Reminiscing XXV

This story is from James Greet, written in 1991 about his life as a cowboy in the 1940’s. 

We checked the cupboard, and there was only two items of food; popcorn, and a small size can of canned milk, nothing else! No salt, or anything. Luckily, there was a supply of stove wood in the cabin.

George set about building a fire in the heating stove, and I built a fire in the cook stove. Soon we had the cabin nice and warm. If there hadn’t been any wood to burn, we would have had to bring in some hay from the stable and burn it a handful at a time. So “count your blessings”.

Now, there was no problem on deciding what to fix to eat. We got a pan out and the popcorn, and proceeded to fix our supper, along with the small can of condensed milk. It really tasted good, for we were very hungry. It had been a long time and many miles since breakfast. This is a good example of “roughing it” way out west. This was solitude, for there was no evening paper, no telephone, no traffic noise, no neighbors, no TV, and no radio.

George and I popped some extra popcorn and put it in a couple of paper sacks for the next day, and then let the fire go out in the cook stove.

We sat by the heating stove and passed the evening just relaxing, for we didn’t have to think about going to bed, since there was no bed. When the cabin cooled off, we put our coats and chaps on and sat by the stove and slept. When the fire would die down, one of us would rouse up and put more wood in the stove to keep the cabin from getting too cold.

There was nothing to keep us from getting an early start the next morning. It was clear and cold, probably twenty degrees below zero. We tended our horses and saddled up. There was a bright moon shining that we took advantage of. We turned our cattle out and hit the trail, even though we could see our shadow by the moonlight.

Daylight soon came, and we were glad to see the sun come up. We got off our horses once in a while, and walked a little ways to warm up. There were more miles to cover that day, so it was important to keep moving.

We munched on our popcorn until about mid-morning and by then we’d had enough of popcorn! We hung our sacks on a bush and rode off and left them to the birds.

After that, when we were at a party and we were offered popcorn, we’d say “no thanks”, and they’d say “you don’t like popcorn?” After a few years, we got so that we could eat it again.

(to be continued)

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