The Taurus and the Bull

Leslie Hallcraft smiled at me as he reached over the top rail of a board fence and scratched the back of an immense Charolais bull.

“This is Baby,” he beamed.  “He’s just as sweet as he can be…yes, he is!”

Les was my landlord.  In the outback of the Ozarks, we [...]]]>

The Taurus and the Bull

Leslie Hallcraft smiled at me as he reached over the top rail of a board fence and scratched the back of an immense Charolais bull.

“This is Baby,” he beamed.  “He’s just as sweet as he can be…yes, he is!”

Les was my landlord.  In the outback of the Ozarks, we had rented a two-bedroom rock house from Les and his wife, complete with a barn and paddock for some pigs, a spring-fed catfish pond, and access to 600 acres of trees to cut wood for the furnace.  Les was a nice man, a converted northerner who drove an International Harvester pickup truck and swatted wasps the way normal people swat mosquitoes, often sustaining two dozen stings a day in hot weather.  He was introducing me to his prize bull – a bull nearly as expensive and large as an aircraft carrier, a bull he loved more than his children, a bull he’d installed in the pasture surrounding the barn and paddock where I kept pigs – a bull that was now going to be between me and where I needed to go several times a day.

I remember my 10th birthday – and not only because birthdays that end in zero are milestones, but because it was one of the few times I actually went anywhere with my mother.  On the evening before that auspicious day, she and her husband loaded me, Merv Fritz, and Wes Roy in their [...]]]>

I remember my 10^th birthday – and not only because birthdays that end in zero are milestones, but because it was one of the few times I actually went anywhere with my mother.  On the evening before that auspicious day, she and her husband loaded me, Merv Fritz, and Wes Roy in their car and took us to a Dairy Queen in the city for banana splits.  After the Dairy Queen, we went bowling.  After bowling, we went to the Steak n’ Shake for goodness sake!  A little perspective here…these were the “good old days” – over 50 years ago – before fast food in the time when families still ate together, at home, while actually sitting at a table.  Then, after Steak n’ Shake, came the really big deal of the evening.  We went roller skating!  Such an event was huge!  Wow!  More perspective:  back when Andy, Barney, and Aunt Bee were living in Mayberry, how many times did Opie get to go to Mount Pilot for his birthday?  Opie and I had a lot in common.  We’d never heard of soccer moms, play dates, or that hideous term “Stranger Danger”.  We spent summer evenings on the porch or catchin’ lightnin’ bugs or at the free movies in the park.  We hung out with friends until after dark, and something like a cell phone could only have been used by Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, or Captain Video and his Video Rangers.

Attitude In Red

His name was “El Rojo”.  He was a rooster.  I got him from Jeremiah Mavis when I lived in “Almost Arkansas”, Missouri.  Jeremiah Mavis was an Arkansas Ridge Runner.  Big, raw-boned, and redheaded, he was of hearty Ozark stock.  His biggest claim to fame were his wife’s newly-installed breasts and a [...]]]>

Attitude In Red

His name was “El Rojo”.  He was a rooster.  I got him from Jeremiah Mavis when I lived in “Almost Arkansas”, Missouri.  Jeremiah Mavis was an Arkansas Ridge Runner.  Big, raw-boned, and redheaded, he was of hearty Ozark stock.  His biggest claim to fame were his wife’s newly-installed breasts and a four-pound, 12-ounce crappie on his trailer wall.

Jerry assumed all Northerners to be ignorant, but for some reason took a shine to me and would do almost anything – as long as it didn’t involve work – to assist in my Southern education.  Jerry operated on the fringes of the law.  He made moonshine back in the hills somewhere, spotlighted deer on a regular basis, and kept fighting chickens.  Cockfighting qualified as major entertainment in that area in those days, and Jerry had several prime contenders.  His stable of birds rivaled that of “Chicken George”, and when Sheriff Cletus F. Joe Dawkins shut Jerry’s operation down, he was left with more roosters than a man needed.