Memoir Monday, Aug 8, 1963

The second summer of cowboy girl life--or as I sometimes call it, my "sentence"... Somewhere between endentured servant and slave and prisoner?  Long hot summers and longer cold winters---several of them...

Aug 8, 1963

I rolled out at 6:00. Today was corral cleaning day. My favorite chore--ugh. I led Leo, Happy and Lyno up. Annie and I went out and got the pasture chores done. I got letters from Judy, Kathy and Mama Witt today. Chief had his usual trot and I came in just a wee bit early. During the afternoon I wrote a letter and a poem and took a nap. I was really weary and just couldn’t stay awake.  We drove out early to do the pasture chores and let the herd in to eat flubber. We also roped and worked on Donna. She remembers an amazing amount of her teachings. After supper I began Judy’s letter. It’s bedtime now. We are going tomorrow to look at Chet McCarthy’s place on Rocking Chair Road which is on sale for $25,000. Of course there’ll be something wrong with it but we have to go see anyway. Someday it will all work out just right and we’ll really get moved. I scarcely dare to hope but I can’t stand to stay here much longer. I’d give anything for a boyfriend or even a new male pen pal. I’m “so lonesome I could cry.”

 I think I said enough about  the corral cleaning task.  Not to belabor a dull, dirty job-- it got done some daily and at least once a week a very thorough and complerte job. Leo, Happy and Lyno were some of the  young Quarter horses we had gotten in the spring. They were yearlings, not quite mature enough for serious training, much less riding, but needed to be exercised  almost every day since they were mostly confined in roughly large room sized pens or paddocks.

To explain that "flubber", we had gotten a batch of economical but crummy hay that had a lot of dried mustard weed in it.  Apparently the grass and alfalafa had grown up after the weeds had come up since they are usually very early.  That dry brittle stuff had little to no food value and probably did not taste good either. The animals confined at the pasture corral did not eat it and scattered it around with some bits of better hay. The main bunch of mules that was out roaming free were not too particular so we could move the horses to a different pen and let the mules in to clean up, which they did. 

Donna was a mule we'd had for quite awhile and worked on some. I am not sure why we did not continue with riding and training her as she was really not bad. She was not quite to where I could take her and work with her like the somewhat gentler mules and I suppose Dad was wrapped up in some other projects and did not see a need to get her the rest of the way to being basically 'broke' though not trained. 

Judy and Kathy were pen pals and Mama Witt was my maternal Grandma. I loved her fiercely and she did so much for me all the time I was a kid and growing up. She sewed fantastically and I think I inherited that interest. Grandma Morgan was also a sewist but she died when I was just a tot.

Of course the search for a place to move went on and on--never with any real results, sad to say. This one was down just north of Bridgeport along the river and on the east side. I think Rocking Chair Road still exists but the area is greatly changed or appears so the last time I drove around up there. At this point I was just 'dying' to get out of Clarkdale and some of the ongoing issues that kept arising and causing problems but ...it was beyond my power to control, direct or visualize into reality.  If I could have, I surely would have. 

And of course 'social life' was non-existent and I had run out of ways to try to make substitutes like the pen pals and some flirtations with various of the 'young and restless' blue collar guys I encountered who I knew I had an ice cube's chance in Hades of going out with or anything else. So I was lonely and discouraged most of the time. To explain that "young and restless" term--I know there was a soap opera by that name but I  watched no daytime TV and don't recall even hearing about it. I used that term for the 20-30 blue collar guys who drove trucks, did construction, and similar jobs. They'd often married young and were not happy with being a husband and father so tried to maintain a 'fun'  lif'e with such hobbies as playing cowboy, motorcycles, hunting and fishing etc.Most had a roving eye as well!

A few photos. This is Donna or possibly Dina--they looked much alike. This rig was used to get them settled down to a saddle and stuff bouncing around, part of the breaking process. Next is Jolly Babe, about a year old. She was gray with a white blaze and two white rear socks. The next is Lyno Reed; she was a  tannish sorrel color. again about a year old. Last me, on a rare time dressing up. I think I was going to church with my friend Evelyn which I did do now and then about this time.