Post by Jerry Thornton on Sept 8, 2007 17:17:31 GMT -5
The day has been hot in the canyon. I have been helping or rather following Dad in the garden taking, I am afraid, too much of his time having to show me how to plant every single thing. If I can remember how perhaps I will be of some help to him some day.
Even though I had my shoes laced up tight my feet are gritty and hot from sharing all of the space with this good old Nine-Mile powder. I remove my shoes and dump out the dirt, shaking the dust out of my socks. The powdery dust making me cough.
Dad is pumping up the Coleman lantern and checking the coal oil in the lamps. The coal oil has the normal petroleum smell, but it also smells something like ginger. The sun has been behind the mountain for sometime now and night will soon be upon us. Dad jokingly says, “that the canyon is so deep and narrow that we must have two hours less day light than anywhere else”.
I must get a bucket of wood chips so we can build a fire in the old wood cook stove. Dad keeps the wood box full all of the time from a pile of wood that he drug down to the ranch by horse back and chopped into burnable lengths. We must get supper and dishes out of the way because we don’t want to burn too much of the midnight oil. The Coleman lantern is used in the kitchen to cook, eat, and do dishes by. The coal oil lamps make it so we can get off to bed. They only light a small area; in fact, you can hardly see the corners of the room with one. We will want to get out to the outhouse as it gets quite cold here at night. Like most desert country it is as cold at night as it is hot in the day this time of year.
When we step outside after supper Dad will show us the stars and some of the constellations. They are very bright and beautiful in this dark canyon. I love to hear the coyotes howl at the moon and the crickets doing their love calls.
Tonight the house is warm after cooking and heating the dishwater, but in the morning it will be cold and awfully hard to want to get out of bed. I usually try to wait until mom starts a fire in the stove and begins cooking breakfast. Dad will already be turning water on the fields and feeding the barnyard animals. I slip my clothes on under the covers it is the warmest way that I know of putting them on. There is still dust in my socks and shoes and it reminds me of yesterday’s chores.
One of us kids will need to collect eggs; mom will want them to go with breakfast. We will need to go down to the spring and get a cold bucket of water for drinking. Mom will get a dishtowel and put over it helping to keep the water cool and the dust out. Dad always put a couple of fifty gallon barrels on his rock sled and fills them with water from the spring. He drags it up by the house with his tractor. This water will be used for washing, bathing, laundry and cooking.
Dad is going back down to the field to check the water he turned loose and I am following closely behind him. I must follow him very close or I get lost in the willows and panic. The willows flip back hitting me in the face and they sting. Dad stops to let me catch up and he makes me a whistle out of a willow. All the while he is making the whistle he tells me this poem:
“I had a wooden whistle, but it just wooden whistle
I had a steel whistle, but it steel wooden whistle
I have a tin whistle, and now I tin whistle!”
Today dad is going to work with his tractor and equipment across the creek. Sometimes he will let me go with him and sit beside him on the toolbox of his Allis Chalmers tractor. Or even better yet, I can sometimes sit on the hood of the tractor. I can put my feet on the side mounted headlights like stirrups, hold fast to the air breather cap as if it was a saddle horn, and I am off on some great white steed doing brave things that Tom Mix might do. Sitting on the hood in front of him is great fun and it allows him to see me at all times so I am quite safe and away from those large mean rear tires. Do you know that this horse will actually buck for me sometimes? When the tractor strains to pull its load the front tires will leave the ground for a moment, or when the front tires bounce over a rock, or ditch. I won’t be going with dad today he has to pay close attention to the operation of his equipment and it will not be safe for me to go.
Dad is off to work, but I hold him up long enough to have him make a loop in a rope for me. This will be my lariat for the day. I spend hours with a rope or bailers twine string, roping the end of our sawhorse as if it was a steer needing branding or de-horning. I even throw a loop under it as if I was heeling the steer, but for me this is much more difficult than the head. Heeling is kind of Dad’s specialty. If I keep practicing, just maybe, I will be ready when my dad comes to help with the cattle.
I was watching my dad and some cowpokes branding cows on day from a large rock that still sets be our loading corrals. A cowboy roped the head of a soon to be steer and another had heeled the animal. A good cow horse is trained so that when the steer hits the end of the rope he will begin to back up keeping the rope tight. If the other cowboy was able to make his target the steer will be stretched out so that it can be branded etc. This day a cowboy felt so sure about his pitch that he was swinging down to the ground as the rope snapped, the steer was jerked back and before the horse could tighten the rope it some how looped once around the cowboys head. The other cowboy was successful and as the two horses stretched the steer out the rope pulled deep into the cowboy’s eye sockets. A quick thinking brander cut the rope with his knife, this cowboy surly would have been blinded for life. He did look kind of like a raccoon for about a week.
I am getting tired of roping this old sawhorse. I get him sometimes, but too often I miss him altogether, not to mention throwing a loop under his belly. Aw, maybe another day. It’s time to find somewhere else to pay. I know! The blacksmith shop. This is my favorite toy box. It has an anvil, a vise, tongs and countless other tools in old wooden powder box shelves. I make my way toward my large toy box past the woodpile and around the pigpen. I never even peek in on them, as they will eat anything that they can grab. Fingers, shoes, shirtsleeves, pant legs, or even your coat. Well, at least they are not picky eaters. They are even better than our modern day garbage disposals. We clean the yard of weeds and over the fence they go along with just about any other thing that you care to get rid of. I am standing in the door of the blacksmith shop. The sun flows threw the cracks in the roof and to the ground making gold bars all the way to the dirt floor. The gold bars seem to be glistening with the particles of dust that have been stirred up by the chickens and other barnyard animals. I strike the anvil with a hammer and it rings out with a delightful sound. I look for scraps of metal and hold them on the anvil with tongs pretending that they are horseshoes, hot from the forge and I am shaping them to shaw my beautiful mount. I try to rivet two pieces of metal together like Dad would put a tooth on the mower bar. The rivet just bends over like the nails that I try to drive in when I’m building us a new cabin. I see the forge; I love this toy, when you crank on it, and it blow air at you and if you crank it fast enough it will howl like a siren on a fire truck. Three alarms and we are off, to put out a fire in a large building thus saving countless lifes.
I look out of the door of the blacksmith shop and there is something looking back at me. It is a kitten in front of the old wooden granary. Dad had turned some stray cats lose under there to keep the field mice out of the grain. These cats are so wild that the only ones that you have a chance of catching are the very small kittens. We are not supposed to feed them because they get lazy and are not good mousers. Every animal on a ranch must earn its keep. The dog is not just a pet, he is a cowdog. These cats will multiply like rabbits and when they get gaunt and begin to starve they must be thinned out so that some can survive and be useful mousers. I have the kitten in my arms now; it took some soft talk and some chasing. He wants loose so he wiggles and digs to be free. I keep talking soft and petting him and he settles down and begins to purr.
I am tired of roping steers, shawing horses, fixing equipment, fighting fires, and chasing wild animals. I think it is time for me and the kitten to have a nap. I take the kitten into my mom and dads room and lay on their bed. It is the biggest bed in the house and it is empty. Mom will be mad at me because she is the one that actually thins out the extra stray cats. She is so good with that revolver of hers that seldom is a round wasted. She doesn’t care for cats anyway so this is kind of natural. I will now expect her to remember which one is Fluffy.
A car stopping out front of the house awakens me. It is Grandpa Christensen bringing Brent, my older brother, back home. Grandpa runs the mail out here on Saturdays and takes Brent to town with him to church on Sundays. We ourselves will be going into town tonight because we have school in Price tomorrow.
Dad is still in the field across the creek and I am glad because Grandpa always tells him that his whole family should have been to church. He will not keep any of his family from going to church but Dad believes that he has an ox in the mire. He also believes that grandpa has one. He sent Skip on horseback up to Grandpa’s ranch to water his fields so that Grandpa’s ox would not burn up. It would be nice if Dad could afford to hire someone to do the chores on both places and everyone could go to church.
Dad works the coalmines and comes out here when he gets off and works a second shift. I don’t know how it does it day after day including the weekends. He wants to keep this place because it has been in his family for three generations, but it is the age of discovery. The world has discovered automation and our fields can’t get any bigger than they are because the canyon is only so wide. Dad has discovered that he can’t afford to hire help and he can’t go it all alone. Mom has discovered more bills in the mailbox these days. Brent has found God and wants to go on a mission some day. Skip has discovered girls and wants to be home on Friday and Saturday nights. Linda has discovered the piano; Dad bought her a used one. I have discovered Dads tools. He can never find them and I don’t understand why, they are everywhere that I go outside to play. Dad is talking about selling out and if he does we will all be sad and miss the ranch. We all really do love it although at times I know Dad doesn’t think we do.
Dad did have to sell the ranch in the early 1960’s and until then we did not have a pot to go in. The family has done well financially ever since. Dad worked as a contractor on construction and made big money. Mom loved the house that they were able to pay for with the money from the sale of the ranch. Brent went on his mission to England. Skip still kind of likes girls. Linda plays the piano and has taught most of her children to play. Grandpa sold his ranch at the same time that Dad did. He remained active in the church and went on a mission himself and spent countless hours doing genealogy.
As for me I still play with tools and keep them wherever my grand children go to play.
Even though I had my shoes laced up tight my feet are gritty and hot from sharing all of the space with this good old Nine-Mile powder. I remove my shoes and dump out the dirt, shaking the dust out of my socks. The powdery dust making me cough.
Dad is pumping up the Coleman lantern and checking the coal oil in the lamps. The coal oil has the normal petroleum smell, but it also smells something like ginger. The sun has been behind the mountain for sometime now and night will soon be upon us. Dad jokingly says, “that the canyon is so deep and narrow that we must have two hours less day light than anywhere else”.
I must get a bucket of wood chips so we can build a fire in the old wood cook stove. Dad keeps the wood box full all of the time from a pile of wood that he drug down to the ranch by horse back and chopped into burnable lengths. We must get supper and dishes out of the way because we don’t want to burn too much of the midnight oil. The Coleman lantern is used in the kitchen to cook, eat, and do dishes by. The coal oil lamps make it so we can get off to bed. They only light a small area; in fact, you can hardly see the corners of the room with one. We will want to get out to the outhouse as it gets quite cold here at night. Like most desert country it is as cold at night as it is hot in the day this time of year.
When we step outside after supper Dad will show us the stars and some of the constellations. They are very bright and beautiful in this dark canyon. I love to hear the coyotes howl at the moon and the crickets doing their love calls.
Tonight the house is warm after cooking and heating the dishwater, but in the morning it will be cold and awfully hard to want to get out of bed. I usually try to wait until mom starts a fire in the stove and begins cooking breakfast. Dad will already be turning water on the fields and feeding the barnyard animals. I slip my clothes on under the covers it is the warmest way that I know of putting them on. There is still dust in my socks and shoes and it reminds me of yesterday’s chores.
One of us kids will need to collect eggs; mom will want them to go with breakfast. We will need to go down to the spring and get a cold bucket of water for drinking. Mom will get a dishtowel and put over it helping to keep the water cool and the dust out. Dad always put a couple of fifty gallon barrels on his rock sled and fills them with water from the spring. He drags it up by the house with his tractor. This water will be used for washing, bathing, laundry and cooking.
Dad is going back down to the field to check the water he turned loose and I am following closely behind him. I must follow him very close or I get lost in the willows and panic. The willows flip back hitting me in the face and they sting. Dad stops to let me catch up and he makes me a whistle out of a willow. All the while he is making the whistle he tells me this poem:
“I had a wooden whistle, but it just wooden whistle
I had a steel whistle, but it steel wooden whistle
I have a tin whistle, and now I tin whistle!”
Today dad is going to work with his tractor and equipment across the creek. Sometimes he will let me go with him and sit beside him on the toolbox of his Allis Chalmers tractor. Or even better yet, I can sometimes sit on the hood of the tractor. I can put my feet on the side mounted headlights like stirrups, hold fast to the air breather cap as if it was a saddle horn, and I am off on some great white steed doing brave things that Tom Mix might do. Sitting on the hood in front of him is great fun and it allows him to see me at all times so I am quite safe and away from those large mean rear tires. Do you know that this horse will actually buck for me sometimes? When the tractor strains to pull its load the front tires will leave the ground for a moment, or when the front tires bounce over a rock, or ditch. I won’t be going with dad today he has to pay close attention to the operation of his equipment and it will not be safe for me to go.
Dad is off to work, but I hold him up long enough to have him make a loop in a rope for me. This will be my lariat for the day. I spend hours with a rope or bailers twine string, roping the end of our sawhorse as if it was a steer needing branding or de-horning. I even throw a loop under it as if I was heeling the steer, but for me this is much more difficult than the head. Heeling is kind of Dad’s specialty. If I keep practicing, just maybe, I will be ready when my dad comes to help with the cattle.
I was watching my dad and some cowpokes branding cows on day from a large rock that still sets be our loading corrals. A cowboy roped the head of a soon to be steer and another had heeled the animal. A good cow horse is trained so that when the steer hits the end of the rope he will begin to back up keeping the rope tight. If the other cowboy was able to make his target the steer will be stretched out so that it can be branded etc. This day a cowboy felt so sure about his pitch that he was swinging down to the ground as the rope snapped, the steer was jerked back and before the horse could tighten the rope it some how looped once around the cowboys head. The other cowboy was successful and as the two horses stretched the steer out the rope pulled deep into the cowboy’s eye sockets. A quick thinking brander cut the rope with his knife, this cowboy surly would have been blinded for life. He did look kind of like a raccoon for about a week.
I am getting tired of roping this old sawhorse. I get him sometimes, but too often I miss him altogether, not to mention throwing a loop under his belly. Aw, maybe another day. It’s time to find somewhere else to pay. I know! The blacksmith shop. This is my favorite toy box. It has an anvil, a vise, tongs and countless other tools in old wooden powder box shelves. I make my way toward my large toy box past the woodpile and around the pigpen. I never even peek in on them, as they will eat anything that they can grab. Fingers, shoes, shirtsleeves, pant legs, or even your coat. Well, at least they are not picky eaters. They are even better than our modern day garbage disposals. We clean the yard of weeds and over the fence they go along with just about any other thing that you care to get rid of. I am standing in the door of the blacksmith shop. The sun flows threw the cracks in the roof and to the ground making gold bars all the way to the dirt floor. The gold bars seem to be glistening with the particles of dust that have been stirred up by the chickens and other barnyard animals. I strike the anvil with a hammer and it rings out with a delightful sound. I look for scraps of metal and hold them on the anvil with tongs pretending that they are horseshoes, hot from the forge and I am shaping them to shaw my beautiful mount. I try to rivet two pieces of metal together like Dad would put a tooth on the mower bar. The rivet just bends over like the nails that I try to drive in when I’m building us a new cabin. I see the forge; I love this toy, when you crank on it, and it blow air at you and if you crank it fast enough it will howl like a siren on a fire truck. Three alarms and we are off, to put out a fire in a large building thus saving countless lifes.
I look out of the door of the blacksmith shop and there is something looking back at me. It is a kitten in front of the old wooden granary. Dad had turned some stray cats lose under there to keep the field mice out of the grain. These cats are so wild that the only ones that you have a chance of catching are the very small kittens. We are not supposed to feed them because they get lazy and are not good mousers. Every animal on a ranch must earn its keep. The dog is not just a pet, he is a cowdog. These cats will multiply like rabbits and when they get gaunt and begin to starve they must be thinned out so that some can survive and be useful mousers. I have the kitten in my arms now; it took some soft talk and some chasing. He wants loose so he wiggles and digs to be free. I keep talking soft and petting him and he settles down and begins to purr.
I am tired of roping steers, shawing horses, fixing equipment, fighting fires, and chasing wild animals. I think it is time for me and the kitten to have a nap. I take the kitten into my mom and dads room and lay on their bed. It is the biggest bed in the house and it is empty. Mom will be mad at me because she is the one that actually thins out the extra stray cats. She is so good with that revolver of hers that seldom is a round wasted. She doesn’t care for cats anyway so this is kind of natural. I will now expect her to remember which one is Fluffy.
A car stopping out front of the house awakens me. It is Grandpa Christensen bringing Brent, my older brother, back home. Grandpa runs the mail out here on Saturdays and takes Brent to town with him to church on Sundays. We ourselves will be going into town tonight because we have school in Price tomorrow.
Dad is still in the field across the creek and I am glad because Grandpa always tells him that his whole family should have been to church. He will not keep any of his family from going to church but Dad believes that he has an ox in the mire. He also believes that grandpa has one. He sent Skip on horseback up to Grandpa’s ranch to water his fields so that Grandpa’s ox would not burn up. It would be nice if Dad could afford to hire someone to do the chores on both places and everyone could go to church.
Dad works the coalmines and comes out here when he gets off and works a second shift. I don’t know how it does it day after day including the weekends. He wants to keep this place because it has been in his family for three generations, but it is the age of discovery. The world has discovered automation and our fields can’t get any bigger than they are because the canyon is only so wide. Dad has discovered that he can’t afford to hire help and he can’t go it all alone. Mom has discovered more bills in the mailbox these days. Brent has found God and wants to go on a mission some day. Skip has discovered girls and wants to be home on Friday and Saturday nights. Linda has discovered the piano; Dad bought her a used one. I have discovered Dads tools. He can never find them and I don’t understand why, they are everywhere that I go outside to play. Dad is talking about selling out and if he does we will all be sad and miss the ranch. We all really do love it although at times I know Dad doesn’t think we do.
Dad did have to sell the ranch in the early 1960’s and until then we did not have a pot to go in. The family has done well financially ever since. Dad worked as a contractor on construction and made big money. Mom loved the house that they were able to pay for with the money from the sale of the ranch. Brent went on his mission to England. Skip still kind of likes girls. Linda plays the piano and has taught most of her children to play. Grandpa sold his ranch at the same time that Dad did. He remained active in the church and went on a mission himself and spent countless hours doing genealogy.
As for me I still play with tools and keep them wherever my grand children go to play.