“Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.”
~Pablo Neruda~
We had all the farm animals on the ranch. Horses, cows, pig, chickens, turkeys, and sheep sometimes. Mother usually raised bum lambs and it was our bad luck to help! How I hated giving those bum lambs their bottle of milk. We of course had cats and usually two dogs, and they were working dogs, by that I mean they helped round up and control stock. We had a big gray blue shepherd named Blue, and Dad would say “Way round ‘em Blue” And the dog would circle them in. How we loved old Blue!
Update. This was written on the back of the above photo, in a child’s hand:
” Dad and the colts Dinahs in the back Pride with Dad.” It must have made sense to the author at the time!
All of us had to make our own fun, and playthings, too. In the 1920’s and 30’s the economy was terribly depressed, or as that period was called, “The Depression”. Very seldom was there any extra money. We always had plenty to eat. The folks always had a garden, chickens, eggs, pigs and cows for meat. Also on the Matlock Ranch, where I was born, there was a big orchard, four different kinds of apples, a red and white currant patch, a raspberry patch, and even some gooseberries. I decided to sit up in the branches of an apple tree in the fall and eat apples, make up and write poems, then I would stuff them in the knot holes in the trees. We also had plum trees, some large and some were small. I didn’t care much for the little ones because they were sour.
I would never trade my childhood for anything even though there were times when it was hard. I grew up as did my brothers and sisters with good values and principles for honesty and decency taught us by our parents. Our Dad used to tell us: “Look your fellow man in the eye and tell the truth and you won’t go too wrong”.
