Part 2

Freighting earned our family cash and credit at the General Store. After such a trip we hurried home from Tatum to see mother, grandfather and the children, bringing with us presents brought from Roswell. Dad made sure that there were always gifts to pass around, and anything that was received, no matter what, was of great value and deeply appreciated.

An empty wooden packing crate, large enough to use as a playhouse, caused no small amount of excitement with us kids. After setting it up like we thought it should be, we sat our baby brother Hodge on top. He promptly fell off and apparently broke his leg. We didn't actually know that his leg was broken but figured it might be. He couldn't walk on it and dragged it along for some time as he crawled. However the leg remained straight and finally healed, so we guessed that it had not really broken.

Yet another time Dad came home with a gunny sack that had two Greyhound pups inside - one black and one gray. These pups became our pride and joy, growing to be so fast that they could catch a rabbit after a very short run. They would close in from behind, one on each side of a running Jackrabbit, then snatch him out of mid air as he tried to dodge back between them.

We had another dog given to us by a J.R. Watkins Co. "drummer." A drummer at that time was a sales representative who traveled the area in a buggy carrying with him several suitcases of merchandise, each containing more wonderful bottles, boxes and items than the last. There were medicines and perfumes of every description, and that was just the start.

Our drummer always seemed to arrive at about the same time each year, just as we were completing evening chores and getting ready for supper. Our parents never failed to invite him to put his horse away, eat supper, and spend the night. I think they enjoyed hearing him talk. He was good at telling one story after another, but later when he was gone my father would tell us the fellow was a "big windy".

The dog our drummer gave us was a slick haired terrier mix, gifted with curiosity and intelligence. We named him J.R. in honor of the drummer, and he became our playmate and constant companion. He died some time later after eating poisoned coyote bait that he came across while hunting. We were very sad when J.R. died, so we made a grave and said a proper funeral to see him off.

When the greyhound pups arrived J.R. showed his disapproval of the attention they received by ignoring them and the people around them. He moved outside the circle of action, lay down and pretended to sleep. He did this so believably that it was difficult, unless you watched closely, to see his eye flutter open ever so slightly, then close just as quickly. Again when he sensed no one was watching, his eyes would flutter open for yet another peek.

Father was the most skilled horseman I have ever known. He grew to manhood on a Wisconsin farm where the breeding, raising, and training of draft horses was central to the work that was done and key to the income it produced. He worked his horses with firm handed gentleness and voice control, and while the colts were learning his patience was infinite.

Colts were born into gentle familiarity with the people in our family, and had only to be taught proper responses to the harness or saddle in order to become good work animals. Running beside their mothers as they worked in harness or under saddle, the colts were not strangers to or fearful of the rigging they would be required to wear when old enough to begin training.

Catching up eight horses that had spent the night grazing in hobbles so they wouldn't stray far, is in itself a seemingly insurmountable task for many. Harnessing them, each in turn, and having them stand calmly in place while the others were being rigged out and the team made complete, was a familiar and routine task for my father. I began to help him harness up as soon as I could reach high enough to buckle a hame strap, snap a belly band or hook the traces. There were never mix-ups or runaways with father's horses, even when young animals were part of the team. Each animal was gentle and cooperative because they had been gently yet firmly handled and taught from their earliest days.

Dressing up on Sundays and riding with the family in our best buggy to the community school house for Sunday School and Church was a fun part of each week. Buck and Bug stepped out eagerly, seeming to appreciate the light work and special occasion. The buggy and leather harness were highly polished, brass buttons and buckles sparkling. We looked a handsome family in a handsome rig on Sunday mornings, and were proud of our pretty span of buckskins with their shiny black mains and tails. We were in fact putting on our best public display, the closest thing to affluence we could muster, however we didn't think of it in those terms.

After Church we often traveled in company with others to visit a neighbor, or neighbors would come to our place and spend the day with us. The women prepared a bounteous Sunday feast in a warm kitchen, with all the talk and socializing that accompanies such an effort. Men sat outside under shade trees talking about crops and cattle, making horse trades, and dealing with other matters that grabbed their interest in our remote Ranger Lake area. As children we would run and play, looking at baby calves, piglets and colts as they were available, and climbing on hay stacks – all the while trying not to get our Sunday best clothes dirty.

When such a Sunday afternoon visit occurred at our place we boys would show off our play "ranches" to our friends. We made miniature fences by lining play pasture areas with small stones gathered in an old milk pail. Designated winter grazing lands, summer grazing pastures, cultivated fields, and trap and holding pastures finished our make believe ranching world. Play corrals were made of sticks driven into the ground for posts, then finished with miniature rails cut from apple box slats and tied to the posts. These made realistic replicas of working corrals, branding chutes and turnout pins. Play barns, houses and out buildings were made of apple box parts cut to size and roofed with flattened tin cans.

Miniature windmill towers were put together of pieces of plank from which we cut and shaped poles to make the four legs of the tower. To those we attached cross braces, then cut a square from the center of a lard can lid so it fit securely in place to make a realistic working windmill tower and platform.

Making windmill wheels and wind vanes was a special task that required patient effort. The correct size tin can or bucket lid was located. A hole was punched exactly in the center, just large enough to fit around a small piece of tubing that would serve as hub and bearing. The lid was cut into equal segments, with each section twisted just right so it would catch the wind and spin the wheel just like the real windmill that pumped our water.

We stocked our pretend pastures with play cattle and horses. Cattle were cow horns found around the branding chutes or on dead animals we came across. Horses were bottles, each different sized and shaped bottle a special animal. Brown beer bottles were prized as the best horses, and to us "Ranching" was a real and exciting game requiring attention to detail, lots of patience. and a great deal of ingenuity and imagination. A ranch once constructed was never destroyed, but repaired and played with on a continuing basis as time and circumstance allowed.

When company came to visit "Ranching" was an important and favorite game with local boys. Branding newly "rounded up" cow horn cattle required a small fire. Branding irons were made of stiff wire bent to shape, and when they were red hot we would burn our "OU" brand into each cow horn, forever marking it a part of our herd. OU was also the brand we used on our real cattle and horses.

Our play world was built inside the fenced area of grandfather Hodge's irrigated vegetable garden, with tiny fences and buildings placed on the slope of the earthen dike that formed the water storage pond. Such ponds were built by excavating earth from the center of an area and stacking it on the sides. The "tank dam" around grandfather’s storage pond was the "hill" we played on, into which we scraped winding roads curving down to "ranch headquarters" from the "mountains" above.

A vivid imagination was an important part of all we did, and "Lets pretend" was "play like". "Play like we're going to Roswell for lumber to build a barn.” Or "play like you have to ride to the north pasture and bring in those bulls to dip them for ear ticks. ”Play like” covered any of the myriad things that busy ranchers do. "Play like" was a great childhood word, a freedom word, allowing us to cast off the limitations of the real world and create imagined worlds as vivid to us as life itself.

Without "store bought" toys we made play wagons from small boxes with wheels cut from round broomsticks. Holes had to be drilled in the carefully marked center of each so it could be pinned to an axle we carved from a proper piece of wood. A nail served as a front bolster pin, and a small branch was used for the wagon tongue. Earth moving scrapers were made from old tobacco tins, and a piece of cast off leather strapped to a beer bottle horse became a silver mounted saddle especially made for breaking a tough bronco.

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