Cowboy Ingenuity

My Dad can be a little old school and before I talk about what his latest thing is….I thought I would give a little background.

I grew up in Higbee Colorado, about 25 miles south of La Junta.  To say we were far from town was somewhat of an understatement.  The bus ride was about 4 hours per day, two in the morning…two in the evening.  A lot of things were learned on that bus, but that is another story.  Our bus driver lived down the road from us and she took the bus home with her for the school year.  One of the things that almost always happened was getting snowed in, every year.  As kids we all enjoyed this, probably not so much for the adults.

One year Dad was having trouble with a tooth, he mentioned that he was going to go to the dentist the next day.  But it was not to be, it started snowing that afternoon and by morning the roads were impassable.  For my brother, sister and I….this was a glorious day.  No school and we could break out our scoop shovel (for those that don’t know, we would ride it down the hill like a sled).  For Dad this wasn’t as much fun.  His tooth was hurting and he couldn’t get to town. 

There were still trails to be broke in the snow, so that the cows could get to the pond, and ice to chop.  So he took a dip of Copenhagen and headed out to saddle a horse at the barn.  By the time he was done saddling that tooth was starting to feel better.  He figured it must have been the dip, so he kept his tooth packed with Copenhagen for most of the week.  I don’t know if he got used to the pain or all that nicotine made it numb.  When he finally got to the dentist he sat in the chair expecting to get a numbing shot and have the tooth pulled.  He barely sat down and the dentist had just stuck his fist in there….and the dentist was done!  Dad asked him if he was going to give him the shot and the dentist turned around, showed him his tooth and said, “I’m done”.  Dad never even knew that he had pulled the tooth!

Fast forward to a few weeks ago.  We were out in Utopia, Texas for Mother’s Day.  We had a real good visit, probably not as long as anyone would have liked, but a good time was had by all.  Dad gets to telling us about a tooth he broke, said he took one of Mom’s nail files and just rounded it off so it wouldn’t cut the inside of his mouth.  That right….I said he took a nail file and just rounded it off!   No dentist, no plans on going to the dentist....just rounded that bad boy off!

 Price of Broken tooth:  $ painfull

Price of nail file:  $2.00

Actual price of going to the dentist:  $0

 A little cowboy ingenuity:  Priceless!