A Hard Ride

By Dick Dooley and Dennis Dooley

I have always had a fierce independence from my earliest memory. However, I was always shy and uncomfortable in social situations, which always frustrated me to no end. I still struggle with my social shortcomings to this day. My confidence in my solo actions were always strong. I have always marveled at the military's ability to train men and women how to run things who did not have a lot of formal training better than a lot personal who did.

During the summer of 2018, I was selected to attend the four-day training seminar at the US War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I think that I was the lowest-ranking commissioned officer at the class since I was only a Navy lieutenant, and all the others were Army lieutenant colonels and above. I tried to persuade them of the desirability of the need for having senior enlisted soldiers in attendance for their input on how to run things more efficiently than the high-ranking officers did since they were the ones assigned to conduct the operations. I came away with the conclusion that my thoughts were not appreciated for the most part, but I still have this belief.

During my preteen years in the Arkansas Ozarks, I read the novel The Yearly by Marjorie Rawlings, and it was later made into a movie starring Gregory Peck. Many of the kids that I knew in the Ozarks were exactly like many of the kids portrayed in the book, which only enhanced the story for me. I also read the books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, which also brought to life for me what I was living in the Ozarks. Also, while in school in the fourth and seventh grades in the Ozarks, I was well-respected, which also enhanced my experience while in Arkansas.

In the Navy, while I had never been in a small airplane in my entire life, I discovered that I had a talent that I did not know that I had. I had mistakenly assumed that many of the other trainees with more abilities than I had were actually washing out of the program while I continued to hang on until getting my wings and commission. This caused a lot of consternations in my mind: why was I succeeding, and they weren't?

After being released from the Navy, I couldn't get a job with any airline due to an oversupply of pilots from Vietnam. Eventually, I got a job with East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) and moved back to my home in Angels Camp, California. I worked at EBMUD for twenty years, and during that time, I also served on the elected board of directors for Calaveras County Water District (CCWD), which oversees twenty separate water, wastewater, and hydroelectric systems scattered throughout the county.

That's a brief biography of my life. If anybody wishes to communicate with me with questions or observations, please contact me through my e-mail address, [e-mail]. Please refer to this book so that I do not mistakenly delete it thinking it is junk mail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890432681

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A Hard Ride

Dick Dooley and Dennis Dooley

ISBN 979-8-89043-267-4 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89043-268-1 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Dick Dooley and Dennis Dooley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Authors' Note

Description for Choice of Cover Photo and Title Change

Preface

Introduction by Dennis Dooley

Boy Cowboy's Cattle Drive

Reverie

The Price of Bragging

The Admiral's Temperature

Outline of My Life

The Early Years—before the Journey

The Journey across America

The Teen Years and Beyond

Memories

School Memories

Boy Entrepreneur

Boy Scout Memory

Fifty-Cent Christmas

Another Time, Another Place

My Early Years

My Shy Years

My Late Teen and Early Adult Years

About Camp Pomperaug

What Generation Gap?

Toys

A Cat-tastrophv

Feud

Hunting Penitentes

The Path Undertaken

Kid Drunk

Rabbits

My First Courtship

Monkeyshine

My First Encounter with Lelia

A Poem to Lelia

Our first year together

Play Ball

What If?

Prairie Dog

Flatlanders

Model A

Cowboy Reverie

Reminiscing

Missing You

A Love That Can Last

Big Bear City

Easter

Pearl Harbor: Introduction by Dennis Dooley and Investigative Report by Robert Stinnett of the New American

The War Years

Shore Leave

A prisoner of war

Donie's article

Justification for the Atom Bomb to End the War with Japan

Dad's Life between 1947 and 1965

Reporting for Duty

Brief Encounter

To a Sick Friend (Part 1)

A Short Love Poem

To a Pretty Girl

I Remember

The Transition Period

Preflight School

Transition to the Navy

Primary Flight Training in the T34 Mentor

Design and development

Primary Jet Training in the T-2 Buckeye

North American T-2 Buckeye

Design and development

T-2B

Training in the Grumman F-9 Cougar at the Advanced Jet Training Command in Kingsville, Texas

Blue angels

The A-4 Skyhawk

Other memorable stories

A Prayer: A Poem by Dick Dooley

Dad's Short Stories: An Introduction by Dennis Dooley

All in a Day's Work

Snowy Cattle Hunt

River Incident

Embarrassing Moment

Skunked

My Wife and Family

Starting a New Career

Odd Characters

Just a-Sittin'

Two Prayers

Going Home

God's Bounty

Make Your Reservations Today

The Old-Timer's Tale

More Stories by Dad: An Introduction by Dennis Dooley

Gertie Taylor

Life Is like a Mountain Railway

Picture Section

What I Was Doing

Eventful Times

Carefree Motoring

My Career Working for EBMUD and Serving on CCWD Board of Directors

In 2018, I Was Invited to the US Army War College for Their Annual Four-Day Leadership Seminar in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Navion Airplane Story

May I Stay Here Longer?

Old Age

What about Hair Goops?

Commercials

Old-Time Sourdough Biscuits

A Fantasy: What If the 49ers Had to Conform to Today's Regulations?

Interlude

Carrots

She's Gone and, Oh, I Miss Her

To a Sick Friend (Part 2)

Unpaid Bill

Forgetfulness

Remembering Jackie Coogan

We'll Miss You

Modern Life

Christmas Poems

La Noche Buena

The Night after Christmas

An Annual Christmas Poem (1977)

Advice to the Lovelorn

The Other Side

Sound of Trumpets

I'll Not Grow Old

Cowboy Heaven

50th Anniversary

The Robbery

Weary Farmer

The Heritage I Leave

8th-Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas, 1895

Grammar (Time: One hour)

Arithmetic (Time: One hour fifteen minutes)

US History (Time: Forty-five minutes)

Orthography (Time: One hour) [Do we even know what this is?]

Geography (Time: One hour)

About the Author

Authors' Note

The first part of this book was written by Dick Dooley and compiled by his son, Dennis Dooley, posthumously about his incredible twentieth-century life journey as told through short stories and poetry.

The second part of this book is written by Dennis Dooley about his life as a decorated Vietnam combat pilot flying missions primarily over North Vietnam, as a Navy pilot flying off of a carrier, and later as a reluctant politician and survivalist working as a utility worker while raising a family.

Description for Choice of Cover Photo and Title Change

Dennis Dooley

My dad had a favorite art book by Charlie Russell, and as a young child, my favorite painting was the one titled Jerked Down, which particularly appealed to me. In this painting, the rider on the horse that is being jerked down, I thought, was a painting of my dad. I remember asking Dad if this was a picture of him, and he answered that he had been in similar situations several times as a cowboy.

Secondly, I want to go back to the original title I had picked for this book: Rode Hard and Put Away Wet. We have six grandchildren, five boys and one girl. Our granddaughter Elyse was a teenager who seemed to know everything already and told me that this title carried a meaning with a sexual interpretation and wanted me to change it. I complied with her wishes and changed it to A Hard Ride.

What most people don't realize is that this is an old horse, indicating a condition that can possibly result in a horse being permanently crippled if mistreated by not cooling and wiping the horse down after a particularly hard ride. This can cause a hoof disease called laminitis or founder where the bone inside of the horse's hoof rotates out of the normal position. This can cause the horse to be permanently crippled and painful for the horse to ever be able to run again. This disease can be corrected by selectively trimming and shoeing the horse if the horse is particularly valuable, but it will take several years. Most horses are not that valuable, and the choice would be to euthanize the horse rather than trying to salvage the horse.

I was looking to reedit this book of Dad's writings to correct a few mistakes and looked around for a publishing candidate who could accommodate me for this task. After a number of dead-ends, I came across Christian Faith Publishing, Inc., and spoke with their agent, who wanted to know more about me. She then asked me if I would be willing to include some of my history, and I said yes, but was thinking no.

After several weeks mulling this over in my mind, I decided on yes and started going over my own history. I have attempted to meld my stories with Dad's, but it wasn't easy. Dad was born on April 29, 1911, and died on September 26, 1996, on my birthday while I was in Monterey, California, on a statewide Water Association convention. In 1911, aviation was still in its infancy, and Dad never did fly in an airplane as a passenger until many years later.

I was not motivated to do good in school and didn't apply myself to my studies.

Consequently, I barely eked by in my grades. I participated in several sports but did not do well for lack of encouragement or guidance. Dad worked very long hours, and Mom worked full-time on swing shift at Norton Air Force Base as a keypunch operator. After high school, I enrolled at the two-year college in San Bernardino, played sports, and only barely passed in my grades. After this, without an AA degree, I was admitted to Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico.

Before I left Southern California, I went to the coast and took a battery of tests for the Navy and placed sufficiently high enough to impress the Navy. In New Mexico, I continued in my usual pattern of barely getting passing grades with two exceptions. I did well in algebra and physics. At about this time, Vietnam was heating up, and it became known to me that I was a prime candidate to be drafted into the Army and sent immediately to the rice paddies of South Vietnam, shortly after graduating from boot camp.

This was not an option that appealed to me, so I contacted the Navy and asked them if they might consider and would consider it if I would take flight training. I was told that they were short of pilot trainees and would consider it if I came back to California and took a few more tests, which I did. I was also told that if I completed flight training and got my wings, I would also be commissioned as an officer. I had never been in or near a small airplane in my life, but the thought fascinated me.

I thought all of the other aviation cadets were more capable than I was and felt extremely inferior. However, I continued to persevere while many of the other cadets were washing out or quitting. After finishing primary flight training at Pensacola flying the T-28 Mentor, I was selected to be sent to the primary jet training syllabus to fly the T-2 Buckeye jet at Naval Air Station (NAS) Meridian, Mississippi. A lot more of the pilot trainees washed out during this difficult syllabus.

After finishing this phase of my training, I was sent back to NAS Pensacola for air-to-air gunnery training and for my first actual carrier landings. From Pensacola, I was sent to the training base at NAS Kingsville, Texas, to be trained at the advanced jet training command in the F-9 Cougar. This again was a very tough syllabus, and many of the pilot trainees washed out, but I persevered.

At the completion of this training, we were sent out for our final half a dozen carrier landings. Later that same day, I was sent to the training command headquarters to be given my wings and resign my status as a cadet and reenlist as an ensign, which is the same rank as a second lieutenant in the other services.

From Texas, I was assigned to NAS Lemoore in Central California to begin transition training to fly the A-4 Skyhawk. While in Lemoore, I began dating a beautiful Portuguese farmer's daughter, Geraldine Fagundes. I fell in love with her and eventually married her. After only a few months, I was assigned to Attack Squadron VA-163, nicknamed the Saints. Gerry and I were married only six months when I was shipped out to Vietnam on the carrier USS Hancock, which was the oldest and smallest carrier in the fleet used for combat operations.

I was under contract with the Navy and was considered part of the Navy reserves and not considered regular Navy. After my tour in Vietnam, I was sent back to the advanced training command at NAS Beeville, Texas, as an instructor, again flying the F-9 Cougar. At the end of my contract with the reserves, I was terminated and had to leave the Navy.

At this time, there was an oversupply of pilots, and none of the airlines I had contacted were hiring. In fact, none of the airlines would even put my application on file because I didn't have the minimum requirement of at least 5,000 hours of multiengine time as a pilot and a college degree, no exceptions. I was convinced that I did not want to be a glorified bus driver and walked away from aviation, despite loving flying.

I eventually took a job as an insurance underwriter in Fresno. While in Fresno, our second daughter, Tanya, was born. When Tanya was just over a year old, I accepted a job as half owner and manager of a Western Auto franchise in Angels Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California. We were confronted with hassles and double dealing from the Western Auto headquarters and eventually decided to cut our losses and sell this franchise.

About this same time, I joined the community volunteer fire department. The caliber of the other volunteers was way above the average residents, and I was drawn to join them. It was difficult to make ends meet, but I persevered. When I didn't have any work lined up, I would go out for at least eight hours a day, looking for more work. After several years of this, I finally got a job with a large water utility with one of its operations at a nearby lake that had an excellent pay. After our daughters graduated from high school and left home, I decided I could afford to buy an airplane and start flying again.

If any reader has any thoughts or questions, I invite you to contact me at my e-mail or my mailing address. My e-mail address is [e-mail]. Mention the book so that I don't think it is junk mail. My mailing address is Dennis Dooley, PO Box 1258, Angels Camp, California 95222.

Preface

The twentieth century was a tremendous time of change and upheaval, especially in the United States. There was the catapulting of this country into the role of a world leader with World War I, then the headiness of the twenties with reckless abandon and prohibition. Next came the hardship and upheaval of the Depression, then the resolve and sacrifice of World War II, then the peace and prosperity of the fifties and sixties, and finally, the technological and social upheaval of the rest of the century.

In the twenties and thirties, there were still undeveloped areas in the United States where one could go and live very much the same as the pioneers of the previous century had done. There are millions of stories of people who were blown by the winds of change and upheaval of the twentieth century, but too few of them put it down in writing. This is a story of one such individual told through short stories and poetry.

Richard E. Dick Dooley was a man caught between two worlds. The first was the rural west that he knew and lived in as a youth and a young man, and the second was the modern world that he struggled in. Although he eventually went back to ranching in Utah later in his working years, his fond memories of his youth would always be there, even if he didn't talk about it much.

Dick was born to an Irish clan in New England, April 29, 1911. His father was a brawling, drinking, Catholic Irish dray driver, and his mother was a Protestant English Blue Blood, an educated scrapper who was orphaned at a young age and reared by relatives, orphanages, and workhouses until she got on her own. She was also half or quarter Oglala Indian but never fully admitted it since this was a period in our history that she was embarrassed by this. Bill and Lillian Dooley had a very stormy marriage and had only one child: Richard E. Dooley.

The details are not clear, but Bill and Lillian had separated several times before Lillian left him for good and took up with another man and eventually left New England for good. During the years that Dick lived with his father, Bill instilled in him many of the thoughts and prejudices of the Molly McGuires who hated the English with a passion. Dick always spoke of his loyalty to the Irish and his disdain for the English, but he loved people and, even though he hated the English, he never met an Englishman he didn't like.

In 1922, World War I had been over for a few years, and his mother decided to leave her husband for good. She had taken up with another man, George, who had lost his wife and had several daughters. Lillian and George decided that they were going to go west. So George left his younger daughters with his sister, and he—along with Lillian, Dick, his eldest daughter, and another female friend—began to hitchhike across the country. They had no money and no plan. This was at a time before anybody had heard of the term hitchhiking.

They didn't have any transportation, so they became adept at getting a ride of some form for a ways and then camp out or get temporary shelter for a few days or weeks and get temporary jobs until they could get enough money to move on again. Lillian was a wiz at getting jobs as a cook or as cleaning person. While the two girls would get jobs as waitresses at a local cookhouse, George and Dick would get jobs in the fields at farms and businesses needing temporary help. For whatever reason, Dick had this irrational attitude that he had to outwork all of the grown men, even though he was not yet a teen, and he usually did, even if he had to work himself to extreme exhaustion trying to do so.

After the better part of a year, they had found a place where they wanted to settle down in Northwestern New Mexico. This was an area that was having a number of years of unusually wet weather that coincided with an influx of settlers. Most who wanted to farm or ranch in this area had good luck so long as the weather was good. They homesteaded a section of land in the small settlement of Lindrith, New Mexico, and thus began what for Dick was a grand adventure.

George received a military pension from his Army service during the Spanish-American War and did all sorts of piecework. Lillian was a teacher, so she started a school and did any other work she could get. Dick had gone to public schools back east and had been home schooled to the extent that he could pass the eighth-grade equivalency test required by New Mexico and was thus not required to attend school.

This freed Dick to begin cowboying all during his teenage years instead of attending school. He did attend school later on and eventually got his high school diploma. Dick fell in love with this rugged yet beautiful country, thus instilling a lifelong love affair with this part of the country, despite the fact that that he was never ever able to go home again after he had left in the early part of the Depression and after the rains ceased and the Dust Bowl had begun.

A couple of years before Dick left this area, the State of New Mexico Schools was persuaded to set up an official school for the community of Lindrith. New Mexico hired a married couple, who were teachers, to formally set up this school, administer it, and be the teachers. This couple, Jim and Gertie Taylor, had a teenage daughter, Lelia (pronounced Lee-lee-yah), who very much appealed to Dick. When he was nineteen going on twenty, and Lelia was barely sixteen, they eloped and were married by a Spanish-speaking Justice of Peace. Even the marriage certificate was in Spanish, so Lelia was never sure they were properly married until they repeated their vows in church at their fiftieth wedding anniversary and six grown children later.

After they eloped, Jim Taylor and all his friends were hunting for them with the intent of killing Dad and retrieving his daughter. They were able to avoid being caught until it was too late, and Granddad had to finally accept the marriage. In Gertie's later years, after Jim had passed away, and she came to live near Dick and Lelia, she became extremely fond of Dick, even taking his side in Dick and Lelia's arguments most of the time.

A few years after the official school in Lindrith had been established, and after Dick and Lelia had eloped, the original log school had burned down, and the Depression was beginning. Many settlers began moving away, and Jim and Gertie Taylor moved on to Portales, New Mexico, to set up a small dairy with Jersey cows (Jerseys produce milk with a higher cream component than most other breeds).

Lelia was pregnant, and Dick and she were persuaded to come down to Portales for the birth of the baby and to finish high school (Dad finished high school, but Lelia never did). The baby was a healthy robust baby boy and was the darling for both families. When this baby boy was eight months old, he got a virulent fever one evening, and the next morning, he was dead. Everyone was devastated, and for the rest of her life, Lelia would talk about how beautiful her baby boy was and how much she missed him, even until her death almost eighty-five years later. Dick would never speak about him, although when he started writing many years later, he would often speak of him in his writings.

Shortly after the death of their son, Dick and Lelia left Portales and moved to Santa Barbara, California. The Depression was in full swing, but Dick could always find a job, even where others couldn't. He was too proud to go on any bread line and always said that he would do whatever was necessary to provide for his family without turning to the government for help.

During the Depression, they were almost like gypsies, moving around to wherever Dick could get work. He worked in the Santa Barbara area at several jobs in Oregon, felling timber in the resort area of Big Bear, California, and eventually in the oilfields of Long Beach. During this time, their first two daughters were born, Donelia and Darlene. Donelia is an original name that came from Lelia's older half sister, Doni, and her name, Lelia.

World War II was in full fury when Dick was called for induction. He was almost too old and could have gotten a deferment for his work in the oilfields but chose to go. Fortunately, he was inducted into the Navy where he ended up on Admiral Nimitz's intelligence staff as a cryptographer.

During the war, two more children were born, Dennis and Dorenda. After the war, the family moved to Highland, California, where they purchased a lot and erected a Quonset hut that they lived in while Dick began building a permanent house that they moved into a couple of years later but was never fully finished until many years later. The family stayed here until 1965.

During these years, Dick worked as a tile contractor and then as a salesman for a meat jobber. It was a mistake that another son, David, was born, but he soon became their favorite as the baby of the family as so often happens.

The year was 1965, Donelia and Darlene were married, Dennis and Dorenda were on their own, and only David was still at home and attending high school. Dick was offered an opportunity to become the manager and a minor partner of a rather large cow-calf cattle ranch in northeast Utah, which he jumped at. At the ranch in Utah, Dick was admired for his horsemanship, his ranching skills, and his cow doctoring skills. He missed a Cattlemen's Association meeting and an irrigation district meeting and was elected president of both in absentia. He would often smile and complain about being too well accepted for a Gentile among all these Mormons.

After about six years here, the ranch was sold, and Dick and Lelia had to leave (David had left a couple of years earlier). Dick wanted to move back to New Mexico, but he needed work, so they moved to Albuquerque, where he began working as a real estate agent. Dick had lived for a short time in Albuquerque when he was an early teenager and always marveled at how much it had grown. A few years later, when Dick decided to fully retire, they decided that if the children wouldn't move to be closer to them, then they would move to be closer to the children and grandchildren. So they sold out in Albuquerque and moved to Sutter Creek, California.

It was in Sutter Creek that Dick joined a senior's writing club and was encouraged to write about his experiences. Dick always had a flair for writing poetry. So he began writing short stories about his experiences and wrote a number of poems. Dick still worked, even when he didn't have to. He and a neighbor built a spec house and made a small bundle of money. He planted a huge garden and supplied the Senior Center with all the vegetables that they could handle all summer long. Dick loved people and had a flair about him that made people instantly love him in return. He could walk into a room of strangers, and within minutes, they would all like him. Dick had a very strong sense of humor and was a master of suckering people in to bite at a punch line.

Dick and Lelia were married for sixty-five years when he passed away. After Dick passed away, Lelia wanted me (Dennis) to scrounge through all of his writings and try to put them in some sort of order. I was amazed at how much he had written and was further amazed to learn things about Dad that I didn't know. Many of his poems and stories were written on pieces of scratch paper and even on irregularly tom pieces of throwaway paper.

I transcribed his writings. I tried to keep to his writing style, choice of words, and punctuation as he wrote them as much as possible, except where I couldn't avoid it or to make it more understandable to others who do not know the family background to understand the context.

I have found it difficult to determine the best sequence for sorting out Dick's writings and making it more understandable for the reader. I will preface many of the writings with some background where necessary for the reader to fully understand the context in which the story or poem was written. Further, I will generally select stories and poems about the earlier years, followed by the later years, then some poetry that has not already been wove into the preceding portions, and finally, some samples of Dick's fantasy and humor. I have found these writings very enjoyable and hope that the reader does also.

One final note: there are millions of people who have had interesting lives that would be a pleasure to read about but too few who are willing or are able to write about it in an interesting way. I have no assumption that Dad's life was necessarily more interesting than many other, but he has been able to write about it in a way that is interesting, I have the good fortune of being able to sort through these writings to put it in this book. I would encourage others who have lived an interesting and noteworthy life to put it down in writing if for no other reason than to have it for his or her future generations to be able to know more about their grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, or what have you. So please do it.

Before starting with the outlines of Dick's life, I would like to start with a couple of stories and poems. My reasoning for this is to set some flavor to the outlines of the history which, I hope, will make the outlines more understandable and enjoyable.

Dick was an early teenager, and the family had recently acquired a homestead in the high country in the Northern New Mexico community of Lindrith. As explained in the story, his stepfather had purchased a small herd of cattle from a ranch some distance from the homestead and wasn't sure how to retrieve them. Reluctantly, at Dick's insistence, they decided to let him and a friend go get them. This, then, is his story.

Introduction by Dennis Dooley

As a young child, Dad's favorite book of art was Charlie Russell's complete book of drawings and paintings. This one painting was my personal favorite because I thought this was a painting of Dad on the horse that was being jerked down.

Dad was tall, thin, and wiry, and I thought this looked like him. However, he would never answer me directly, except to say that he had been in this situation several times, which was good enough for me. I was aware that he was an excellent horseman, but he never did talk much about his early years in Northwestern New Mexico. As far as I knew, he was just another father like many of the other fathers that I had met, but I was too ignorant to pump him for more information.

After he passed away in 1996 at age eighty-five, Mom told me to look in his drawers in his office to see what I could do with what I found. I found numerous handwritten stories and poetry on scraps of paper and realized what a fantastic treasure I was blessed with. Mom's only instruction was to do with his writings as I saw fit.

I was still working full-time and made several attempts transcribing his writings but couldn't finish them due to being too busy with many activities, including my full-time job with the water district, looking after Mom, flying my airplane (I had a Navion at the time), serving on a county water district board of directors which oversaw over twenty separate water, wastewater, and hydroelectric systems scattered throughout the county, taking care of three rentals we owned in Angels Camp (I was doing most of the maintenance work on the rentals), and running all over the United States to watch our younger daughter run track. She was one of the top sprinters in the United States and was offered many scholarships around the country and finally settled for Fresno State and eventually made it to the Olympic trials in the 400-meter race but failed to make the team.

After retiring for the third time, I settled down to transcribe this original book. It involved piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of many bits of scrap paper that weren't together in one place and organizing it into a book. I did this without any idea if I did it right or not. During this time, I spent a total of three trips back to New Mexico to search for anything I could find about Dad. From the descriptions in the book and my conversations with Dad, everything was exactly as Dad described it. Lindreth was and still is on a dead-end road in the middle of nowhere, the nearest town being Cuba, New Mexico, which is about twenty-five miles southeast and predominantly an Indian settlement. Lindreth was and may still be a destination where many criminals would go to disappear from the law authorities.

After spending about six months transcribing this compilation, I spent the next six months contacting publishing firms and literary agents, looking for support for a publisher to no avail. Finally, in desperation, I decided to go the self-publishing route in 2012. Shortly after this original book was published, I noticed that there were a few typo mistakes and wanted to explore the possibilities of republishing this book and to include the title Rode Hard and Put Away Wet, which is an old western saying of the dangers of working a horse too hard in the heat and then putting them away wet without rubbing them down and cooling them off. If done that way, the horses are at risk of developing a hoof condition of having the bone in the hoof rotating inside of the hoof and becoming crippled making that horse likely unable to be ridden again in the future. Dad loved horses too much to mistreat them in any way.

Last year, I started contacting self-publishing businesses to help me with my goal of republishing this book. I sent one business (Christian Faith Publishing) my plans. The literary agent I spoke to asked me to send her a copy of my book and to tell her about myself. She was impressed with my history and asked me to consider including my history in this rewrite. I initially rejected this idea in my mind, but I told her that I would consider it. Later, I rethought my decision and decided to go along with this route.

In the first book, I tried not to talk about myself any more than necessary, except for when a clarification was necessary. I have had a charmed life, which included an angel on my shoulder protecting me in times of danger. Without a college degree, I was able to become a commissioned Navy officer based on my ability to successfully complete Navy flight training and getting my wings. I made the cut for selection for single seat combat jet training. After getting my wings, I was stationed at a West Coast Navy Air Station (Lemoore NAS). From Lemoore, I was based on a carrier assigned for the Vietnam conflict, flying 110 missions primarily over North Vietnam from the carrier.

Before the Navy, I had the incredible opportunity to go live with my grandmother in the mountains of Northern Arkansas on a rural farm of 1,000 acres, which was still mostly jungle with cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, and horses. The culture was still mostly out of the nineteenth century. In high school, I was either in sports or had a job. I also went to a lot of summer camps where I aggressively participated in water sports.

It is my hope that you as the reader will enjoy this ride. So get in, fasten your seat belt, enjoy the ride, and may God bless you.

A really profound short prayer:

Dear Lord,

Thy will be done—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

Amen.

Boy Cowboy's Cattle Drive

Dick Dooley

It all started when my stepfather brought some cattle, sight unseen, from a rancher near La Cueva, New Mexico. The obvious question was how to get them home in those pre-cattle truck days. La Cueva was some two hundred miles east of our ranch, and it was October already at which time the early winter storms were likely to come at any time.

At the ripe old age of thirteen, I was confident that I could handle any situation. After much argument, I persuaded the folks that I was competent to handle the problem. Finally, it was decided that I, in company with a neighbor boy named Bobby Loddy, also thirteen, would go after the cattle. The next morning, Bobby and I saddled our horses, packed the pack horse, and started for La Cueva. Some miles east of the ranch, we crossed the Continental Divide, dropped down into the Arroyo Blanco Basin, and were well on our way.

Along the way, we paused to visit with a rancher whom we knew. We were told that he was having a party that night. The next morning, we rode through Gallina, stopped at Scott's Store and, conscious of the fifteen dollars in my pocket, brought a couple of sacks of Bull Durham (smoking tobacco sold in small pull string cloth sacks) before proceeding. While there, I pulled out the old Smith & Weston (revolver) which I had slipped into my bedroll and belted it on.

What with the gun on my hip and the tobacco tag hanging out of my shirt pocket, I felt equal to