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Hello, I was bitter last week. Bitter cold that is. Talk about ringing in the New Year in style. It was too cold to even go to the dance and supper at New Hradec. I hate missing that. We had a low of –35. That is cold. Even here in North Dakota. But that wasn’t the worst around. The national weather service had Hettinger as the coldest place on the planet! Not in the nation. Not on the continent. On the entire planet Earth! That includes the poles! Well, shortly after that was posted on social media, corrections came in. Som...
Hello, I hope you had a Merry Christmas! And I hope you will have a Happy New Year! And as long as I’m hoping, I hope we have warm, gentle rains next spring. And I hope the winter is mild, there are very few storms, and cattle prices go up. You can always hope. Hope is good. I am glad the Christmas season is over. You know that I am somewhat of a Scrooge when it comes to the Christmas season. I’m hoping to be better. There’s that word again. Hope is good. Shopping frustrates me. Shirley does it for the kids and grand...
Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! I hope yours went as well as mine. Well, I’m writing this the week before Christmas, so I’m just figuring that mine went well. Over the years, Christmas has gotten easier. I think that year I bought Shirley the “Buttmaster” was the low point of our marriage! Suzanne Sommers made it sound like it would be the perfect gift. I guess maybe Suzanne wasn’t married to an Irish woman. Oh, if I could just write well enough to describe the look on her face as she tore the wrapping open on that last...
Hello, Over the years you hear lots of stories. Stories of jokes that guys have played on one another. I’ve written about them in the past. About Johnny putting the dead calf in Clarence’s pasture. And Clarence buying a pail calf and then unable to find the mother of the dead calf. I’ve written of the night they hauled Terry’s bulls home, and then returned his pickup to where it was parked behind the Buckskin, and left the endgate open. But I don’t think I ever told you the pig story. Oh, I know I’ve told the tale of my...
Hello, Some years ago I was at a horse sale. Seth brought in a cute little pony. A real small pony. About thirty inches tall. It was a beauty. And well broke. But not for kids. That last line kind of hurt the sale. I don’t suppose any of you need a pony? Or a whole bunch of ponies. Ponies are bad. They are evil. I remember from when I was young. I think my pony’s name was Laurie or something like that. And then she was followed by Scratch, my brothers pony. A pony is a real small horse that should be ridden by adults. Mea...
Hello, Shirley says I am “Scrooge”. I’m not much into early Christmas. I don’t shop. I don’t decorate. I am critical of those that do. I know I shouldn’t be this way. I have grandkids that really look forward to this season. So I am trying to be better. But I still don’t think Black Friday should be a holiday. I am thinking that I shouldn’t have to write a column on “Cyber Monday”, whatever the heck that is. It has been close to thirty years since I was in the legislature. If I were back I would introduce a bill that no deco...
Hello, Saturday morning dawned cold and windy. The forecast was for warming by noon, but the brisk wind was dang sure cold early. We were on our way down to Will and Jen’s ranch to preg check cows. As usual, the drive down was pretty uneventful. I always enjoy the drive across SW North Dakota and NW South Dakota. You don’t meet a lot of traffic, and you can see for miles and miles. A herd of mule deer, including one nice buck, were oblivious to the fact that we are in the middle of deer season. They were grazing on the sho...
Hello, I know some of my readers are suffering through the same thing I am. I am starting to forget stuff. I used to forget simple things. Things like ‘take the garbage out” or “swing by and pick up a gallon of milk”. But now it has been getting worse. I’ve always been poor at names. I just nod and say “Hi”. Especially if you run into someone who shouldn’t be there. Like if you see someone from Bismarck at the grocery store, or maybe a bar, in Dickinson. But lately it has been getting worse. I forgot how to write. I can st...
Hello, They are forecasting single digit lows for tonight. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It happens every year about this time. So today we will start winterizing tanks, rolling up garden hoses, and insulating the pumphouse doors. Maybe. At least we will talk about it. We usually don’t do that stuff until the hoses are covered and the water lines have frozen. Because someone will call and need help weaning calves today. Or someone will text me that they need a partner in pinochle. In all my trips around the sun that is...
Hello, In the fall I attend several livestock auctions. Sometimes I am selling. Sometimes I am buying. Usually I am just watching. This helps when I have to do my year end balance sheet for my bankers. Note the term. Bankers. I have more than one. But by attending the sales, you can kind of get an idea what your net worth is. And how much you will be lying as you fill that sheet out. Much of the time, I take one of my grandsons along. It’s been that way since I had grandkids around. At first, they think it is a neat deal. T...
Hello, As we get closer to Halloween, it gives time to think of Halloweens from the past. Several years ago there was a fire called the Halloween fire. It was a windy devil and a fire started over toward Sidney, Montana. It burned for miles and miles. I think it was finally stopped by the Little Missouri River south of Watford City. Wasn’t as bad as the fire that the late, great Danny Woods used to tell about. Danny was a rancher down in the breaks along the little river. He had wonderful stories that he told so much; e...
Hello, I’m tired of warnings. I mean I am really tired of warnings. The seat belt warning comes on every time I get in the pickup. I do fasten my seat belt. I don’t need a warning. The stove warns me when the burner is hot. I learned as a child not to touch hot stuff. I’ve scars to prove it. All of my pills warn me not to operate heavy equipment after I take the pills. I don’t have any heavy equipment. My mother warned me as a child to carry the scissors pointed down, and don’t run. I don’t carry scissors and I don’t run to t...
Hello, I get thousands of calls a week about my column. Well, not really. I get hundreds. Okay, I get a call every once in awhile. Maybe two a year. But they are calls. And I get thousands of letters. Okay. I got two. My favorite was a lady from California that wrote me a nice letter. Now, I don’t know many people from California. A couple ranchers and a team roper are about all I can recall. But somehow this lady got my column. In this letter she was a little critical. Well, very critical. She said, “If you were my hus...
Hello, One thing I have noticed, is that, like a fine wine, I’m getting better with age. Most people are like that. Well, maybe not most people, just athletes. Like me. I’m becoming better at football than I was over a half century ago. I don’t play fantasy football. But I could. I don’t bet on football games. But I could. I sit in my recliner and know what the coach should call. Never mind that as a 155-pound offensive lineman in high school, I didn’t call many plays. This dawned on me yesterday as I was hauling a load of c...
Hello, Last fall I had a chance to revisit the old Smith Camp on Fort Berthold. It was one of the first cow camps in that part of the country. I think the Keogh’s were among the first to make it kind of a headquarters on the reservation. But I’m sure there were ranchers before them. For the better part of a century, it was a camp where you could put your horse in a barn, go into a log cabin and get a cup of hot coffee, or find shelter from a storm. It lies just below the Kennedy Hills, about 15 miles northeast of the Los...
Hello, I know we have all been concerned with the fires that roared across Montana and other western states. I had the opportunity to witness some of the devastation first hand on Friday. On Friday morning, in a nice rain, I drove down to Bowman and met a friend to go to a horse sale in Great Falls. It was raining nice at home. And from here to Bowman and then northwest to Great Falls, we never shut the wipers off! 525 miles with the wipers on in western North Dakota and eastern Montana. That may happen only once in a...
Hello, As I write this, hurricane Irma is winding down. Still pounding northern Florida and up into Georgia, but it appears the worst is over. I understand most of the areas shut down operations when the wind reaches 45 mph. That is right. 45 mph. I know the winds are dangerous, but if we shut down emergency services when the wind reached 45, there would be no use having ambulance or fire trucks in Harding County! I have several friends who live in Florida. Mostly in the Ft. Myers and Naples area. They often kid me about...
Hello, The Dakotas are a good place to live. Oh, we may have a drought. We may have to fight ice and snow for a few months of the year. The wind may blow from the northwest for days at a time. We do get an occasional flood along the Red, the Mouse, Heart, or Beaver Creek. But when we have a flood, most of the time we pile up some sand bags, or maybe have to evacuate a relatively small number of people, let the water recede, then move back in and clean up. Minot, Grand Forks, and Fargo have been hit hardest, but the end is...
Hello, When I served in the legislature, I had a friend that used idioms to often explain things. Now for those of you who don’t know what an idiom is, don’t feel bad. I had to ask Shirley. He would often say things like, “I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer” or “I’m not the brightest bulb in the closet”. Sometimes he would get a little mixed up as many legislators do. He may have said, “I’m not the sharpest knife in the closet”. But we always knew what he meant. What brought this thought on this morning is something...
Hello, By the time you read this, the eclipse will have passed. Hopefully you did not stare at the sun for two and a half hours so you can still read. They are issuing warnings to not stare directly into the sun or it can damage your eyes. Really. They have to tell people not to stare into the sun or it will hurt your eyes. Some people are making a killing on this. They are selling sunglasses for dogs. Sun glasses for dogs! I know my dog isn’t very smart at all. He will chase birds that he will never catch. He will try to d...
Hello, We did it again. I mean we went to the Bike Rally in South Dakota. You may remember, years ago, when Shirley and I took the Honda Super 90 to the rally. We didn’t make it all the way. Shirley’s sweat pants got tangled up in the chain going down the hill to the Lost Bridge. Probably was just as well. And then one time we went through Sturgis on the way to a rodeo when we had the grand kids along. I think that was the time we were sitting at a light in Sturgis and a motorcycle pulled up alongside us. The motorcycle mam...
Hello, This is a column that is kind of like the Seinfeld show. A column about nothing. Or it could be considered a column about everything. This has been a tough year because of the drought. Hay was hard to find. I stooped to cutting kochia weeds in the old city lagoon. Now kochia is a big, bushy green weed that thrives in adverse conditions. It is the kind of week that helped livestock survive the thirties. But one of the problems is it can be high in nitrates. And that can be fatal to cattle. I was telling a friend about...
Hello, It’s been a long time since we had a rain. A real rain. One that sat in and rained for three or four days. Just a drizzle. Where you sat at the coffee table and looked out the window at the grass growing. Or you swept and cleaned the shop and the tack room because it was too wet to even get out to the road. Or you had the kids go to the shop and straighten nails. A rain where you could take a spade and go down to the horse pens and dig little ditches that drained out the corner of the pen and found its way to the c...
Hello, You know just when you thought there was nothing left in the world to write about, up jumps an idea. It happened to me while watching the Olympics. I know, I know. I’ve written about the Olympics before. Remember when Shirley and I did the ice skating routine to “Achy Breaky Heart”? In our overshoes and Carharts on the stock dam. Shirley never did fully recover from that. But that was the Winter Olympics. This was summer! Swimming. Maybe Shirley and I could do the synchronized swimming. She insisted I start out alone...
Hello, It is turning into a long, hot summer. I mean it is really hot. We’ve had several days well over one hundred degrees. Measurable rain is non-existent. The hay crop and small grain crops have been decimated. Many ranchers are selling off a huge part of their herds. Others are contemplating what to do. Should you sell off now or wait for fall? The pastures are going to be in tough shape for next spring. What if I buy hay, or send my cows away, and the rains don’t come this fall or next spring? And I have nowhere to go....
