I grew up, whatever that means, in a suburb of Seattle, but when I hit the ninth grade my family move to the panhandle of Nebraska and I was somewhat obligated to go with them.
Work was slow in Seattle. There was a big lay off at a rather large company called Boeing. At the time there were bill boards up that said “Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?”
My father worked as a millwright at a logging/lumber mill called Weyerhaeuser. It seems that things were slow there also. My Great-Grandmother was around 80 years old and her husband of 60 some years had just died. It was decided that we would move there to be with her during her “twilight” years…she lived to be 102! Twenty-two years is one heck of twilight!
I liked being in cowboy country. Dad was a cowboy, granddad was a cowboy and my great-grandfather was a cowboy. That is as far back as I know. I was proud to walk around town in my no-name cowboy hat and a pair of Acme cowboy boots. Later in life I would not have been caught dead without a Stetson hat and a pair of Tony Lamas. Now it is a Nautica or a Mount Gay Rum cap and a pair of Sperry Top-Siders, but quite often I miss my Tony Lamas.
My grandparents had a ranch in an area of the panhandle called “The Sandhills”. As the name implies there was nothing there, but sand, grass and Cottonwood trees if there was any water around to provide for the trees and the grass. It was once described as the Sahara Desert with grass. Someone wrote that when the buffalo still roamed, there was no grass there because the herds were so large they ate it all or their hooves destroyed the roots, but I do not know for sure. I do know that when the wind blew it would find somewhere where the roots of the grass were not tightly knit together and it could cause a huge hole called a blowout. It looked much like a sand-trap on a golf course, but surrounded by tall prairie grass not fine trimmed fescue.
There was a train that came by in the morning and one during the evening. It consisted of a diesel engine with a couple of dozen box cars made up of mostly grain cars and a caboose. Please do not remind when the last time was that you saw a working caboose.
At one time in my dad’s life he was a brakeman on a train. They have gone the way of cabooses and switchmen which only makes sense because without a caboose they would have no place to ride and without the workers there would be no need for a caboose. He always knew interesting things about trains like how many cars in a mile long train, how many engines it took to pull that train and what the different colored lights mean on the cross bar above the tracks.
One warm summer evening while I was helping out with the chores I heard the train whistle blow somewhere down the line. My dad caught my attention and said “Come on let’s go throw rocks at the train.” Oh the excitement of committing delinquency with my father! This is going to be so good. On the one half mile walk to the tracks I started looking for rocks.
Work was slow in Seattle. There was a big lay off at a rather large company called Boeing. At the time there were bill boards up that said “Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?”
My father worked as a millwright at a logging/lumber mill called Weyerhaeuser. It seems that things were slow there also. My Great-Grandmother was around 80 years old and her husband of 60 some years had just died. It was decided that we would move there to be with her during her “twilight” years…she lived to be 102! Twenty-two years is one heck of twilight!
I liked being in cowboy country. Dad was a cowboy, granddad was a cowboy and my great-grandfather was a cowboy. That is as far back as I know. I was proud to walk around town in my no-name cowboy hat and a pair of Acme cowboy boots. Later in life I would not have been caught dead without a Stetson hat and a pair of Tony Lamas. Now it is a Nautica or a Mount Gay Rum cap and a pair of Sperry Top-Siders, but quite often I miss my Tony Lamas.
My grandparents had a ranch in an area of the panhandle called “The Sandhills”. As the name implies there was nothing there, but sand, grass and Cottonwood trees if there was any water around to provide for the trees and the grass. It was once described as the Sahara Desert with grass. Someone wrote that when the buffalo still roamed, there was no grass there because the herds were so large they ate it all or their hooves destroyed the roots, but I do not know for sure. I do know that when the wind blew it would find somewhere where the roots of the grass were not tightly knit together and it could cause a huge hole called a blowout. It looked much like a sand-trap on a golf course, but surrounded by tall prairie grass not fine trimmed fescue.
There was a train that came by in the morning and one during the evening. It consisted of a diesel engine with a couple of dozen box cars made up of mostly grain cars and a caboose. Please do not remind when the last time was that you saw a working caboose.
At one time in my dad’s life he was a brakeman on a train. They have gone the way of cabooses and switchmen which only makes sense because without a caboose they would have no place to ride and without the workers there would be no need for a caboose. He always knew interesting things about trains like how many cars in a mile long train, how many engines it took to pull that train and what the different colored lights mean on the cross bar above the tracks.
One warm summer evening while I was helping out with the chores I heard the train whistle blow somewhere down the line. My dad caught my attention and said “Come on let’s go throw rocks at the train.” Oh the excitement of committing delinquency with my father! This is going to be so good. On the one half mile walk to the tracks I started looking for rocks.
Did I mention that there was nothing in the Nebraska Sandhills, but sand, grass and Cottonwood trees if there was any water around to provide for the trees and the grass?
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