January 17, 2010
Approximately the summer of 2006 I was visiting a mmusician friend, Tom who lived on his family’s ranch/farm not far from California’s capital. I lived a few towns over but we managed to hang every week at rehearsal as members of the same community band; he in the trumpet section, I still beating mmy brains out.
His dad and mom who were both in their late nineties were sitting on their old farmhouse front porch. The house was one of those old ornate Victorians still in really good shape because of an extenseive remodel a few years earlier. The paint was almost new looking and the structure itself looked straight and solid.
Tom was really proud of the outside detail as well as the insides and threatened a few times to invite mme in sighed to see it; for some reason and unfortunately, we never got to experience this together, nor did I do it alone; not like mme.
Tom and his two brothers with each of their wives and small families all lived in separate housing while mostly sharing the farm duties. As old family farms go, they too could do many of the mechanical things needed to keep up the large machinery. Their huge pole barn shops had every tool imaginable to do anything imaginable including making parts for anything needed on an immediate basis.
Those things always amazed mme when thinking how it used to be in the early days of very few repair gas stations as automobiles were first coming to light.
Most times when visiting, Tom would be in the shop for any number of reasons. He’d be fixing or working on or mostly inside of something that needed repair, oiling, upkeep or to just hanging while enjoying a beer in the shade of too hot.
All the brothers were geniuses with beer besides their other duties on ‘The Ranch.’ The ranch besides raising their own hay was sold to buyers around those parts. They also had a herd of cattle to raise and move from pasture to pasture in the never ending business of their ranch, hay sales and farming enter prize.
One night after rehearsal Tom, who is also a great poet asked mme if I’d like to witness their next branding exorcism of which I replied with a wide eyed yes. Being a city boy and although after living in South Dakota for five years still was enthralled with the idea of being around Blazing Saddles and City Slickers type of landscapes escapes, so of course I acquiesced; always with a camera in tow.
When living in South Dakota and helping to do different things on ranches wild living there I did have the opportunity to be involved in several ranch type things but nothing like this one. Needless to say after you read the following poem maybe you’ll imagine what was actually witnessed. Quite a day it was.
Strange as it seemed to mme to see and especially hear this particular hap in stance wild taking photographs and trying to keep out of the way; I took just a few photographs wild trying to keep out of the way; and I mean out of the way.
I’mm not your usual cowboy, go get ‘em, wrestle that steer or even hop on that horse kind of guy. I don’t even feel comfortable riding a horse on a mmerry go round let alone a live one; but I have on occasion until the last few mounts paid no attention to anything I had to say or do when last we met. I’mm no horsepoke.
Naturally it wasn’t sitting on top of their back and them below mmy butt wild trying to point them in the direction I was hoping to move. There was no way and no luck; they just didn’t pay attention to the rider trying to change their directions. I’ve heard of horse whisperer’s doing this very easily. That I tried.
OK, what’s the big deal I thought? No matter how long I tried this whispering thing, even when whispering over and over and over as in ,” Come on horsey, Come on horsey, Come ON horsey,” nothing worked; the thing stood still as a granite wall.
Unless it’s a small cat or a larger dog that I’ve known for a while, I’d just as soon keep a safe distance from something with bigger feet, heads and brains smaller than a walnut. This does not include living things smaller than a pony or a Great Dane thank you very much. Although I’ve lived in a house with two of those, they too may be in question. I’ve always wanted a pet pig though. No luck there.
In any case Tom thanks for the invite, the days of riding on your tractor through the waving haze of grain and especially for introducing mme to the finer points of castrating bulls, trimming their horns and cutting parts of their ears off for whatever reason that was I still don’t know; and didn’t ask. Maybe you told mme but I’d soon forget. What DID you do with those things anyway, eat them?
In whatever the jobs are in ranching I’mm one of those little persons compared to the dudes that were there that day. Most of those MEN were cowboy hat, full chaps wearing, tobacco chewing, big hands people two or three times mmy size.
Their familiarity with every job of the day seemed like it came natural to them although I think one of them was a bank teller during the week. The only person who sort of put mme to shame as I hid behind the camera at every turn was Toms son who looked like he was in the 5th grade and had no problems hanging.
It seemed a brutal necessity of requirements to keep everyone happy and healthy in order to sustain the common community of heifers as well as a lot of bull. MMined you I noticed each cattle of both genders, although electric prods were used, tried like hell to jump out of the shoot to freedom only to be caught at the last minute in the clutches of the next shoot that turned ‘em on their sighs for the final cut in their movie of transforming them from one gender to the other. Next?
I definitely could understand their position as they huffed, puffed, had bulging eyes, wild kickin’ and screamin’ and what have you, in not wanting to lose their pry’s possessions. I’mm not sure I’d be that calm during the same process.
The last part when their horns were cut with large what looked like pliers while the streaming spurts of blood shot out from their heads pretty much did it for mme as far as photography was concerned; not too mention losing part of their ears which after a while seemed like a pile of questions that none of them could answer when herd from dirt. By the way what happened to that bucket of balls?
The black tar on that make shift miniature broom rubbed in the movement of a windshield wiper and in the same spot where there once was something else as a replacement just didn’t seem the same; especially when after finally being scent on their weigh, most looked back at us with what definitely appeared to exclaim something like in the movement a human would do with one particular finger.
Not being a cattle person I wasn’t sure that in time they would get over this but I guess they did although I can’t imagine how. Maybe it had something to do with thinking of revenge at a later date; hence a trepidation to ride one of those things.
In any case thanks much for the experience. I’ve tried to put this out of mmy mmined every time offered anything resembling their consistency as food. These then were the impressions I herd from your cattle on:
The Trail’s Next Staged
The muscle’s amassed
The strength’s to hard
The prods or mauls
The hulks, stern guard’s
The pens - our tense
The wrest leapt, caged
The weight’s in store
The trail’s next staged
The ‘lectric prods
The climb out’s blocked
The sir cull’s iron
The gates hell rocked
The one bye, won
The next timed - pinned
The bar’d in shocked
The squeals, the din
The climb in crime
The brand read hot
The hef’ or bull
The creed’s the lot
The door is opened
The race for free
The path’s swift, broken
The clamps sentry
The to ear’s marked
The holes howl, trimmed
The blood spurt blows
The ground plies win
The horns not spared
The crimson’s gushed
The bull’s grid lock’s
The slide over’s crushed
The sac’s their pried
The face glows pissed
The battle’s cried
The agony twists
The neck blows, stiff’s
The bucket’s fill two’s
The needle pricks, kicks
The pine’s tarred, shoo’s
The health’s in sure’s
The rife goes on
The heard’s endure’s
This trail’s staged - gone.
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