This finds me all alone and broken-hearted again! Well, not too broken up, just alone. My close relative announced a trip coming on with her benevolent society group and they took off for the big city to hoop and holler for a day or two. Just like a bunch of men off the long drive from Texas to Kansas, mean and ready to rock the town! She took a suitcase filled with fancy clothes and said she would be back when she got back, sometime day after tomorrow! They are to attend a Christian women's retreat, so I will not expect any big trouble.
I had supper already fixed in the refrigerator and so I ate it, but tomorrow I intend to eat a big old greasy hamburger. The garden is still producing enough to keep salads aplenty on our menu and I am being brave and eating them. I still refuse to eat those long gourds and they are sure determined to last till the last day of summer!
The offspring and I gathered the springers and have them in the labor room, so to speak. I am very impatient when waiting on the fall babies but nature doesn't give a flip about when I want to start delivery! I stood watch this morning and nothing was going on and now the scheduled watchers are on guard. The fence is being checked and tightened by a walking man, as that is a good way to spend the daylight hours of the watch. The older cows ignore us but the heifers have to follow along for a while to just watch. I expect babies by the end of tomorrow as one of the older cows was showing signs of motherhood being imminent.
The sale barn is still going full blast and I got in a good visit with Claude Rosster last week. He was there looking for a bull and you know I was sure to try to convince him to buy a blooded sire and try for better calves. He said he didn't care, just wanted something to freshen his cows. I think he will drive out here and look at the bull this next week if he doesn't find one in the sale barn in the next county.
The social distancing around the round table where the knights discuss the conditions of the world, and mostly Washington D.C., causes a lot of chair scooting and dragging chairs around. The fellers mostly have cloth masks in their shirt pockets, but they can't drink their coffee with a mask on. We all enjoy the time spent there but, if you need a thing to pray about, I wish you would pray none of them ever get the covid-19. We are mostly old codgers, and most are on the downhill run health-wise, so it would be a disaster.
It is my opinion, and everyone has one, the older I get, the more I miss that close relative when she sashays off with the ladies. I still enjoy draping my pants over the chair and throwing my socks on the floor once in a while, leaving the sack of bread on the table and using the box of salt instead of the little bitty shakers. Old Dog likes to come in and sit by me in the living room for the evening news and I don't have to go to bed until I want to -- actually until I wake up in my chair! But, I will be glad when she gets home. Do not say anything about any of this to a female, they tell everything they know!
Bill is the pen name used by the Gravette area author of this weekly column. Opinions expressed are those of the author.