.

I know all this now. I didn’t then.

Back then, I was a hopeful new cattle buyer. My number one criteria, get them cheap. Number two, get them healthy. Number three, get them home. (A whole ‘nuther story could be written on that last one.)

Back then, I saw two high stepping rigs come into the ring. No matter that they nearly treed the sale barn ring guys right then and there. It was just sale barn stress. (A newly minted term to justify my purchase of them.) I bought them right off, somewhat disconcerted that there was little, if any bidding against me. So far, I had satisfied two of my buying criteria. Got them loaded and trailered back to our place. Opened the trailer door and kicked them out.

They never stopped to see what our place looked like.

In seconds they had cleared the top rail and were headed east.

I saddled up our trusty ole mare and leaped into the saddle. She and I had this. We both felt it and had visions of the glory ride back home, the two critters roped and slinking behind, we in front, me with my chest pumped out, she with her head so high it nearly touched Jupiter.

We cantered out to within 500 feet of where they had slowed up a bit. They threw their heads up and started trotting off to the east again. A problem began to present itself within a short distance. My trusty ole mare was laboring in near full gallop, and it appeared they never broke their trot. It soon became apparent that the good girl beneath me was giving all she had, and they, looking back in that condescending way of theirs, realized it and slowed their pace so she wouldn’t feel so badly.

We tussled on for another couple of miles in circle after circle before the ole girl and I dejectedly turned back in a westerly direction towards home. The rope I had so gamely thrown repeatedly, and from way too far away, made for a long trailing line of disappointment behind us. I really don’t know why I tried to rope them anyway. Any of my family or friends can tell you my hand/eye coordination doesn’t seem to register very high. Some have even gone so far as to say I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside.

I turned around, and saw those two standing off, giving us that once-over-high-brow look they give. As near as I could tell, they weren’t even breathing hard. I was pretty sure I heard a guttural chuckle or two.

They migrated on southeasterly and soon joined up with the neighbor’s cattle, about 1 ½ miles from our place. The neighbor was kind and told us to leave them in there with his until he gathered his group, and we could sort them off in a semi-controlled situation and get them loaded and hauled into town.

*****

About three months later, my neighbor Kevin called and said he had that group of calves penned in some panels he had set up in the middle of his pasture. I thanked him for letting me know and told him I’d be there later in the day to load ours after they had theirs loaded out.

He told me he thought it would go better if he and his brother Wade and I, all three, would work together to get them loaded. I sensed my neighbor knew what he was talking about and made haste to get our trailer hitched up and rattled my way over to his panel corral.

When I got there, I saw Kevin and Wade standing off to the side of the panels, discussing the situation. They were as cool as you please, those two brothers, while those two Brahmas were tearing things up, slobbering and snotting, slamming into panels, twisting this way and that, never once standing still.

The panels were in an oblong shape, about 30 feet wide by 60 feet long. At the end opposite of which I was backed up to, it opened into an alleyway that soon narrowed down to the width of a trailer. That alleyway circled back up alongside this oblong pen they were in. Once they were in the alley, they had about 60-70 feet before they got to my trailer. My Brahma’s were burning a rag as far away from us as possible in the oblong part. They looked like they were just a twitch away from hiking right on over the top and leaving.

Kevin told me the plan.

“There’s no way to do this like we normally do. I’ll get them started moving towards that alley. Once they hit the alley, Wade will jump in and keep them moving, maybe speed them up a little. We don’t want to give them any chance to turn around. If they do, we’ve lost them. You’ll stand right behind your trailer door where they can’t see you. As soon as they hit your trailer, you slam that door as fast as you can.”

Kevin got them started. Like I said, both those guys were cool as cucumbers. Those Bramers tried their rush thing on Kevin, but it never ruffled him. He got them turned and moving. Wade jumped in right behind them with a long stick, once they entered the alley, and turned up the heat a couple more notches. They hit my trailer at Bramer speed, saw the trap it was and locked everything up and got started turning around. Their momentum had them sliding, feet and legs flailing for a purchase on the trailer floor, all the way from the back to the front of the trailer. I saw one of them button up into a little ball of cowflesh as she hit the front. She got untangled in a mighty shorty hurry, though, and was heading back at me.

I engaged some lightening quick reflexes I didn’t know I had, and the trailer door slammed shut, just as Wade came flying over the top rail himself of the other side of the alley, grabbed the latch, and had it latched before those girls could say Jack Diddley Squat.

The trailer I was using then is called a half top. Which means the top extends only halfway to the back of the trailer. Those girls were spinning and gaining momentum with every second.

“Get ‘er moving and don’t stop!” Wade hollered. “They’ll bail if you stop!”

This said after I had jumped in the cab and rolled my window down to thank them.

I could tell he knew exactly what he was saying would come true if I didn’t start rolling right then and there.

I moved.

The sound and commotion going on behind me slowed a bit as I sped up, but it never let up all the way to town, 30 miles away. My truck rocked, swerved, and jounced as they deemed fit. Concussions of sound rained down all around me, even though I had my windows shut.

I was several miles on my way, when I realized there was road construction on the road I normally took. I had terrible visions of those girls up and over the side, along the row of parked cars and trucks at top speed, and finally plastering the flagman against the nearest vehicle before they left for places yet unknown.

I took a different route, and as I got near to town, I started looking out as far ahead as I could to the next stoplight. If it was red, I eased up so I could hopefully keep moving through it by the time I was there. Green, and I poured on the coal.

Of course, the sound effects and irrational movements never abated. We wobbled, twisted, and banged through every light in that city. Folks started keeping their distance, and with good reason.

I could see that the loadout guy at the sale barn wasn’t there.

No problem. I was going to unload without his permission. The fact is these girls were going to unload regardless.

The truck had hardly stopped in the unload bay before I was running at Olympic speed to the back of the bay to throw the gate shut on it and open the gate into the nearest pen.

I barely made it back to the trailer as one was rearing up. Immediately the smell of burned hoof filled the air as I opened the trailer gate and they levered for traction on the concrete slab.

They made one mad dash into the pen, and I crashed the gate shut behind them just as they slammed and bloodied their noses on the other side.

They brought a couple hundred bucks less than I bought them for, the way I remember.

I heard tell they treed the ring guys. I wasn’t there. Didn’t want to be associated with them.

I sometimes wonder about that idea that guy had, back in 1885.

Peeling a ‘Nanner

October 13, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

My daughter had the audacity to tell me I peeled my banana the wrong way the other day. And since I am rather smitten with her, partly because she looks and acts a lot like her mom, I listened up.

She went on to show me, with graceful, deft movements, how to do it the proper way.

I detected several problems immediately with her peeling process.

For starters, my hands don’t look nice like hers.

I don’t have long enough fingernails. Why? Don’t ask.

I don’t have the touch.

Her way seemed a bit feminine. Which is good for her.

My mind went off to some future work project that involved a bunch of guys. The canteen serving lunch would serve a healthy meal, which would include a banana.

We guys would sit around, leaning up against some wall whilst we ate our healthy meal.

Conversation would run rapid fire, until. Until I started peeling my ‘nanner. The right way. Words would slide into slurs and slurs would drain off into silence. All eyes would be on me as I tried, of course with confidence, to get my ‘nanner started peeling from the bottom end, not the stem end.

It would start much like it started when one of my students, and that a girl no less, asked me on the third week of my first year being a schoolteacher if I could get the contact paper separated from its backing for her.

I had a very distinct picture of her beautiful hands, (just like my daughter’s) as she handed the paper to me. I also had a very distinct picture of my hands; scratched, scared, calloused, short fingernails, and their futile attempt to get the paper started.

Just as I squinted and squirmed myself into various contortions trying to get the paper separated, I saw myself totally divesting my efforts on the ‘nanner as silence ensconced the whole group.

Until. Until one of my buddies would step up and say, “Give me that.”

He would flip it around, grab the stem, and with a quick, masculine flip of the wrist, have that thing peeled, all the way down to the mushy bottom end that I had spent so much time squeezing and squenching on.

I read a while back, that you can read a person’s personality by the way they push their food into their mouth.

I wonder if the same could be said about how a person peels a ‘nanner?

Shrimp

October 11, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

There is only one way to eat shrimp, as I recently learned. Of course, there are lots of ways to eat shrimp, and I enjoy every one of them.

But I will have to agree with the southern folk I ate shrimp with, there really is only way to get the maximum benefit out of shrimp.

There were five entrees to that meal. No, there were six. I’ll classify the tea as an entree. They are not necessarily named in importance. In fact, I would be hard pressed to say which is the most important. They all blended so seamlessly with each other. They were: Red Lobster biscuits, Coleslaw, Fried Pickles, Fried Catfish, Shrimp, and Sweet Southern Tea. I’m not so sure but what it ain’t that tea that made it all go ‘round. That tea had substance to it. Nutritional value, if you will. That tea simply can’t be replicated anywhere else except down south. You can try, but altitude or lack of humidity or any other factor will work against you.

The Shrimp have to be boiled. And they have to have the shell on. And they have to be fresh from the nearest fish market. The Catfish need to be caught that day and fresh filleted just hours before the meal. The guys that do the Catfish and shrimp, since they are so good at it, do the pickles also. The muffins and Coleslaw are done right before the meal, the one still warm from the oven, the other chilled, straight from the fridge.

Now here’s the deal. If you get there a little early, the Master Shrimp and Catfish guys will invite you out to where they are working like mad. They will point to a place where they have started their pile of Shrimp, Catfish, and fried Pickles. They’ll say, “These here are just sorta the not so good ones. Help yourself.” So, you help yourself. And immediately you start a journey that you don’t ever want to turn around on.

Here’s the next deal. Once you’re all sat down at the table, grace is said, and the food starts making its rounds, you realize you’ve tied into something that won’t let go of you. You shell a shrimp and throw its hearty goodness all the way to the back of your mouth. It’s so good you do it again. They are a little spicy, so after a bit, you grab fried pickle, dip it in ranch dressing, and toss it back. Its cool delectability is the perfect medium for the shrimp. After several of those to cool your mouth down, you head on over to the steaming catfish. Its golden breading has been taunting for the last few seconds anyway. Total flakiness, and total flavor with no fish taste whatsoever send you into delirium tremens. You ease up a bit on the fish and spoon in a bit of that chilled Coleslaw, since by now your mouth is steamed up again. It sends its medicinal properties to work and soon you start eyeing those muffins. They have been patiently waiting all the time, gazing longing at you. You acquiesce and are immediately bombarded with a very hard decision to make. Finish the meal out with them, or? The sweet tea is the deal breaker. After a few sips, it’s all over again. And therein lies the problem. It keeps going all over again in such a vicious circle. It all fits so completely together that you can’t decide whether you just started a new circle or are ending one.

I finally had to quit, as the remnants of several shrimp and a little muffin still looked wistfully up at me. Limits had been exceeded and complications were beginning to set in that were bound to last for several days to come. It was about then that an older gentleman, seated nearby, asked, “Where do you get your shrimp from, over there in Kansas?”

“You won’t understand,” I replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, you won’t understand. We get them from Walmart.”

“What? From Walmart? What do they taste like anyway?”

“Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

But, if my thinker hadn’t been quite so sludged up, perhaps from the tea, and I had been able to respond a little quicker, I would have liked to have asked him,

“Where do you get your Ribeye’s from, over here in Florida?”

How about you Floridians bring some of your fresh shrimp with you over here to Kansas, and I’ll show you where we get our Ribeye’s from, and how we fix them, sort of on the same evening we do your shrimp.

I’ll definitely want you folks to make the tea.

She Knew

October 10, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

I tried out my very limited knowledge of Spanish greetings the last couple of mornings on the pleasant hotel cleaning ladies. They always perked up and smiled with a return greeting to me.

But beyond that, we couldn’t go very far. Their grasp of English and mine of Spanish fell far short of a substantial exchange.

And that was okay.

This morning, as we were leaving, with suitcases in tow, they were standing not far from our room near their cleaning cart.

I waved a small goodbye, and knowing it was the wrong greeting for goodbye, said, “Benas Dios.”

“Benas Dios,” they replied.

Again, knowing it was the wrong thing to say in leaving, but not having anything else in my Spanish repertoire, I finished with, “C`omo Est`as.”

“Muey Bueno,” they replied.

But. As I rounded the corner to leave, the younger one said, “God—-” and then trailed off. Her English vocabulary gone.

And that’s okay, sweet lady. Because even though more than likely you will never read this, you know Him. I could tell that from the first day we met. And in His language, I will tell you what you were telling me.

And we’ll both understand.

Because we both know Him and his language.

God Bless You, senorita . . . till we meet again.

And then we’ll all speak the same language.

10-7-2021 Blip

October 7, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

She had the look of a businesswoman. My perception of her was affirmed when I saw her reading a book on how to manage your team, and how to get the most out of your employees. Her hair was dyed that funny grey/silver color that always leaves me perplexed if it was a blonde dye gone bad or if it was meant to be that color.

I was rather puzzled when I saw her thumbing rapidly through her phone before takeoff. Her search inquiry was how to deactivate her Facebook and Instagram account.

I know you probably think I was being a little too snoopy. The fact is, I wasn’t. She sat one row ahead of me, and her phone was angled my way. I say, if you don’t want someone looking at what you are looking at on your phone in a plane, don’t look on your phone.

She eventually found the area she was looking for and got both accounts deactivated. There was no lingering or indecision. The action was definite.

When the app queried as to why she was deleting her account, she selected, It makes me spend too much time on my phone.

I wanted to stand up and congratulate her right then and there, but It seemed a bit inappropriate to do so on something I had seen over her shoulder, so I left it be.

I read recently that reading something on your phone limits your comprehension to the screen size. Now admittedly, some folks will have a fair-sized comprehension. Mine, not so much.

I also read that our attention span is steadily getting shorter. And they blame it on our electronic gadgets. They say that we are getting right close to the attention span of a goldfish.

And I wrote all that, and it is more clutter for your phone, per se. My hope is that the stuff I send your way isn’t too time consuming or full of clutter. I also hope that if it becomes that, you will leave off reading what I send you.

I have this thing called a blog. The original word for blog was/is weblogging. Supposedly the original intent of a blog is so folks can journal about their day. Apparently a good blog has lots of pictures, videos, and links to other sites, etc., to try to pull in more readers. I hear some bloggers do it for money, and I guess if that is why a person did it, you’d want all the readers you could get. I don’t do it for money. You and I can both rest easy on that one.

Lately, I’ve been amazed at some of the blog material folks read, including the stuff you read from yours truly.

I’ve been asking myself why I write, because today it is much the same as when I was in school. I get bored if I write too long.

But there is a certain catharsis in writing. At least for me.

And, as my friend Kate put it so well, “Blogs are for people who have stories with too many details to tell at the dinner table.”

But it begs a question. I stopped in recently to see my friend, Dr. Kenneth Bell, who runs one of the newspapers we advertise in. “Have you ever thought about a memoir?” I asked. “I know there are chunks of your life that you couldn’t write about (he was used by the CIA during his time in service) but I’d like to read about the rest.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I have,” he said, “Even thought about a weekly excerpt here in the paper, but it seemed rather self-serving.”

Is that what a blog or writing is? Self-Serving?

Stone Crab Fisherman

October 4, 2021February 7, 2023
by Les

I liked the guy the minute I saw him, even though he was a complete stranger. Clean shaven, with a thick shock of silver metallic hair, and eyes that looked like they had seen more miles of life than I ever would. They were friendly eyes; even kind, although it didn’t take any imagination to see them turn piercing and stern, once I heard what his occupation had been for the past 30 years. His cellphone ring can only be described as a very deep croak from a bull frog. Several years later, I saw him in the local parts store, and his phone rang. Still the same ring.

He told me his name was Bruce, and he wondered what it would cost to put a sprinkler system in his yard. We walked over his yard, while I explained how we did things and offered him a bid.

“Ok, when can you get to it?” I told him a couple of weeks. “Ah, c’mon. I need you to start today! My wife is fixing to throw me out of the house if I don’t get this done!” I saw an onery twinkle in those eyes; I told him to plan on two weeks, and if it worked out, we’d be there in a week and a half.

We were back within a week and a half to get started and after the first morning on the job, I asked him how he had spent his life up to this point. I guessed him to be in his mid-sixties.

He told me he had been a career stone crab fisherman.

“A What?”

“Yeah, I just moved back here about a year ago. Born and raised here. Tried to farm with my Dad. Didn’t work out, so went to Alaska to try my hand at King Crab fishing. Didn’t know a thing about it. Bought a boat and got started. Spent a couple seasons there and found out the competition was too stiff. So, I moved my family from Alaska to Florida and started up Stone Crab Fishing. That worked, and I’ve spent the last thirty years out on the water.”

He went on to detail how he set his route up in a 9 mile run with crab baskets spaced in distance by how fast an average man could hoist up a basket, pull the crabs out of it, use his thumb to pop off the main claw, (they grow a new one back), toss the crabs back into the water, bait the basket and grab the snag pole to snag the next basket buoy they were coming up to, winch it out of the water and replace it with the one just previously cleaned, repaired and baited. He said it took a strong man and glancing him over I could tell he wasn’t speaking lightly.

“So now I came back here to see how much money I can lose in farming,” he finished up saying.

It felt rather surreal to be talking to and working for a guy like him out here on the flat plains of Western Kansas. Felt like I was in the presence of a man among men.

He worked with us all day, every day, helping dig holes and by the second day we knew for sure we liked this guy. The boys weren’t in their teens yet, still pretty young and were thoroughly enamored by him.

One day, Austin looked up to a plane flying over and shouted out, “Hey Dad! A V-Tail!” And sure enough, it was. Bruce looked up also and concurred, then asked us if we were interested in planes.

We told him we had a small very basic RC plane that we sometimes flew successfully but most of the time crashed more successfully.

“Well, I’ve got a plane. Would you like to go up with me sometime?” Bruce said.

We instantly took him up on his offer. He told us he’d make the call when it suited him based on weather and work.

We waited about a month, and finally I called him to see if he was still thinking about taking us up.

“Oh, yeah, I haven’t forgotten about you, just too busy right now and too many thermals would make for a pretty bumpy ride.”

We told him that was fine, and to call us when he was ready.

Ready for him was longer than I imagined it would be. In fact, so long I had forgotten about it, and we were getting on into October when my phone rang midmorning on a midday of the week. I recognized his number and called him by name when I answered, figuring he had sprinkler trouble.

“Hey, looks like a pretty nice day. Thought I’d see if I could get the Skyhawk fired up and take you all for a ride”

Three guys, all acting like kids, including the oldest one, ran for the truck, dropping everything right where it was. We got to the hanger and there was Bruce, smiling at us. But the plane was still in the shed and nothing doing. Bruce told us he thought the boys would like to learn how to do a preflight check and so had waited to fire everything up for that reason.

He painstaking went through each check, and had the boys do the manual part of it, even down to getting a fuel sample from a special valve on the bottom side of the wing, to see if there was any water in the fuel. Of course, the boys didn’t know what they were looking for, but after he showed them, you could see them light up and swell with importance.

Now it was time to help Bruce push the Skyhawk out of the hanger, get in and fire her up. She was light and it was easy pushing with the four of us. So easy, that we overdid it coming over the lip of the door and the tail flew up a bit and the front wanted to drag for a way. Once out, we piled in and kicked her over. But she didn’t start. And the battery was not going to last long at this rate. Bruce mentioned she often did this on cold mornings like it was, and that we may have to charge the battery and come back another day. But, wonderfully, the motor caught once he realized he was running the choke too far out.

Now it was time to do the run tests while taxiing out to the runway. Bruce handed the checklist manual back to the boys in the back seat. I was up front with him in the copilot’s seat. He told them to start reading the checklist off to him and he would check the things as they read them. He briefly looked at me and told me I could taxi it out to the runway, explaining I needed to steer with my feet. I said, yeah. He said, “Oh that’s right, you have an RC. You know all this stuff. While you are taxiing out there, get a feel for the resistance on the throttle by running it in and out a few times. This one is a bit sticky at a couple of places.”

I was too dense, or too excited at the moment, to catch on to the portent of his words.

It was only when I had the bird lined up with the center strip that he looked at me, and in that no nonsense voice that I’m sure had captained his crab trawler told me, “When you’re ready, take her off.”

It was then I realized, albeit a little too late, what he meant by getting a feel for the throttle.

But I seized my chance. Bruce had to help me a bit on steering while taking off because the rudder pedals, which steer the front wheel, were attached to it by springs so there was a lag I didn’t know how to account for.

In seconds we hit our target speed and I eased back on the yoke, making sure to hold level as I did so. We climbed steadily for a half minute or so to give enough ground clearance and eased over to the left towards our place. Bruce had waited for a morning that had a few fluffy clouds hanging here and there. And he was in his element. Since he didn’t have the controls to worry about, he was often half turned around in his seat, pointing out things of interest to the boys.

The next hour was deliriously fun. After buzzing our place, we cavorted around like kids in the park. We carved out channels between clouds, gauged the height of the next one and summitted it with ease, or swooped stealthily sideways along the shadowy side of a cloud and then popped around the sunlit side to surprise whatever our imagination had waiting for us. Or, we buried ourselves in the thick of that white cotton, just for the fun of it.

I started using more and more rudder and aileron as I got used to it, turning tighter and tighter figure eights, until Bruce directed my eyes to the back seat. I saw one normal colored face and one very green face behind me and knew that it was probably time to ease up a bit.

We soon headed back towards the home runway. Except I had a hard time finding it, since it all looked so different from the air. Bruce pointed it out to me, and I lined up to land. I had it all in the bag, or so I thought, until I was 20 feet off the runway and just skimming along. I knew what the problem was but was too afraid to do anything about it. I was riding on a bubble of air generated by flying that close to the ground. This bubble is often referred to as ground effect. I was afraid that if I nosed down anymore, I’d pierce that bubble and jam the front end of the plane into the ground. Bruce chuckled a bit and with one hand eased us down, all the while giving a running commentary on what he was doing.

Find yourself a stone crab fisherman for a friend.

Life is interesting up there.