Brothers,
Thought you might enjoy these pictures of Daddy (my father-in-law). He ran trailer loads of cattle from Texarkana, Texas with his brother driving another cattle rig throughout the west and mid west, long haul. Each of his children accompanied him at various times including my wife Cindy who made a run with him to Wyoming.
The young pastor who officiated at Daddy's funeral came to the house a couple days before and asked us to relate fun stories that we had with him. On just such one of his cattle runs a brother-in-law of mine related this nugget... "Goodness, we were hauling the cattle to Arizona on a really hot day and Daddy's 'got to go in the worst way' (
You know what I mean here folks). We're going through wide open country with no cover and Daddy spots a RR bridge and stops the truck. He hurries underneath and is gone for several minutes and upon returning I can see he is wearing his famous wide grin. Upon climbing up into the truck he remarks..."Sure was cool up under there."
The story I related was with a smaller 3/4 ton Chevy truck. Daddy and I were out on the ranch where he was a foreman checking new born cattle in a large herd. We're slowly driving through the herd and Daddy is stopping occasionally to log in new births of cows, writing down the tag # of the cow and checking visually the condition of the calf. As we start out yet another time after a log entry Daddy says..."See that cow over there?" I reply, "Which one Daddy (as I'm scanning over hundreds of head)?" He says, "The one with the all-white face, she's produced 4 sets of twins and three singles!" Even a green horn like me realized that she was a good birth mother.
He knew the land, he knew where to fish (the ranch bordered the Red River), read
The Farmer's Almanac most every day and he knew the animals, was magical with the blue healer dogs he trained to help him with the cattle. And people, you mention 'Daddy' or 'Ray' and a big smile comes to your face.
Standing at the rear of the cattle trailer. Daddy fueling his '56. Fall/winter picture (jacket and hat). just another brother
Cosmo
