memories – Page 4 – Angel Wheeler

In Memory of My Dad #19

If you are shading the wrong side of 50, you are one of the unheeded senior citizens and you can always make an escape to your own personal hideout to get away from the witchy world of today by going into your own kitchen.

Here among the rich smells of good food cooking, and the sight of bottles cooling, you can surround yourself with blessed peace. God Bless the American Kitchen.

We often revert to the things of our childhood to accomplish a task. A favorite tree with the branches just right for sitting and daydreaming, perhaps we may have made a beach-head underneath the hanging branches of a cedar tree. I can even remember digging holes to build an underground room so that we could get away from our parents or the preacher, or some other self-appointed guardian of our childish rights.

Today the aromatic and fun laden kitchen is the in-place to be.

The bombings, the train wrecks and the Republicans fighting it out in New Hampshire fade into insignificance when you unpack the latest gadget for your kitchen; the coffee bean grinder. It will grind coffee beans coarse or fine, with several settings in between. It was to be a gift for my daughter at Christmas but someway I ended up with the thing. Now I must find a place for it. This is not easy when your supposedly neat kitchen is already cluttered with coffee maker, automatic can opener, you sure can’t discard the ice bucket and the lasagna pans. So where do we put this newest gadget? We push the toaster aside making room for it and put it near the bread holder. However, it’s nice knowing you are the gadget king of the county.

These specialty catalogues that will mail you anything from Christmas cookies to salmon and fresh steaks, will fill your every need in the culinary closet. In our kitchen, we have not one but two spaghetti combs. How did the Romans build the coliseum and the Parthenon without ever inventing the spaghetti comb? The reason would baffle the ancient scholars. As a mess of spaghetti rolls and boils, the spaghetti comb is used to straighten the whole mess out until it looks as smooth as one of the Breck girls’ hair on the back page of Good Housekeeping magazine.

There is one item that I feel I should warn you about, and that is whiskey marmalade. The ad asks: “Do you have the blahs each morning? Then have some whiskey marmalade with your English muffin. It will put zip into your life. Made from 80 proof Dewar’s Scotch whiskey.”

Now as you drive to work a man in uniform pulls along side and motions you to pull over out of the 65 MPH lane. He will get out with a toy balloon and tell you to blow it up. You can say severely, “When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away my childish things.” Then drive on and leave the trooper standing there with a toy balloon in one hand, as he scratches his head with the other wondering, what happened? But I digress from my original theme, the kitchen.

Todays kitchen is a blessed retreat for those who wish to withdraw from the hurry-hurry of today’s world that is rushing by so fast. You can sit beside the kitchen stove, watch the early morning sunrise and listen to a pot of wild plum jelly happily bubbling away on the front burner while you drink that third cup of coffee. You can think back to your first presidential election when you first became eligible to vote. You voted for LBJ because he said he didn’t want American boys fighting a war that Asian boys ought to be fighting, and you didn’t hanker to go to Vietnam. But LBJ kept us into a shooting war with North Vietnam, to make the world safe for democracy. But, that’s neither here nor there, and the wild plum jelly is about ready to be put into glass jars and capped with a seal of melted wax.

The only thing that ever came easy for me in securing food for a growing family was the gathering of wild plums. They grow and hang in great clusters like grapes and you can take a machete and a couple of cardboard boxes and gather enough in five minutes that will make enough plum jelly for everyone from Eldon to Welling.

Now it is quiet and the kitchen is all mine as I listen to the purling and boiling of the plums, I can remember other days and other ways.

I can see an older man ramrod straight and dressed in greasy buckskins bent over a small cooking fire. He is turning bacon in a heavy cast iron skillet as his horse, a grulla dun crops grass in the background. His keen blue eyes never look directly into the fire, but the man isn’t too worried because the dun horse would have given a signal if anyone had approached, and he is grazing contentedly.

He has three cooking tools at his disposal, a long-handled fork, a heavy spoon and a skinning knife that has done double duty when the buffalo were plentiful. His name is not important, but he could be one of your ancestors, or mine. He is a scout, guide, ranger or perhaps now he rides on the opposite side of the law. Nevertheless he has led an adventuresome life with the trio of culinary tools and a coffee pot and the heavy iron skillet.

The coffee pot is rusting now in one of his many campsites, the fork and spoon just a memory, but on my kitchen wall, handy to the stove, hangs an iron skillet much the same as the one he cooked his countless meals in, fireblackened and about twelve inches across.

And that reminds me, the bacon is in the pan and store-bought biscuits in the oven, it’s breakfast time once more.

written by R.L. Briggs

Nostalgia

A drive down Highway 10 will snake you through beautiful Green Country. Past trees and hills and green galore. A very different view than the flat, yellow, arid, blowing, dusty pasture grasses that I gaze upon each morning from my kitchen window.

A drive down Highway 10 will snake you past Lover’s Leap, Kooter’s Bar & Grill, and several canoe rentals.

peyton's place cabin #1 (2) — mom, me, and jolea at Peyton's Place---Cabin #1

Until you finally arrive at Cabin #1 where I spent my childhood summers.

Where I learned to dig deep and find the best skipping stones and try to outskip my dad. I failed. Every time.

Where I itched with Poison Sumac every year and walked around pink skinned, not from the sun, but instead from the Calamine Lotion caked on my body.

Where I tasted my first fear of water when the swift rapids unexpectedly carried me farther than I expected or dared to venture.

This past Memorial Day, I took a nostalgic drive down Highway 10 and found things much the same, yet much different.

The peacocks who enchanted me with their outspread plumage were no longer swaggering about.

The sliding glass door on Cabin #1 was replaced with a regular fiberglass door and the choice of paint colors no longer made the cabin “rustic”.

The place where we swam was the same, and it was almost peaceful, if not for the annoying college-aged drunks loitering about being much too loud and immodest.

But for a moment, I tuned them out. I stood on the rocky bank of the Illinois River and closed my eyes. And I remembered.

me and jolea — Me and my sister Jolea. Circa late 1970's.

I remembered summers long gone, but not forgotten. A family in tact before divorce and then death separated. I remembered a happy childhood. Loving parents. Carefree moments. And catching fireflies in a jar. I said good-bye.

Then I walked to my car and drove home.

In Memory of My Dad #17

Being Santa Claus Isn’t Always Easy, Unless You Believe
by R.L. Briggs
Commentary

Speaking from past experience, one of the best things that can happen when you are playing Santa Claus is to get those baggy pants off, the whiskers out of your mouth and those phony bootees off your shoes.

Nobody helps. Everyone else is too busy tearing open Christmas packages, strewing tissue paper and colored wrappings around the Christmas tree. Santa struggles on unaided.

He wrenches rib muscles, gets charlie horses, he spits angel hair from his beard, sweats and swears, he wrestles himself from the bright red Santa suit like Jacob and the Archangel. He is accompanied by cries of delight from the recipients of all this Christmas loot who have left him to this fate.

Believe me, I know.

If you think it is any fun to prance around like an overstuffed laundry bag, being JOLLY while giving out with the HO, HO, HO’s, with a mouth full of artificial whiskers in a home-made snow storm breathing in cedar pollen, then you have another think coming.

The thing for you to do is volunteer this Christmas, I can book you solid and write your material for you.

“Have you been a good little girl? Heh, heh, heh.” What an approach.

And yet when we get right down to it, Santa Claus is the only surviving relic of a time gone by, when we all believed that the better we were, the greater our rewards would be.

Santa Claus never needs to be modernized, Santa Claus needs to be unchanging. He needs to wear the baggy pants that are always in danger of falling down, he needs the long white beard that is always getting into his mouth, he needs to give out the jolly HO, HO, HO to every fresh faced, smiling child that he holds on his lap. Of course a bag full of presents goes without saying.

Once in years past I took over for a friend who played Santa every year for a bunch of neighborhood kids and had fallen ill just about the 24th of December.

One of the ladies had rented a Santa Claus costume that would have fit Doc Holliday, if Holliday would have went for such foolishness as dressing up as an overweight Christmas cherub and spitting out Ho, Ho, HO’s to a gang of neighborhood kids. The costume was put together with rubber bands, no buttons, no zippers, no fasteners of any kind.

I put the costume on and retreated to a bathroom. Through the halfway opened door I could hear one of the neighborhood ladies telling the children that the happiest people in the world are the ones that didn’t have anything. That bothered me because I had a whole bag of presents to give out to the children.

I had began to sweat because I had put the costume on too soon, and I had to wait many minutes while the children sang a few carols. Outside, a blizzard was blowing, but inside the central heat was going full blast.

The Santa mask didn’t fit, one of the eyeholes kept slipping down so all I could see was the bathroom floor and a view of my pseudo Santa boots.

When the lady chairperson came to summon me, I was trying to hoist the red trousers to a more respectable altitude, and the wide black patent leather belt had become entangled with the flushing mechanism on the commode. In the excitement of the moment I grabbed the wrong bag and was about to distribute a bag of dirty laundry instead of the presents.

But, like a true champion, I emerged from the bathroom emitting a series of HO, HO, HO’s and have you been a good little boy/girl, when my own personal Wranglers I was wearing under the Santa suit and which I wore for safety sake, let go and split right down the middle.

When this ordeal was over I retreated to the bathroom and clambered from the costume as best and as fast as I could. I was remembering back to the time when there was only one Santa Claus. He wasn’t on every street corner as he is today. He came to Briggs, Oklahoma and we were all glad to see him. Young and old alike, it made no difference if sometimes he left more than he did at others. he was the one and only.

And I don’t remember him bouncing around saying HO, HO, HO. Maybe that was the time when Christmas came out of the Bible, and we all believed.

In Memory of my Dad #16

The laziness of summer causes my days to run together, but then I remembered today is Saturday, which means a story from Bob.

Tear Gas Didn’t Go Over at Sonny’s Soul Kitchen That Night
R.L. Briggs

Though the details on your arrival are a bit fuzzy, the terrain is not all that unfamiliar, so you are not that surprised to find yourself in a place called Sonny’s Soul Kitchen at 3 a.m.

The day has turned to night for the second time in a row, a flashing kaleidoscope of color that makes two a.m. become six a.m. somewhere in your sodden mind. But you are not ready to admit that you have crossed the line, so you order another Cuba Libre and case the joint for the companion that brought you to this place.

Sonny’s Soul Kitchen usually serves good barbecue and pretty decent soul food up until midnight, but it is past that time now. Instead of the band, a little three-piece combo is cooking to the strains of “Crawlin’ Kingsnake.” The blues fill the air as the tenor sax overrides the down home beat of the bass guitar. The raw feeling of pain in the singer’s voice seems to reverberate through you. You listen intently, lost in a world of your own.

A small wizened man in a too big shirt covered with red parrots comes in with a wash tub and a piece of baling twine attached to it and a mop handle on the other end and sets up with the band. He starts to beat out a double bass rhythm keeping excellent time. “That’s Duhon,” said the bartender. “Some nights he sits in with the band.”

Yours was one of the few white faces in attendance this morning, everywhere you looked there were black faces from the almost blue-black blend to the straight aquiline noses of the red American Indian. Smiling, sweaty faces that gave a glimpse of gold whenever they laughed or told one of their many jokes. The joint was definitely jumping.

The dancing was getting wilder now, none of this two-stepping, fox-trotting business either. There was a rhythm to the music now, it was getting jerkier, more lust driven. Short cries and loud shouts accompanied the dancers as they vied for more room, more attention on the dance floor. I felt a deep driving urge to join in with the dancers, but by now my tongue felt like an iguana had been using it for a chew toy, so I told the bartender “more rum and ice, heavy on the ice.”

I had come in here with Stone. Stone and I try not to see each other as much as we would like because we bring out the worst in the other. He plays Jekyll to my Hyde. Or Neal Cassidy to my Jack Kerouac–it just depends on who you believe. Stone is the kind of man who would be in a place like this at this hour of the morning.

His mission in life is to have as much fun as possible in as little time as possible. Stone’s only fear is that they may be having more fun at the place we just left or the place we are heading to.

The impromptu thrill that you felt when he showed up at your place with Lynyrd Skynyrd blasting from the stereo was beginning to wear a little thin.

A platinum blonde is dancing wildly with a neat little black man wearing a bright red shirt that reminded me of Patrice Lumumba. He is doing an involved dance step while the blonde held her arms akimbo like a hula dancer, an intense look of concentration on her face. Hbbbbber body jerked back and forth to the conga rhythm, now and then she would spin, her plaid skirt flaring out full around her like a colorful fan.

I raised my glass to them in a silent salute, and decided it was time to join the dancers. I asked another pale face if she wanted to dance and she looked at me as if I had spiders nesting in my hair. She turned me down flat and went to dancing with a spade bearded man. I stood alone in the middle of the dance floor and thought about the tear gas canister that was hidden under the front seat.

I had bought the grenade shaped tear gas bomb in a Army-Navy store in Oklahoma City the week before. I’d remembered Stone asking me something about Beirut when he saw the small bomb, I’d laughed and told him to expect the unexpected.

The dancing had reached a high in debauchery as I came back inside with the tear gas bomb. The sax screamed and the drums beat out a harrowing rhythm as the crowd yelled and groaned their delight, I thought the old building would cave in under all the noise and shouting.

I made a pass around the crowded room sounding like a leaky tire as I held the handle down on the bomb. Fog followed me as I made my way to the front door. I’d planned on getting back to Stone’s pick-up where I could witness the exodus undisturbed.

I got outside just in time to witness Stone’s tail lights as he made the far corner of the block. By now people were boiling out of the place, it was every man for himself as the caustic gas began to take hold.

I got whipped like a rented mule that night. I had no place to run and I felt my nose crunch as the first of several blows caught me right on the button.

My lips felt like two pieces of chopped liver, and I couldn’t see out of one of my eyes. Somewhere in the melee one of my tennis shoes was ripped from my feet and thrown at my head.

I was never so glad to see anyone as the bartender in my life. “Big boy, it’s time for you to go,” he said laughing quietly. I stumbled off down the dirt street telling myself that I’d had a good time no matter what had happened.

I gave a growling German Shepherd a big right-of-way as the early morning sunlight hit my one good eye like a mother’s wrath.

I heard what sounded like a young voice humming Brahms’ “Lullaby” in the distance.

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

Memorial Day

The flags were flying high and proud at Ft. Gibson National Cemetary this past Monday.

I took a solitary road trip to visit my dad’s grave.

This trip was a journey of healing for me.

Not complete healing, only partial. But I’ll take partial.

My dad’s death hasn’t seemed real to me. He lived in another town and although we facebooked regularly, we only saw each other about every 4-6 months. He would call me up or send a message saying “I’ll be out that way about Tuesday.” Just out of the blue like that. Whenever he’d take the notion. I’ve been expecting to hear from him anyday now.

Driving into the cemetery, searching for section 24, site 146 and seeing his gravestone made it real for me. Realizing that I would be driving into his town, see the stores, see the family, see the memories but not see him, made it real for me. Not feeling his hug and his sloppy kiss on my cheek made it real for me.

Whenever we’d leave town, he’d stand on the porch on Cedar Street, lean on the railing and wave us good-bye for as long as we could see him. That too didn’t happen this trip. It won’t ever happen again.

It was good for me to face it all. A tiny piece of my broken heart was sewn together this past weekend. And as time passes, more stitches will be added. The void won’t be so vast. The hole won’t feel so empty.

The stages of grief are:

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

Today, I accept it.

Tomorrow may be a different story.

But today I’m okay.

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

In Memory of My Dad #12–When the goings got tough, the tough went over the hill

When my wife, Anne, used to come home and find me gone, one of the children would say, “Dad has gone over the hill again.” That would mean things at home had become a trifle thick and I’d walked out on the family once more.

No, I don’t mean walked out for good, but I’m impatient taking care of small children. Believe me, mine were a handful; yelling, laughing, and running all over the place. I would become exasperated with the young ‘uns and at times I would blow-up for no reason at all. Then I would remember something from the Scriptures; “Provoke not your children to wrath.” That’s when I would know that it was time to go over the hill.

Over the hill is where the yellow wild flowers grow in great abundance, looking as if some demented artist splashed great slashes of yellow paint everywhere. When my girl Angel was a baby, she picked a big handful of the blossoms. Joley taught her to say “Happy Easter” and her flowers graced the table that Easter Sunday. The Easter ham never tasted better.

Over the hill lies a pond where the fat, old bullfrogs croak and harrumph the night away. Once a neighbor gathered a gallon bucket of frog legs there in less than an hour and the antics that the frogs made when Stan or Steve, both sharks in the local Little League, would throw a rock in their midst, it would seem to rain frogs everywhere.

The hill would slope gently down to where a wet weather creek bubbles and gurgles happily before joining Red Deer creek. The creek is forbidden to the girls who are barely out of the toddler stage. But I find the remnants of a small dam and I wonder what kind of skullduggery the boys have been up to down here.

One hill leads to another and that hill is covered with Indian Paintbrushes. The Indian Paintbrush to me is the most beautiful of all the wildflowers in the world. Beyond that is another hill where you can’t walk without crushing the State flower of Texas, the wild Bluebonnet. Bluebonnet Hill at that time was soon to be leveled to make room for a 4 lane bypass around Pampa, Texas, so me and my kids used to gather a handful of the bluebonnets and transplant them in a grove of mesquite bushes not far from the hill. I hope we were successful in the removal of the wild flowers. But that has given over to time now and the flowers probably won’t grow where they were transplanted.

The mesquite grove also provided us with the aromatic wood that we would use for cooking out. There is no better taste anywhere in God’s great garden than mesquite flavored steaks or chops, and if it was a few days after payday the aroma of hot dogs could be smelled throughout the neighborhood.

I might as well walk a bit farther to where the black Angus and the Hereford cattle make their home. Maybe I’ll even inspect the water gaps, making sure they are still sturdy. I remember once during a summer of not much rain, when the owner of this property offered to cut the water gaps out so that the neighbor’s cattle would have a place to come to water in this spring fed watering hole. Yes, I remember that drought and the neighbor’s kind offer.

Circling back toward the house I see the black Angus, like a small boy’s playthings, on a hill not so far away, the cows ignore me but the calves approach me cautiously. I don’t bother them and soon they rejoin their mothers.

Now I have come full circle and here is my household still needing me, I hope fervently. Angel throws herself against my legs wanting to be picked up and carried, Joley’s bright brown eyes welcome me home while she talks a mile a minute. Stan and Steve rough house each other around the front yard, Stan laughing so hard at Steve’s ineffectual pummeling that his own defenses are almost nil.

These are my kids, how could I have been so annoyed with them only a short time before.

My wife asks, “Where have you been?”

“Over the hill,” I reply, knowing that things are going to be all right once again in the Briggs’ house.

~R.L. Briggs

In Memory of My Dad #10

written by Bob Briggs

I recently motored out to West Texas for the holidays. I saw a bunch of old friends and made more than a few parties while visiting there on the Golden Spread.

One of the old friends I saw was Dave. Dave was an old water well man and moon player, par excellence. The only trouble was that you couldn’t tell which was his vocation and which was his avocation.

I used to work for the guy, so I had more than a working relationship with the guy when he had a moon hand in front of him. I think that Coy, a half mad guitar player is finally coming around to my way of thinking, after losing hundreds of dollars over the years to Dave.

When you live in West Texas, you’re a long way from big-city life. If not in miles, then in a state of mind. One day during a lull in the moon playing, Dave related this story to me.

It seems that years ago, when dinosaurs still ruled the earth, Dave was a pretty good cowboy. But that was in the years when Dave was a lot younger. Before he traded his string of rough stock for the spanner wrench and shop hammer.

Old habits die hard, so when Dave gets all shined up to go somewhere, be it a country dance or a neighbor’s barbecue, he still dresses western. Big Hat. Lace up roper boot (cause they’re easier on the feet.) Trophy buckle from one of those “punkin rollins”. Like I say, Dave used to be a pretty classy cowboy.

Dave went to the Veterans Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico last summer to have RK surgery done on his good eye. Dave only has one eye, so how he was going to get back to Pampa never entered his mind, seeing as how his roommate and best pal Nancy stayed home to work the first shift at Sandy’s Bar.

The first shift runs from around eight in the morning until one or two in the afternoon, due to the influx of shift workers that come in for an early morning beer. Eight a.m. is early evening for many of the Celanese, Cabot, Ingersol Rand or MapCo workers there in the Panhandle of Texas. Things tend to get pretty lively in the saloons about noon, especially if some fo the pulling unit hands are off that day and decide to spend the day shooting pool instead of mowing the lawn or some other honey-do chore.

Anyway Dave stayed there at the VA hospital for three days, when for lack of a better word, they unwrapped his eyeball. Things were still pretty fuzzy from Dave’s side of the eyeball, so they decided that he should stay for the weekend.

Dave had a great-nephew stationed at Ft. Collins, Colorado. So Dave got the doctor’s permission to fly up and see him that weekend. “It was one of those little puddle jumpin’ airplanes,” recalled Dave. So the first stop was in Colorado Springs, where the passengers had a twenty-minute layover. So Dave got himself a carton of chocolate milk and a six-pack of Fig Newtons for a snack.

Dave then went to sit at a table already occupied by a businessman dressed just like Tom Bosley, reading a Wall Street Journal through a little pair of half glasses perched on the end of this nose. Dave took little notice of the peculiar look that Tom gave him as he opened the Fig Newtons and scarfed one down.

Tom immediately reached over and got one of the cookies for himself. Dave didn’t say anything, just thought, “strange custom” and went about eyeballing the fellow travelers as best that he could with the bum eye.

Dave then ate another Fig Newton this time noticing that Tom all but snarled as he quickly put another Fig Newton in his gaping maw. “Must be some sort of practice that we don’t do down on the plains,” thought Dave eating the third of the Fig Newtons and pushing the remaining one across the table to Tom who was glaring openly at Dave now. Tom took the third of the Fig Newtons and walked away all the time muttering to himself.

“Well hell”, thought Dave, “no one in Pampa would think of eating one of your Fig Newtons without asking, and never without saying thanks.”

Dave shrugged his shoulders and made his way to where they were boarding the plane.

As he felt in his inner coat pocket for his ticket, Dave found an unopened six-pack of Fig Newtons.