Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: July 1st, 2014

What amazes me when I think back on those times is how short those times were.  We only went about four years without a cow, yet it seems like it was ages.  Everything seems like it was ages.

We used to have so many kids come out to our place and play and that was different from the picnics and all the Perrys and the high school kids that would play with pop and mom.  I remember Bob would have a couple of his friends come out, Mike Whitty and Bobby Grant, and they would want to play touch football, so Brother Bob, Bobby Grant and Mike Whitty would play against Louise and me.  As it turned out, Louise and I usually one.  Louise was roughly as fast as the other boys and they would go out for a pass, but much to Brother Bob’s chagrin, they couldn’t catch, the ball would go right through their hands, we said they were butter fingers.  On the other hand, even though Brother Bob could throw the ball farther and much more accurately than I could it was all for naught, but Louise could catch even though she was two years younger than those two, so she would hike the ball to me and I would give a might heave and she would take it over her shoulder and head for the goal line.  What fun that was.

The wood was always a headache, though.  We would get fifteen loads of trimmer ends from Mr. Byler.  They had to be stacked, kindling made, and so on, and a lot of it went into the woodshed, which is what Grandma’s place had become.  It was never quite enough and so Bob and I would knock down a couple of alder trees, actually Bob cut the trees down, and the two of us would saw them up into the right lengths, split them, that sort of thing.  Pop’s axe was rather dull by this time so one Christmas we asked for axes, Bob got a two bladed axe and I got a one bladed axe which would also be used as a wedge.  Those things were always across the creek and we had a little foot bridge to get over there so once Bob threw his axe across the creek and started across as he had done many times before, but he fell and chopped off a piece of his knee cap.  He had to get fifty five stitches on that and I can still hear him moaning in pain, night after night.

By the time that had happened, we had a cow again.  We got Buttercup from Uncle Heini when I was in the eighth grade, just after the last KC picnic.  Buttercup was a good cow, too, but getting old.  It became my job to milk her morning and night.  But we also liked to listen to a radio program then, too.  It was called the Hall of Fantasy and I can tell you that was so scary.  I t came on luckily only once a week, but we listened to it religiously.  I remember going down to milk in the winter, the limbs swaying in the wind, the clouds passing by the moon, it was all spooky and I milked as fast as I could and hustled back up to the house.

We had to have the cow, though.  Pop’s income was no longer sufficient for the growing family, and it did keep growing.  The cows all gave a lot of milk, which we sold, we used as much as we could, we had real cream, good clabber, home made butter, home made ice cream, lots to drink, the brothers and sisters often came down in the summer with cups and I would milk a cup full and we would talk.  It was fun.  After we ate Buttercup, I mean, traded Buttercup for meat, we had Gussie that was going to be a pet for the girls, but Louise figured out first that Gussie was not going to be the usual pet.  Gussie gave a lot of milk.

The parking area on the hill, though, attracted people coming by.  We called such folks the Squatleys.  They did tend to squat.  It was Bob’s and my job to chase them off the property.  I do not know how many times we did that, but the routine was always the same.  Bob and I would take our 22-s and head on over.  The time I remember best was the last time.  In those days, the people that we really discriminated against in Coos County were the Okies and Arkies and Catholics.  But the Okies and Arkies had lost everything and had come West, they were still coming West when I was young.  So, this last time, Bob and I headed on over.  I walked up to the fellow’s car and it turned out that he had his wife and two or three children in the back seat.  Bob stood behind me, we both had our guns loaded and I walked up to the car and said to the man, you can’t stay here, this is private property.  He looked up at me and said, we have no place to go.  I said that did not matter to us, this is private property and he had to leave.  I can still see the eyes of the woman, they were beat, the children did not know what to think, they just looked at me, the man looked at me and he looked at Bob standing about ten feet behind me and he got this wild look in his eyes, started the car and left.  Another time when I came back from milking, I heard this moaning over on the hill, it sounded like someone was being murdered.  So, I asked mom to call the sheriff, which she did, he turned out to be in Glasgow, and Bob and I met him at the top of the hill.  We could still hear the moaning, so we drove over there as fast as we could with the sheriff and there we found a man with two big black dogs and a real bull whip and he was whipping his wife with it and she was about seven months pregnant.  Both of them were drunk and both were from Arkansas.  So, the sheriff started to talk to the fellow about that and the woman spoke up and said, Don’t you have to beat your wife when she gets out of line?  The sheriff was dumbstruck.  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he did say that he had never beaten his wife, which surprised the woman.  At any rate, the sheriff got the two calmed down, the fellow promised never to beat his wife again which was ostensibly against the law, and the sheriff told them to drive home carefully and behave themselves.  It was the good old days so drunken driving was OK and they drove off.

But by the time I was a freshman in high school, pop could no longer compete with anybody.  Bob and I were sorry about that, we had always looked forward to the time we could play with him as the other boys had done.  But he did teach us a few card games and the game that we liked best was Pedro, so Bob and I were partners and mom and pop were partners.  After we learned the game, Bob and I won all the time.  Mom did not care, but pop would head off to bed muttering, good game.  Finally after about a fifteen game losing streak, pop said we should change partners.  I was agreeable, so mom and I played Bob and pop.  I immediately went into a long losing streak, but pop got happier and happier, Good game, he would cry out with a big smile and head off to bed.  I have to admit, though, it eventually did get to me that we never won.  We had something like a twenty four game losing streak before we finally won a game and then immediately went into another losing streak

To be continued.