Grace in the Osage

Eddy Harris and me

I hope ya'll don't think real bad of  Eddy and me but we were creative and you could blame that on our teachers or our parents but we just seemed to be thinking up things to do all the time. 

For the most part as I look back you might have concluded we were ADD or ADHD or some derivative of that which gets treated nowadays with Ridlin.  In fact I will throw Jon Tanny under the bus on that one as he was about the same way but he just was not part of this particular problem.  Now just one side note or opinion.  It would be my opinion that when you get a little overactive and creative the best thing to do is punish the bad behavior not drug'em.  Anyway what worked best for Eddy and me was some level of fear of the consequences for our bad behavior although with the volume of orneriness you might think we were over the top.  Well the reason I just went through all of this is I am about to tell you of a few things Eddy and I did that we probably should not have done.  Probably is not the right word.

Ok, here goes.  Eddy and I generally carried guns with us and in particular in our vehicles all the time (about everyone our age carried their guns in their trucks), even to school.  Now we did not hide them and in fact we displayed them in the back windshield of the pickup before, after and during school.  At lunch we sometimes would go out to the country and do a little shooting.  Generally turtles in the creek or an occasional coyote.  That may sound crazy but there were so many coyotes that the government paid you $4 for the ears of a coyote as an incentive to cut down the population.  It was a symbol or honor to hang the dead coyotes on the fencepost by your ranch.  We use to count them to see which farmer or rancher was the best at coyote hunting.  I remember one time we counted over 40 coyotes hanging on the fence posts and as I remember it was Ernie Eaton who had those.  Now the most famous coyote hunter in my mind was Paul Jones because he hunted with an airplane.  On Sundays you would hear him flying during church.  Paul Jones had the most greyhounds (not the bus but the dogs) and he would turn those greyhounds loose to chase the coyotes then he would follow them with the airplane. Most of the time there were a few pickups on the ground trying to stay up with the dogs.  It was pretty wild at times.  You might check with Bob Jackson but I think he totaled a perfectly good pickup while coyote hunting.

Well I got off track a little but the point is Eddy and I got a little stupid one time and decided to shoot all of the signs on Carl and Aladyne McConaghy's ranch.  Now I knew better but it did not stop me from being just plain stupid.  The bad news got worse as somehow Carl figured out who was the culprit and called my dad or mom.  Mom informed me how mad dad was and how deep of trouble I was in.  They did not ask me if I was guilty, they assumed correctly I was guilty.  Mom informed me that I was going to go over there to their house and apologize to the entire family.  I was shaking in my boots as I pulled up to the ranch house.  As I remember Carl was outside and he called everyone in the family to come and listen.  I did apologize and Carl forgave me which kind of blew me away.  I was humiliated for doing something so disrespectful to friends and neighbors.  You know they never mentioned it again and Glen and I have been good friends our entire lives.

Well I am sure I will give you more stories on Eddy and I but what did we learn:

• Think about your actions and how they effect other's lives
• Remember there are consequences for bad behavior
• Not everyone has the grace of forgiveness like Carl and Aladyne

It is Sunday and I am going to church and I still ask for forgiveness for something all the time.  Did I ever learn?  Yes, I learned the value of GRACE, John 3:16.

Thanks for your time,
gary@thepioneerman.com