Too busy to read, let alone consider writing, I find myself wishing today’s oldest farmers could find the time to share childhood stories.
When author Ralph Moody tells of herding cattle at age 8 in Colorado to unfenced pasture for a grouchy neighbor atop his father’s horse named Fanny, the reader is right there with him. This was in the early 1900s, and getting a glimpse of ranch work is captivating.
Scared to death taking the cows out into the road, trying to keep them out of the neighbor’s growing alfalfa, the young boy uses a broom handle fashioned into a sort of whip. He fell from the horse many times before realizing Fanny had more intelligence in herding than he did.
“Fanny knew all the tricks there were about making cows do what she wanted them to do, and my biggest job was guessing which way she was going to turn, and when. I found out the farther I leaned over her neck, the faster she would go, and maybe I ran her fast lots of times when I didn’t need to,” Moody writes in “Little Britches.”
When Moody’s sister Grace brought lunch to him, which was “everything stew” in a lard pail, she begged to get on Fanny to herd the cattle while her brother ate. Mother would not like this, and Ralph feared his sister would surely die, but Grace insisted.
The big brother told her to hold on tight with her legs and to watch the horse’s ears. Fanny would point her ears in the direction she was about to turn, and it helped to anticipate her quick maneuvers.
Grace didn’t listen and ended up flipped upside down, between Fanny’s front legs while the mare was in a full run. Somehow, she managed to hold on for dear life. Scared and shaking, laughing and crying at the same time, her big brother insisted Grace get right back on or fear would prevent her from ever trying again. This time she listened. When she got back on, with her brother’s help, she pulled the reins so tight that Fanny walked slowly backward and in a circle.
“Father always said the worst things you expected never happened to you,” Moody writes. Breathing a sigh of relief that his little sister was still alive as he handed the lard pail back to her, he told her to head for home. When the two were far enough apart for safety in her remark, his little sister yelled, “I can ride better than you can any old day. I can ride her backwards and you can’t!”
“I was afraid Grace might have ruined Fanny, but she didn’t,” Moody writes.
For his first day of herding 30 milk cows, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the neighbor paid him 25 cents. She pinned it to his shirt as she scolded him for running her cows too much and told him to give his pay to his mother immediately. Feeling certain he was being fired after just one day, young Ralph hung his head as he left the Corcoran ranch.
Mrs. Corcoran hollered, “Don’t you be late in the morning!” Ralph beamed with pride, and as soon as he was out of her sight, he unpinned that quarter and put it in his pocket, like a grown man would. He was happy to give that quarter to his mother, and thrilled he didn’t have to wash supper dishes, just like his father, “now that I was a working man.”
Next week: the battle for water and other survival stories
