Scamper the Wonder Horse

Scamper the Wonder Horse was my first horse; well to say she was a horse was stretch.  Scamper was a pony, my Dad bought her for me and she was mine; but a horse?  I think not.  I think he paid maybe twenty-five dollars for her…or maybe he traded nine chickens for her.  I’m not really sure, but she was mine and I was as proud as any five year old could be.  She was the beginning of my cowboy career and I had plans to be the next Jim Shoulders and Phil Lyne all rolled into one.

But before my cowboy career could begin, Scamper had a few kinks that needed ironing out.  Not huge issues, just things like laying down when she didn’t want to go and running off when she did want to go.  There wasn’t a whole lot of in between with Scamper.  But it wasn’t a big deal for a top hand like I was going to be.  It was just a chance to show the world a what a wolf of the world looked like.

The first thing we dealt with was the running off, and really the running off wasn’t that huge a deal.  Heck, I could ride her as fast as she could run.  It was all the things she would brush me against the concerned me!  She would run off (which consisted of a combination of her bone jarring trot and her ground hammering lope) with me pulling on both reins for all I was worth and Dad would start hollering, “Just pull one rein, just pull one rein”

That was easy for him to say, he wasn’t riding this wild mustang that I was riding.  I couldn’t hear him anyway; I was way more concerned with dying.  We would bolt around the arena, or around the barn, with her brushing up against things trying to knock me off and me pulling for all I was worth to get her to stop.  Once Dad had several young horses tied to the fence when Scamper ran off.  She ran up between the fence and those young horses.  You would have thought it would have caused a big wreck, but other than undoing all of Dad’s training, breaking a few lead ropes and catching those lead ropes under my chin as I laid back in the saddle….it went surprisingly well.

The laying down was the other issue that I needed to work out with her.  When she didn’t want to go anymore, she would just lay down.  Didn’t matter where you were or what you were doing.  She’d just quit.  I spent many a day jumping up and down on her sides trying to get her to get back up.  All she would do was just lay out on her side like she was just waiting to die.  And I can tell you, there were many time I wished she would have died…or that I could have killed her!

We got most of these kinks worked out in the arena and Dad finally felt comfortable enough to take me with him to check cows.  I was some kinda excited.  I left the house in all my cowboy gear ready to show my Dad what a hand I had become.  I had my best hat, my boots, my rope  and my chaps.  I also had what no self-respecting cowboy would be without; I had my pistol in the holster on my hip.  I, not only was ready to do cowboy work, I was dressed properly to perform these important actions. 

 

Dad was riding a big gelding we called Festus. 

Now Festus, it seemed to me, was nineteen feet tall with a head that was almost that long too.  So, Scamper and I did have somewhat of a hard time keeping up.  The best we could manage was to travel a little ways back of them, in her spine battering trot.  At one point, I started to wonder if I would ever have kids (just kidding, what five year old thinks about having kids?).  I couldn’t have been prouder though.  I was going to do real live cowboy work on my own horse, with my Dad.  Whoo Hoo!

As we traveled along, suddenly Dad kicked Festus into a lope and they soared over this irrigation ditch.  It probably wasn’t a huge ditch, at least not for Festus.  They cleared it rather easily and Dad pulled up on the other side to check on me.  I pulled ol’ Scamper to a stop at the edge of the ditch and it might as well have been the Atlantic Ocean.  I felt like, not only was I riding the smallest horse in the world, but that I was the littlest kid too.

But, my Dad was there to encourage me.  He didn’t say too much, no long speeches for him that day.  He just said, “You can make it”.  If it was one thing I believed, it was whatever my Dad told me.  Heck I was the kid he could get to jump off the top of the garage into his arms…man, after writing that down…I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer was I?  But I digress…back to the ditch.

I turned Scamper around and rode back toward the house, when I was about twenty yards away I turned around and lined her up on the ditch.  I took the end of my reins and started whipping her over and under, I knew that we needed a lot of speed to cross that Grand Canyon of an irrigation ditch.  I would like to say that she took off with all of the speed of a thouroghbred racehorse, but we were pretty much in that same spleen splattering trot/lope thing.  But she was going somewhat faster.  As we neared the ditch, I started having visions of us flying over that ditch somewhat like Pegasus.  That we would clear it and I would come to a sliding stop like the top professionals that we were.  I could just picture my Dad’s chest swelling up with pride, knowing that his legacy was going to continue in a grand fashion.  There would be dancehall gals singing and everyone would be beating me on the back in congratulations and buying me drinks……of milk.

As we raced toward the edge of the ditch, with all of the brain rattling, kidney collapsing speed that could be mustered by a short legged pony; Scamper must have been feeling all of the confidence that I was oozing, because at about ten feet from the ditch, she jumped. She surely must have thought that she grew wings.

To say we missed would be an understatement.  We landed smack dab in the middle of the ditch and sunk to the bottom.  Obviously not a wide ditch, but it was deep.  Both of us went under and came back up spraying water like a couple of Beluga whales.  As we scrambled out, to my horror…I could hear my Dad laughing.  I was cold and wet, not the least bit happy about the situation and I had a new found hate in my heart for this worthless, early jumping, nine chicken pony.  But my Dad…he just couldn’t stop laughing.  I just knew that I could no longer call myself a cowboy, I mean, come on…any hand worth his salt could have made that jump, right?

Dad finally got himself under control and shared with me some of the wrecks he had growing.  He let me know part of being a cowboy was celebrating the wrecks that you have.  Laughter is contagious and eventually I laughed a little too.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized that this was part of the initiation that goes along with being a cowboy.  If you haven’t been a wreck or two, then you probably have done much.

You know, I don’t really recall what happened to Scamper.  I just remember I started riding real horses at some point.  I supposed Dad traded her off to the next growing cowboy, or maybe he sold her for twelve chickens.  I don’t know.

Flying Cats and Ranch Security

It has been a looong while since I wrote anything.  So I thought I would write something and start this thing back up.

My Dad was a feedlot cowboy, which means we always had horses.  They were not push button, can only do one job horses.  They were the tools of his trade.  The same ones that us kids rodeo’d on, where they same ones he used in the feedlot.  We always had a couple of colts, or in some cases five or six year olds, that we were starting at the house.  After about 30 rides, Dad would then take them to the feedlot and ride them for 90 days.  Ninety days of pushing cattle around, dragging roped ones and opening gates made for some pretty broke ponies.  My brother and I were usually the ones that started these “colts”, me probably more than him.  I think that had something to do with my level of brains….

At one time we had this little T-Cross mare, she was pretty sharp looking…kinda that old timey quarter horse type: square, blocky and solid.  For whatever reason we never really started riding her, we would pull her up and mess around with her for a day or two and then turn her back out.  I suppose because she was ours and any customer horses took precedence over her.  After all they were paying.  We called her Misty and Misty didn’t really get started good until she was about six.  Now Misty wasn’t a  big wild bronc by any means.  In fact, once we started riding her, you had to pedal for all you were worth to keep her moving.  I always said that she wore me out faster than walkin’.  Except for one time…

I had ridden her about 15-20 times, so I thought she was really going well.  With a little work you could lope her all over the pasture and even come in for a somewhat bouncy, jilted stop.  I’m sure I was a shadowridin’ son-of-a-gun!  I thought I was a he-wolf of a hand and the world had better get ready.

We always had four or five dogs and about the same amount of barn cats, so at some point every evening there was a commotion.  The cats seemed to be a little smarter (gulp, am I going to say this?) than the dogs because they never let themselves be caught out in the open.  Except once….

I was ridin’ ol’ Misty up close to the barn, admirin’ my shadow and how good things looked.  Why, I had the world by the tail.  There wasn’t a better hand than me, most anywhere.  As I rode along I heard the usual ruckus raised when they had gotten a cat on the run.  I was working on stopping and backing so we weren’t moving much.  I kept noticing that the ruckus with the dogs kept getting closer.  I finally looked up and all five dogs had a big orange tom cat on the run.  Now Tom had let himself get caught out in the open and was runnin’ like his tail was on fire as fast as he could for high ground.  And since there were no trees in the pasture, I noticed to my horror that Tom was headed straight for Misty and me, with the dogs in joyous pursuit about five feet behind him.  At about eight feet Tom jumped into the air and flew toward us. 

At that point, Misty noticed the ruckus.  Her head flew around toward the commotion, but even she was too slow for the blazing orange streak that was now airborne.  Tom landed with all claws out, one front and one back leg hooked into my fine Navajo saddle blanket, while the other front and back leg were desperately clawing to get a grip in what now appears to have been tender horse flesh.  Add in the fact the dogs were still in hot pursuit barking and howling like a pack of wild beasts, this was now too much for Misty to handle.

To put it mildly, we left the country.  We left the country like Satan was riding one of the hounds of hell and was swinging a lariat trying to drop a loop on us to brand and ear tag us.  She ran faster that I had ever experienced with her before, I really had no idea she was that fast.  Of course my friend was still attached to the saddle blanket, as cats sometimes get attached to things when their claws are out.  Tom was probably looking somewhat like a kite on a short string, squalling like a banshee; wanting nothing more than to be loose from the whole situation.  Also added to the mix was the wolf pack that was now very excited to be chasing not only a cat, but also a horse.  They were probably grinning like crazy thinking, “can this day get any better?!?!  What a great and wondrous day!” 

As we got toward the end of the pasture, Tom finally loosed himself from the saddle blanket.  I’m sure he had somewhat of a spill, but his welfare had ceased to be at the top of my priority list. The good news was that this distracted the wolf pack somewhat.  They immediately lit into the cat, he of course had landed on all fours (how do cats do that?) and immediately skedaddled up an electric pole.  The dogs appeared somewhat disappointed, but were glad to take up the chase again with the horse and I.  Misty and I were working on our second lap around the pasture and as we passed them, they heard the siren call of a running horse. They leaped into action to help slow us down, jumping in front of Misty right before we got the electric pole.

Technically, they did their job.  She jammed on the brakes and I did a pretty fair impression of Superman and yard darted into the midst of the wolf pack, which seemed to create a large amount of excitement in itself.  Looking at it from the dogs’ point of view, their master had dismounted to play with his faithful and brave ranch security team.  They were wagging, slobbering and licking all over, just excited that I would venture from my lofty position to mingle with them.  From my point of view, I wanted to kill all of them!

The mare trotted back to the barn and was waiting for me, only a little jittery.  She turned into a nice little mare and some people from Oklahoma bought her for their grandkids later on.  They were as happy as they could be, I’m just glad they did see the flying cat and ranch security episode.

Cow Pie Bombs

When we lived south of La Junta Colorado, my brother and I used to have wars where we threw things at each other.  Depending on the mood, sometimes it was rocks.  But most of the time it was of the horse apple / cow pie variety.  Mom and Dad thought we were gross little rascals, but I do think they thought this was funny…or maybe this was one of those deals that kept us from tearing up the house.  These wars ranged from the long range cow pie bomb, to the close range rapid fire of horse apples.  Just to clue you in, there is a trick to handling a cow pie bomb, to soft and you ended up with a handful of…well you know.  To hard and it just bounced off your target.  It had to be just right to get that “explosion” upon contact.  Sometimes I won, sometimes he won (the real loser was my Mom having to do the laundry).  Sometimes we got the neighbor boys over and it was a team sport, but it was all in good fun.  We were little boys that didn’t see the filth of what we were touching, we just saw the results of a good throw.

Sometimes I’m still like that little boy in a cow pie war.  Today I picked up something that I thought I put away.  In the past I messed around with it and enjoyed it; now, not so much.  But I still want to pick it up and mess around with it every once in a while.  The thing is, I know it’s not good for me.  I know that God has better things for me than this thing I keep picking back up, but still I pick it up.  I’m sorta like a dog with a bone, even after you take it away from me….I still want to pick it up and play with it.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m talking about sin.  God calls us as Christians to live a different life than the world, but we still want to dabble in what the world has to offer.  Sometimes we fiddle around even with the Holy Spirit screaming at us to run away, leave, vamoose, scam…just like Joseph ran away from Potiphar’s wife.  But is that what I do?  I can run away from those public sins, but the ones I hold in my heart are harder to run from.  Those are the ones that keep coming back for me to pick up and play with.  God gives us some pretty specific commands about our sin, in Deuteronomy 26:16-19

“Today the Lord your God has commanded you to obey these laws and teachings with all your heart and soul.  In response, you have agreed that the Lord will be your God, that you will obey all his laws and teachings, and that you will listen when he speaks to you.  Since you have agreed to obey the Lord, he has agreed that you will be his people and that you will belong to him, just as he promised. The Lord created all nations, but he will make you more famous than any of them, and you will receive more praise and honor. You will belong only to the Lord your God, just as he promised.”

So if I read this right, if we obey God’s commands with all our heart and soul, we will belong to God.  Jesus says something that is very similar to this in the New Testament, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and your entire mind.”  (Mathew 22:37).  So if we love the Lord, removing the sin from our lives should be pretty easy…right?  Coming to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ is not like a magic pill.  We still have the same sinful body that covets and desires the things we want.  Coming to know the saving grace of Christ means that we are not prisoners to that sin.  Philippians 4:13 says we “can do all things through Him who strengthens us”, this includes avoiding the evil desires of our hearts. 

The key is to listen and act when the Holy Spirit is telling you to run away.  Joseph didn’t just tell Potiphar’s wife no and still hang around the palace.  Joseph ran away, in fact he ran away so fast that she pulled his tunic right off of him as he ran out the door.  Joseph gives a pretty good example of resisting temptation; don’t just leave the situation….RUN AWAY from it!  Get as far away as you can.

I would like to say that I don’t struggle with sin, but the truth of the matter is I do.  This sin that I keep throwing away and then going back to dig it out of the trash is not pleasing to God.  I know this; it’s not a secret that this is bad for me.  I have sin in my heart that is constantly struggling for control.  Why is this you ask?  Because I let it!  God has given me the strength to leave it behind, but sometimes it’s not the devil.  Sometimes I just like my sin.

The good news is that once you belong to God.  Once you’ve accepted the Saving Grace of Christ.  Once you’ve accepted the fact the Jesus Christ suffered, bled and died to pay for your sins…then you have a chance to repent.  Does this give you a license to do and act any way you want and then get right on Sunday.  No, God calls us to act and live differently.  Will we stumble and fall (like I did today)?  Yes…no doubt.  But, we can repent.  We can pray for the faith and strength to resist the thorn in our sides.

Praise the Lord for a God of second chances!  It’d be pretty hard life if God only gave us one chance and then we were done.  Aren’t we all a little like King David, we stumble and fall, get back up and repent.  I find that I don’t stumble and fall near as often as I used to.  Those cow pie bombs don’t find their way into my hands as much anymore.

Eleven Year Old Brilliance

I don’t like winter; I think anything below 65 is freezing.   I have often contemplated moving further south, like to Mexico.  But my language skills have always been a barrier.  I know a few Spanish cuss words, but the balance of my espanol is pretty slim.  I suspect that I would probably get beat up if I moved down there and not even know why.  So I will stick to the gulf coast of Texas, where winters are a total of 20-30 cold days and the rest are pretty good.  Of course this is just my opinion, but then I’m doing the writing...so mine’s the only one that counts right now!

Now when I was a kid, growing up in southeastern Colorado, there was plenty of winter to go around.  There were weeks that we would be snowed in and could not get out of our driveway.  And being in the “kid” stage, snow was still fun.  Of course fun was defined as when we could do what we wanted to do and not what Dad wanted us to do.  So “fun” varied from day to day when there was snow on the ground.  Snow was fun when you sliding down a hill and not so much fun when you were holding wood for the chainsaw.  Of course, when you have snow you also have ice.  Ice is fun when you are sticking it down your sister’s neck.  It’s not much fun when you have to chop it out of a stock tank and therein lays the story…

My Dad was, as still is, full of good advice.  One of these pearls of wisdom was on the skill of chopping ice.  Whether you are chopping a hole in a pond or a stock tank, you always chop a bigger hole than you need and scoop the ice out.  The hole will freeze up smaller, so if it is bigger…it will stay open longer.  If you don’t fork out the chopped ice, it will freeze faster…thus your animals will not have anything to drink.  Looking back, this makes perfect sense.  As a young hon-yak, I tended to only do enough to keep me out of trouble and would take the least amount of time.  So I was always chopping a small hole in the ice.  After all the cows and horses noses weren’t more than eight, or so, inches around…right?  I never forked the broken ice out, any animal worth its salt, could push right through that ice…right?  I was a dumb little nut.

One day my brother and I were riding the scoop shovel down the hill by the hay meadow (isn’t that what any kid worth a flip would be doing?) and had been happily doing this for most of the day.  It had been my turn to chop the ice and I, being the unreliable little degenerate that I was, had only chopped a small hole in the ice.  I knew this would probably come back to bite me later, but there was sledding to be done and I wanted to do my fair share.  I always figured I could chop it out later in the day.  Ain’t that like a young cowboy…just living for the moment!

That particular day it had been way below freezing all day and Dad happened to check the tanks.  Wouldn’t you know it; there was no longer any hole in the ice.  He, being the stockman that he is, went ahead and fixed the problem.  Then he came looking for my brother and me.  I sure he was mad at us, me for not doing a complete job and Cully just for being associated with me.  When he found us we got a lecture and a job.  The lecture was on our responsibility as owners of animals and the job was because Dad wasn’t a big spanker.  I would have rather had the spanking because it over in a minute.  Dad punishments tended to last all day.  I think that day he had us start shoveling the driveway instead of waiting for the county to snow plow it open.  Of course, Cully “Guilt by Association” Johnson (my brother) was a little peeved at me.  The next day, Cully let me know pretty quickly that I was going to be the guy chopping ice since I threw him under the bull (so to speak). 

So, a little sullenly, I headed down to chop ice.  I knew that today, I had better do this right…I was pretty sure Dad would check up on me later.  Needless to say the ice was considerably thicker than yesterday.  But I had an ax, so I went to choppin’ with gusto.  After about two minutes I had a little tiny hole chopped out, not much bigger than the ax head.  I raised the ax up for what I know was going to be a mighty ice shattering swing.  As my downward swing started I noticed something was drastically wrong.  As I watched in horrified slow motion, that ax head slid off the end of the ax close to the bottom of the swing and slipped ever so gently into that miniscule hole in the ice.  Never to be seen again.  The next words out of my mouth were of the variety my uncle George had taught me and I won’t repeat them here.  I knew I was going to be in a mess of trouble and what happened next was right of the bible.  Some would say that I had a temper tantrum.  I prefer to think that, at that moment I was possessed by a demon.  I commence to hollering and cussing and flayin’ around shovels and buckets. 

Once the possession was over and I was somewhat returned to normal, I started trying to think my way out of the situation.  I knew that I was supposed to be paying attention to what I was doing, and I am now pretty sure that Dad would have understood what had happened, but then I wasn’t so sure about it.  At the time, I just understood that I was in a mess of trouble.  Part of any thinking process is thinking outside the box.  In a flash, I came up with a way to break the ice.  It was still pretty thick, so I figured I could just jump up and down until I heard it crack.  Then I could take the pitchfork, break it and fork the ice out.  Genius, huh?

So there I was, jumping up and down…on a frozen over stock tank.  I was carefully listening for that telltale crack.  But after five minutes, my patience had worn out.  I was just jumping.  I finally said enough is enough.  One final time I gave a mighty leap and with all of the weight a 60 pound boy can muster, slammed my feet into the ice.  The next moment I found myself up to my chest in icy cold water, standing in a hole that was just barely bigger around than my body.  I again was possessed by that demon, because not only my was my body standing in what amounted to a great big cup of ice, but my new high top boots (that I’d got for Christmas) were also in the water.  I started flailing around trying to get out, which didn’t amount to much more than waving my arms and hollering!  I couldn’t do much more than that because those little tiny holes I had been chopping were the only weak spot in the ice, and that was all that broke.  I could get no leverage to pull myself out, I was for all intent and purposes…trapped.  I knew eventually Dad would come down to check on me when I didn’t show up at the house by nightfall, but I figured by then I would be a Corysicle.  I was just hoping that I was yelling loud enough that someone would hear me.

Cully happened to be close enough to hear and came to see what had happened, and being the good big brother that he was….he fell to his knees laughing at me.  After the proper amount of brotherly laughter and teasing, which in my mind seemed about ten hours, I started to think that everything below my chest was about froze off.  Cully finally got enough composure to pull me out and let me tell you, I was dang cold!  My teeth were chattering like a machine gun and I couldn’t feel any of my lower regions, but then at that point I wasn’t even sure I still had lower regions.  Being the good big brother that he was, Cully was not about to get in trouble again.  He made sure we chopped and forked the ice out of the hole, he even insisted that we make the hole bigger.  Of course, when I say we…I mean he made me do it while he supervised.  I could only think about two things:

1.       It was cold and I was cold.  If you’ve ever wondered how cold a well diggers butt was, I probably could have told you that day.

2.      My new tall top boots were soaking wet and still full of water, I just knew they were ruint!

After he made me finish, I hot footed it up to the house (there’s an oxymoron, my feet were anything but hot).  I got to the house and realized I had a new problem.  The water in my brand new tall top boots had created suction and I could not get them off my feet.  I had all of my brother’s help I wanted for the day, so I was not about to ask him.  But I figured that if I could get the water out of the boots they would eventually come off.  I had remembered reading a John Erickson book where he had a similar problem, so in my eleven year old brilliance…I thought I would try that process.

I laid down on my back and put my feet in the air, thinking that the water would drain out and I could get my boots off to change clothes.  There is not an eleven year old in the world yet that understands the law of gravity and water flow.  I was no exception.  As I raised my legs that water came cascading down my legs and too late I realized where that water was headed.  I had just thought I was numb from standing in that stock tank, it turns out that I wasn’t all that frozen after all.  Now I won’t go into detail about where that ice water hit and the results of said ice water bath, but I think it goes unspoken (by most men anyway) that I had a reason to commence yelling again.  Mom came running out to see what had happened, and all she could do was laugh, what is it with my family?  Here I was I dire straits, with frozen nether regions and all they can do is laugh? 

On the plus side, she did help take my boots off and they were not ruined.  Once they had dried and I had warmed up a little, I headed back outside.  After all, wasn’t there some sledding to be done?  And what kid worth his salt wouldn’t be doing that on a snow day?

When I Wanted to be a Cowboy...or a Fire Truck

I last wrote about my Uncle George when I learned all thosenew words.  It probably wasn’t very long after that when I got to put some of those words in practice.  to give just a little background, my Dad and Grandpa had a dairy together when I was about five or six.  When it was springtime I was always pretty excited, after all here was a bunch of cows that were little boy sized.  I wanted to be cowboy like my dad…or a farmer, like my grandpa….or a fire truck…….sometimes I wanted to be Superman.

But I digress, this particular day I was wearing my cowboy hat.  Uncle George was heading out to doctor some Holstein calves and he was carrying a rope.  Now George was not a cowboy by any means, he wasn’t going to ride a horse and we drove to the pasture.  BUT, he was carrying a rope.  So I jumped all over the chance to go rope some calves.  Imagine my disappointment when he said I couldn’t bring my rope.  Was he not taking this aspiring young cowboy (that day anyway) seriously?  Did he not know that I had plans to be the next Phil Lyne?  Apparently he had no idea that Phil Lyne was the All-Around cowboy in the finals that year.  I wondered what he had been watching that year, the Hesston commercials?

Learning to Drive and New Words

My daughter, Alicia, is starting to want to drive.  As soon as we are headed out of town toward home, she starts asking.  “Can I drive?”  She is pretty relentless and other than the fact that it’s a little stressful, I cannot think of a reason not let her drive!  She is actually a pretty good driver, beings how she is our little dare devil.  Faith is not so quick to want to learn, but its coming.  It is a rite of passage with all kids, despite their parents’ wishes!

All this got me to thinking about when I started learning to drive.  When we lived in Loveland Colorado, my grandpa had a farm.  It was a pretty good definition of a family farm, my uncles worked on the farm right along with him (when they finished with any outside job they might have.).  When haying time came, a trailer was pulled out to the field and everyone either threw bales on the trailer or stacked.  My brother and I’s job was to drive the tractor while the adults stacked/threw hay.  We couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 years old, so we were scrawny little things.  My uncle George used to put the tractor in low and put one of us on, and away we would go.  Seems simple, doesn’t it?

Add to this story the fact if we wanted to stop, we didn’t have enough weight in our behinds to push the clutch down….or that the first few times we were scared to turn the steering wheel!  Oh the fear, that first time!  I remember I was excited and scared all at the same time!  My goal at the time was to be just like my hero...my Grandpa.  I was going to be a farmer when I grew up!  So every time I had a chance to get on a tractor, I jumped at it.  Of course at that age…opportunities were few and far between!  One of my favorite times was always haying time…..

What I Learned From Running Horses

When I was a kid, my Dad was a feedlot cowboy.  There are a lot of things about being a feedlot cowboy that, as a kid, I enjoyed.  Getting to cut school to go ride with Dad was pretty high on the list.  The downside, not so much for my Dad, but for others was the short employee life.  There is a joke about feedlot cowboys and Saint Peter:

One day Peter was at the golden gate, checking names in the book.  Making sure that everyone waiting in the line, was marked there.  Finally it was this old man’s turn, as he stepped up to that big ol’ desk…this cowboy came loping by.  He waived at Peter and just rode on through the gate.  Peter waived back and then turned back to the book, back to checking names.

Waiting in lines has an effect on people that generally isn’t too pleasant.  The ol’ man snapped, just a little.  He said, “Why does that cowboy get to just ride on by and all the rest of us have to wait in line?”

Peter looked up, surprised.  “Him, oh, he’s a feed lot cowboy”, then he looked down at the book again. 

The ol’ man was still a little miffed, “what has that got to do with anything?” 

Peter said, “Why stop him, he’s only going to be here 30 days anyway!”

 

Kind of a lame joke, but it’s a lot funnier if you’re a feedlot cowboy or a feedlot brat.

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All that is a prelude to a story that has nothing to do with any of that! Just a chance for me to tell a lame joke!  Read on!

Pride Goes Before Getting Pitched in the Dirt

I have always had buddies that were involved in rodeo and for a while I was too.  There are always stories about rodeo and probably anybody that has participated in it, has several…some they can share….some they’d better not!

Several years ago…about 25, to be exact, I got the chance to ride a bareback horse.  I thought this would be fairly easy, after all…I was a pretty fair hand at colt startin’.  I always liked ‘em best, back then, if those colts would buck…a lot.  So I thought ridin’ a bareback bronc couldn’t be a whole lot different.  I mean, after all, it just a buckin’ horse and instead of a saddle….you got that little suitcase handle to hold onto.  How hard could it be?  Heck, I was ridin’ a bull or two back then too….surely they were a whole lot harder to ride than a bareback horse.  I felt confident and almost over qualified to ride a bareback horse, so I thought I would give it a whirl!

Wrestlin’ a Super Ninja Tick

My parents were dorm parents at Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, just outside of Amarillo (only in Texas is 40 miles, “just outside of somewhere) and that’s where I graduated.  I wasn’t anything spectacular, just average.  In a class of 26, I think I was about 11^th or so.  I played football for a while, but I wasn’t much more than a scrub.  I was a six foot, 145 pound lineman…and a bad one at that. 

Boys’ Ranch, when I was there, did not do well in team sports.  Mostly due to the fact that most of the boys that were there spent a lot of their lives thinking of themselves….now don’t get me wrong.  For most of them, if they weren’t thinking of themselves….no one else was.  It was a form of defense.  All of this made team sports difficult, BUT wrestling!  That is where Boys Ranch tore it up!  They always had a good wrestling team.

I say all of this to tell a little story of my experience with a Super Ninja Tick.  There was a guy in my Dad’s dorm named Jammer (he was always getting into jams and you know how nicknames are…).  Now Jammer was probably 110 pounds soaking wet, but as I remember it he was a pretty decent wrestler.

Who's Got Your Back...

When I was kid, we had a mare named Fancy.  I don’t recall a lot about her, really not a whole lot more than her demise.  She had taken sick and was laid up by our barn in Higbee, Colorado.  Dad had asked my brother, Cully, and I to feed before it got dark.  Cully and I were a couple of irresponsible yahoos, so true to form…we did not do what we were told.  Needless to say, when Dad got home; he sent us down after dark to take care of the chores.  Chores like making sure this sick mare had a bucket of water close to her, milking the cow and feeding everything else.  Things that would have been a whole lot easier in the daylight.

In the Nine Mile Canyon, it didn’t just get dark.  It got daaaarrrrk, I’m talking not being able to see your hand in front of your face dark.  Darker than the inside of a cow, dark!  So when we got down to the barn, the dog started growling and made a couple of young boys, already nervous, just a little more nervous.  We tried to suck it up and go on down to the barn.  But the closer we got to the barn, the louder and stiffer legged the dog got.  Finally we could stand it no more, we made tracks back up to the house, running like the very hounds of hell were chasing us!

Legend of the Flowerdy Ghost

I had a request to tell this story from my sister and I said I would never tell it!  But, since my daughter asked for this story….I’ll tell it.  But, oh!  The mental scarring that will occur as I re-live this horrendous event in my life!  My life has been mis-shapen from this event and I don’t know if I will ever recover!  (HA!)

When I was growing up typically we did not get to do much of the Halloween thing for a couple of reasons:

1.      It cost money

2.     We lived a long way from town

Since it cost money to buy costumes, ours tended to be of the home made variety.  Normally we were cowboys (best costumes ever, right?), wore our hats and chaps, carried ropes and real live guns to school.  Heck, Dad would even take a black marker and draw some really cool looking mustaches on us (probably the only time in my life I was able to have a handlebar mustache on my face!) 

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!

Lessons from Chickens

When I was a kid and we lived in Higbee Colorado, there was a family that babysat us for one summer.  They were pretty rough and tumble, which fit in just fine for me and my brother and sister.  I won’t go into all the details (I have talked about that in a previous story), but I did learn some interesting things that summer.



A couple of them involved chickens.  Don’t jump to in conclusions here, it was pretty tame stuff.  The family in question probably had up to 200 free range chickens, give or take what the All Night Coyote Diner feasted on.  They were a great source of enjoyment to four wild boys that fancied themselves cowboys.  There were many an hour spent roping chickens.  For anyone reading this, you need to understand that roping chickens is much safer than roping geese!  As some point I will expound on that story, but the mental scars have yet to heal.



Anyway, we spent many hours improving our chicken roping skills and were actually quite good by mid-summer.  Needless to say, the chickens were a little skittish!  At one point there were no chickens laying eggs and we were banned from roping chickens.  Which led to about a week or so of moping around trying to think of something to rope….until my Dad showed us a couple of new tricks.



One of them had to do with catching and holding a chicken’s head on the ground and quickly drawing a straight line in front of their beak.  The goofy things would lay there for hours, staring down that line.  My Dad said he would drive in to pick us up and there would be 40-50 chickens laying on the ground staring down a line.  You would think that was a lot, but that was only 10 or so apiece.  That little trick was used for a couple of weeks, we used to see how many we could catch and hypnotize before the first one woke back up.  The other involved holding one and tucking their head under their wing.  I guess that had somewhat of the same effect.  Once you got them still, you could sit them on the ground and they would sit like that for hours.  Needless to say, we were easily entertained. This was probably some of the tamest things that we did that summer.  Who thought you could have so much fun hypnotizing chickens?



This leads to this thought:

Are we like those chickens in our Christian walk?  Dumbly staring down that line, leaving ourselves open to all kinds of attacks from satan?  Or are we studying and praying so that the devil doesn’t have a chance to grab us by the head and draw a line in front of us?  How about those of us who allow our heads to be tucked under our wings?  We don’t say anything to anybody about Christ; we just hide in the four walls of our church?  At different times I am both of these chickens.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring a lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

1 Peter 5:8-9

Brothers Are a Pain

This is a guest post from my Mom, Cathy Johnson.  Which goes to show that the Johnsons' were not the only crazy people,  the Dennee's were right there on the edge of crazy!  can you imagine being so angry at your brother/sister that you could get where this story went....oh wait....I've been there.

Enjoy the read, check Mom and Dad out.  They do a good job helping peope with horses, Mom just didn't used to be so good with her brothers!

Here's Mom:

Even though I look like a pretty easy person to get along with, when I was a kid, I was quite the bossy big sister.  I was the oldest one in a family of four younger boys.  I helped my mother with all my younger brothers as they came along and it was just second nature to me to think my brothers had to mind me. 

I had two brothers, close to me.  Billy, who was about 8, and Phillip, who was around 6.  Phillip was the pain in my “you know what”.  He and I were forever at it, and Billy would egg him on.  Our parents had a rule about fist fighting, but that didn't even slow us down when we got out behind the barn or behind the haystack.  We were a pretty uncivilized little tribe.

Are you Crazy?

These were the words of Felicia, my wife, when I sent her this picture.

Fireball in the Kitchen

In the tradition of rednecks everywhere, here is a guest post/story from my nephew Clay.   (he of Redneck Bobsled fame).  It seems all boys get into alot of trouble when left to thier own devices.  Kinda levels the world out, knowing that this is something that probably will never change.

It all started off as a normal summer day.  Tom, Will, Clint and I were looking for something to do.  We searched up and down for something to do… we even thought of ideas, but never went with them of course they all took too much effort.  So as we sat around in the heat.  We kind of had a past with fire and had been discipline prior to this but there was just one idea we couldn’t resist.

Redneck Bobsled

Before anyone can think that crazy thoughts and actions can only occur in an older generation, I give you my nephews.  Now I heard this story over a card game this summer and I just knew it had to be repeated.  I have asked them several times to write it down (ok, I was being a little lazy…thought I would just publish their words), but to no avail.  I have gotten a couple of excuses, the latest one being from the new college man Clint that he just does not have time!  Come on now, I went to college….there is plenty of time!  HA!  Clint is pretty focused and we are proud of him.  Clay has given me nothing, not a phone call or even one of those text thingy’s (proud of him too)!  So, they have to suffer through my bad memory and any embellishments I might want to add to this story of the redneck bobsled!

Stupid Kamikaze Birds – Flash’s Story

When I was a kid, we had a mare named Sonny Gill’s Flash, we called her Flash.  That was real original, except in the story behind the story the name fit!

Dad brought her home in a small two horse (home made) trailer.  The trailer didn’t have a top and, of course, all of the wind and lights was just too much for her to handle.  We hadn’t gotten very far when we hear a terrible ruckus from the trailer.  So Dad stopped and when he got to the back of the trailer, he found she had kicked the back door out!  What a start to life with the Johnsons!

How I Learned to Drink, Spit and Cuss

I learned to drink, spit and cuss from one family group, ok the spitting I can’t blame on anyone.  The first summer we lived in Higbee Colorado, we were babysat by a neighbor girl.  I say babysat, but that was a pretty loose term considering what we learned! 

Note to Self: Don’t Laugh at Mom

People will do strange things when they are scared or startled.  Things that are way out of ordinary for their personality, things that will make you shake your head….or in my case, duck!

I will start this with the statement that my parents were not abusive.  They believed in consequences’ for our actions (check out: I Yelled Ugly Names at Her the Whole Time), which in the case of young boys like my brother and I….usually included a spanking!  I only got one I didn’t deserve (check out:  The Only Spanking I Didn’t Deserve), but I think I more than made up for it by all the things I did get away with!

When we moved from the place on Highway 350, in La Junta Colorado, Dad had already gone on to a new job.  So, us kids and Mom packed everything and did most of the move.  There was whole lot of boxes and, in the spirit of moving, some crabby attitudes.  Now, I’ll be honest, I was pretty crabby about the whole move.  We were moving away from everyone I grew up with and I was not happy about that at all!  You know, those crazy/ mouthy teenage years…I always had some sort of back talk going and invariably, it got me into trouble.  We have always joked about the great American adventure…moving!  It draws families closer….yada, yada, yada!   As a family, we probably fought more when we were moving than at any other time…and that’s saying a lot (Cully and I were close to the same age and as we got into our teenage years, there were some epic fights…might have to write about some of those some time!)  This story is about a poor choice on my part.