Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: March 18, 2014

A Grandpa Delsman Story
We all know how in the good old days people were all upright and upstanding and helpful to each other.  Here is a heartwarming story from the twenties.  As I said before, the twenties did not roar for most of the people out here on the West coast.  Out here, we did have prohibition and you can see what was going on by some of the old names of beaches on the Oregon coast, like Whiskey run and so on.  Consequently, people had to be supportive and I thought it was time that we heard how that worked out in practice.  Our forebears were after all stalwart citizens.

Grandpa had the farm in Arago.  He did not own the farm, he leased it and had an option to buy it, but he never exercised that option.  A neighbor, somewhere to the west of him was a good friend and a little to the west of that neighbor was a second neighbor.  Now the first neighbor became suspicious of the second neighbor.  His young bulls seemed to disappear.  Too many bulls on a dairy farm are not good so what the farmers did was to raise them for six to nine months and then sell the bulls for veal, if they were a bit older they were called baby beef  You no longer see the designation baby beef any more, but when I was young, it was still in common use.  After about  two years, you just had beef.  Veal was expensive and since each county was more or less self supporting, the farmers did fine selling veal or baby beef or they would eat it themselves.  Consequently, seeing your cattle disappear was not good.  So, the first farmer was pretty sure that the second farmer was stealing his cattle but he could not prove anything.  So, he decided to get friendly with the fellow and invited him and his family over for Sunday dinner.  The second farmer was a bragger and at one point he said, this is certainly good beef, but you know, he went on, I have never eaten my own beef.  That was enough for the first farmer.  He said, enjoy your meal, you are eating your beef now.  Well, the second farmer did not say anything.  But the stealing stopped and so the first farmer thought all was well.  The second farmer even invited him and his family over Sunday dinner.  The main course was Hasenpfeffer, a rabbit dish.  That is what happened to Peter Rabbit’s father when Mr. MacGregor caught him.  So, they had a nice dinner, the conversation was lively, the topic of conversation turned to the fact that dogs tend to go with their masters but cats seem to stay home.  The first farmer said, yes, that seems to be the case, although his big cat seems to have run off for all of that and he wondered whatever became of it.  Well, the second farmer said, it is on your plate.  The first farmer told grandpa that he went out and he puked and he puked and he puked.  Somehow, though, the relationship of those two never improved, although the first farmer never lost any more beef.  I do not know if the second farmer decided to go to other sources, but at any rate, that was the end of that.

Yes, there was nothing like the good old days where men were men and women were women and all were outstanding and upright and did the right thing.