I love this time of year particularly if the countryside is all green. We can quit feeding the cows and stockers, which sure slows down the expenses.
This time of year normally the temperatures are good. Oh, you are still going to have some ole guys complaining and happy to point out the negative. This morning one ole cowboy was reminding us we have no spring anymore that it goes from winter to summer. I wanted to tell him I hope he doesn’t get too hot going from the cafe to his easy chair at the house.
Where most of my land is at we are a little too far west in receiving a little rain, but not what most are getting at the center of the state. Perhaps we would have lived farther east, but my great-grandfather made a run in the Land Run trying to stake a claim on 160 acres of land. He found a piece of land and looked around at his new home to be. The next morning he was going to the place they would record it, but was awakened by two men with guns who said they were on the other side of the property. He knew that wasn’t true, but they were going to kill him if he didn’t let them have it. So here we live farther west, but happy to have what we got.
One of the guys who comes for breakfast every morning started working for the county. First, supervisors had him picking up twine on the roads. Then he got promoted to mowing and yes it’s a scary thought, but now he is on a grader. After two weeks of grading he said there’s not that much to it.
He said, “I just put it at a certain level and lean back and go.” We said, “If you are going to be a good grader don’t look back just put it in high gear and go. That’s what every successful grader does.”
One man told a grader several years ago, “You don’t need to do all that fancy stuff that makes bumps just blade my roads smooth.”
At the breakfast table this morning one cowboy said he was watching on television where a man was interviewing random people walking down the street of a big city. He asked them how many days are there in a year? And he said you can’t believe how many did not know. And since I felt I was the smartest cowboy at the table I said, “Wow how stupid can some people be everyone sure knows there are 425 days in a year.”
Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the view of High Plains Journal. Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman who grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
