Drive - A Memoir 30th Installment
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of their 4x4 pick–ups, mostly with 1J Jefferson County or 5C Clark
County plates; and then there were the hunter wannabe fools from the
city, driving their 'new–off–the–lot' pick–ups with 8/B
Bonneville County plates. All the locals knew to stay clear of these
8/B boys, if you didn't want to get shot.
“Tex
is here,” I called to Russ as a tractor turned into our lane. We
trotted up to the tractor to meet a disheveled old gentleman needing
a bath and a shave with traces of clean streaks washed through the
dirt by the tears caused by the wind and cold cause the tractor
doesn’t have a wind shield.
“Want
some goobers?” Tex chirped. He was a cheery, young fellow trapped
in a sad elderly body. Tex was just a little taller than us, a skinny
stretched out piece of jerky, lanky and thin looking about the same
as a piece of dried beef. He was a product of too much drink, too
much living alone with no family around and too many bad things
happening, but he had us. Tex, Russ and I were the most unlikely
three musketeers: two kids and an ancient cowboy – happiness
together.
“Sure,
you know we love peanuts,” Russ said, grabbing a handful. I dove
both hands into the gunny sank to extract a double handful of the
un–shelled peanuts. Tex always had a fifty pound sack of peanuts
with him on his tractor.
“Have
you done any more work on your house, since we helped you dig your
foundation this spring?” I asked.
“Not
much, been too busy trying to keep people off my place. Seems like I
have to go after a hunter, a thief, or my neighbor, and run them off
my farm every other day,” Tex lamented as he pulled his warmed up
hands out of his coat and rubbed his cold red face. Tex had about 800
acres just north of the Camas National Refuge. He didn't farm the
land anymore and besides those 800 acres, he had his tractor, the
round tin granary (a small tin silo) he lived in, and piles of cinder
blocks and lumber for the dream of building his house with our help
someday.
I
was thinking about what had happened this spring while we were
digging the hole for his house; he had wandered off with a little 410
shot gun and had returned with a freshly shot sage hen. “Dinner in
an hour,” he said as he stood over us on the edge of the hole.
“Jeepers, the way you’re digging, I’ll have a house to eat this
bird in as soon as I get’er cooked,” he cheered and rambled away.
“Do
you think it’s been more than an hour?” I asked Russ. “Let’s
go see if he’s still alive in that tuna fish can he lives in.”
“I
was just about to call you mutts to dinner,”
500 more words tomorrow
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