In A Pasture Somewhere

CS Lewis said, “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career.”

My mother had the ultimate career. She was always tending to us girls or busying herself with the cooking and cleaning. She wasn’t just a wonderful homemaker. She was the home. One thing she has often told me was, “I may have been the heart of our home, but your Daddy was the glue.” “He kept us all together.”

I read an article in a magazine, years ago titled, “In a Pasture Somewhere.” As I read through the article, I saw my childhood memories flash before me…

I grew up watching my dad throw a leg over the saddle every morning and lead his horse to water every night. I can still hear the sound of his boots and spurs as they would hit the boot jack when he would come in after a long day of riding in a pasture somewhere.

Dad had ways about him that are only learned in the country. For example, driving down the open highway, he spots a five-gallon bucket laying off in the ditch. He quickly hit the brakes and moved to the shoulder of the road as if he had spotted gold. He jumped out, grabbed the bucket and tossed it into the back of the truck, saying, “You can’t have too many of these around the barn!” Better still, I have seen my dad stop on a gravel road, get out and walk right up to a rattlesnake. He proceeded to grab it by the tail, swing it around in the air and slam it to the ground, while my sister and I looked on through the windshield in utter amazement. It was jaw-dropping. I have personally been on the phone with my father as he lined up lunch with his shotgun. Come to find out he was standing on his back porch. He joked by saying, “I like my lunch fresh and hot.” Oh, but my favorite is the one my mom tells about dad grabbing a opossum when it tried to invade the chicken coop. She said he grabbed it by the tail, threw it in the air, and had target practice on its way down. If there is one thing he has taught his girls it was, “A country boy can survive.”

Oh, but more than all his funnies, I love my dad’s gentle ways. Like the way he loved my mother or always took time with his girls.

We would be on our way to a pasture somewhere, and I can still see his hand laid over the steering wheel as we would fly down the gravel road. It was customary to raise your hand slightly and give a two-fingered wrist wave when you passed another vehicle. Although country people do not understand the meaning of the word traffic, they wrote the definition to the word neighbor.

That particular day, we were headed to load round hay bales. I was eager to go because I knew it meant I was going to get to drive the truck and flatbed trailer while he loaded the bales with the tractor.

When dad had ranch work that required a helpful hand, he would alternate between my sister and me. Sometimes it would be exciting work like driving the truck for him; other times, it was less exciting and involved more work like stacking square bales. Now, typically, if it was square bales, the whole family would go, which meant a long day of loading bales onto a flatbed trailer and then unloading into the barn. Still, there was a ham sandwich, coke, and snickers bar to look forward to on the lunch break!

However, for this job, I was enough; One driver for the truck and one driver for the tractor. I felt all grown up, helping dad out there in a pasture somewhere. Unbeknownst to me, he was loading more than just hay bales. He was capitalizing on moments to teach me about life and love. I saw his patience in action when I would make a mistake, but most of all, I knew how proud he was of me when he would rest his arm over my shoulder and tell me what a great job I had done.

My father made sure his girls understood that hard work was a family past time; Personal responsibility was ours alone. In a pasture somewhere, there was a work ethic being cultivated; Only time would reveal it.

I can remember one summer, a neighbor told us we could go and pick all the corn we wanted from his corn field. Mom and Dad took him literally and had us out there, filling the entire truck bed with corn. The back of the truck looked like the Corn Palace when we were finished. Except, that was only the beginning. The next day was a complete assembly line of shucking, creaming, and freezing the mountain of corn they thought we needed in our freezer. We had creamed corn, whole kernel corn, and corn on the cob. My mother looked like a mini version of Paul Bunyan holding that electric cutting knife to shave off those ears of corn. She would look up every so often and yell out the back door for more corn! It brings a lot of laughs around their table today.

Watching those cultivating years sprout, I can see that it was never about baling hay or shucking corn. It wasn’t even about riding fences or branding cattle. Cutting firewood together kept the winters warm, but it wasn’t about that either. Dad was leaving his mark on all of us.

His old cowboy hat still carries the marks of the dust, dirt and grime from those long hard rides. The sweat from honest money earned is forever stained inside the rim of that old hat as a constant reminder of the life he carved out for his family – in a pasture somewhere.

“And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not lose heart.” Galatians 6:9

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