A Country Drive

When you grow up on the ranch, driving trucks and pulling trailers becomes second nature.  If you’re going to be any help at all on the ranch, you have to start driving by the time you hit seventh grade.  By that age you take over your mom’s job of driving the truck while dad pushes hay off the back to the cows.  Mom could hardly wait until you got taller than the tires on the one-ton.  Now she doesn’t have to listen to your dad yell “slow down…speed up…quit jerking the clutch.”  It’s your turn to take the abuse.  You learn to drive under the pressure of a “back-seat driver.”  Dad says he is just getting you ready for the time you’ll drive your mom to town for groceries.  He says “she’ll do all the drivin’- you just turn the wheel and push the pedals.”

By the time you’re in the eight-grade you can make turns without knocking down the corner-posts.  Your dad lets you drive on the county farm roads (only from the mailboxes to the cattle guard) and your mom won’t let you near her new Suburban.  Sometimes you confidently drive down dead-end roads with the gooseneck hooked-up knowing you’ll have to back out.  No big deal.  As my dad would say, “no step for a stepper.” Whatever that means.

After a few hundred miles of dirt road driving you hardly notice you have an empty gooseneck trailer behind you.  When it is full of six-weight calves, you just drive a little slower and start hitting the brakes a little sooner.  Piece of cake.  You begin to feel pretty cocky about your driving.  Instead of having both hands on the wheel, you start to hang one arm out the window just like dad.  In time you even begin to talk on the two-way radio with some of the “other hands” on the ranch.  Someday you’ll be the foreman.

By the time you get to ninth grade and start going to high school in town, you’ve driven the tires off of the feed-truck, the bucket-loader, and the quad-runner.  The city kids at school are all jealous of your driving ability.  They still can’t master the simulated driving game on Nintendo.  They ride their bikes to school.  Your mom brings you to town in the Suburban.  You kinda wish she’d drop you off two or three blocks before you get to the school.  It’s embarrassing having your mom drop you off right in front of the flagpole every morning.

Your sophomore year approaches and you become officially eligible for your driver’s license.  It is rather anti-climatic.  Except for the written test.  Dad always just told you to “keep it between the ditches, gun it when you go through the mud, and take the wire-cutters out of your back pocket before you jump in the truck.”  Now all of a sudden, the mean looking lady at the motor vehicle place is giving you a test and asking all sorts of questions about lines and signs.  Yellow lines this, solid lines that, a red sign means what, a picture of a cow on a sign is universal for blah, blah, blah.  Who knows?  Who cares?  You don’t care about the speed limit in a commercial loading zone.  At 16 years-old you simply want to roll the windows down, rev the gas and feel the wind blow through your hair.  Freedom is what you seek, not answers to a stupid test.

When you overcome the written test and you have your license in hand the world changes.  You spend every waking minute thinking about getting a new vehicle.  Your fantasy is owning a three-quarter ton, club-cab truck with a Detroit diesel powerstroke engine, iPod jack and a retractable gooseneck hitch installed by the dealer.  Your reality is getting the 1974 GMC half-ton with a flatbed and a headache rack your dad bought at the last farm dispersal auction over in Waller County.  The paint is faded, the seat has a big hole in the driver’s side, and the blinker switch is a Phillips head screwdriver sticking out of the steering column.  But, you don’t care because it’s yours!

Your new symbol of freedom runs a little rough, but Earl the mechanic at the John Deere dealership, says he’ll help you get it running “smooth as a top.”  Earl’s a good man.  He grew up working for your dad until the bottom fell out of the bean pit, the hog market and the cattle futures all in the same year.  After that he had to get a new job in town, but still thinks of you as his little brother.  He loves your dad and was really the one who taught you how to drive.  And, much to mom’s dismay he was the one who gave you that first pinch of snuff.

Growing up on the ranch teaches you a lot about being a driver in life.  You learn to press the gas and let out the clutch all at the same time.  You learn how to shift gears when the load gets heavy.  You learn that what you drive says a lot about who you are and what you value.  You learn that you care more for people than a pile of metal and rubber.  And, you know you can back a gooseneck down a ditch bank and never turn your head.  You use your mirrors of experience to get you where you need to go.  Keep on truckin’.

The Smell of Success

My nose is big. My nose is powerful. It takes me to places I love. I can follow my nose to fairs and shows around the country. I can inhale the warm memories of my farm youth and I can choke on the smell of times gone bad.

When I close my eyes and draw a deep breath I can return to a different time; a time when the long days of a July summer were spent riding horses, feeding calves, mowing lawns and just being a kid out of school.

Your nose is the same. Not big maybe, but powerful. Of all of our senses, perhaps the sense of smell is our most wonderful. Oh sure, you could argue for any of the other senses, horse sense included and I'd probably agree with you. But go with me for a moment on a journey through the aroma of our country lifestyle.

Growing up on the farm you learn to use your nose as a veterinarian instrument. Once you've smelled the rancid odor of a horse with thrush in its hooves, you don't soon forget. You also don't forget that salty smell of sweat that is absorbed into the saddle pads on a hot summer day. Tack rooms have an ambiance of leather and latigos. Horses have a scent all their own. They smell different than cattle and of course they smell great compared to pigs.

Now that I have mentioned pigs, I know some of you will say they don't smell bad. Well folks, they do. They stink. Not the pigs themselves, they're fine. It is their fecal matter that's the problem. I think it has some chemical compound in it that makes it radioactive. Nuclear waste if you ask me. If you spend much time with pigs, the smell is absorbed into your skin and it follows you around. It is like a porcine pheromone that attracts other pig people. That’s why folks in the pig barns just show pigs. It is a natural attraction, their noses brings them together.

I have a special pair of rubber boots that I wear only when I'm cleaning the pig barn. Really they're a pair of hip waders, you know, the kind duck hunters wear. They come up to the middle of my chest. If they would make a pair of rubber boots that could cover your head when you clean the pig barn, I'd probably have those. Instead, I'm real careful not to splash too much water on the walls. I don't want to get any porcine perfume behind my ears.

I remember the smell of my show steers. I liked smelling their breath when we would lay together in the show barn. Their breathe was laced with the sweet scent of molasses and corn. In an odd sort of way the remnants of their ruminant effervescence smelled good. You knew the steers were comfortable. They didn't hunger for food or attention. They were at peace with themselves and their dinner (regurgitated as it was). I too was at peace.

Sheep really don't have a smell. I can't recall any wonderful childhood memories generated by the smell of my sheep. However, I can remember the time I was teaching high school agriculture and we had a bunch of old ewes decide to check out of this world. The seemed to clump up together at the bottom of the school farm pasture and die. By the time the student feeder said, "Mr. Vernon, some of the ewes aren't coming to the feeder," it was too late. They were blowed up bigger than the Goodyear blimp. They looked like a little fleet of wooly blimps. Their udders looked as if they were in full milk with a set of triplets. (Actually, more like a vet’s fully inflated rubber glove.) When we took the tractor with the front bucket to pick them up, the kid didn't hit the brakes soon enough and one of them exploded. I 'bout lost my lunch with the stench that engulfed us. My eyes burned and I had this gag reflex going on. It was bad. I still crinkle my nose when I think about that dreadful (or dead full) day.

The sheep showbox on the other hand has a very definite smell. The mix of lanolin, sheep dip and clipper oil has a manly smell. Not some Yankee candle, vanilla flavored, Martha Stewart smell. Nope, a sheep showbox smells like a cross between a Briggs and Stratton motor and a hundred year-old Bourbon. It will singe the hairs on your nose if you breathe too deep. Some folks can get intoxicated with the smell of a sheep showbox. I do not.

Growing up on the farm there all kinds of smells. Close you eyes, take a deep breath and travel in time to the day the alfalfa field across the road was just cut. Or, the refreshing scent of the moments after a summer storm has passed. Take the mental step into the feed room and smell the grain. It may remind you of your youth or it may leave you shaking your head when you think about how much money you spend feeding your animals.

Close you eyes and remember the musty, "Old Spice" scent of your grandpa. Smile and take a sniff of your mother's country kitchen on a Saturday morning. Smell the bacon and listen to the sizzle. That's the simple life.

Use your nose to lead in the right direction. If it smells good, go there. If it smells bad you'll know what to do. Use you nose to find the smell of success.

Corndogs and Cotton Candy

Corndogs, cotton candy, and county fairs. This is stuff that holds American families together.  Think about it.  When you go to county fairs and see people eating corndogs and cotton candy, there are always kids near by. Some are chronologically gifted children who have been around awhile, their grey hair thinning and their girth a bit wider, but the others are the reasons we go to the fair–the real kids in the crowd.  Corndogs, cotton candy, and county fairs exist for the young ones with spasms of laughter in their bellies, kindness in their hearts, and waves of anticipation as they wait to ride the “Hammerhead.”

For country folk like me, county fairs are a nostalgic event.  They remind me of a time in our country when family values meant something. There is something special about seeing kids proudly display their “colors” and getting the support of their parents.  Unlike the troubled inner city teens locked in a downward spiral of gangs, violence, and death, the kids of the county have found value in wearing the green of the 4-H gang and the blue and gold of the FFA gang.  I wished more kids wore these colors and belonged to these types of gangs– the kind of gangs we think about when we remember Spanky and Alfalfa.  Gangs of innocence and fun.

County fairs are about our communities.  They help us to recognize goodness in our lives.  It is important we pick young girls to be fair queens.  It helps them grow up to be confident, self-assured women.  It is appropriate we reward the “cattleman of the year” at the fair.  Afterall, that is likely where he spent some of his childhood–in the feed allies and showrings at the end of a stick and leadshank showing cattle.  It is right that we dedicate buildings to home economics and farming.  Displays of food and fiber remind us of the splendor of American agriculture and the art of producing delicious pies, intricate quilts of cotton, and jellies that make your mouth water.

I could go to a fair, never get past the livestock barns and get as many thrills as riding the bobsleds, or farris wheels.  But these thrills are different.  More subtle.  Slower, less manic.  I get a thrill out of seeing a barrow that looks like Schwarzenegger, a lamb that braces like a statue, or a steer with a coat of velvet and a top as thick as a NFL linebacker.  It is exciting for me to see a 13 year-old 4-H’er know how to handle a pair of Listers and a set of parents confident enough to leave the kid alone.  I enjoy walking through a barn with the hum of the fans, the coolness of the misters, and the electricity of excitement that comes from knowing the show is about to begin.

More people should eat corndogs and cotton candy.  While you may disagree about the effects they have on your heart, I hope you’ll agree they are good for your soul.  Corndogs and cotton candy help us remember the kids–­the ones trapped in the bodies of CEOs, registered nurses, schoolteachers, computer programmers, and all the other folks whom long for a simpler, slower time.  Corndogs and cotton candy help us share with our children the rich agricultural heritage of our communities captured at the county fair.

Eat up, have a big time at the fair, and I’ll see you in the winner’s circle!

Farmers and Ranchers Are Not the Same

The English language is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. It has so many confusing rules and then there are exceptions to those rules. Words can sound the same yet mean something very different. The words to, two or too are a prime example. Also, whine and wine have completely different outcomes if you partake of too much of either! Too much of one will have folks thinking you are a crybaby, too much of the other and folks will know you’re a sick crybaby. English words are funny that way. In agriculture we have funny words too and there are exceptions to those funny words.

Farmers and ranchers sound like they are the same things. But they are different as night and day. Farmers are plant people and ranchers are animal people– most of the time. Like I said, there are exceptions to the rules–think pig farmer.

Farmers and ranchers are all involved in production agriculture, but they approach their callings in different ways. Farmers wear mesh caps given to them from the local tractor dealerships. The color of the cap communicates a farmer’s allegiance a brand. Green screams John Deere. Blue yells Ford. Guys wearing golden caps drive CATS, big CATS! Farmers will wear the same hat for all occasions, you know, weddings, graduations, Farm Bureau meetings and harvest celebrations.

Ranchers wear cowboy hats and caps. It depends on the function. Old ranchers will wear only silver belly cowboy hats like to good guys wore in western movies. Young ranchers will wear black cowboy hats sometimes and silver belly hats at other times. It depends if they’re at a bull sale or a team roping. Young ranchers also wear caps. But not like the farmers’ mesh caps. Nope, young ranchers wear the Imperial brand caps they buy from the rope dealers. Cactus Ropes and Classic Ropes have cool caps.

Farmers wear Red Wing lace-up boots, Carhartt jackets and Levi jeans. Ranchers wear Justin Ropers, goose down vests and Wrangler jeans. Farmers don’t iron anything and many ranchers wouldn’t leave the house without heavy starch and a crease in their jeans.

Farmers and ranchers all drive trucks. Farmers have winches, toolboxes and bumper vices on their trucks. Ranchers have headache racks, hitches and dogs on their trucks. Generally speaking a rancher’s truck is cleaner than a farmer’s truck; however, you’ll find both ranchers and farmers who have a dashboard full of parts receipts, cigars, pliers, cupcake wrappers, empty Copenhagen cans and duct tape.

Farmers ride iron horses. Ranchers ride Quarter horses. Farmers get excited about going to farm equipment shows. They like to spend all day talking ‘bout motors, horsepower and gear ratios. Farmers drool over the latest tractors and implements the dealers and manufacturers trot out each year. They’ll crawl up in the cab of a John Deere 9300 four-wheel drive, 360 horsepower tractor with a Powertech, fuel-efficient engine and a “Command View” cab with 62 square feet of tinted glass and think they’ve died and gone to heaven. Farmers will grumble about how farming is too tough right now to buy a new tractor, but next year will be better.

Even though ranchers ride horses, they don’t get excited about going to horse shows. Horse shows are for teenage girls who love horses, live in town, board their horses at their trainers, wear too much make-up and have more silver on their bridles than grandma has in her heirloom silverware set. Ranchers go to ropins’ and rodeos. They love watching Ty Murray ride bulls and remember the times they rode old momma cows in “Little Britches” rodeos down at the Shady Acres Arena. Old ranchers may be missing the thumb that got caught in their dally at Ft. Worth in ‘76, but they’ll still be roping every Thursday evening at the Guthrie Jackpot Arena.

Farmers go to farm equipment auctions. Ranchers go to livestock sale barns. They all spend too much money at any auction they attend– it’s genetic. Farmers will buy stuff just for parts they’ll never need. Or, they’ll buy a whole pallet of cotton picker spindles just to get the trailer hitch that was lying on top of the pile.

Ranchers will spend all day at the local sale barn to see how their neighbor’s calves sold. And, they will complain about the steer buyers being coyotes, how feed is too high and the grass is too short. Ranchers really go to sale barns for Ms. Mabel’s peach cobbler and a cup of coffee. But, they’ll end up paying a dime over market for a load of used- up Corrientes to practice roping with in the sorting corrals.

Farmers are members of the Grange and Farm Bureau. Ranchers are members of the Cattlemen’s Association and the American Quarter Horse Association. Farmers and ranchers go to a bunch of meetings, they enjoy the company of their peers. Sometimes they all meet together. When they do it is usually at the Wagon Wheel Coffee Shop down by the Co-op on Farm to Market road 236.

Even though farmers and ranchers do things different, they do one thing the same and they do it very well. They support kids who want to grow up and be farmers and ranchers. Farmers and ranchers love kids and will do anything to help the local high school agriculture department, the 4-H, the FFA and other farm youth organizations. 

My Happy Place

We all have one - you know, your happy place. For some it is by the beach, for others it is in the mountains. For me it is now. Now is my happy place; today, this moment, this minute. It is not yesterday and it is not tomorrow because I have no control over tomorrow and I cannot change history. So I choose to live in the now. It hasn't alway been that way, I used to think too far ahead and look longingly to the past. While useful, that way of living didn't really bring the satisfaction I have living in nowville. Now is my happy place.

Don't get me wrong, thinking ahead is important, but not for finding true happiness. It is helpful to look ahead so you can enjoy what you are doing today. It gives me a sense of accomplishment to know I'm headed somewhere productive.

Looking back can be instructive as well. It helps me not make the same mistakes I have made in the past. I don't look to the past to rely on my present day happiness. Sure, it was fun back in the day and I have some great memories of some special times. I just don't spend a lot of time wishing for days I lived in the past. With that said, I am still sentimental about particular moments, people, places and things. They make me happy now, just as they made me happy then.

Now is it. Truth be told, it is all I got. It is really all anybody has; this moment.

Why is now so happy? Lots of reasons I suppose, but mostly because I choose to be happy. Always have, even though at times, it was very difficult. We all have the ability to be happy if we choose to be happy. Some people don't make that choice. And, yes, it is a choice.

I'm pretty simple in my ultimate desires. I want to be a good dad, a good teacher and a good man. That's it. I'm not looking to accumulate large sums of money, drive the fanciest car or live in the biggest house. I do o.k. in that regard. Comfortable is good. I could do a little better, but I don't sit around moping about what I don't have...that is not my happy place.

I see lots of people racing around trying to find their happy place. To me it looks exhausting and sort of counter productive. People seem miserable trying to be happy. That's too bad. I feel for them, but I understand we don't all have the same happy place.

Finding my happy place has been a blessing in my life. I found it early enough in life to spend a significant amount of time there enjoying the view. Everyday I get to smile. What a joy it is to know happiness!

I wished everybody could find their happy place. It would make this world a better place. The fact is, it ain't gonna happen. But that knowledge won't stop me, 'cause all I have is now and I can't waste it on those who want to wallow in pity, drama and unhealthy choices.

Being happy doesn't mean I run around all giddy (all "shits and giggles" as my dad would say). That would be crazy. I smile on the inside more often than I smile on the outside...nonetheless, I smile. Those who know me, know I am not that quick to laugh. I'm funny on the inside. I find my own private joy. I'm selfish that way, it's my happiness. That is all I can control. Other people's happiness is their deal. I can't make them happy. That is not my job.

I hope you find your happy place. I found mine.


Scott