"Tastes Like Chicken"

…working for Mrs. Smith was hard work. She had a demanding demeanor about her. After mowing the lawn one time I was raking up the loose grass clippings and leaves on the lawn. Suddenly Mrs. Smith ran up to me and demanded “what was I doing”, grabbing the lawn rake from my hands. “You’re raking the grass against the grain” she implored. I didn’t really know what to say to her when she handed me back the rake and forcefully told me “now do it the right way”. As soon as she had shuffled away the old farmer showed up again. In his hand he had a fresh picked red apple from his orchard. With me still standing there sort of dumb founded by my recent rebuke, he pulled his pocket knife from his pants pocket and cut the juicy apple in half. Throwing me half the apple he slowly walks by me and says in a low voice “she sometimes gets that way” before he ambles off amongst the thick vegetation surrounding the house. That was sure a good tasting apple.

During my junior high school years I decided I had outgrown my Stingray bicycle. I had saved up some money of my own so I decided I would treat myself to a brand new ten speed bicycle. My new, sleek ten speed bike sure made the  

compute from home to the ranch and back home easy compared to riding that dumb old Stingray. By now I was actually doing far more ranch type work then actual gardening chores. Mr. Smith taught me how to weald a pretty mean brush hook, used for clearing the blackberries away from the irrigation ditches running throughout the hay fields. The brush hook was followed up by the round tipped shovel to remove the heavy wet overgrown grass growing in the bottom of the ditches. I bucked lots of hay bales through the years. Periodically you would get the stuffing scared out of you when you would roll over a bale so you could better grab the binding strings and there would be a dead snake baled in the cube of hay. Finally when I got old enough, Harry decided I should learn how to operate the old 8N Ford farm tractor they had on the ranch.

Sometimes I had to buck the hay by myself because it would be too hot for Mr. Smith to work in the fields at his age. I would put the old tractor in first gear, with a low idle and steer it out through the hay field.  Leaping off the slowly moving tractor, I would run ahead of it and lift the heavy bales of hay and throw them haphazardly on the deck of flat bed. Periodically I would gingerly jump back on the tractor to make a big turn, heading back the other way in the field for more bales or to stop for a few minutes while I restacked my messy load on the trailer. The only time I have ever drank a whole beer, at one time in my life, was when one day I had ran out of ice water in my water jug. The day was blistering hot, when Mr. Smiths son, Bob, arrived that afternoon, to help finish getting the hay in the barn before the brewing thunder storm hit that afternoon. He had a case of ice cold beer from the Siskiyou Market with him but no water with him at all. The Siskiyou Market where he had purchased the frosty brew even advertised that they had “The Coldest Beer in Town” on their sign out in front of the store. Popping open a cold one for himself, Bob offers one to me. I knew I was going to go straight to hell but I took one anyway. I slugged it down like an old beer drinking pro, without even taking a breath because I was cotton-mouthed thirsty. It tasted awful, but it was at least wet.

The grossest job I had on the ranch was in the spring time shortly after the new lambs were born. Mr. Smith would have me herd all the sheep up into one pen in the barn.

The new lambs would be intermingling with their moms. The one you had to watch out for was the darn mean old ram. You had to keep your eyes on him because he would take a big leap in the air and with his head down come running at you and try and butt you with his hard as a rock head, and it hurt. Mr. Smith would say it’s time for the “treatment” and I would know what that meant. The ewes would need to have their hooves trimmed, which stunk real bad when I had to hold them still as Harry would hack away at their overgrown hoofs with the toenail shears. All lambs are born with long tails which had to be cut off shorter; they didn’t like that too much. You really didn’t want to be a male lamb because castration didn’t look like it was any fun either. With me chasing the next victim down in the pen I would turn him over and hold the poor little bleating creature’s hind legs apart. Harry would pull his pocket knife from his pants pocket, slitting the ball sack open on the male lambs with his sharp blade. I didn’t eat too many apples cut from Harry’s knife after witnessing that ritual. Squeezing the testicles with both hands from the cut open ball sack, he would bend down and with his mouth, in some barbaric style tear the testicles from the squirming little tike with his teeth. He had some kind of “secret formula”. Fuel oil, turpentine, I don’t know, maybe even battery acid I think, mixed together, that he would glob onto the open wounds with a stick immediately after “The Treatment” and just before I released them back into the herd so they could warn the other unsuspecting male lambs. All I know is his secret formula smoked when drops of this black tar mixture hit the ground. Harry said it prevented infection and flies from bothering the open wounds. Standing back up with remnants of blood around his mouth and fresh testicles still in his teeth he would spit them in our bucket of tails and testicles. He’d always exclaim, mmm “tastes like chicken”. I never got to be enough of a farmer to practice that part of farming.

We always waited till the end to give the ornery ram his treatment. I think the reason Harry did it that way is because, if I was killed early on, trying to catch the ram, he would have the rest of the sheep to try and catch and “treat” by himself. One time I was not paying enough attention to that darn ram and wham he butted me hard. Grabbing up an old wood 2 x 4 that was leaning against the barn wall I let him have it right across the horns, as hard as I could. He fell over dead on the ground I thought. I knew my days working at the ranch were for sure over. Harry even exclaimed “God Damn, I think you killed him”. Afterwards I felt sort of bad. Harry came over and smacked me on my shoulder and said “I was wondering how long you were going to take crap off that damn ram”. About then the ram began to wake up, while still lying there on the ground. I took advantage of that ram already being down and I leaped on him, we gave him the treatment before he came all the way alert again. I don’t remember that ram ever trying to butt me again after that episode.