Cutting new trails

STEERING THE FEED TRUCK AND OTHER LIFE LESSONS FROM A RANCH CHILDHOOD.

By Cara Guerrieri

I scooted my five-year-old self onto my knees and into the driver’s seat of the old Ford truck. Dad got out and jumped on back, from where he’d toss the hay while I steered round and round the meadow. I was too short to reach the gas pedal, but in 1964 trucks had chokes, which could be pulled out a bit, causing the truck to putt-putt along on its own at a slow creep. Over the crunchy snow I steered, but not before calling out, “Where should I go?”

Dad’s answer was the same as it had been yesterday and the day before. “Don’t hit any cows, ditches or fences,” he hollered. Dad’s instructions were notorious for being short and incomplete, and he left out that he also expected me to cut new paths, not simply to follow yesterday’s feed trail. That meant looking for undisturbed snow, which sometimes camouflaged the ditches and their long snake-like outlines crisscrossing the field.

Meanwhile, up ahead, 200 hungry, pregnant Hereford cows milled about, anxious for their morning feed. They stared at me through the windshield, unblinking, as if inviting me to a dare. Their feet planted, they’d wait until the very last moment before lumbering out of the way of the truck. I’d have my hand on the choke, ready to kill the engine if I needed to, while I chewed my lower lip and sweated.

As to Dad’s directive to avoid hitting fences, that should be easy enough in a 150-acre field, but with cows all over the place, hidden ditches to avoid and new track to cut, even the barbed wire fences were too close for comfort. I kept my eye on them.

Steering the truck was serious business at my age, and Dad needed my help. He couldn’t very well be both in the cab of the truck and on the back feeding at the same time. Turns out it was a help to Mom, too, as it kept me out of her hair during her chaotic scramble to get my three older brothers off to school.

With all my concentration, I didn’t notice the stunning views of Carbon Mountain and the Anthracites in the backdrop. I’m not sure I even noticed the beauty of them until late childhood, when I suppose my world view extended beyond the ranch meadows. But at that age, I simply had a job to do, and that was all that mattered. As ranch kids, we were given real responsibilities early in life and were expected to help where we could. These days that

“LOADING A SLED BY HAND WITH A PITCHFORK WAS A REAL ART.”

— Richard Guerrieri

Top: Richard Guerrieri and his young son in 1957, with horses Scotch and Pearl pulling the feed sled. Bottom: Richard with son Burt last summer, on the old sled at the Bar Slash Bar Ranch.

would be considered a wise parenting practice, but for my folks it was born of necessity rather than philosophy. Ranching meant work, hard work for everyone involved.

Mom had been up since early that morning, making us a real breakfast of sourdough pancakes, eggs and bacon. Before I was even dressed, Dad had ventured out into the cold, backed the truck up to a haystack, grabbed a hay hook, and hefted 70- to 80-pound bales neatly onto the flatbed. He stacked them just so, in a pattern to “tie” the load and keep it stable. Twenty bales to a truckload, three-quarter ton of hay. Each cow ate 25 to 30 pounds of hay per day, which meant he would load two or three truckloads, at least two and a half tons of hay every day, all winter long.

“No wonder you have a bad back,” I said to him recently, thinking he might chuckle or at least agree with me. Instead, he focused his 91-year-old eyes over the meadows where he’d spent his entire adult life irrigating, fencing, mowing, raking, baling and feeding hay. “If you think lifting bales onto a truck is hard, you don’t know nothin’ about feeding with a team of horses and a sled. Now that’s real work. Back then I’d start the day lifting those heavy cold harnesses – the collars, the Hames, the tugs and the breeching. If the horses were jittery, hitching them up could be tough as hell and damn aggravating.

“Sometimes I was half froze to death before I even finished hitching the team. On those days, I’d head out, tie the lines to the rack and trust my team to follow the well-worn route to the stack while I built myself a careful little fire on the frosty sled boards with a little handful of hay. I’d warm up enough to keep going, put the fire out solid, and carry on.

“We’d get to the stack, and I’ll tell you, loading a sled by hand with a pitchfork is a real art. It takes finesse to get a good full load, built up from the edge to the middle so you don’t lose your load as you bump along uneven ground.”

He continued musing about times gone by and the switch from horses to trucks. “Even though feeding with a truck was a helluva lot more expensive than with horses, it was half the work and twice the efficiency. It made sense economy-wise, but there’s something about a team of horses I still miss. The companionship, the feeling of two thick leather lines connecting you with the team. We were one unit, working together with singular purpose. You don’t get that with a truck.”

I listened as Dad described the old days and thought about the modern tractors my brother Burt and his wife Sandy use on the ranch these days. Their new tractors automatically unroll giant round bales for the cattle. No hand work involved. The process makes feeding with an old flatbed Ford truck almost seem quaint. In an echo of my own childhood, Burt and Sandy’s five-yearold grandson, Carter, often sits on Burt’s lap and steers the tractor while Burt reminds him not to hit cows, ditches or fences. Carter’s face is all concentration as he considers the path ahead. I smile, thinking of those simple directions being handed down to another generation.

I wonder if the instructions Carter has been given will stick with him as they have with me. Or if, in time, he’ll consider that when cutting new tracks in life, the solution to most difficulties can be boiled down to avoiding trenches, staying away from barbed barriers, and maneuvering around herds of lumbering naysayers that might block the way.

Of course, those things were far from my mind when I did Carter’s job that day in 1964. I just wanted to finish up and get ready for afternoon kindergarten. As for Dad, he didn’t intend to impart a life metaphor when he jumped on the truck and hollered out my instructions, but we both agree that the lessons kids learn on a ranch are unplanned, unique and lifelong. b