Cousins

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I spent a lot of time at my cousins house when I was a lad. Here are a few memories that stuck with me.

 

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Cousins

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Rodeo Days

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When I was about 10, my aunt Bueldine and uncle Harold bought a male calf to raise for beef and were keeping him in some barns about 3 blocks from their home at 5 Hummel Street in Pnillips, Texas. I was over at their house after they had raised him a couple of months and my cousins Ricky, Scott, and I decided to go to the barns and visit the calf. We decided to try to ride the calf and we took turns riding him. Each time he bucked very hard and he threw all of us off his back one at a time and we all hit the dirt hard. We took turns until we were worn out. We had discovered our own personnel rodeo and had a ball riding the young bull.

 

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A couple of months later, I was over there and we went to the barns again. The calf had grown quite a bit and I went first that day. I couldn’t believe how much higher the calf was jumping this time. He threw me clear over the fence. As fate would have it, just outside the fence there was the bottom of a broken RC Cola bottle sitting with the broken glass points up. The heel of my right hand hit right on one of the points. I bled like a stuck hog and had to have stitches in my hand. That was the end of my rodeo days. A couple of months later they castrated the bull and after that he lost all his desire to buck. Perhaps, you caught the pun in that last sentence.

 

 

Dang, here come those boys again, think I’ll throw one of the over the fence this time.

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The Carpenter

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In 1955, when my cousin Kristi was about 5, I was over at my aunt Bueldine’s house. Kristi, my cousin Ricky, and I were sitting in the den, and Bueldine was ranting and raving about the carpenter they had hired to complete an addition to their house. He hadn’t showed up to work for two days and she was really upset. She said “we hired an unreliable worthless drunk alcoholic to complete our room addition and we are never going to get it finished.

 

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The next day, the guy showed and she was somewhat relieved. Along about 10 AM, the front door bell rang. It was the carpenter holding Kristi’s hand. He said Mam, you might want to put a leash on this young lady. She came out to the work area and told me that MaMa said I was an unreliable worthless drunk alcoholic and would never finish the addition. Buel Dine later told me she was somewhat embarrassed, but the incident served to increase the carpenters reliability as he never missed another days work after that day.

 

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Now Kristi, you must not repeat things I say about other people unless you consult me first.

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The Garage

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When we were very young, my cousin Scott and I discovered an old detached garage in their neighborhood, that you could push the door in a little and we could squeeze inside. After we got in there, we discovered it was a kids goldmine  inside. There was old marbles all over the floor, and pocket sized toys like yoyo’s and tops laying all around. We filled our pockets and slipped back through the door. We had a ball playing with our pocket full of goodies.

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We thought this was such a good deal, we went back three more times in broad daylight to refresh our treasures. On the fourth time, the door opened just after we got in and a giant man asked us what we were doing in there. We said we were playing cops and robbers and were hiding out. Scott was a fast thinker. The guy looked around and there was so much junk in there he couldn’t even tell anything was missing. He said you boys stay out of here because you might get hurt. We said OK as both of us breathed a sigh of relief. We stayed out of garages after that.

 The treasures we picked up on the floor of that garage meant a lot to us but the owner didn’t even miss them. I guess that we didn’t do too much evil by taking a few.

 

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Thanks for reading Cousins,
Bill