At Chris Muir's Day by Day cartoon, the gang at the Double D ranch are infiltrated by anti-Trump protestors (really just rabble rousers paid by Bernie's money man). They are met pretty angrily by the resident bad-ass Texas Longhorn bull known as Tabasco who was fitted with a warning bell, and I got to remembering old Wooly Booger.
I grew up along the shore of Lake Okeechobee where our rented house was surrounded by a small, about 12-15 acre pasture where the landlord (a big boss at US Sugar Corp.) kept his little hobby herd, maybe 20-25 mixed breed cows lorded over by Ol’ Wooly Booger*.
See, USSC in addition to its cane plantations and mills was at that time a major player in the champion Brahma Bull world, with operations in Australia, Costa Rica, and right there on the Big O. They did some breeding experiments too, and Wooly was a hu-mon-gous Brahma/Angus mix…a Brangus, and he was one mean ol’ sumbitch. Get into *his* pasture, especially anywhere near *his* cows, and your life was truly in danger. No horns, just a huge curly-maned head, with shoulders and chest like a double or triple sized buffalo. And he was fast; he could be on you all the way from the other side of the pasture before you knew it, so you had better stay within a few yards of the board ‘n bobwahr fence, which he could have easily ran right through, but he knew his domain was inside its borders and you were safe if you stayed outside.
So Mr. Stacy put a big old cowbell on Wooly Booger as a warning for us five young 'uns out there, and when you were playing ball or whatever in that pasture and had your back turned and you heard that thing clanging, you better drop everything and head for that fence as fast as you could go. Only Mr. Stacy dared stand up to that bull, he was a huge man and he carried a big lead pipe with him when he was out of the truck; I think that bought him some mutual respect from Wooly, even though he could have easily stomped him down. I saw the bull prove that point one time when Mr. Stacy drove his company car into the pasture and the bull did not like that one bit, so he butted the front of that car head on and it seemed like lifted the front wheels clean up off the ground, then one time rammed it from the side caving in the whole side of that new chevy biscayne (like I said though, Stacy was a big shot and he had a new car I think the very next day).
Anyway. A bell on a big ol’ bull has a very practical purpose, and pays to pay heed, whether rowdy kids playing in the pasture or those dirty hippies doing their dirty deeds.
*Named by my Dad for his massive and mean curly-headed countenance way before the old song song Wooly Bully came out…we lived out there when I was 8 to 13, 1963-68, and the song by Sam and the Shams was I think in '65, but it sure seemed to have been written especially for ol’ Wooly Booger...maybe my Dad should have gotten royalties!
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Ol' Bob Wahr
In an episode of my favorite online editorial cartoon, Chris Muir's Day by Day, the guys do some fence work at the ranch, and the wife of the younger is concerned his inexperience will result in him hurting himself at the hands of the treacherous barbed wire, and I couldn't help remembering and commenting about when that happened to me:
What did somebody say upthread, that Bob Wahr bites? Oh yes indeed he do.
The little pasture around our old Lake Okeechobee house, the same one that contained ol’ Wooly Booger the giant Brangus bull that was featured in an earlier post, featured a couple of rickety gates made of 2X8’s, that we ignernt daredevil yard apes liked to tightwalk on, not too easy as it would rock back and forth as you made your way across the 12 or so foot span…lose your balance and fall into Wooly’s space and you’d barely have time to get back over the fence or else just say your prayers.
So one Sunday when it was my turn I get almost to the end and start to lose it, Wooly watching intently from close by, and in an effort not to get stomped to death I tried to leap the last few feet to the little platform we had nailed to the end post. That didn’t work and I instead fell onto the 90 degree adjoining fence section, straddling that rusty ol’ bobwahr. I had on the typical boys tough levis so it didn’t do the damage that might be implied by that landing, instead it ripped my inner forearm flesh open like a ragged can opener, the blood starts spewing and I and my brothers and sisters start screaming.
Like I said it was Sunday, my hardworking Daddy’s one day off. The house was maybe a hundred and fifty feet away, and he was enjoying the Sunday paper while visiting the crapper when he hears the commotion, and as he later told me, he “cut one off in the middle”, pulled up his pants and ran outside, sure he was going to find one of his young’uns under Wooly's hoof. Instead he extricates me from the grips of ol’ Bob, throws me in the back of our ’65 Falcon wagon (two door, like a little Nomad!), and floors that little six banger the six or seven miles into town to Everglades Memorial’s ER. I lived, they sewed me up, but the ragged scar remains to this day, I’m looking at it right now.
You’d think such an experience would lend a bit of judgment and reserve to a 12-year old wild child…but no, I did a whole lot of stupid shit after that…sometimes even still. Ain’t it a wonder that we survived?
What did somebody say upthread, that Bob Wahr bites? Oh yes indeed he do.
The little pasture around our old Lake Okeechobee house, the same one that contained ol’ Wooly Booger the giant Brangus bull that was featured in an earlier post, featured a couple of rickety gates made of 2X8’s, that we ignernt daredevil yard apes liked to tightwalk on, not too easy as it would rock back and forth as you made your way across the 12 or so foot span…lose your balance and fall into Wooly’s space and you’d barely have time to get back over the fence or else just say your prayers.
So one Sunday when it was my turn I get almost to the end and start to lose it, Wooly watching intently from close by, and in an effort not to get stomped to death I tried to leap the last few feet to the little platform we had nailed to the end post. That didn’t work and I instead fell onto the 90 degree adjoining fence section, straddling that rusty ol’ bobwahr. I had on the typical boys tough levis so it didn’t do the damage that might be implied by that landing, instead it ripped my inner forearm flesh open like a ragged can opener, the blood starts spewing and I and my brothers and sisters start screaming.
Like I said it was Sunday, my hardworking Daddy’s one day off. The house was maybe a hundred and fifty feet away, and he was enjoying the Sunday paper while visiting the crapper when he hears the commotion, and as he later told me, he “cut one off in the middle”, pulled up his pants and ran outside, sure he was going to find one of his young’uns under Wooly's hoof. Instead he extricates me from the grips of ol’ Bob, throws me in the back of our ’65 Falcon wagon (two door, like a little Nomad!), and floors that little six banger the six or seven miles into town to Everglades Memorial’s ER. I lived, they sewed me up, but the ragged scar remains to this day, I’m looking at it right now.
You’d think such an experience would lend a bit of judgment and reserve to a 12-year old wild child…but no, I did a whole lot of stupid shit after that…sometimes even still. Ain’t it a wonder that we survived?
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