To my granddaughter, Emma Joyce:
The Day Grandpa met the angels.
It didn't start out as the kind of day that you would expect big things to happen. It was a day that started out like the day before it and the day before that. Emma, you just never know what a day might bring. You can quote me on that.
It was a day of lots of mistakes and a lot of miracles.
Unfortunately, for both the cattle, and myself - I was the one making the mistakes. But fortunately for both the cattle and myself, God was providing the miracles.
We had two very large bulls and a large cow that we needed to sell. The cow was what people call a Black-Baldy, which I believe is a cross between a Black Angus and a Hereford. An Angus is pure black and a Hereford is reddish with white head. So a black baldy is black except for the head, which is white. One of the bulls I believe may have had some Beef Master in it - I cannot remember. The other bull was a huge Brahma. They are the ones originally from Asia, which have great humps on their backs or more properly on their shoulders.
We had a crummy little trailer and a very small Mazda truck. It was like a toy truck really. But I thought that I could pull one bull in it and take it to sell at the Will's Point sale barn. We lived in Poetry, which is not a town but a community a few miles north of Terrell, Texas.
I loaded the smaller of the two bulls in the trailer and pulled it out of the pasture and into the driveway. The bull was plenty large for the little trailer, but I thought the truck would make it to Will's Point pulling him.
M1: That was my first mistake.
I went into the house to wash up, leaving the bull in the trailer in the driveway.
M2: That was my second mistake.
I gave the other two animals (the really big Brahma bull and the Black Baldy cow) time to walk around from the barn area to the pasture adjacent to the driveway.
Mbig: Big mistake.
They walked up to where they were against the fence about 10 feet from the trailer except they were still inside the fence that runs along the side of the driveway.
Now the cattle got to talking, as cattle do, and the one in the trailer decided, he didn't want to leave Poetry and the other two who were telling him stories about sale barns and what happens next (This is a true story, but I confess that I am actually just guessing here, not being fluent in cattle talk – even though I have been accused of it – as in "Johnny, what you're saying is just a bunch of bull.").
Anyway, this 1300 pounds of meat decided he didn't want to be in that trailer any more, and he started acting like he might try to get out.(This is a good time to point out Emma, that if you ever get a horse/cowtrailer, you need to get one that has bars or even a roof over the top of the whole thing as you will see as this story continues.)Mine didn't have a roof or even bars over the top. I didn't think it would much matter if the cows I was hauling got wet, but as you can see that isn't the main reason for having a good roof over your trailer.
You could call this a 'pre-mistake' but then the story gets too long..Anyway, what happened, although actually quite spectacular, was not something you want to watch up close. Unfortunately, your uncle Caleb (Bob) was in the driveway between the cattle in the fence and the bull in the trailer. And he, being a strong 15-year-old weighing 160 pounds thought he would try to stop the bull from coming out the top. It might have seemed comical to someone if they saw us on TV, but let me tell you, Emma, it wasn't all that funny at the time. And when a bull gets his front feet over the top of a corral or fence or in this case the top of a trailer - he is very likely able to go over the corral or fence or in this case the side of the trailer. They are very strong and they don't even go to a gym and work out.
Just as I started yelling for Caleb to get out of the way, the bull came over the side of the trailer. The side of the trailer was about 6 feet high and the trailer itself was off the ground another two feet.So if we do the math we get the following:
[(1300# angry meat) x (8 ft)] / (160# boy) equals
GET_OUTTA_THE_WAY_OR_DIE.
Fortune was on our side as Caleb, without paper and pencil, was able to do the math in his head and tell his feet to move him, which they did instantly - and so he is still alive to this very day.
(This might be a good time for Grandpa (me) to remind you, Emma, that no matter how hard math seems when you're studying it, it is worth knowing - it can even save your life! Ask uncle Caleb!)
Well, this brings me to my third mistake
M3: I decided to take the other two cows instead of the now injured 1st bull.
I guess I was thinking that I would have the majority of the cows so there wouldn't be any reason for them to leave the trailer. As far as it went you could say that that logic was sound. Unfortunately, it didn't go very far.
I got the other two animals into the little trailer. It was a good little trailer for what I had paid, but it wasn't made to hold 2500 pounds of moving meat, which it now contained. I started the journey to the sale barn in Will's Point, but things didn't go exactly as planned. I ended up at the sale barn in Will's Point, but I was no longer towing the trailer, but rather following the angels' trailer when I finally reached my destination.
To get from Poetry to Will's Point, you have to take Farm to Market road 986 into Terrell, turn east on Highway 80 which doubles as the main street in Terrell (along with traffic and traffic lights and people driving cars with honking horns).Going down 986 was a lot more dangerous than I had realized it could be and along that road I made my fourth big mistake of the day.
M4: I didn't turn around and go back home.
But I noticed real quickly that I had to go REALLY slow or the trailer would start weaving back and forth. You see, the trailer and cattle weighed almost as much as the little toy truck that was pulling them. (To make matters worse, if that was possible, the truck had rear wheel drive - and when the cattle moved just right - or should I say wrong - they could almost lift the rear end off the ground and the truck would lose traction).But I didn't turn around and go back home.
Instead I slowed the truck down to a crawl and found that if I went slowly enough I could keep the trailer from wobbling. And since there wasn't much traffic on 986, when I got to Terrell I had only 5 or 6 angry cars behind me.
When I got into Terrell, it being Saturday, it was very crowded. I was getting honked at because I was going so slowly. The reason people were honking at me was to get me to drive faster. That is where I made my fifth big mistake.
M5: I did drive faster.
Every action has some reaction as they say and my fifth mistake had two reactions.
1) It made the trailer shake back and forth. (I was afraid it was going to tump over right there on the main drag in Terrell!)
2) It made the bulls uneasy.
Now, Emma, I don't know if you know much about really large cattle, but I can tell you from experience, that you don't want to make them angry and you don't want to make them scared.
Worse - don't make them angry AND scared!
Even with the truck shaking and the cows bellowing, I decided that if I could just get them out of the city that it would be OK. You have to really use your imagination here, Emma, to believe that a grown man could really think that. But that's what I thought. Maybe sometimes things seem a lot clearer to you after you can look back at them. I don't know.
Anyway, I did just make it out of town before the trailer began to shake more violently than before so I started slowing down like I had earlier, but this time it only got worse and worse and I started praying.
Then the miracles started happening.
Finally just about the time I was almost stopped, the trailer fell over spilling the very large, very scared animals out through the top. (Another reason to have a roof on a horse/cow trailer).
This was the 1st miracle of the day: Given everything I know about the laws of nature, (the 1st being that the bread always falls peanut butter side down).
Miracle 1: the trailer fell to the right so that the cows spilled out on grass beside the road instead of spilling out to the left onto pavement and oncoming traffic.
Miracle 2: the trailer wasn't ruined. Believe it or not it was still hitched to the truck. Although the tongue was slightly bent, it was not broken. (Now, Emma, you can call that what you want, but I am claiming it as a miracle.)
Miracle 3: The cows were uninjured.
Anyway, there I was and there were the cattle. Luckily, cows know what to do with grass and these started eating it like "Ok. We've had an 'interesting' morning, but we're just cows and its time to eat the grass."
Miricle 4: The trailer dumped the cattle about 25-30 feet from a pay phone (Emma - cell phones weren't available in those days, and even if they were available Grandma and I couldn't have afforded them. And even if they were available and we could have afforded them, Poetry wouldn't have been in cell Phone Company's cell!) So I'm counting it as a genuine miracle that the truck happened to stop right beside a pay phone.
So I walked to the phone and called Grandma. I don't remember what I told her, because there wasn't anything she could have done. Before 5 minutes had passed, two cops showed up to "help".
And they did help some - they called a tow truck, which put a winch on the trailer and popped it back on its wheels for some money, (which I was glad to pay by the way).
So there I was with a trailer and my little Mazda truck and two cows walking along the side of the road when the cops tried to help. If you thought that the 160-pound boy trying to stop the 1st bull from going over the side of the trailer was silly, you should have seen those cops. They started chasing the cows. I don't know what they were thinking they WOULD do, but I know what they did. It was
Miracle 5: The cows crossed that busy highway when for "some reason" there was no traffic and the other side of the road for "some reason" had a VERY large area between the road and the fence. And for some reason this large open area had plenty of room for the cows to NOT get hit by traffic AND plenty of deep grass for the cows to begin eating instead of running from silly cops.
Miracle 5: Then the angels showed up.
This was the biggest miracle of all and it overwhelms (in my mind at least) all my previous mistakes and foolishness (for that day at least).
The angels came in one of the largest cow trailers (with a roof) that I have ever seen. They also "by chance" brought another truck like vehicle - only it was no toy truck). There were working cow horses in the back that were already bridled, saddled and had ropes on the saddle horn. Emma, I am not making this up. It really happened!
The angels had chaps and spurs and boots and cowboy hats and there was a horse for each except of course the boss angel. The boss angel was chewing tobacco. He walked over to me and looked around at the cops and the cows and said, "Need some help?"
As if we didn't both know that God had sent him straight from heaven only a moment ago to help me!
Emma, you may have seen cowboys rope and handle cattle, but there is no cowboy alive that do more than those angels did for me that day.
I am so glad that God answered your Grandpa's prayer.
Anyway, they got the cow in the trailer in no time, but the bull was really big. He was the Brahma. He was gray with a large hump on his shoulders. If I stood beside this bull, my head was about even with his hump. He was a lot of bull. Well this bull figured that he had had about enough of trailers or so he thought. The angels roped him around the horns and two horses pulled from the front so that one horse came along the right of the giant trailer and the other came along the left of the giant trailer.
The boss angel jumped in front of the Brahma and tossed another rope around his horns. He then passed this rope to the horseman to the side of the trailer through the bars in the side of the trailer. He did the same for the other horseman. Then he jumped back out of the trailer. Then the two angel horsemen on the sides of the trailer slacked off the ropes they were pulling and started pulling the bull with the ropes the boss angel had handed them so that now their horses were able to walk along the outside of the trailer pulling the large bull with the ropes that were going from their saddle horn, through the bars of the trailer, to the bull's horns. They pulled till the bull was at the end of the trailer, but he didn't think he wanted to go into the trailer. Then a forth angel rode up behind the Brahma's and grabbed his tail. He pulled that tail over the back of the Brahma and had his horse help him pull that tail forward. This had the affect of helping the bull decide that he might want to go ahead and get into that trailer where his girl friend, the Black Baldy, was already locked safely in.
Once the big Brahma was in the giant trailer, they had a slight problem. The ropes were still around its horns and it seemed like to me that those four ropes were going to be really hard to get off.
I was wrong (again). The boss angle reached into his blue jeans and brought out a large very sharp pocketknife. He reached into that trailer and cut the rope off that bull's head without hurting the bull or himself (as if angels can get hurt!). I don't know what all that rope would cost in human dollars, but I guess the angel just didn't care about people money.
And that is how these four angels got the cows put away. Then the boss angel asked me if I wanted one of his boys to take the cows to the sale barn in Will's Point. He was just being polite because we both knew that that was what he was down here on earth to do!
So the boss angel and two junior angels got in angel truck like vehicle and drove on to wherever angels go. Meantime I followed (in my little toy Mazda pickup) the other angel who was pulling the giant trailer to the sale barn in Will's Point.
And, Emma - that is the true and factual story of how Grandpa met the angels.
Shortly after that day, for some reason, I (your old Grandpa), decided that I had had about enough of the cattle business and decided to move to the city - where I am until this very day.
And that's no bull.
