Stories by my dad – Page 4

In Memory of My Dad #15

It was the kid’s first job as a pipefitter with the H.B. Zachery Company, he had just picked up his card in Amarillo, Texas and was now driving down to Lubbock where the big turnaround was to take place. A turnaround is where a plant is shut down for two or three weeks and a bunch of craftsmen come in to go completely through the plant fixing and overhauling the equipment. A turnaround was what the contract called for in the Exxon plant where they would be working. It’s usually hard work, 12 hour days, seven days a week, but the pay was high and so the money was good.

There was one older man on this job that the kid had hit it off with when he worked as a helper back in Borger, Texas and he was anxious to see the man once more. The man was in his 40’s; a great bear of a man, with a ruddy complexion and a huge red beard. He had a perpetual smile on his face and seemed about ready to break out in laughter at any minute. The man was well read; sort of an unemployable poet.

The kid used to follow him around trying to absorb all the knowledge the man had stored up over the years. He used to tell the kid, “don’t push so hard, just take things as they come and they will.” He and the kid were a good team.

The man had a small spread outside of Lubbock, a good-looking wife and a daughter that had just graduated from West Texas State up in Canyon who was home for a short visit before going off to Dallas or Houston to look for a job. The man wanted the kid to meet his daughter. He said they would cook some steaks out on the grill and quaff a few brews before the girl left to make her mark on the real world.

He and the kid took off one Sunday at noon because the man had a good working relationship with the boss and they drove to his ranch about ten miles outside of town. They arrived there at his door at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon because they stopped for a few games of eight-ball at the Moose Lodge.

The daughter was drop dead beautiful. She was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, and was built accordingly. She was a green-eyed, black-haired home wrecker that should have been wanted in three states for manslaughter, and she could also put the beer away like a grownup.

Somewhere during the long evening, a lot more Cervazas was bought and drank, so the kid and the beauty decided they would drive into Lubbock where Joe Ely was appearing at the Palamino Club.

The kid was afoot, and so the man insisted they take his new Chevrolet Caprice into town. He had just bought the ’66 Chevy and the only thing he was more proud of was his daughter.

It was unusually warm that evening, the moon hung there like a huge pumpkin in the bloodshot evening sky and the wind which usually growled over the plains was quiet as the kid headed down the highway, drunk on the beauty that clung to his arm (not to mention the cervezas).

The kid and the girl listened to all of Ely’s songs and the kid wasn’t ready for the night to end, when the beauty suggested they drive several miles up the highway to Lake MacKenzie and park there for a while.

The kid picked up a handy twelve pack and a square bottle of Jose Gold, and they began to partake of the liquid refreshment as soon as they cleared the city limits of Lubbock.

They parked there at the edge of the lake and did all the things that young lovers are supposed to do. Finally, they decided to take a walk, and the kid carried the square bottle with them.

When they returned to the car after trading tequila flavored kisses, the car was sitting down on its frame in a pool of quicksand on the small spit of land. The kid knew if he didn’t get help in retrieving the car soon, it would be history–he needed help and he needed it “post-haste”.

The tequila was having its effect on the dark-haired beauty by now, and she would have been worshipping at the porcelain altar if they would have had one, as it was, she just used the floorboard of her Daddy’s new Chevy. The kid had no choice but to walk to a farmer’s house they had passed a few miles back and ask for assistance.

It was by now about 4 o’clock in the morning, and had started to rain, one of the six times that year it occurred.

The farmer was really angry with this rain-soaked, bedraggled individual who stood on his doorstep that morning—but the code of the west wouldn’t let him say no. So he put on his rain gear and got on his tractor to try to pull the kid out.

The kid gingerly lifted the comatose beauty out of the way while the farmer was hooking the chain to the rear bumper. The farmer was in a real rage and was pulling the car out as fast as he could, the kid had one hand on the wheel and the other on the open door and was trying to see through the rainstorm when the door caught on a tree stump and jerked the bumper off at one end and slewing the car around until it came to rest in a ditch. The farmer then hooked the chain to the other bumper and gave it a mighty heave, tearing the bumper loose from its moorings on one end–but by golly, they had the car out and it still ran.

So here’s a new car with both bumpers dragging, the driver’s door torn halfway off, as the black-haired beauty hurled in the floor board and about a ton and a half of mud was tracked into the car by then.

The kid drove back to his room in the dismal swamp, the rooming house, and sent the sleepy beauty home with her father’s car.

The next morning the kid was sitting there reading the baseball box scores, when he heard what sounded like a D-9 caterpillar coming down the street. It had a horrible rending sound as the bumpers were scraping the pavement and throwing great gobs of blacktop up while shooting sparks. The screeching could be heard for miles.

The man could have wired the bumpers up, and he could have shut the door a little better. But he was bringing the wreck in to show what a jerk the kid was and to demand payment on the spot.

As the man pulled up to the front of the building, the kid could see him and the man was all but steaming.

The whole crew went out to see what had transpired the night before. So as they made their way in the front door, the kid was making his way out the back. The kid didn’t pick up his check, lunch box or tools. He had a ’59 Oldsmobile and the burning of rubber was the last thing anyone heard from him. The kid didn’t breathe easy until he reached Happy, Texas which was 200 miles to the north.

Happiness was Lubbock, Texas in his rearview mirror.

~R.L Briggs

In Memory of my Dad #14

Gremlins sit at my elbow, grinning inanely at me as I try to work. Try to be interesting and hold the reader by the hand, leading him or her through a myriad of words.

Sometimes I think writing a column is the hardest form of work there is. Certainly, it’s harder than laying pipe. It’s harder than working on a drilling rig. It’s even almost as hard as the stoop labor that the nurserymen do.

Believe me I know, having done the aforementioned things to earn my daily bread. Suddenly and without warning these small imps can evolve into full grown demons that make me want to do nothing except stare out the window at the trash bins.

Is that a fly I hear?

It’s early in the year for flies and I spent the whole of one day during the warmest days of late October ridding McClure Avenue of its sole remaining fly.

Yet that is the unmistakable drone of a fly. I try to ignore the droning, but this one has the sound of a Huey gunship. Loud and annoying.

I rise and stalk the fly. As usual it vanishes and cowers in silence. Just as I’m getting my thoughts back in some semblance of order, here comes the droning again. Still loud and annoying, and the gremlins are still lurking, keeping me from my work, so it went this fine, almost spring day in March, 1996.

I figured, what the heck? All God’s creatures need a break from each other “mas o meno”, so I’ll just take a little break from the invisible fly and go to the post office.

I notice two small grayish birds just outside my window, the bigger and more gaudy of the two, I surmise to be the male. The female has a small bit of feathery fluff in her beak. Some sort of soft flooring for the nest they are going to construct. I suppose that is what will happen, because the male of the species has a whole beak full of grass, twigs, and a brightly colored ribbon. I talk to the birds, you know, so I’ll just ask them what type of bird they are on the way to the post office.

The female seems to have the bit of feather stuck in the side of her beak. Hung in her eyeteeth, as it were. All she would have to do is put one of her tiny bird feet on the feather, rear her head back and she would be free of the bit of clinging fluff. The male, impatient to begin construction on the nest mutters under his breath, trying to hurry the female along.

False spring is the sort of weather we have been having. False spring is when it is unseasonably warm and then turns off cold once more. I think I heard that in an old John Wayne movie, The Shootist, or something like that. Do these birds then know something that the weathermen have not hit upon? It looks as if they do, because now they have elected to build their nest in a neighbor’s abandoned boat.

It is getting close to noon now, and the gremlins have field day in my head. I try to think of an idea that will fly (pun intended). I walk around the town trying to come up with an idea. Fathers, sons, mortgages, responsibilities, anything. But now the fly has returned droning louder than ever.

I sneak another quick peek at the birds. The female is taking her own sweet time about selecting a spot in the boat where they will build the nest, while her mate scolds and hops all around. I’m amazed at how the human aspect enters into this little drama, but right now I have trouble of my own and cannot stop to commiserate with the birds.

Besides there is no difference in their predicament. The female still has the bit of feathery fluff hanging from the corner of her beak, while the papa wren still carries the load of grass, twigs, and bright ribbon. The little imps that were once gremlins by now have grown into full-fledged demons, and the day is fading into eternity as I sit here and try to tap something out on the old Smith-Corona.

It has now been about five hours since I first started to observe the male and his ditzy mate with the feather hung in her beak. I see the tail feathers emerge from under the power trim section of the boat, and I’m glad that the male has finally began construction on the nest without his companion who can’t even get rid of a tiny fluff of feather.

But wait, that’s the female emerging from the recesses of the boat, her beak as clean as a whistle.

The male still hops around importantly with, you guessed it, a beak full of grass, twigs, and a bright bit of ribbon.

~Bob Briggs

In Memory of my Dad #13

I lost a good job with MapCo about 1985. I could have took to the road and hired out fitting pipe or some other form of construction work, but my family was in their formative years and I wanted to stay close to them as possible, so I took a job for a short time working cattle.

No, not the fat shorthorned beef cattle, or the lanky, terrain-toughened longhorn variety. But the placid milk cow. Well let me tell you they ain’t necessarily placid. These seemingly contented bovines are some of the most self-centered, greediest, cowardly, excitable slave drivers that God ever stuck a gut into. Most people that are owned by cows will agree with me.

Heaven knows that she should be contented because from the day she is calved until the day she becomes a McDonald’s burger, she is pampered. She is taken from her mother and hand fed a diet fit for a queen. As she grows into young cowhood she has no responsibility whatsoever.

And when that day comes for her to seek a mate, does she have to fight her way through hordes of other clinging females? She does not. She simply rolls her big brown eyes a few times, makes a few girlish capers around the cowpen and the owner runs to a telephone to arrange a quick marriage with the artificial inseminator.

She then spends her entire pregnancy living a life of leisure. She feels no pain. Loses no breakfasts. Makes no plans for a new bassinette. She just enjoys herself, and when her time comes she will have the assistance of a vet if the need arises.

Meanwhile, the dairyman has been enjoying no leisure at all. He has been feeding this bottomless pit endless bales of hay. Tons of silage garnished with the proper amounts of vitamins and sweetened with molasses. Making sure she has plenty of fresh water to drink, and on top of this, playing chambermaid to her every biological need.

While the man hustles endlessly for the cows comfort, she and her buddy, the milk inspector, neither of who has a dime invested in this operation, stand there with a smirk on their face.

The cow is completely greedy. She’ll go to any lengths to fill her multi-stomachs. You would think with all the stomachs she has to keep her going, she’d be happy. She will load up all of her stomachs to the point of bursting just in case there might not be another chance.

She will bawl to get out of the barn if she thinks there may be something edible out there. Then she will bawl to get back in the barn just in case she may have missed something in there.

This buxom thousand-pounder is the world’s biggest coward. A tiny heel fly will put her to flight. She may stampede just as you are about to pen her and her companions at the sound of a sneeze. And she will invariably put all her weight on your foot she accidentally stepped on. If you change clothes from your daily routine, it will throw her into a tizzy. A man who talks about the cows he owns is a dreamer. A realist knows that he is owned by the herd. Family activities are planned around the herd. When the man does get away for a breather, the herd decides how far he should go, when he is due back and is always a constant worry.

The cow is a master of feminine trickery, for instance when she becomes sick, she lowers her silky lashes, rolls her limpid eyes and gets a hump in her back that sends everyone in the house into a panic. What does she have? Hoof and mouth, the plague, cancer. No, probably just a good old-fashioned bellyache from overeating more than her share of fodder.

A cow generous, ha! She doesn’t give milk, it’s taken from her at great expense and a lot of labor. Can you imagine the labor it takes to hook up 100 milkers. Then you have to clean all the equipment and make sure it’s sterilized before doing it all over again that night. Placid? Never—again just plain lazy. All the textbooks tell you how much water a cow will drink. Sure she will, if it’s pumped for her. But let one of those bad blue northerners blow in, and if the stock tank is a fair walk away, then see how much she will drink.

She is a firm believer in the old-fashioned caste system–watch any herd of cattle and you’ll see one boss cow. A new addition to the herd is quickly put in her place. The cow is a born tyrant.

I’ve also heard that cows don’t really sleep. This doesn’t surprise me too much because she’s much too busy casing the joint for a weak spot in the fence so she can make her escape.

The milk cow is far from stupid though, she can even tell time. Case in point: when you are in a hurry, a cow will never accommodate you by coming to the milking barn on time just because there’s feed in there. She’ll dawdle at the far end of the field until you go and issue an engraved invitation in the form of a stick or a well placed rock.

Never make the mistake in thinking that all cows are the same. We’ve got glamour girls, introverts, extroverts, worry warts and motherly types. We’ve had airheads, screwballs, business women and career girls. But that would take another story.

In fact, instead of trying to tell you all I know about dairy cows, I think I’ll exact a small bit of revenge this morning. I’m going to McDonald’s for a Char-burger and a glass of milk.

~R.L. Briggs