-40 Degrees

Saying good morning to a pleasant foggy, drizzling morn, woke up to 50`, but I just read about an arctic blast dropping down into the States bringing -40` to Bismark. May the Lord give us enough to endure what every load we have to carry.  

Speaking of -40` I remember hitchhiking from Portsmouth, NH to Rochester, NY one spring and one of those arctic blasts dropped down for a visit bring -40` with it as me and a fellow Marine were on the road with a 72 hour pass in our pockets. It got so cold that the beer in out get-away-bag was freezing. So what could we do but hurry up and drink them before they froze so hard we could not. There we were on the side of the Turnpike, thumb out, and drinking slush ice beer in one of the worst blizzards hit that part of the world in years so early in spring.

The trees had already sent their sap up into their trunks and limbs, and as the cold set in it froze them, and with the freezing the sap expanded causing them to explode. When the smaller limbs started going off on either side of the highway it sounded just like a firefight on either side of us, and as the night went on and the bigger limbs started they sounded like mortars and Claymores going off. Then in the early morning the sap in the trunk has expanded enough to blow the whole tree down with a boom that sounded like a 155 artillery piece, The trees booming and crashing down and the limbs' cracking and popping it sounded like a Marine Division MLR (Main Line of Resistance) throwing everything it had at an assulat. The only thing missing was the light of a good firefight.

For it was pitch dark with the only lights coming from the occasional car or truck passing by. The snow was falling at over an inch and hour, and the wind was a whipping adding its howling to the chaos of the frozen trees exploding and dying. We should have frozen to death that Friday night, but the Good Lord did not see fit to take us that night, instead a car picked up and got right up behind a semi and follower inches from its back right on into Rochester.

That was a hard year for Maple Trees, over half of them died during that storm in that part of the world. I heard over the radio that it had dropped to 40 below during that night.  This is a link to Wikipedia's story about the storm I am talking about Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962.

The old mare and the new horse.

The old mare, Taz as her rider called her, looked out over her herd; it had been her herd for as long as she could remember. Sometimes it was larger than now, other times smaller, but always hers. New horses to be set straight about who was boss, and the constant reminders she had to keep giving the others kept her firmly in her job. While she could not count she knew exactly how many horses were in her herd, and just where they were most of the time.

The perks of being boss were few in a pasture, she got to eat from the hay feeder when she wished, drink when she wished, making anyone who might wish her spot to wait for her to vacate it. When she felt mean she could pick on anyone she wished, and woe to anyone who thought picking a fight with her was a good idea. She could, and did, have a buddy that she spent most of her pasture time with. Right how it was the Big Red, a large Sorrel gelding.

Then her rider returned with the trailer he had left with early that morning, and her attention left the herd completely and rested solely upon what was in the trailer. In the trailer was the new horse that had been living in her pasture for the last month. The rider had kept it separated from the rest of the horses, including herself, and they had only been able to become acquainted from across the driveway that separated the south pasture from the east dry lot.

Taz, along with all the other horses in her herd, ran to the fence and followed the taller as her rider pulled into the driveway. They nickered their salutations as the trailer stopped and the rider took the horse out and put it into the dry lot. After the rider had moved the trailer to in normal spot the herd ran up and down the fence line as the new horse did the same in the dry lot. She could tell there was something not the same with the new horse, it smelled different, and somehow it acted different. It did not make any differences in any case since he was over there and she was over here. What she did not know was that the new horse had left a stallion and came home a gelding.

She and the herd fell back into their normal routine, which was mostly eating. They would go out into the pasture and separate into singles and pairs to graze the grass, then go up to the shed with the round bail feeder in it where the rider always kept hay in it, no sooner would it be eaten up when he would put a new bail in the feeder. They would take their water from a large troth that the rider seldom lets go dry, even in the hottest weather, and never let freeze in the coldest of weather.

At times they would break into a wild run up and down the pasture and around the fence line. Knowing no bound in their limitations, running to the end of their desire only to rest and run again. As wild as any wild horse hey roam their pasture, fill their stomachs, fight their fights, and sleep as they will.

Running is a game they just loved to play before a thunder storm sets its wind and rain loose upon the pasture. And though they had shelter they were free to take, more often than not they would bunch up and stand in the rain with their backs to the wind. If you were to turn them loose upon a hundred thousand acres they would not live much different than how they live on their five, except for paying the rent.

Every now and then, sometimes more now than then, others times more then than now, the rider would come into the pasture and take some of them out of the pasture. Sometime they would stay near their pasture, others they would be loaded on the trailer and taken away. When this happens they never knew their fate, for each had taken one or more trailer rides that they did not end up where they had left, and had been introduced into a new herd.

They had all learned to become a different animal when they were put under tack. They all had learned their job, some better than others, but none as good as the old mare had. She and the old gray gelding, Gal, had been with him the longest. When she had come to live with him there was only this gilding to share his attention with.

They, together, had watched their rider clear, fence, and sow the pasture with grass. They has watched the shelters go up one by one, sometimes he would send more time working on his place then he did with them, but they knew that he would come back to them, and he would never let them go hungry or thirsty. And just what was that stuff he kept forcing them to swallow the short tubes he stunk into their mouths?

One by one her herd had grown, from the two that she was one of in, this last horse, making six, oh, and let her not forget the mule. When he had come to her pasture he had been kept separated from the rest of the herd too. She and the other four horses would, at times, run up and down the fence line across the driveway as the mule ran up and down his fence across the way. He did not keep by himself like this new horse was, her oldest pasture mate, the gray, had been put with him and they had budded up.

The mare did know how the gray and the mule had first been introduced but as it turned out the gray was just used as a device for the rider to catch the mule. The mule, Jim Bo as the rider called him, had been in her world for two years before he came to live with her. His scent would drift down to her every time the wind blew from the southeast. He had been born in a pasture less than half a mile away two years before he had come to be in her herd.

As soon as the mule had been weaned his owner sold his mother and kept him alone in his ten acre pasture. He had never had a halter on, never been taught any human relational skills, not that he would call them that, and had a great averse to being caught. After two days of the rider trying to get close enough to throw a rope on the wiry little mule he gave up and took the gray up to the pasture where the mule had lived all of its life, and mostly by itself.

The mule had only known one horse in its life, and that was its mother. Oh the great pleasure the mule remember from the time it had spent with its mother, running by her side, sleeping next to her, and, let him not forget, the milk she would let him suck from her tits. So it was quite natural that the mule though that Gal was his mother returned to him when the rider turned the gray loose in his pasture. Jim Bo ran to Gal’s side and imminently dropped his head down to avail himself of the milk that he just knew would be waiting for him just for the sucking.

Gal, the old gray had absolutely no idea what the hell was wrong with this horse that was not a horse, but he was going to have nothing to do with letting him, or any other animal, to try and suck on him. So with a quick side kick Gal took off around the pasture with the mule in hot pursuit. Every time he coughs up with Gal he would drop his head down and stick it under Jim Bo trying for the milk that was not there. Gal would stop, spin, and let go with a double barrel kick. Then run off as fast as he could. Jim Bo has been just as fast at Gal in the short range, but Gal was an Arabian and his ability to keep running finally wore the mule down.

After about two hours Jim Bo was resigned to the fact that he was not going to get any milk from Gal, and had even come to realize that Gal was not his mother. Still he found great pleasure in being by Gal’s side, and where ever Gal went the mule went too. This was just what the rider had known would happen.

The rider had left the two alone for three days then he went back to Jim Bo’s pasture and called Gal over, and Gal being not only the rider’s horse, but had a great regards for the rider (besides he just might have a treat), Gal walked up to the rider, and the rider slipped a halter over his head. Which he did not mind at all, maybe he would get to take his rider for a ride, Gal had taught his rider just about everything he knew about riding, and they rode hundreds of miles together in the eight years they had been together. Though how he rode the Mare much more than he did him, they still would go for long rides together.

But a ride was not in the cards today, instead the rider just led Gal (that is short for Gallivant, incase you are wondering) down to the barn and into a large stall. Jim Bo would not leave his new friend’s side so he walked right into the trap. As soon as the rider, Gal, and Jim Bo were in the stall Jim Bo’s owner, who was not a rider, closed the stall gate on them. In no time at all Jim Bo found himself with a halted on his head, and a lead rope attached to that.

The gate was open and Jim Bo walked for the first time in his life with a rope on him to hinder his chosen direction and to force him in the direction the rider wanted him to go, and he did not like it at all! And as soon as he cleared the stall he took off, jerking the rider off his feet and dragging him up the pasture. Had it not been for the Jim Bo’s owner, a big man, being able to catch up with the runaway mule and dragging rider he might still be running around that pasture for the rider was not about to let go of the rope that had taken so long for him to get on the mule. Well make that long story short Jim Bo came to accept the rope and let the rider lead him to Taz’s pasture.

About two weeks after the rider had brought the new horse, a Dun he calls Doc, back and putting him in the dry lot he took Doc from the dry lot and turned him loose in the main pasture with Taz’s herd.

My Love Affair With Horses

Writing is like painting in that you use words to paint a picture. The choice of words and phrases can be likened unto the lines and shades in a sketch. The idea is formed, sometimes in advance, sometimes as you go along, developing itself as the words grow. The mind, like a seeping spring, contently turning over thoughts, thoughts of this and that which sometimes turn into a stream that channels itself into a story or pome. Today I would like to tell the story of my love affair with horses.

I never was around horses as a child, though at the time I have told that lie, and did spend a day riding a trail horse while I was in Guantanamo Bay as a young Marine. Other than that the only other time I had straddled a horse was on a trail ride at Stone Mountain, GA back in the mid-60s as I was absconding to Hawaii with the law not far behind (another story). That was a nice ride, there was my brother, who had taken us to the airport in Atlanta, the girl who was making the trip with me, sorry girl but your name has long ago left me. I could divert here and tell the story of the reason for that trip, the woman who was making it with me, and our adventures in Hawaii until we decided that we were not meant for each other, but that would be digressing from this story, my love affair with horses.

Back to Stone Mountain, It was a beautiful sunny day, hot out, but nice in the shade of the trees we were riding under. We had paid our fees, and they assigned us horses. Having never saddled a horse I did not know enough to check the girth to ensure it was snug enough. About halfway through the ride, on a part of the trail where there was a deep ravine to one side, and trees right up to the edge of the trail on the other side, just where the trail made a hard left turn, my saddled slipped to the side where the ravine was. Of course, I had not learned how to re-center a saddle by shifting my weight in the stirrups yet, it was my second ride. I was in my mid-twenties on this ride, and I left horses for a very long time, going on to Hawaii, becoming both a sailor, buying and living on a 35-foot sloop for two years, and a hippy, again a different story and one I may tell sometime.

Time marched on its want say anything way; I came back from Hawaii, did my bit in the pin to pay the government back for having the audacity of using Marijuana, and was picked up after I was paroled by the woman who was to become my first wife. To cut this story way short, after 21 years she left with the kids to Florida, and I stayed in Tennessee. I won't say any more about this period of my life for now, except to tell you that there was never any love between us on my part. I married her because she got pregnant and told me flat out that if I did not marry her that she would abort the child. I could not abide that, so we married in a Court House in Chicago, not even a kiss after the “I do”, I was pissed but decided to do the best I could both for her and the child(ren), my bed, I made it.

Jump forward 22 years, the ex gone, and me alone for the first time in a very long time. I started going dancing a lot, my ex never liked to dance, and playing around with a lot of different women. Though out my married life I had escaped the unhappy part of my life by going to school, when you are working your way to an understanding of calculus, differential equations, statistics, political science, computer science, you don’t have time to dwell upon how your life could have been happier. At the time I was working for an OEM firm that made Medical Imaging Equipment and was sent to Ervin, California on a regular bases for varying amounts of time from a week or two, or a month or more depending upon the complexity of the equipment that they were training me to be able to maintain and repair should it break.

In Tustin, I found this two-stepping bar, Coyotes Joe’s that I liked to hang out at and dance when I could. It was there that I met Rena. I was 49 when I met her, and we hit it off. I was with a date at the club when I first saw her, she was smashing. While my date was occupied with some of her friends, I struck up a conversation with Rena. I told her that I was there with someone, but that it was just casual but I would not dump my date while I with her, and all of that aside I told her that I would love to go dancing with her next weekend, and gave her my hotel room and phone number.

Well for a long time I did not dance with anyone else in California. We did lots of things together and hooked up again on my next trip out west. Besides dancing, we went to Disneyland, to Medieval World, Wild West World, walked on Laguna Beach, and thoroughly enjoyed each other company. On that second trip she road back to El Paso with me, I always drove out on these trip for the chance to see the country, we spent the night there, found a place to go dancing, and the next morning I dropped her off at the airport so she could fly home, and I drove back to my part of the world.

Rena ran a travel agency and got a lot of deeply discounted, sometimes free, plane tickets. One week she flew out to St Louis, and we met and spent the day visiting Grant’s Farm, spent the night together nearby, and she flew home in the morning. A month or so later she got a ticket to Nashville and came over for the weekend. I wanted to do something romantic with her, and on the way from Humboldt, just a little north of Jackson, I noted a billboard advertising Loretta Lynn’s Farm and Stables Horse Riding. That would do it, I thought, and this thought changed me for the rest of my life.

I picked her up at the airport early that morning; we spent the morning at Opera Land Hotel, had lunch, and then headed back to my place, which was not very much, then just a one bedroom apartment. Most of my money was going to pay off the debt that my ex had ran up on my credit cards before she left, I had credit cards that only she knew I had! I do not want to get off onto a tangent about that, but it still galls me when I think about it.

On the way home I swung off the Interstate, and took her up to Loretta Lynn’s Farm, she thought that horseback riding was a great idea. I paid out $30 for the hour ride; we were the only ones on the trail other than the guide that took us around. When he asked us what type of horse we wanted Rena said a calm one, and I said a spirited one. Vicariously I was a cowboy, because of all the western I had watched, see them mount, and ride, neither my mind nor my body hesitated, and I road just like I had been doing it all of my life. I was fifty years old that day, that day I fell in love with horses.

That love grew on me though over the next summer. Rena and I had decided to move in together, she would sell her house in Long Beach, and on my next trip over I would fly out, and she would pack her van and a U-Haul with the stuff she wanted to bring with her, store the rest, and I would drive up back to Tennessee. Now there is more to this story about her selling her house then her just wanting to move in with me. Her husband had left her, but her two grown sons had not, and both were still living with her. She was at her wit's end trying out how to get them out to live on their own, and this was a perfect opportunity. If she sold the house and left the state then they would have to make it with their own effort.

You know how it is that what seems perfect in the glow of infatuation but flaws are reviled as familiarity wares in? Rena's first taste of a side of me that she did not like came as we were diving out of California and into New Mexico; she wanted me to stop for gas before we started down that long stretch of road through the land that connects California and New Mexico. I looked at the gauge, remembered about where the next station was and said that we had plenty. As we went through that beautiful landscape the gauge got nearer and nearer to empty. Rena was chewing me out for not having stopped for gas before, and just how pissed she was going to be if we ran out of gas.

Not all that’s well ends well, for we came into a gas station 20 or so miles before we would have run out of gas, but it pointed out to Rena the different in our risk aversions.

We made it all the way back to Tennessee without any more disagreements. I moved her into my apartment, and set up housekeeping. I found another place, much nearer then Loretta Lynn’s place, Chickasaw State Park, down near Mississippi almost straight south from Humboldt. Every weekend that we were not out doing something else we would go riding Saturday and Sunday for an hour or two. They only charged $10 an hour instead of the $15 that Loretta did (no, I never got to meet Loretta).

All this summer we rode hours and hours on many different horses, but winter was coming on. Rena had never driven in snow, and the thought of riding with me in the snow gave her no comfort. That along with all the other cultural shocks she had endured, no bike trails, no one to play tennis with, no street light, not being able to go to a restaurant and drink coffee and read the newspaper half the morning without them wanting you to leave the table for other patrons. All of this, along with some other things, which I won’t go into, led her to decide to move back to Long Beach before winter set in. We parted on good terms, met a few more times at various places for a night or two, and talked over the phone until she got a boyfriend who did not want her to carry on her friendship with me any longer. Now it has been years since we have spoken. We took my Mother and Aunt Ulane to New York just before she went back, that trip in of itself makes another nice lone story, and the picture above was taken on that trip.

After Rena left I kept going to Chickasaw Park every weekend and riding. After a while, the two boys who worked as trail guides and wranglers for the lady who ran the concession told me that I should just work with them, ride for free, and get paid $25 a day for doing it. Now my day job was paying about $60 K, but I jumped on it with the understanding that service engineer job had priorities. I also confessed that I would have to be taught how to saddle a horse. I was 51 years old.

Looking back through the years I have had many good and bad stretches in my life, the time I spent riding at Chickasaw was one of the better periods of my life. I would spend the week working on CTs, Nuclear Cameras, RF Rooms, and sometimes MRIs. Then on Saturday and Sunday, and whatever holiday, I would drive the hour it took to get to Chickasaw, help round the horses, 30 to 65 depending upon the time of year and how many renters we had coming for rides.

We had to walk out into a 50-60 acre pasture to herd the horses back into a job that they were not always eager to do. After running them into a corral, we catch and take them out one at a time to be brushed and tacked up. Each horse had its own rig that it had to be mated with, in all the time I was there I never did get as good at matching a name to a horse as those two boys were.

After the horse was tacked up we would tie then to the picket line. The horses would wait there until some renters came, and then we would match the horses to the renters according to three criteria:

The size of the renter, the ability of the renter, and whether or not this horse should be beside that one or not. Some horses liked each other, some would tolerate others, and some just hated some horse and would pick a fight if every next to that horse. Almost all riders had to have a trail guide to go with them. Only a few, who we could trust not to gallop the horse the whole way would we let go out alone. Small groups would get one wrangler, medium size would get two, and large groups would get three. There were only three of us, so any more renters coming while we were all out had to wait until the last group got back.

When we got back and dismounted the renters we took the horses strait to the water troth and let them drink their fill. This myth of horse colic if it is allowed to drink too much water is just that, a myth, and long as the water is not very cold they can drink their fill without any harm. After they drank their fill we would take them back to the picket line at the end of rotation so they could get as much rest as possible before their next trip. Each trip was about an hour or more depending upon how much you let the horses run.

We would start the rides at 8 in the morning; take the last renters out at 5 in the evening. When we were done for the day we had a long feeding troth that went the length of the barn that we would pore rice brain in, the horses were allowed to eat their fill, and would, on their own, leave the barn when they had their fill and run to the pasture, when the last horse decided to go, we would shut the gate, and go out and ride for fun. We did a lot of what we called rough riding. Trey to take a horse up a hill way too step to climb just to see how far he would make it up before spinning around to go back down. Taking horses down ravines way too steep to climb back up, so steep that the horse had to slide on its butt the whole way down. We would race down the dirt roads in the park in the dark as fast as the horses would go, unable to see anything ahead, but knowing that your horse could. That is as close to flying as I ever came.

After finishing up Saturday night I would drive back to Humboldt, get cleaned up, and then go dancing. Sometimes I would go to a joint up in Dyersburg, just south of Kentucky. Other times I would go to a club in the Holiday Inn in Jackson. Yet other times I would go to the joint that the sheriff in “Walking Tall” had his fight with. I had a lot of dance partners and got laid quite often, but I always got up in time to be back at Chickasaw in time to round up the horses on Sunday morning.

I bought my first horse there an Arabian they called Ahab but I renamed him Gallivant. The reason I bought his was that the way I was riding if I was to hurt a horse I would have much rather it have been my own horse then someone else’s. When I transferred to North Carolina from Tennessee I brought Gallivant with me, he is buried at the tree line in the west pasture, in spite of the hard riding he had to do with me he lived to be 35 years old, 20 of those years with me. I got my second horse in Tennessee also, Tazmania, who still riding the trails with me; she was two years old when I got her back in ’95. That makes her about 17 now, and she is still eager to take me anywhere I might wish to go.

This has been the longest love affair in my life, other than with the marines, outliving all the ones with all of my women, with sailing, mountain climbing, thou my love of women is longer and not yet dead. I hope yet to have a woman in my life that I hold dearer than my horses.to have a woman in my life that I hold dearer than my horses.

Reward

I was driving home the other day when as I came up on Wildwood to the junction with Mahaley there was a snapper, right there in the middle of the road. I stopped the truck, got out, and walked back to where he was. Picked him up, and as I was walking back to the truck he was snapping at the air as I was holding way back on his shell. But he was pissed, and wanted with all his heart to hear who/whatever it was that had taken him from his chosen path.

I laid him down in the bed of the truck, jerking my hands away before he could spin and snap my finger off. Getting back in the truck I drove on home, and turned into the driveway stopping in front of the gate in front of the pond where I got out, went back to the bed where the snapper was. Standing on the running board I reached down, picked him up, and walked over to the pond where I dropped him into the water at the edge of the pond. He looked up, turned around, and swam to where the water was deep enough for him to dive, and dove out of sight into the muddy water with no idea that he had been rescued, just a profound irritation at my having interfered with its life, and a great desire to snap my fingers off!

How many times have you helped someone and they disappeared from your life with no sign of gratitude? Well if you were doing it for their thanks you were doing it for the wrong reason. You should help others for your own well being, not their thanks and gratitude. If that is your reason for helping then that is your reword or disappointment. If you do it just because you can, then you store your reward in heaven.

~

~

~

© 

Rexx

Life Worth Living?

The following is a response evoked from me by a question posed: Who get to decide if a life is worth living. A friend of hers had just been told that she had a 50 percent chance of giving birth to a child with Downs Syndrome.

Left to itself to decide, in the overwhelming majority of the time the self will decide that life is more desirable than the most horrible life. I am reminded of an event that occurred some years back when I was taking my Mother and adopted brother for a ride in the Smoky Mountains near Chimney Rock.

The road between Asheville and Lake Lure are laid out just lovely, very, very curvy, but the curves are set such that you can traverse them at a high rate of speed by cutting across the oncoming traffic lane. This was of the time of year that the foliage had died off because of winter and you could see in time to make your decision to cut the corner or not in plenty of time to do it safely.

I was driving my mother’s car, a Chevy Capri, Mom was in the front seat, and Jim, my adopted brother,  was in the back. I was just rocking that car, just under the ability of the car and up near my ability to control it. I do not know about the rest of you folks, but for me, that is when driving becomes enjoyable, when you are at the edge of your abilities, the rest of the time it is just a chore that has to be done. When we got home that afternoon Jim told my Mother that though he had never flown before he felt that he had now. Sorry, I regress.

The point of this story is that as I did a power slid around one long slow curve a cat ran out from the side of the road. Ran right into my left front wheel! I braked down and in my rearview mirror I could see the cat dragging its hindquarters off the road. I backed up to where I was near the cat, and got out of the car. It was in real bad shape, paralyzed from the waist down, an eye half out of its socket, and blood running from its eyes, nose, and mouth.

It was in my mind to put the cat out of the misery that I had put it in, and walked toward it very slowly, speaking in a low, soft tone telling it how sorry I was for the condition I had put it into as I put on the glove I had taken out of the car with me. The cat was having nothing to do with it, as I got close it started dragging its broken, pain racked (I am sure) body away from me. Before I could reach it, it took off way faster than I could run, for believe me I tried to catch up with it as it dragged its broken body away from the mercy I had in my heart. It, at first went off the road, then turned and drug itself along side the road, and found a culvert it could crawl up into, which it did.

No mater now reassuring I tried to sound, no matter now well I tried to make my intention seem, the cat was not going to deliver its life into my hands. What life it had left it was going to spend as it deemed best, pain racked and taking each of its remaining breath through the bubbles of blood in its nose. It was not given into me the right to decide if its life was worth living or not.

When a parent makes the kind of decision that you have put before us there are more than just the life of the baby involved. If you can afford to pay for all the additional expense that you know will come along with the birth, you have every right to spend your money and time as you see fit. I do not believe that you have the right to expect someone else to pay that expense. Insurance companies have the right to set the criteria of what they will pay for, and what they will not. If you would have the government pay for it you are forcing me, the average Joe taxpayer, to pay for your decision.

Another consideration that the parent must come to terms with is the fact that a child with Downs Syndrome will most likely outlive them. I have know sever people who, in their old age, had a Downs Syndrome child, though in their forties, still a child. I used to live next door to some folks in this situation, my children, five and six, played with their boy, and he, near thirties, played at their level. When his parents died, he has to go into a nursing home, his life, as he knew it, was going to change dramatically. He will never know, once they are gone, the love and comfort that they chose to give him as long as they could.

The answer to the question is that life worth living is going to depend upon who answers it.  The cat said “Hell Yes!” I said that he would be better off dead.  The mother who just conceived a child with a big chance of being born with Downs Syndrome will have to decide.  I know what the child would say if it were asked, but the mother she has to decide if she wants the rest of her life to be anchored to a six year old.  I will not judge the decision for I see both sides.

Lumberjacking

Friends of mine, Allen, Joe, and Jerry, take down the

dead trees in my dry lot on April 13, 2013.

Grunt

Grunt, that's what they call an infantryman, but in this neck of the woods where I grew up in western North Carolina up near Tennessee, it was also an euphemism for shit, poo, poop, dodo, feces, or number two as we say to our children. We would use it when warning another not to step on dog droppings in by saying, "Watch out for grunt there."  When we had to go to the bathroom we will quite often say, "I got a go grunt." 

Now this in itself would get me in any trouble when I went to the Marines, but the fact that whenever my father would use the bathroom to grunt he would make a long loud grunt things sound, so my siblings and I assumed that it was necessary to make this sound while relieving ourselves. Each time we set down either in the outhouse or the indoor throne after it was installed we felt compelled to make the same sound our father made while he was relieving himself.

Bear in mind that until I went and the crotch I had never used a multi-toileted restroom. That changed on my first day at Parris Island, the latrine [as I learned it was called] had two rows of toilets, ten each, on each side of the latrine. So in front of, and alongside of 19 other boots I said down and cut loose with a long loud groan as I grunted. Every head snapped in my direction, with a course of, "what wrong with you?" I quickly learn that silence was preferred mode when one is relieving oneself in public.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

About a year before I went into the Marine Corps I was visiting some relatives out in Montana with my mother and father, I had always dreamed of being a cowboy and when offered to go horseback riding with my cousin I jumped at the chance. One of the hired hands, Slim as he was called, rode along with us for a spell, but as the morning wore on Slim left us on our own to go look for some strays.  My cousin and I, Leland, rode home through the morning stopping to eat lunch about midday.

We rode maybe an hour more after that and by this time I was getting quite saddle sore and talk Leland into heading back to the ranch we were about halfway back when we saw Slim horse grazing without Slim.  Leland cought Slim horse and we started riding circles, bigger on each loop, looking to find Slim.  After about an hour of riding we found Slim sitting in a patch of cactuses.

Well Leland being quite puzzled, asks Slim how the heck he got a mixed all those cactuses. Slim answered, "I jumped in."  Leland then said, "what the hell did you do that for?"  Slim looked up and said rather apologetic, "well, at the time it seemed like a good idea."

A few years latter the Marine rifle company (B-1-6-2D) that I was serving with was sent to Guantánamo Bay Cuba for a tour of guard duty on the Windward side of the base. The three rifle companies walk the routes and stood the guard post in rotation, taking turns being on duty, on standby, or on base liberty. When you are you had to stand our wall your pose for eight hours, have eight hours off, and then another eight hours on. When your platoon was on standby you had to spend the day and night in your utilities with your boots on, ready to run at an instanced notice to back up to platoon that was on active guard duty in case they was an incursion. Liberty day was for you to figure out what to do with what was available. There was the slop shoot, or beer garden as some call it, a movie every night on outdoor screen, a stable with horses on the windward side that you could check out, and the ubiquitous cards games.

But I digress, the story I want to tell today is about my close encounter with a banana rat while was walking long and winding road that ran between two fixed guard stations. This was the only walking post that had to be manned. It stretched from the post that overlooked the Caribbean, to the post on the inland side of the salt marsh. The fence that separated the base from Cuba Randall along one side of the road, on the other side was an extensive salt flat that was to marshy to build a fixed guard post upon. This is why the road had to be walked because the guards in the fixed post at either end of the road could neither see nor hear one another. Each post had telephones which allowed the guards to communicate with all the other posts, but because of the distance between the two posts on either end all of the marsh, it had to be walked to ensure no breach had been made of the fence.

You had to walk this post in a random fashion for eight hours when you drew it. Rest for eight hours, and then walk it for another eight hours. I can assure you it was the least popular of all the post that you might draw. The night I'm telling about I had just left the post near the sea and was walking to the next post in one, maybe five or 6 miles it's hard to recall exactly, in any case, it was a good long walk. While I was a BAR man they let me walk this post carrying an M1.

I had just started my second eight hour walk all the day in the evening when I saw this God awful big rat, I never knew rats grew so big. I didn't think anybody would believe I saw such a thing. So I decided to prove that actually say it the best way would be to show it to them. I unslung the M1, chambered around, and took aim at the rat. However, before I fired I reconsidered. Every Marine that heard my report would undoubtedly think I had either shot a Cuban or one had shot me.

So I am unchambered round, put it back into the clips, and reset the clip into the magazine. All the while this huge humongous rat was staring at me intensively. And the whole while I was fiddling with my rifle he had not moved an inch just stood there without moving, or even blinking that I could tell. We were maybe 10 to 15 feet apart, as I had come around the curve of the road into the straight part of the salt flat he had built his way to the solid ground from which I had just come.

It was still in my mind to kill the rat so I could show it to my compadres, so I took my rifle by the barrel and lifted the stock up above my head like a baseball bat, and started a slow advance upon the rat.  The rat made up his mind, rather slowly at first that it was not going to cooperate with my intentions. At first, as I crept up on him, he backed up at the same speed I was moving forward. Before I could get within striking range he spun and took off a running.

You're not going to get away that easy I thought to myself and picked up my speed to a fast run. The rat was not as fast as I had feared him he may have been, but then neither was I fast enough to catch up with him, just maintain our distances. Will this race went on and on, with our distances slowly narrowing.  As we were running twilight was getting deeper, and dark was near upon us when we came to the end of the salt flat. By this time I was within a stride of being able to strike at him, remember during this whole run I have been holding my rifle as though it were a baseball bat. At the end of the flats for the road curved off to the right and the next guard post, there was what appeared to me in the near dark I growth of bushes.

The rat made a dive into the bushes, and swing my rifle hard as I could I dove in right behind. Immediately I forgot all about the rat for the bushes were not bushes, they were cactuses. And had I not had my arm in front of my face holding my rifle up high to swing the rat the cactus needles would have put my eyes out. As it was I had hundreds if not thousands of needles piercing my arms, my chest, and my legs. I even had so many that went through my combat boots that they had to be cut off from me when I got back to sickbay.

Well, that's where I was, sitting in the middle of that their cactus patch, picking needles out of my hands and arms when the relief truck drove by with its spotlight search in the roadside for me, as it went by I holler, really loud, over here! The sergeant of the guard walked over, as close as she could get, and asked me, "How in the hell did you get in there?" And I responded, "I jumped in." With a really pissed off look on his face, he asked me, "What the fuck did you do that for?" And of course, I responded, "Well Sarge at the time it seemed like a good idea."

They cut me out with machetes, carried me to the truck as the cactus needles did not allow me to walk very well, and took me straight to sickbay after relieving all the other guards. As I mentioned above the corpsman had to cut my boots off, cut my utilities off, and they pick bails out of me for two or three hours. Each needle to come out left its tip inside as it had a Barb on to remind me as they worked out over the next four or five years that not everything was done in what seems like a good idea at the time turns out to be such a good idea at any time.

This is not me, but the rat in nearly as big as the one I was chasing.