Saturday Morning Press
opinion
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Saturday, August 27, 2016
Page 6
letter
By BAXTER BLACK
Life is more important
FOR THE SATURDAY MORNING PRESS
To the editor, I will have to admit that I am ignorant of some of the facts presented by Leeann Cline. I do know that it is a good thing that parents put their weed where their kids cannot get to it — because we know that kids never get into things they are not supposed to. But two facts I am not ignorant include: 1. CDOT says weed smokers admit to driving three times a week under the influence of the weed. 2. All the money represented in those facts — in fact, all the money in the world cannot replace a little girl’s life or a little boy’s life or any life. Raising me out of my ignorance with your figures does nothing for changing my mind. They do make me realize there are many people that put a higher value on money than on human life. So, I guess I’ll just remain ignorant and vote “No Pot.” John Pogline Craig
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Horse psychology pondered
Remembering ‘Dick and Jane’ books
I
thought about back-toschool when Lyle and I were “up Morapos” on Tuesday to turn the cattle into the hay meadow part of the pasture. prather’s As we passed pick the Morapos School and teacherage (the little house where the teacher stayed), memories came flooding back of the days Diane Prather past when my siblings and I attended school there. I could almost smell the sagebrush and rabbit brush that had been cut back from the buildings as they were being readied for school. That is one of my favorite memories of the start of school. The school and teacherage are located on our family ranch property. Years ago, on those first fall days of school, our parents were often putting up second-cutting alfalfa right across the road from the school, and we could watch them work as we played outside at recess.
My sibings, Charlotte (Allum), Darlene (Blackford) and Duane (Osborn) all attended the Morapos one-room country school. Charlotte and I completed grades one through eight, and if memory serves so did Darlene, but Duane attended first grade and then transferred to Hamilton. The Morapos School shut down as a result of district consolidation. A few months ago, Charlotte and her family, Duane and I sorted through a box of school books that we had used in our early years of school. In those years our parents apparently bought our school books because our names were in them. As I recall, depending on grade level, there were math, reading, health, social studies or geography, and penmanship books. We had workbooks too. The books I remember the most were from the “Dick and Jane” series. The first pre-primer books were small books (of not a lot of pages) with simple stories about Dick, Jane, Sally, Puff and Spot. The stories repeated words such as “run,” “see”
and “look.” One of the books following these pre-primers was “Fun with Dick and Jane.” It was also one of the books I brought home from the box at the ranch so I got to read through it. The book included one hundred new words, in addition to the words in the first little books. The stories were all about fun with family, at the farm (with Grandfather and Grandmother), and with pets. In one story, the family dog, Spot, chased a horse, some baby pigs and some red cows. (He would have been in trouble here at Pipi’s Pasture.) Spot learned his lesson when he tried to chase a big white hen and her chicks. Another book, for about the same grade level, “Hello, David” dealt with social studies topics, especially differences between living in the country and city, and the difference between country and city schools. This book introduced characters other than Dick and Jane. Oh, the wonderful memories of the country school of years ago!
Some people are just flat good at handlin’ horses. They’ve got that good “horse savvy.” Matter of fact, there are people actually makin’ a livin’ trainin’ horses! I admire these folks’ ability and special talent. It’s always a pleasure to see a good horse workin’ right. But horses look at veterinarians like kids look Baxter Black at Sunday school or cowboys look at weddings. They make’m uncomfortable. Even though everybody tells ‘em it’s for their own good, they’d lots rather be someplace else. But, in the case of the horse, you can’t really blame them. Most every time I have to handle a horse it’s to stick something in him like a tube or a shot or a plastic sleeve! And, they remember you! I’ve seen horses go bug-eyed and snorty at the sight or smell of a vet truck! The only way you could give’m a shot was to sneak it to the cowboy and let him do it from horseback. Years back I went to a lecture and demonstration on “horse psychology for vets.” The gist of the whole philosophy says it is a matter of wills. Since the horse is a social animal, each band has a pecking order. It’s not always the strongest or fastest or biggest that’s the leader. It’s the one with the most dominant personality. So every time a person meets a horse one has to dominate the other. Well, I took the schoolin’ seriously and came back ready to test my new horse psychology skills. I practiced on several “bronky” ones before I tried it out on my archenemy. He was a dark brown, non-descript, bad-headed, illtempered, big-footed, long-haired typical Nevada-raised feedlot slogger named Scrap Iron! In six years I had never tube-wormed Scrap Iron or given him so much as a vitamin shot! He wouldn’t let me within 20 feet of him! Following my instructions, I crouched real low and approached him. He mistook me for the Ferrier and let me pick up a front foot. I buckled on the one-leg hobble and stood up. He realized immediately the trick I pulled on him and promptly went into his “bad actor” routine. He ran around the corral on three legs, he reared, rolled, snorted, slobbered, kicked, fell, cussed and generally just made a fool of himself. Which, of course, was the plan. After soakin’ him like this for See BLACK on page 7