While I’m on a roll, I should tell my favorite story of Dad’s milking expertise. Mom never came to the barn and Dad seldom, mostly to give a little advice to the boys that did the milking every day.
Well, early one morning our best milker, Beauty, had one of her weird days when she would stick her head in the door, roll her big eyes and turn and run across the corral, milk painting the dirt as she ran.
Well, what we usually did, since our wise corral engineer, dad, never realized or conceded we needed a squeeze pen, was take a can of grain and pour a trickle of it running into the barn. Beauty loved grain and if we hide outside she would usually come in licking the grain and then just had to stick her head in the stanchion to get the big pile. We could then close the stanchion with a string from outside and, wala, let the milking begin. This cow was actually worth it because she gave ten gallons of milk a day!
One very cold, winter day, after I had to milk alone-Tom was either at BYU or on his mission-Beauty would not even follow the grain trail into the barn. After much effort and needing help I went to the house to get Dad from his comfort, to, ostensibly, help.
Dad immediately counseled me that, “You can’t drive that cow in, you gotta lead it. You have got to be patient.” So, being a bit tired of the whole thing and now late for Seminary, I just got on top of the hay stack and asked him to show me.
Now the fun begins. Dad took that whole bucket of grain instead of the dipping can, and showed ole Beauty as he trickled her some grain. She was very interested in the process and ate his grain up to the door of the barn and then ran away, repeatedly. (He failed to run his trickle into the barn, by the way.) I was really beginning to enjoy this and was glad I was dressed so warm.
Finally, patience failed him and Dad, bucket in hand, yelled and ran after that cow. Unfortunately, he ran towards the area where the cows stood when at the manger. Now, our corral engineer (Dad) had not planned for such a wet winter and the slime (green) was up to 18 inches deep at this worst time. It was also frozen over so that he did not know where the firm ground ended and the iced over slime began. As he tried to get around her he ran onto the slime ice, it broke and down he went- face first, full body as he instinctively held the grain bucket up so it wouldn’t spill.
The slime oozed over him for near full coverage. I was transfixed and then was in sudden danger of death by falling off the hay stack due to a fit of uncontrollable, ecstatic laughter. Never has there been any thing funnier than Dad rising up, “the man from goo”, taking his glasses of with his free hand to wipe the s— out of his eyes, seeing the bucket safe in his other hand, bellowing and throwing the precious bucket in the slime and stomping off to the house. I ran ahead to summon my Mother and all to witness this great thing. She giggled uncontrollably until he wanted to come into the house and its warmth. Then she instructed me to quickly get out the hose and spray him off as he undressed in the back yard before he could enjoy a warm shower.
That spring and summer we had a sweet reminder of the great adventure because the grass which he fertilized grew thicker, longer and greener than any other in out lawn. I laughed each time I passed it.
Shortly after my fist fight with Johnny Cleveland, I was at a Nampa Stake dance with my friend, Gary Walker, and about a dozen other teens from Caldwell. It was a lot of fun, except that a large, tough acting kid, with the last name of Sterling, came to the dance and started to obviously try to pick a fight with one of our Caldwell guys, Johnny Clark. He continuously rammed into Johnny of the dance floor and then would push him and accuse him of being the rammer. J. Clark was a very fine young man but definitely not a fighter. As we were leaving, I got behind Johnny. Sterling pretended that Johnny had pushed him at the door and told Johnny that he would meet him outside. I could see that Johnny was terrified, so I suggested that if Sterling just had to pick a fight with someone from Caldwell, I would accommodate him if he would leave Johnny alone. I was smaller than Johnny and a head shorter than Sterling, so Sterling seemed to think that was a great deal and enthusiastically accepted. I did not realize it at that time but Sterling’s Young Men’s leader was very concerned about the whole thing and came out to make sure that the fight was fair and that Sterling did not seriously hurt me. Kinda weird, but…
So, Johnny started throwing punches and I ducked and deflected them and started scoring left jabs. Unfortunately, I hit him once in the mouth and broke his right front tooth half off. I swelled up both eyes and told him I didn’t want to hit him anymore. He agreed.
His leader apologized to me for the whole thing but said that he was praying that something would happen to straighten Sterling out. I saw Sterling a year later and he came up to me and thanked me for teaching him a lesson that turned his life around.
I told Dad and he said that he supported me in how I handled the situation. Nampa kids didn’t pick on Caldwell kids, to my knowledge, after that.