I was going through facebook the other day and saw a post from a friend about helping work cattle, and it brought to mind several times I have helped work cattle with Bob. But, like another friend posted, there are just some things husbands and wives shouldn't do together and working cattle is one of them. I agree!
First things first, I have always thought we were roping an old black cow. Can even picture it in my mind, but Bob says nooo, it was a big ol' brindle steer. Okay, I will defer to his memory because he has always had a better memory than me.
Okay, to start with, I wasn't raised on a farm. We lived on a farm up until I was nine, but Dad raised hogs, not cattle, which is a significant difference. We moved to Bradleyville sometime before my 9th birthday, and while Bradleyville isn't a city, it was definitely not a farm either. My days were taken up with riding my bike, playing with friends and walking to my dad's gas station which was about half a mile up the road.
After Bob and I got married we raised a few bottle calves, and bought cattle. I liked having them and looking at them, and I fed the bottle calves and took care of them, but Bob always took care of our cattle. Bob fed them and watched them and did everything that needed to be done. I would have been happy to help, to feed hay or whatever but Bob knew I didn't know a thing about cattle, so it was easier for him to just do it himself. The only time I was called upon to help was at what I considered the worst times, when we were working cattle and they needed somebody to work the chute or loading calves to sell.
Anyway, we were trying to load this ol' brindle steer to take to the sale barn. We hadn't sold it before because it had escaped a couple of times when we were selling other calves, so it had grown very large. Which should have been my first clue.
Bob finally corralled it at the old shed that the Neuenschwanders used for milking dairy cows when they lived on this farm years and years ago. That is not where we usually loaded the calves from, but that's where he had it penned up. Which should have been my second clue.
So, Bob backed our pickup up to the shed. Back then we used our pickup with a metal rack on it to transport calves, pigs, anything we had to sell. Most people did the same thing, it was really only professional haulers that used a trailer like they use now.
Bob had the steer roped in the pen and ran the rope through the rack so I could pull on the rope while he encouraged it from behind to run up the ramp and into the back of the truck. It sounded like a good plan to him. Clue number three.
Bob handed me the rope and told me to hold on to it no matter what. Don't drop the rope! Okay, sounded simple enough. Now, I have always thought I was of average intelligence, had good common sense and all that. That day I don't know where any of that was. I think if he had told me to drink the Kool-Aid I might have done that too.
I was standing there, braced on the outside of the pickup, holding onto that rope for dear life, . The steer started up the ramp with Bob behind it thumping it and "haa-ing" at it now and then to make it go on up. It got to the top of the ramp, looked up and saw me standing there holding that rope and that ol' brindle steer just decided it was not going to get in that pickup. He snorted and jumped backward and started scrambling backward down that ramp. I was holding that rope for all I was worth, but it didn't matter. That steer outweighed me by six hundred plus pounds and if he decided he wasn't going, what I thought was of little consequence. He pulled that rope with him as he went, taking whatever skin I had on the palms of my hands.
Oh my, how that hurt! Stinging, burning, pulsing pain!
Bob ran to me and asked if I was okay. What was I to say? I turned loose of the rope he told me to keep hold of. Yes, I was okay, with tears of pain running down my face. Did I care that I couldn't hold that steer? Yes, I did care because Bob had told me not to let go, but Bob didn't mean for me to hold it at all costs.
Bob finally got that ol' brindle steer rounded up, roped, into the pickup and hauled to the sale barn. When Bob got the steer out at the sale barn, the steer went crazy mad. He ran the sale barn employee down the corridor and up the partitions separating the pens. Made me feel a little better that the ol' thang didn't just have it in for me, but for anybody who happened to get in his way.
These days I don't even offer to help with cattle. I just let Bob find somebody who is willing, or maybe I should say, somebody that isn't brave enough to tell Bob they don't want to work cattle. Our marriage is better for it. HAHAHA!
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