WHEN COWS RULED - Segment 3 (Scroll down for earlier segments)
Maybe life was better on the ranch. The money was lousy, but there were no exhausting border runs.
Gramps’ cows also got free entertainment, provided by Lester and me. Just watching us seemed to entertain them. Often, they would walk over to where we were standing. “What are you boys planning...a barn-burning…ha…ha…ha?” They wouldn’t let us forget about the barn.
One day, as Lester and I romped about the ranch on our horses, I came up with a brilliant idea. Brilliant ideas scared Lester. He started to run, but I grabbed him before he could get away. “Hold still and listen,” I said. “We’re not going to build a campfire.” Lester breathed a sigh of relief. “Besides, there’s no barn,” I continued.
“Okay, what’s your idea?” asked Lester nervously.
“We’d have to lower the fence,” answered Lester, beginning to perspire.
“Okay, okay, maybe a couple rails,” I responded.
We prepared the fence, and then we calculated the speed, timing of the jump and clearance needed to get over the split rails. At the sound of a distant moo, we were off. About mid-flight we discovered that climbing over the fence would have been much easier. Trying to jump a fence while holding a broomstick between your legs took far more athleticism than either Lester or I possessed. We crash-landed, ending up with two very small horses, neither big enough to ride. It wasn’t long before the cows had surrounded the crash site, bent over, holding their sides in raucous laughter, some slapping their knee with a hoof. Lester and I thought for sure they were going to throw dollar bills at us for such great entertainment. Then we realized that cows had no where to carry money.
Gramps said he had never seen his cows laugh so hard. He said laughing cows gave more milk.
Trying to preserve our bodies, Lester and I decided to ask Gramps if we could ride real horses.
He just laughed. “I’ve got too much respect for horses to let you boy’s on’em. I feel bad enough for those broomsticks.” I’m sure that’s why he had nailed the legs of his sawhorse to the floor. He probably thought Lester and I would try to ride it off into the sunset.
Gramps was always calling on his grandkids---that would be me and my cousins---to help him herd behaviorally-challenged cows from pasture to pasture. Being close to a mathematical genius, I knew the shortest distance between two pastures was a straight line. If I had to herd cows, I wanted to walk the shortest distance…a straight line. The only problem---Gramps cows fought straight lines. They would have none of it. When Gramps said, “Move’em out”, cows would run into town for a cup of coffee, or maybe some Chinese food; anything to avoid a straight line. After dinner and a little window shopping, they would meander home, being sure to visit neighbors along the way.
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