Jim's Lunch

Terry

My older brother Jim was working on the ranch, he was about six miles from the house out in the summer pasture using a John Deere cat building a dam for a reservoir for the cattle to water.

       My younger brother Ken who was about five years old and I was about seven were playing outside around the house. Mom called us in and said Jim had forgot to take his lunch with him, she told Ken and I to take his lunch to him. So being the obedient children we were we said ok.

       We had to walk the five or six miles to the reservoir where Jim was working, I think there was a brown paper bag that his lunch was in. Well after we had walked about three miles we thought we could drink some of the Koolaid that mom had put in a quart jar and Jim would never know, so we each took a couple drinks and then we realized we were hungry also. We took a sandwich and shared it.

      Well by the time we walked to the reservoir we had eaten all of Jim's lunch and drank all of the koolaid, I don't even remember what Jim said when we got there but I'm sure he was not very happy.

Pictures Not Taken

Pat 

The pictures that were never taken are the ones that come to mind when I am remembering the Lewis Ranch. I wish I had photos to show you the royal purples and golds of a field of wild iris and dandelions so thick you couldn't step without crushing more than one. 

A photo of the kitchen stove and table, both in the first house and the second one, would be wonderful. You could see how big and inviting and worn the old table was and how the Majestic stove lived up to its name. Maybe you could see a pan of biscuits to the side and a pan of gravy and one of deer steak.

Or a picture of the attic where all of us kids slept. If that picture had been taken, you would have seen beds full of kids, huddled against the cold, with their feet pressed against heated rocks. You might see snow settling on top of heavy quilts and the frost on the nails in the floor.

There were pictures we never took of ball games on the diamond in front of the houses, of the old outhouse, the woodshed/coalshed/chicken house, the new fancy turnstyle type of gate they built for the fences around the houses and the floor to ceiling bookcase Daddy built for Mom. 

Those pictures - the ones that never got taken - should make us think to take them in our lives right now. You never know when you might want to look at them again.,

Corinna

Imagine my amusement at this quote from the Washington (state) Trails Association:

"Enjoy starlight like you’ve never seen it before. The satisfaction of cooking a delicious meal 20 miles from the nearest supermarket. Waking up to the sounds of hermit thrushes echoing among the cedars."

The cedar trees were actually cottonwoods, and it was usually a huge flock of blackbirds that woke me up...but I went to sleep with the gentle clop, clop, clopping of shod horse hooves echoing through the little valley oasis created by the irrigation water in the ancient flood plain meadows nearest the ranch houses. I'll never forget that sound. And bull frogs. Giant bull frogs. Probably grew so large because they ate the equally giant mosquitoes, despite the aerial mosquito spraying done every spring. Some good that did.

A large portion of my childhood and many of my cousins as well was spent eating delicious meals 20+ miles from the nearest grocery store....with food grown in our "back yard" i.e. the ranch my grandma and grandpa worked on as permanent hands. Every single one of their kids worked on it at one time or another. I worked a couple summers there too if you can count making lunches for hired hands, cleaning the bunkhouse and cleaning the ranch boss' house.

But I am that strange oldest child (of 8 sibling's) oldest child whose youngest uncle was only 7 years older. My first memories are of the ranch, lived there my til I was nearly 6, spent every weekend I could there, and spent entire summers there until grandpa got too sick to live that far out of town (in my mid teens).

As kids we ran pretty much free on literally hectares of land. We ate foraged foods like dandelion greens, wild onions, current berries--Grandma's current berry jelly, what I'd do for some of that, and I'll never forget the time the boys tried to make dandelion wine! And wild food like deer, elk, antelope, rainbow trout, jack rabbits, and of course the ranch staples of beef, chicken, eggs, veges, unhomogenized and unpasteurized milk and milk products--what risk takers we are!

Lets be real. The true risks were the gophers and rattle snakes; getting thrown because your horse shied from what might have been a rattle snake, but just as likely was a gopher, or having your horse step in a gopher hole and break it's leg. All the years I spent out there I never saw a rattle snake. Getting gored by a large, angry bull was a much more likely event, if you were stupid enough to get in the same pen as he. Or kicked in the head by a calf during branding season, or falling in the river when it was flooded, or through the rickety old barn loft floor. I wasn't allowed up there but I'm told most of my aunts and uncles jumped from the loft to the ground. Pretty sure I would have never tried that. o.O Getting lost? Never. The Rocky Mountains were to the west, with Jelm mountain being the most distintive mountain of the bunch, having a solar observatory perched atop its apex. Of course we knew the entire Rocky Mountain profile and thus knew which direction we were headed by looking at them. If you're really confused, Red Mountain was to the south--a day's ride on horseback. You're not gonna get that far walking on your own two feet in a day. Should you or your horse step in a gopher hole and break your leg, prickly pear cactus can be eaten and will provide enough nourishment and fluid to keep moving towards home.

As good as I had it, my mom Pat Veretto, and her siblings Ken Pantier, Charles Pantier, Jim Pantier (RIP '68 Vietnam) Beverly Browitt, Rick Pantier, Terry Pantier, his wife Judy Pantier, Mark Pantier, spent their entire childhood and some of them a good portion of their adulthoods as well living in that place in that way. Nothing in this life is forever.

But I guarantee you stars shine brighter when you're higher and dryer. The University of Wyoming has an observatory on the top of Jelm mountain. It was put up in the mid 1970's so to me its like it's always been there. We could see the sun glint off it's shiny steel dome from Lewis Road which led to the old ranch houses. The google map shows the first elementary school I went to, (Harmony) it's located a few miles north of the old ranch houses. The unimpressive looking mountain is Jelm, the summit is something like 9000'+. Of more interest to me is the fact that there is a medicine wheel located not far from the observatory which, if I ever saw it I don't remember it, and I might never get to see it again due to the fact that it might already be ruined by rogue 4x4ing. >:(

Amazing how one stupid sentence can bring back a flood of memories....I suppose I should be grateful to have lived long enough to have "a flood" of memories. mmm -_- And I am grateful. Now I just hope I can find the health, ambition, stamina and fortitude to wander over God's green earth as far as my legs can carry me in a day once again as I did in my youth, now that children are grown and my sun has passed it's zenith.

The Bull Pen

Bev

On the ranch there was a pen back of all the other corrals we called the bull pen because all the new bulls were put there to become accustomed to the ranch. In the pen was a lean-to shed with an open front and a hay crib three-fourths of the way around it. The roof was sloped and covered with aluminum and was a great place to slide down into the hay that was stacked in the crib for the bulls. Mom and daddy told all of us kids repeatedly to stay away from the bull pen because you couldn't trust a bull. They are unpredictable and could easily hurt a little kid. Of course, we didn't listen to them and spent many hours sliding and rolling off that roof.
One time nobody wanted to go to the shed, so I went by myself. I thought I would slide and roll for a time and get out before the bulls came back to eat. Boy, was I ever wrong. After hours of playing, I finally decided it was time to leave. When I looked around, all the bulls were standing around the crib eating. They chewed and looked at me and chewed some more. Boy, was I scared. It looked like every bull in the world was there. How was I going to get out of there without a bull chasing and trampling me? I crept over to the south side so that when I was ready I could climb out of the crib and run as fast as I could to the corral fence and over into the lane. It took me several tries to work up the courage. I finally steeled myself and then before I knew it I was out of the crib and running like the wind. I scrambled up over the corral fence and into the lane where I stood panting and shaky. I looked at the bulls. A few of them were looking at me curiously but the rest were still eating. I guess they were more interested in filling their bellies than trampling a naughty little girl who wouldn't mind her parents. I never went to that bull pen alone again.

The First House: The Beginning

Note: This is 90% fact, 10% fiction because, of course, I cannot remember all of the details now. This was first published to Gather.com in 2007. Pat

Image courtesy morguefile,com

Uninvited Guests


I was the oldest of eight kids, growing up on a ranch in Wyoming. In those long ago days, we carried water to bathe in and wash with and to drink, and we hauled wood and coal and burned trash in a barrel and used an outhouse. We lived in log houses, picked wild greens, ate deer meat and played with frogs.. simple, every day things for kids growing up at that time.

I decided to write a few stories about how it was. This is the first one.

In the Beginning

We were scared to death. We'd taken a small picnic lunch down to the footbridge behind the house, probably to get out of Mom's hair more than anything. We had spread our cloth on the boards of the footbridge and neatly laid out the sandwiches, Jim and Bev and I, and we poured iced tea from a jar. We were getting ready to eat and take a look at our new home.

And then they came. Big, monstrous things, with snorting noses and feet that sucked with every step at the muddy stream that wandered along under the footbridge. I said we were scared, but we were terrified.

We'd never seen a real live horse before, much less the nose of one poked over a pole handrail, wiggling and sniffing at us and our food. Would he step up onto the bridge? Did he want our lunch? Would he bite? What should we do?

We did what all smart kids do when they don't know what else to do. We yelled for Mom. No, we screamed. The horse threw up his head and snorted and, spinning around, he jumped two great heaving paces, splattering us and our lunch with cold, muddy water. Then he calmly trotted off, twitching his heavy black tail as if to say, "I really don't care, you know... "

~~

That was our introduction to horses, and the freedom, the fun and the pain, of living, growing up and learning on a ranch in Wyoming well over a half century ago.

We were the oldest of what would eventually be eight kids and we had moved into a four room log house on the Lewis Ranch outside of Laramie Wyoming. Daddy had become a "ranch hand," and we had become the newest members of a community that was made up of people who had been there since the beginning of time. We were the "new folks," and were always the "new folks," for all the years we lived there. 
---------

More about the first house

Pat 

The lilac bush at the corner came from the old Sodergreen ranch. Mom and Mickey dug them up and transplanted them, one at what was by that time the bunkhouse and one at our house.

That's Corinna standing in front of it. She must have been around two years old.

The stairs went up to the attic where Mom and Wanda and Gay went to explore one time. All they found was a nest of hornets and no one ever went back up there that I know of.

The corner was the outside of the kitchen. I loved that old kitchen and always wanted one like it.

The well was just to the left of where Corinna is standing, where we kids pumped water for the house. 

The Milk Cow

Bev

 

Looking back through the veils of time, I remember when daddy acquired a milk cow. She was gentle Guernsey we named Lady. Early in the morning, before work, daddy would walk out to the pasture and find her. He'd cut a willow branch along the way and swing it, sometimes slapping her gently along the flanks as she ambled back to the barn. Occasionally, my sister and I, and sometimes one of our younger brothers, would go with him, our bare feet getting soaked by the dew on the grass. The sounds of frogs  croaking, along with the meadow larks singing and blackbirds trilling was music to my ears.
The sun would rise up over the horizon, just a sliver at first then jump up like a giant orange ball and fill the land with pale yellow sunlight that warmed the earth.
Lady would go into the milk barn, as we called it, chewing her cud as she went straight to her stall. She knew good grain was waiting for her. Daddy would put the kickers on her so she couldn't kick over the milk bucket, then caution us to be quiet when he began milking.
The swishing sound of the milk going into the bucket was a comforting sound, somehow, just as the smell of the milk barn, with its mixed scents of grain, hay and cow manure was comforting. To this day, I like the smell of cows and hay and grain, the smells mixing together like a comforting potpourri.
After he'd milked her dry, daddy would clean Lady''s teats and bag and turn her out to pasture again. He'd then pour some of the milk into a pan for the barn cats, and head home with the rest of the milk, where mom would strain it through a cloth into gallon jars. That was the beginning of the day.
The picture provided by Morguefiles