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| Cattle guard |
Cattle guards are openings from one open pasture to another where a road would wind through an area and the cattle could roam back and forth across the road which is where it got its name "open range". Probably the best description of open range is "there are no fences". The cattle guard prevented cattle from crossing because it was a series of pipes welded together with about four inches between each pipe. The cattle would not walk across it because their feet would get stuck in between the pipes but it allowed cars and trucks to cross.
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| Johnny may recognize this cow? |
Now as long as we mentioned trucks I want to straighten something out that has bothered me my entire life. In the country we have pickups and trucks. Pickups are what just about everybody drives and they are called Fords or Chevys and they are 1/2 ton and 3/4 ton pickups. What they are not is c10 chevy (small letters because it is small) or Tundra but it can be a Dodge. It is not a Cadillac or SUV or Toyota or Subaru. Now I know I POed some of you (remember POed means put out) but you need to get over it and stop calling a F150, F250, F350 or C1500 or C2500 a truck. They are pickups and Toby Keith has got me calling my F150 a truck so you can see he has screwed up my head as well. Oh ya, you probably don't know that one of our famous Shidlerites has worked with Toby since before he became famous, Billy Eden. Now Billy as I remember can play a good guitar and a base but other than that the only thing I know about him is his sister was pretty dog-done good looking and they ran the Dixie Dog. If I need to explain then you need to drop me a line (that means email me stupid). My wife does not like me using that word but she is asleep.
Back to the cattle guards. One of the great things about them is you needed to know the nature of the cattle guard because if you were driving too fast you could wind up hitting the top of the roof. In fact my dad, Cliff Olson, got his neck xrayed when he was about 75 years old and they asked him if he had ever broken his neck. Dad said not that he remembered but when he was in his 20s he was crossing a cattle guard going into Tanny and Nanny Olsen's ranch and he bounced so hard he hit his head on the roof of the pickup. He was sore for several weeks but got over it. Now that I think about it if he had done that today there would be at least two lawyers who would make several thousand or hundreds of thousands of dollars and an insurance company would have paid out their rear-end and dad would have been rich. The catch was back then dad knew he was at fault for driving too fast and you don't file a lawsuit because you don't like their cattle guard. That means take responsibility for your own actions. It is about character.
Another thing cattle guards remind me of and that is Mr. and Mrs. Art Jacques. I should mention that Art has a brother named Jim and there is a story coming about them as well. But anyway, when you went to the Jacques there seemed to be lots of cattle guards and gravel roads with cattle that you had to watch out for but the great thing was Mrs. Jacques was and I am sure still is a great cook. Now I could mention the reason I got to go there was because of Dave and AJ but actually their folks were genuine people and wonderful to be around.
They were just like the rest of us in that there was always hay to haul or cattle to work (if you need a definition go back to the early stories). But one time I was over there working cattle and in particular branding cattle. They had something we never had and that was an electric branding iron. The problem with an electric branding iron is you don't put it back in the fire to get hot but you just hang it somewhere until you are ready to use it again. So far this makes no since to you but I was working the shut that day and someone hung the iron on the shut. It was white hot and when my right hand hit it I was branded with the Jacques brand. In fact you can still see the scar today. Now I know what those young calves felt like when they got branded. It smelled like burnt flesh and it was oozing like crazy but not bleeding much. So today anytime I see that scar I think about the good times and I really do mean good times working cattle and being with friends in the Osage.
What did I learn in the Osage?
- don't drive too fast over a cattle guard
- take responsibility for your actions not give them to someone else
- Put a lawyer out of work and make America a better place, just kidding Kermit and Rollin
gary@thepioneerman.com
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