Story Time Again

[Tom Penkava]

Badger in the Kitchen
The summer of 75 was a warm one, with temperatures in the high 90s on the two bar two east of Greeley, which if you don't know, is in Colorado.  In the early days ( late 1880s ), this ranch was a fairly good size and covered a large part of present day north central Colorado.  The two bar two and the Wyoming Hereford Ranch, just a piece up north were the settings for James Michener's “Centennial”.  At the time I worked there in the early 70s, it was down to about 60 sections and owned by a corporation.
I was living in a bunk house that would sleep four, but there was just two of us this summer.  It being one of those hot, muggy nights we had all the windows and the door open for a little air flow, just a screen door to keep the insects out.  I woke up along about 1:00 in the morning, something stirring in the kitchen, making all kinds of racket.  Crawled out of bed, eased over to the doorway and poked my head around the door jam to see what was going on, 44 in my left hand.  Well what do you think I saw.  There in the kitchen, getting into everything was a dang Badger, it had tore a hole in the door screen and made itself to home.  I let out a yell, eared back the hammer on that 44, Badger ran for the outside, I fired left handed.  Red, who was still asleep, came charging into the kitchen, what the Sam He**s going on, still half asleep.  I explained about the noise, the Badger, the shot, so we look around, that animal sure did make a mess of things.  Nope, I didn't hit it, I missed it a mile and then some, but I did shoot the handle off the screen door.  That 44 left a big hole in the frame of the screen door where the handle should have been.

[Tom Penkava]

The ranch I worked on during the 70s  was 60 some sections at Roggen, CO, most years it had a little over 9000 cow/calf pairs and the only way it worked was to run them on corn stalks in the winter and grass in the summer,.  About 2/3 were spring calvers, 1/3 fall cavers, everything was AI, with cleanup bulls after.  I looked on a map once and figgered out I was ridding 50-75 miles on average daily, team roping 20-30 head to doctor whatever,
 
Just wish I had a camera back then.  One summer day, me and Jess were ridding/doctering and he roped a Freshian bull deep around the neck.  Bull ran into the door of an old homestead house, there they stood.  Jess was on a little 900 lb dunn gelding, bull weighed about 1100 lbs, Jess couldn't drag him out of the house, bull couldn't pull him in.  We sure enough needed to doctor the bull for foot rot, so I rode around to the north side and leaned down,reached in and roped the heals through the window.  There we were with the bull, head & healed through the door & window,so we went and doctored it, but every time the bull would strain, the walls of that old house would shake and dust would sift down.  Turned the bull loose and do you think we got any thanks, not a bit, had to circle around to avoid that dang bull, seems he was a bit on the fight after all that.

[Tom Penkava]

Coyote Roping
If in you don't already know, anyone working stock spends most of their time taking care of the animals, looking out for their well being.  And cowboys being cowboys, anything that moves is a likely target for a rope.  One summer on the 2-2 we was moving a set of cow/calf pairs from one pasture to another ( generally these were 4 to 5 section pastures ) when I spotted a coyote off to one side.  Any stockman who has come on a calf what has been ate on by a coyote will understand this, well I shook out a loop, hooked a spur and took out after it.  I was ridding my bay gelding we called Houdini ( cause he was a escape artist ), short chase later and I had Mr. coyote roped & dallied.  Not much to that, soon as he felt the rope, he tried to hide down in the sage brush.  Problem being, now what.....  What do you do with a coyote at the end of your rope ::)    well, I stepped down, put my instep over the rope and pulled mr coyote up short, outs with my pocket knife and ended mr coyote then and there.

[Tom Penkava]

Pidgins
Now you all got me on a roll, so here goes another from the 2-2, I think this was about 1975 or maybe 76, after spring caving as we were AI-ing on a bunch of black angus, I had a pasture of 500 and Donnie had another 500 next to me, with the AI facility between our pastures so we could help each other.  We noticed a bunch of maybe 120 or 200 cows milling around, rooting their heads & noses in the ground, just like hogs at a trough.  Now what the **** are those dang cows doing, maybe they got a coyote down or something, so we hook a spur and amble over for a look.  Dangest thing I ever did see, all those cows were circled around taking turns rooting a pidgin into the dirt.  No telling what a cow critter will do next, or a cowboy for that matter.   Maybe one of these days I'll dig out the scrap book from 71 when I took a few months and joined up with the "Buffalo Bill Wild West Show", there's a few stories there also.

[Tom Penkava]

The Cowboy and the Blond
The summer of 77 I was once again on a ranch in the Colorado high country, guiding trail rides and packing horses and mules.  I had worked for this place 5 years, then moved on east to the plains for 3 years at the 2-2.  The 2-2 had been sold and I headed back to the high-ups for some quiet time, and I needed to sell my 5 horses as I planned on moving to the Pacific and looking for work on one of the Hawaian Ranches there.  The summer progressed perty well, lots of interesting guests from all over the country and Europe, excepr for one week in June when I had a seizure, but thats another story.  Along about Labor Day weekend, the ranch filled up with people, including this woman from Denver, who had lived in Crawfordsville, In, and NYC, but was from a town about 40 miles from where I came from in Nebraska.  She was up early watching the horses being drove into the corral/barn and just had to open her mouth about something.
I was riding my sock footed sorrel roping horse, so what else to do but hook a spur and head off across the meadow after her, rope a swinging. Of course she did the wrong thing and took off running, which triggers the chase instinct in critters & man.  Well, I caught her, roped her neat as a pin.  Damn, talk about madd, like to never got my rope back, stayed ( teeded off ) for 3 days, but last Christmas we celebrated our 38th wedding aniversith, Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass.

[C. Perry Rapier]

That's an excellent story Tom. So when you rope a woman she stays roped.

[Tom Penkava]

Horses
Now talking about nice horses, takes me back to the 2-2 again and Josh.  When I started in 74, they gave me a 3 year old Appaloosa gelding a young fellow had been jammin arround on and anyone what said he was a good horse was "joshing" you, so that's what I called him.  Reason I happened to think of him, one day in about 76, Donnie and me was checking on a set of cow calf pairs on a leased pasture up off Colo HWY 34, east of the ranch, we pulled into the place, unloaded our horses, mounted and started drifting through, looking for anything that might need doctoring.  Now this was a irrigated field, with foot deep ditches every witch way for water to run to irrigate crops, Donnie and me are just Amblin along, I got one leg over the horn taking it easy when we come up to a ditch.  Donnie and his Dunn step across easy as you please, no trouble, we keep jabbering away at each other, paying no mind, when what's that Josh horse do, think he steps across like the Dunn.  Nope, he has to step down into that ditch with his right front...... get the picture ??? that's right, I fell off my horse.  There I lay, flat out in the dirt, looking up at that Appaloosa, all he did was to turn his head and look down at me.  Now don't ever tell me that a horse can't have expression, cause that horse had the most discussed expression on his face, looking down at me like what you doing falling off like that.

[Tom Penkava]

Bubble Gum
Winter of 75 we had quite a few cows on the 2-2 home place, getting ready for spring caving, somewhere between 3000 and 4000 head that would begin droping their caves along about the later part of Feburary, with March being the really busy time and then April following up with the late cavers.  All this ment that we had lots of hay to feed every day, even though the ranch put up 3 or 4 hundred ton every year, still had to buy more during winter snow times.  Rather than truck it in, unload, stack, then have to load and haul to the pasture to feed, it was usual to just feed right off the trucks as they delivered to us.  One especially heavy snow, Paul and me was feeding off a semi truck, breaking the bales and scattering the hay as the driver iddled across the pasture, trying to miss the frozen dips and bumps, doing a fair to middling job of it till he hit one perty hard, there goes Paul, off the side of the deck of the Semi Trailer, landed on his side and broke his arm.  He got up, shook his head and said” shit cain't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time”.  Had to haul him into Greeley to have the arm set, 6 weeks of one handed work for him till it healed.

[Tom Penkava]

A Cold Wind
The last week of March 77 the wind picked up and started to blow, on the night news they showed dust storms stretching from Montana all the way down into Texas.  We were working a gather of cow/calf pairs, loading them onto semis to ship to the sale barn that Thursday.  As I recall, we had trailered our horses into a smaller field, maybe about a section or so and gathered up about 160 or 180 cows with their calves and then had to wait for the trucks, anyway we finally got them all loaded up with all the dirt blowing, cold wind and all, then headed home.  That night it turned to snow and more snow for the next 3 days.  Stopped snowing Saturday afternoon, but still cold.  We had a little over 9000 head that drifted and needed to be rounded up, which took the better part of 2 weeks, It was so cold that at one point me and Jiggs actually got off our horses and stood down wind behind telephone poles to warm up.  Anything that broke the wind, it was 10 to 15 degrees warmer.

[Tom Penkava]

The Water Hole

Have you ever experienced the dry oppressive heat of a hot dry August afternoon, on the sand hill plains of a Colorado cow ranch.  Let me tell you, it can be down right warm, even the flys have sense enough to be some where else.
Time I'm remembering is the summer of 76, on the Two Bar Two, which when I was there had about 60 sections on the home ranch east of Greeley, Colorado.  If anyone wants to, it lay between I-76 and US-34, from Wiggins to Keensburg and was part of the setting for James Michener's Centennial .  Those sand hills are dry, the only water are wells drilled down to the aquifer and pumped up with old time wind mills, most dating back to homestead days, and the water emptying into stock tanks anywhere from 15 foot to 30 foot in diameter, depending on the size of the pasture and the number of the windmills in it.  Main purpose being not to have cattle walking to far for their water.

Donnie and me had been a horse back sense before gray light early dawn that morning, riding west checking stock, roping sick ones, doctoring, then swing back through headquarters at noon for fresh horses and a bit of lunch before heading out on our east loop.  Along about 2:00 the sun bearing down we rode up to one of those stock tanks with just a might of a breeze, nearly enough to spin the Dempster windmill.  Now I don't know if any of you have had the pleasure of water pumped fresh from deep under ground, but let me assure you here and now that is about the coolest, best drink you can have on a hot summer afternoon under a clear blue sky on the plains of America.
Well, Donnie and me stood there and looked at that there stock tank, then looked at it some more, yep, we ground hitched our horses and climbed in, closes, boots, hats and all, and just stretched out and soaked up more that our share of well water.
After laying in there a while and getting good and cool, we just mounted up and rode dry, which on that hot August day didn't take long at all.

[Larry Pesek]

Tom,   If you have plans to write a book,  pit me on the list for one! ;)

[Roger Barfield]

Tom, I could read these all day!  Thanks for posting them.

[Tom Penkava]

No story this time, but I thought Paul might appreciate this, it is the only one I have left from my early days.  I bought it new in 1970 from Jack Carroll in McNeal, Arizona and it is a fully marked ( Eduardo Grijalva Sr ) bit.  I used it a lot for 20 years, then it has just been hanging around for the past 26 years or so, I clean and oil it every now and then and think of the horses it has been on.

[Dwayne Henson]

Excellent

[C. Perry Rapier]

Hello Tom. Its always good to hear from you and read what you write. I could feel the heat as I read your story. I worked on the railroad in the summer and let me tell you, its very hot. A little story. Not to steal your thunder though Tom. But your story reminded me of this that happened to me.

It was Summer and very hot. And I was a Track Foreman. When we wanted to go goof off we would say that we are going to go check on some track on down the way some.

Well when I got down track where nobody could see me I ducked under this low bridge and took my big heavy steel toe work boots off and my socks too. And I proceeded to soak my feet in the cool stream. It felt so good I leaned back and fell asleep.

I woke up when I heard voices overhead. It was my boss and he was with somebody else. I could hear him say, 'well they said he was down this way somewhere'. So I knew they were looking for me.

I stayed under the bridge because I did not want to get caught by my boss let alone also with the other guy. It might not sound like much to some but the railroad is not kind on folks sleeping on the job.  Nine months on the street will cure you of that habit.

Anyway, yes, nice cool water on a hot day. Just don't get caught.  :-X

Thanks again Tom. And yes, I'll buy several of them books when you get it published. You could do a series  of short stories.  ;)

[Tom Penkava]

Ride to Chapango
Did I ever tell you about the time my wife Elaine and some friends of ours were out for a day ride on the Sky Corral Ranch, up west of Bellvue, Colorado on Stove Prairie.  We left out of the ranch mid morning, headed further west towards the ghost town of Chapango, located on the north slopes of White Pine Mountain where a few early miners had tried their luck at looking for mineral in all the white quartz there.  Chapango only lasted about one winter, not enough gold to justify staying more than the one winter, but there were several log cabins still standing well into the 1970s.  We rode in, stepped down and turned the horses onto the tall green grass and proceeded to look around.  My wife Elaine looked out the window of one of the log cabins at the horses grazing away and commented “ I could have lived right here just like this, then she turned around and said, and I want my Washing machine and dryer in that corner, my electric stove goes over there, with the refrigerator on that wall”.  You all can just about picture the humor, laughter, and comments that brought about and of course it had to be retold at dinner for months.