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... "

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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. 
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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

Kitchen in the First House

Pat

The photo is one of us in front of the first house we lived in when we moved to the ranch. It was a big old log house with only four rooms.

There was a big wood burning stove on the north wall of the kitchen, with a hutch on the west and a dry sink on the south. In the center stood a large table with drawers in it where we had our meals. Those things hardly covered half the room.

There was a linoleum in the middle of the room but the outside edges were painted wood and splintery. Charlie was crawling then and Mom had to keep overalls on him to help keep splinters out of his knees.

The well was outside the south window, which is a story for another time. It was a good, solid old house and left many good memories in my mind.

Going to School

Bev

 

My older sister and brother used to have to walk up around the bend in the road where it followed the Big Laramie River. They would cross the big bridge then go up a small hill, which we dubbed The Little Hill, there to meet the bus.
I remember sitting on the porch in a swing daddy put up for me and watching them walk down the road. Pat was so pretty with her long, brown hair hanging down in ringlets. She wore a pretty pink jacket with a hat to match. Jim wore a shirt and jeans with suspenders. I wanted to be walking with them, but was too young for school. But I got to hear the Meadow Larks and Blackbirds singing throughout the day. I got to spend time with mom as she baked bread, swept and mopped the kitchen floor and tidied up the house. I got to spend the whole day with no worries.
Then around three o'clock, I would wait for them to come back, down the Little Hill, across the river bridge and back around the bend. That was one day that would be repeated over and over again until the bus began picking we children up at the house.
These are some of my first memories of the ranch, the simple life we lived and the love we had for that life and for each other.