Our summers were spent “bare foot”, and we ran all over the place without shoes, until we had thick callouses on the bottom of our feet. We had to herd the milk cows to keep them from going into the wheat or alfalfa fields. After the wheat was cut and the hay up, we herded them in those fields and even with the callouses, I can still feel the wheat stubble when I ran to head off a cow! Boy that was tough running and if I happened to have a stick in my hand, old Bossie got it good! It was usually Roy, my older brother and I who did most of the herding, and if a horse was handy, Roy got it first. He would beat me to him, every time. Speaking of herding cows, our milk cows were usually kept in pastures just across the railroad and along the Lemhi River.
When it was time to milk, one of us kids would go get the cows and bring them to the barn. This time, I rode a Pinto mare, a bullheaded tough mouthed critter. I was trying to get the cows out of a grove of trees and willows, and all of a sudden, the Pinto got the bit in her teeth and took off right under a low tree branch and off I went! To this day, I know she did it deliberately. When I caught her, I put her through some fast runs around and around that pasture, which calmed her down quite a bit!
Ray, Thena and Bernice, (Bertie) were still too small to help with this type of chore. This particular day we had corn on the cob, and so we had the cobs and the corn husks to take out, which the pigs loved. Bertie was tiny, but wanted to go with me, and watch the baby pigs. Bordering the pen was a small building and I climbed up on it to throw the garbage into the pen. The sow that had the baby pigs was mean, and Dad had told us all never to go in the pen because the mother pig would attack.
I looked around, and here was Bertie. She had climbed up beside me and looked over the edge, and before I could grab her, she had fallen into the pen. I don’t know where I got the courage, but I jumped in beside her, grabbed her up in my arms, and climbed the fence and out of the pen! The old sow I guess was so amazed at this sudden flurry of activity or so busy eating corn cobs, that she didn’t attack. Boy, did I ever catch it from Dad and Mother!
From that day on, Bertie must have harbored a resentment against pigs in general, because a neighbor came through one of our back fields one day, and through the barn yard, and here was Bertie, about four or five years old, systematically grabbing baby pigs and cutting off their tails with a hatchet! She had de-tailed three before Lee Churchill, the neighbor, stopped her. She and Athena were quite a busy little pair. However, Athena had missed out on that caper!
