A Goat Tale and Other Stories Heard Around the Supper Table

By Glenda Price

Glenda Price has been presenting a slightly off-center view of country living in her "Heard Around the Supper Table" columns each week in various publications the past eight years.

This is her first collection of selected columns, illustrated by Cowboy Cartoonist of the Year A-10 Etcheverry who also has a slightly off-center view of country life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 7, 2009
• ISBN: 9781438970363

Glenda Price

Glenda Price of Mesilla Park, New Mexico, grew up on ranches in northeastern New Mexico where her father was a ranch manager. By age 8 she was "making a hand," and later she rodeoed around the Southwest, mostly competing in barrel racing. She holds a journalism degree from New Mexico State University. She is a New Mexico Stockman contributing editor and a former contributing editor for Arizona Cattlelog andColorado'sCattle Guard. She is a contributing writer/photographer for New Mexico Horse Breeder and Livestock Market Digest. Her weekly humor column, Heard Around the Supper Table, has won many fans over the past eight years. She is a former Southwest Region Vice President of North American Agricultural Journalists, and her freelance "serious" work has won several regional and national awards.

Book preview

A Goat Tale

and Other Stories Heard Around the Supper Table

Glenda Price

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2009 Glenda Price. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/2/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-7036-3 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4389-7035-6 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009903039

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana-

Contents

Romantic Cowboys?

A Country Rodeo

Cowboy Wanted.com

A Goat Tale

Cowboy Gardeners

Summertime Blues

The Famous Radio Station

The Dun Horse Called Duke

4-H Adventures

The Woodpecker War

Water and Me

Country Cooking

Finding Arrowheads

Snakes

Behind the Chutes

Irrigating

Trading Stamps

Finding a Real Cowboy

The Bull Chase

Up Early

The Haystack

Superstition

The Cowboy and the Security Guard

Kids’ Sports

Tools

Winning a Truck

Learning to Drive

The Cowboy and His Chain Saw

Airplanes and Pancakes

Brothers and Sisters

A Muddy Relationship

Motherhood

A Hunter’s Lament

Mechanics

Chickens

Kids at Camp

Rain

A Christmas Story

Friendship

Romantic Cowboys? 

Cowboys are romantic, they say. Uh-huh. Every one I know can get downright eloquent when discussing a new baby calf, his favorite using horse or his best cow dog. We females find that quite attractive.

But what about us? My theory is they like human female companionship, but they just don’t know how to say things like, You look great or Mmm, you smell good. They’re more likely to say, You tailed up that calf like a pro, or You handled that young horse muy bueno.

There is another problem that gets in the way of romance. Cowboys have pardners. When a cowboy gets married, the new wife usually has her husband’s pard as a permanent house guest for the first six months or until she finally sends him on his way.

Here’s an example of the romance problem. You spend hours getting the dirt and manure out from under your fingernails and the hat crease out of your hair. You ask, How do I look? His eyes glaze over and he mumbles, Fine. You ready to go?

When I was a new bride I thought, one day, he’d figured out this romance deal. With me. It was a cold, windy spring day and, as usual, it had not rained and we were still feeding. He came to the house, brought me my coat, turned on that nifty little smile and said, I’ve got the feed loaded. Wanta come with me?

I figured he really didn’t need any help because the feed pickup was rigged where one person could handle it alone. A cotton rope ran from the driver’s window to the feed box door so you could drive along in grandma gear and hold the door open so the range cubes could pour out. The cattle were used to coming to the pickup when it honked, so you could get a count and check on everybody’s health while you were at it.

So he just wanted my scintillating company, right?

I shoved the wire pliers, screw driver and empty gunny sack onto the floorboard and sat next to him. Between pastures I fiddled with the radio and found a fairly decent station.

Most of the pasture gates were the kind where the cedar post fits into a wire loop near the ground and you’ve gotta hug the top of the post and shove it toward the post on the fence so you can lift the wire off the top of the post. After you’ve gone through the gate, the hug-the-post procedure is repeated to close the thing.

I’m kind of a weakling so I had trouble with some of them, but I didn’t complain. My romantic husband fiddled with the radio while I struggled except for once when I yelled out, I can’t get it. He grinned indulgently while he made it look easy.

When we got back to the barn he looked at his watch and said, Look at that. We got finished in record time. I knew it’d go faster with you along to open the gates.

A Country Rodeo 

Modern rodeos – slick productions with fast-moving action – are fun, but my favorites were those we had at neighbor ranches when I was a kid. If we had an announcer at all he mostly yelled through whatever kind of loud speaker system we could come up with.

The clown was whoever happened to have some baggy pants, and he usually painted his face with his wife’s makeup (which she didn’t always appreciate.)

Broncs were unbroken or outlaw horses, and we rode cows. I can tell you cows are NOT easy to ride, even if you get to hang on with both hands cuz you’re a girl.

My all-time favorite rodeo was at the village of Ojo Feliz. We drove through the back pasture and timber country to get there.

The rodeo grounds were in a big meadow. The guys had rigged up a couple of chutes with a net wire holding pen behind them. They doubled as loading chutes and roping boxes. The arena wasn’t fenced, of course, so everybody parked their vehicles close together, making a circle ending on each side of the chutes. The arena ended up not very big, but we didn’t worry about it.

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My Mom happened to be the only one with a wrist watch with a sweep second hand, so she got nominated to be the timer. She spread a blanket on the pickup hood, got the papers with everybody’s names, and said she was ready.

The cows were all Herefords, of course, and by golly they bucked fine – most of the time. One old heifer, though, sorta strolled out when they opened the gate and calmly surveyed the situation. The rider spurred, nothing much happened, so everybody honked their horns.

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