Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a hotel room reminiscing with my mother, father, and brother. It is fun to remember. This was one incident I remember vividly. I have not yet finished it but here is the start:

I don’t know exactly when the day began, it was all just a blur. It started with my grandfather, Virgil, filling up the doorframe of our room at the ranch. He was about six feet tall but he always seemed to fill up any room with his presence; like that morning, he woke us up with only “It’s about that time boys”.

My grandfather had been up for hours. He always preached that it was better to be 2 hours early that a minute late and he applied this with everything in his life. When I would spend time with him, he the first ready and always waiting. I remember once the whole family was in San Antonio to catch a plane for a family vacation. Virgil was up, dressed, packed, and waiting at the airport restaurant before anyone else was awake. When the rest of the family arrived at the airport, he had breakfast, which was cold, waiting on the table.

This day was no different except breakfast was hot.

Round up happens twice a year. It is a time when ranchers gather up all their sheep and goats. They sell some, other they castrate, but all they sheer. Grandpa’s ranch is huge, 15000 acres, and round up takes a week of clearing out each pasture. It has to be done on horseback because the terrain is so rough.

Those who do not know the land described it as barren but I have always though of it as beautifully mysterious. In the summer the ranch takes on a desolate look but life is just hiding from the punishing sun. When the sporadic rain does fall, it mixes with the bleached dirt to form green, which appears from everywhere. It is as if the rocks have been hiding grass seeds and the rain gives them the ok to start growing.