Tuesday, May 4, 2021

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.

Thursday, January 28, 2021

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.,