Hay Haulin’

           Howdy friends and neighbors.  There can’t be anything under my hat this week because it left western Oklahoma and is now somewhere in south Texas!!  It was up in Kansas a few days ago, then I watched it go back by Saturday afternoon.  Whew! It’s been windy here.  A friend of mine just decided that he loves the wind.  Yep, he allowed hating it wasn’t doing any good so he thought he would just try loving it.  Several years ago I was complaining about the wind blowing one day and an older, wiser gentleman looked at me with a puzzled look and asked, “What else is the wind supposed to do?”

 

            The other night some friends were over and as we scarfed down some thick, juicy rib eye steaks the conversation turned (somehow) to hauling hay.  Primarily hauling little square bales of hay.  Then it hit me.  Here’s a topic I could write an entire book about!  I believe that every person that has a sliver of a tie to a farm or ranch has a story to tell about hauling, stacking, baling, feeding, sitting on, standing on, laying on, or building forts for a good gourd fight out of, small square bales of hay.  It was fun to listen to the stories of my friends and family as they told about the good old days and making good money hauling hay.  And yes, even I have several stories about my hay hauling days.  The difference is that I don’t remember making good money doing it.  Of course it wasn’t the hauling that bothered me, it was the stacking that I didn’t like.  It seems that the whole time I was bucking bales up several tiers, I was thinking to myself that there had to be a better way.  I would think to myself, “why didn’t they just use a round baler?”

Snow

 

Howdy friends and neighbors.  Whoa!  Last Thursday afternoon it was sunny and warm.  That afternoon the wind changed as a cool breeze came from the north and it had the smell of snow in it!  Early Friday morning, we had a thunderstorm and by Friday afternoon, freezing temperatures and blowing snow.  The blizzard lasted until Saturday morning.  By Sunday afternoon, I was outside in short sleeves, mud boots and sunglasses.  I was tromping through mud and dust was blowing into my eyes.  Yep, that’s Sunny Point, Oklahoma.

Autosteer

Howdy friends and neighbors.  Sorry I missed you last week.  I was off in a foreign land (California) for a visit and didn’t write a column.  It’s good to be back at Sunny Point, OK.  Yep, it was sunny, calm and wet out there; it’s good to be back where it is dry and windy.  Hopefully the dry will go away for a little while this week but it’s just that time of year for wind.

 

On to better things… 

Wealth

Howdy friends and neighbors.  I guess I’m going to attempt to describe wealth in this little article.  Of coarse, if you tape a quarter to this article, it would be worth about twenty-four and a half cents, minus the cost of the tape.  But, I will give you my take on it from the blowing sands of Sunnypoint, OK, anyhow.

Crack

Howdy friends and neighbors. What a week last week!! On to news from Sunny Point, OK: for those that didn’t know, my son Mason, fell from about ten-feet up a couple of Fridays ago. We were close by, but things can happen in the blink of an eye. Gravity and hard ground resulted in a trip to the emergency room. Mason never lost consciousness and at first, I wasn’t sure he was even really hurt. He kept telling me he was “tough.” Well, he was tough, but I wasn’t. All said and done, he had a fracture to his skull. At one point, I thought he was headed to Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City in a helicopter. My heart almost stopped. Scared, is the only way I know how to say it. The ER doctor then began ruling out things and we stayed in Elk City ICU for two nights, a regular room for a night, and then we got to go home. Mason is fine and acting like a kid again. Me, I learned many lessons.

Fusion

             Howdy friends and neighbors.  My four-year-old son just inherited about another $1.5 TRILLION dollars in debt.  Thanks to the elite leaders of this nation, the “fix it” generation just got another big piece of bacon to eat.  I don’t care what your politics are, the fact is that congress and the administration just crammed a 1500 page “boar’s nest” bill down our throats.  From this point on that is my new name for the White House, Senate, and House chambers, “The Boar’s nest.”  I assume that by the time this hits the streets that one hundred dollar bills will start falling from the sky and good times will be here to stay.

Neighbors

 

            Howdy friends and neighbors.  I would like to take this chance to write about my little opening statement, “friends and neighbors.”  I like the fact that I’m watching less television nowadays but the Hollywood message still seems to creep in through the many media outlets that I’m subject to just in passing.  One message that I get so tired of hearing on television and radio is how we, that live in the “fly over” country are so backwards and unsophisticated.  I guess the left and right coast have to put down the central plains so they can have something to stand on.  Here is my take.

Freedom

 

Howdy friends and neighbors.  Wow!  What a football game.  Good hard hitting, 60 minute fight to the end, smash mouth football.

 

As I sit down here at my keyboard mulling over all of the stuff that has happened this past week, from a winter blast to a trillion dollar government bill to a football game, I think what hit me the hardest this week were the stories I had the privilege to hear Sunday morning at church.  Last month, a mission team from western Oklahoma went to Bangladesh and they shared their report.  I’m not an expert on the country of Bangladesh though I hear it is densely populated and very poor.  As I heard the stories of the people that live there and the hopelessness that they live with, I wonder why it is that I was so lucky to be born here in the United States of America.  The similarity that I heard in all the stories was the reason the people of Bangladesh have so little is because of an oppressive government.  If a farmer improves his allotment of land and makes a productive farm through ideas and hard work, the government will take it away and give it to those who are more favorable to the government.  Thus, they simply have no hope for a better life.  School is an absolute privilege and one miss step and the kids are kicked out.

Chuck’s Cow

Howdy friends and neighbors.   It seems our beloved ag-media just won’t let this rumor of a “cow tax” go.  Thus, I guess I will follow suit.  Anyway, the “cow tax” is this hyped story of the EPA assessing a huge per head greenhouse gas tax on each bovine as if that would somehow miraculously cure the made up myth of global warming.  In my worthless opinion, only the United States Congress and administration could come up with that kind male bovine excrement and view it as good policy!

The Snuggle

 

Howdy friends and neighbors.  Nope, not a word about the media hyped inauguration day.  It’s not worth my time.  Let’s look at something a bit lighter.

 

Here a while back my 4-year-old boy noticed his cousin had a blanket that he liked to have while he slept.  Mason decided that he too needed a “snuggle” to accompany him to dreamland.  So, Mema to the rescue and we now have a snuggle blanket.  Mason doesn’t have to have this cloth pacifier all the time, but when he thinks about it, look out, we’ve got to have it!  After watching him carry this little blanket around, I tried to remember if I had something that I had to have to go to bed.  All I can think of is a pillow that had a duck on it.  I think I kept that poor thing until I was in high school.  Thus, research was needed. I called my Mom and she said that I never really had a snuggle or one certain thing, but I always had to have some type of farm implement!  Funny, now I need one in the yard, only its payments are keeping me up at night instead of helping me drift of to restful sleep.  Anyway, I hope this stirs in your mind what it was that you had to have.