Well, the New Year of 2023 is well on its way. And, as I anticipated, it only took a few hours after Jan. 1 for me to get word about about a New Year’s Eve escapade from my buddy, ol’ A. C. Doocey, from Asbury, Mo.
Readers will recall that A.C. has periodic shortcomings when it comes to handling his alcohol. Well, it happened again in the wee hours of the new year. I got the story straight from a good source, A. C.’s long-suffering wife, Lucy Doocey.
When I called their home that morning to wish them a happy new year, Lucy answered and said A.C. didn’t feel like coming to the phone.
She said when A.C. arose late that morning, she commented sarcastically, “You were nice and quiet when you got home from your card game about 3 a.m.”
She said A.C. took that as a compliment and began feeling full of himself.
So, Lucy told me she brought A.C. back to reality when she related to him, “But the two drunks who brought you home by clattering up the front porch steps certainly weren’t quiet.”
***
Two Minnesota friends were discussing the recent demise of their mutual friend, Franz, who drowned when he fell into the icy water through the ice hole he’d cut while ice fishing.
“The poor lummox,” one friend lamented. “I’ll bet he left his poor wife destitute.”
“Oh, no,” the other friend assured the first. “I know for a fact that he left his wife with more than $100,000 in cash.”
“A hundred grand,” the first friend said. “Who’d a’thunk it? It was well known that Franz couldn’t read or write or do math.”
“Or, swim,” the second friend concluded.
***
Speaking of schooling, or lack thereof — a rural mother back in the days of one-room school houses wuz bragging to her big city sister about what good multi-lingual skills her son had achieved at his one room school.
The skeptical sister responded with a question, “Well, what languages is your young Mr. Einstein studying?”
The rural mom replied, proudly, “Spanish, French, German and Algebra.”
“That’s impressive,” the city sis replied. “Put little Einstein on the phone and have him say ‘Good Morning, auntie,” in algebra.
***
As I mentioned last week, a voracious, vicious little prairie falcon is preying unmercifully on both my chickens and my “pet” covey of quail.
To stop the predation on my chicken flock, I put up a much smaller pen with a top on it. So far, that project has worked.
To cut down on the quail massacres, I’ve started spreading the grain sorghum and cracked corn way back under low-hanging cedar tree limbs. I think that gives the quail a better change at avoiding becoming the main course of a falcon buffet.
***
I’ve got good news on my old 1997 pickup truck that I advertised for sale in this column.
The very first day, a retired rancher, ol’ P. Lowe deRhode, who lives a “fur piece” south of Ainsworth, Neb., on the eastern edge of the Nebraska Sand Hills, called and bought the pickup sight unseen. He said the pictures of the truck I sent “looked slick.”
He said my Kansas Flint Hills pickup would feel right at home in the Nebraska Sand Hills — and I suspect he’s right. It needs a change of scenery.
Lowe said he’d put the check in the mail, but then a blizzard hit Nebraska, and he said it could take several days before the snow plow could clear the road to his mailbox.
At any rate, when the check arrives, I’ll hold it until Lowe comes for the pickup. It’s just a’waiting patiently in the garage.
***
It’s with a heavy heart that I pass along the sad news of the death of “Mad Jack” Hanks, 82, a fellow rural/aggie/cowboy columnist who ranched in Colorado. Mad Jack’s column appeared weekly in the Fence Post and his columns could be both boot-kicking humorous, or butt-kicking serious. He was also an artist and cartoonist. His early years were spent cowboying in the Texas Panhandle.
I regret that I never had the chance to meet Mad Jack in person, but we were kindred spirits in our belief in the positive values of rural life, and our largely negative views of the political path America is trundling down.
I don’t know how Jack Hanks acquired the “Mad” part of his persona. Perhaps it was because half of what he saw made him “Mad.”
Mad Jack Hanks’ “celebration of life” services were held at his favorite saloon and country-western dance hall in Ft. Collins, Colo. No better way to bow out, tip your Stetson, and disappear over the final horizon.
***
Words of wisdom for the week: “Praise is something a person tells you about yourself that you’ve suspected all along.” Have a good ‘un.
Not so quiet New Year’s entrance
The Spirit Of The Cowboy
“The dawn of the new year prompts reflection on the past and renewed hopes for the future.”
Prodded heavily to release personal email when buying new boots as commented recently, the business’ advertisements flowed daily as expected.
Today’s “blog” emphasized “The Spirit Of The Cowboy,” of course personally heartwarming and seemingly worth sharing.
The American cowboy is a pillar of Western heritage that has endured for centuries, is an undeniable source of inspiration.
Though the world continues changing, the cowboy legacy stands unshaken as verified by three cowboys spanning multiple generations.
Ross Coleman, Molalla, Oregon, is a rancher, father, and bull riding legend. “You enjoy the work. You’ve got to love the land, and you’ve got to love your livestock,” Coleman insisted.
“You get up early in the morning and work all day for not very much pay,” he said. “But you love everything about riding a good horse, going across good country, and taking care of cattle.
“Things on the ranch are not always perfect, but you learn something,” Coleman continued. “Being a cowboy, whether in the rodeo world, or on the ranch, you’re going to be humbled. Humility is a lot better than pride,” champion bull riding cowboy rancher Ross Coleman declared.
Thomas Saunders V is a sixth-generation rancher and member of the renowned Saunders family at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
“Spirit comes from the soul,” Saunders acknowledged. “It’s not something that happens to you. It’s something that happens in you.
“It’s a blessing to have the cowboy and ranch lineage and history in my family,” Saunders granted. “I’m very proud of my cowboy ancestors of who I came from. I’m very proud of who they carved me out to be a ranching cowboy.
“Land is legacy, and we’re certainly proud to have withstood the test of time. By persevering and moving forward with our ranch,” cowboy rancher Thomas Saunders V declared.
Tilden Hooper, Carthage, Texas, is a professional many times champion rodeo bareback bronc rider.
“There are day-to-day differences between rodeo cowboys and working cowboys,” Hooper contended. “But at the end of the day, the values are the same. It’s hard work. Your handshake means everything.
“It’s putting your hat on every day, pulling it down hard. Going out there and doing whatever it takes to get through the day, and get it done.
“The spirit of the cowboy is special. It’s everything that’s America. It’s freedom, it’s hard work, it’s loyalty.
“The cowboy is the last wild, free thing left.”
+++30+++
CUTLINES
Ross Coleman, Molalla, Oregon, is a rancher, father, and bull riding legend.
Thomas Saunders V is a sixth-generation rancher and member of the renowned Saunders family at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Tilden Hooper, Carthage, Texas, is a professional many times champion rodeo bareback bronc rider.
Dispersing That Unneeded ‘Stuff’
“A lot of stuff can pile up in more than seven decades.”
That’s true for many, probably most, yet others just “throw away” whatever they aren’t using regularly. They don’t have anything around that doesn’t have a present necessary use.
“If something hasn’t been used in the past five years, it’s not needed so just get rid of it.” Such philosophy is also common, yet definitely not always the case.
Financial records are important to keep for years as reference for management, taxation, assistance programs, and other purposes. Impossible to prove much of anything by word of mouth.
While there is generally no economic worth, photos and scrapbooks often have considerable sentimental value. It’s fun to remember and see how people and life change through time.
“I don’t want to throw anything away, because I might want it sometime.” Those most conservative who’ve never had much feel that way about certain possessions.
A favorite worn out shirt, coat, boots, or hat might be kept for no reason except “I like them.”
Still there are hoarders who keep absolutely everything. Every building is overflowing with what is really “junk,” absolutely worthless to them or anybody else.
Still, what seems worthless to one can have certain value to somebody else. That might be as small as a pair of pliers to as major as an old car or tractor.
Animals can be included in the “too many” categories as well. Stories are common about those with large numbers of dogs and cats, such they don’t or even can’t take care for them. Yet, for some reason they find it hard if not impossible to downsize.
Farmers are some of the worst about keeping unused worn-out equipment. Fact is apparent by large accumulations around many farmsteads, especially of the older generation.
“It’s time to get everything in order, because the successors have little or no interest in what there is left.” Simply said, “Just get rid of the clutter and get organized.”
Old farm paraphernalia, clothing, and papers are being dispersed, but there’s still plenty remaining for be usefully stored and filed. Even horse population is down sharply.
Reminded of Ecclesiastes 11:2: “Don’t hoard your goods; spread them around, be a blessing to another. And, Second Chronicles 24:13: “They labored and organized to get the house in order.”
+++ALLELUIA+++
XVII–2–1-8-2023
CUTLINE
“If something hasn’t been used in the past five years, it’s not needed so just get rid of it.”
Doctors and lawyers
McDill “Huck” Boyd sounded one of the first alarms a half-century ago: Rural Kansas was losing doctors and the state needed to find ways to bring new ones to farm country.
Today, Marla Luckert, Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, says rural Kansas has lost too many lawyers. Eighty percent of Kansas attorneys now practice in six urban counties. Luckert has created the Rural Justice Initiative Committee to confront the issue and revive the country lawyer in Kansas.
Boyd’s appeal helped bring family practice out of the cellar of medicine, promote it as a newly recognized, board-certified specialty and encourage young medical students to become country doctors. Luckert wants to do the same for lawyers.
It didn’t hurt that Boyd by the 1970s was a prominent newspaper publisher in Phillipsburg and a powerful Republican who gave life to the careers of celebrated Kansas politicians including Keith Sebelius, Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum. Boyd was the party’s national committeeman, a country politician with the savvy of a city boss, skilled at pulling strings in Topeka and Washington. (In 1976 he was Director of Security for the Republican National Convention that nominated Dole for vice-president.)
In the early 1970s, Boyd’s campaign for more country doctors moved in fits and starts, but over the years acquired broad support. Family Practice had become a specialty in American medicine. It lives today in the University of Kansas branch medical school in Wichita and at the school of rural medicine at Salina.
Among other specialties, rural doctors held uncommon weight. They often became fixtures in a small town, involved in their communities. Their children were in school. They came to know the kinships of a place, its feuds and friendships and interdependence, and were trusted to heal its sick and injured. The thought was to revive the doctor as a community principal – healer, father confessor, life coach, minister to the sick and hypochondriac alike, one who saw all, heard all, and spoke none of it.
*
Chief Justice Luckert holds a similar notion for lawyers. She signed an order early last month creating the 35-member Rural Justice committee, saying that in some parts, access to justice in rural Kansas has been cut off. The Wichita-Sedgwick area and the state’s five-county northeast metroplex, have two attorneys per 535 residents. For the other 99 counties the ratio is one for every 805.
Samples of trouble: Wichita and Hodgeman Counties in the far west have no attorneys; five other rural counties have only one practicing attorney. Eleven others each have only two practicing lawyers.
Across the state’s rural stretches the system of seeking redress for grievances is unbalanced, financially inaccessible, Luckert says. Citizens may have no lawyer, or lack resources for navigating a complex system and legal procedure for settling trouble.
Needs abound: business contracts, wills and estates, divorce, child welfare, landlord-tenant issues, property leases, mineral and water rights, land use and zoning, immigration troubles, gay rights, civil rights and more. School districts, and city and county governments also need lawyers.
For rural criminal courts, the county attorney, elected and underpaid, is sometimes the greenest lawyer in town, if there is a lawyer. For the defense, the large farm cities ‒ Hays, Dodge and Garden Cities, Liberal ‒ may have experienced lawyers but elsewhere in rural Kansas defense attorneys are rare, if at all. Over the spare townships of the plains, there is a difference between the right to an attorney and the ability to find one.
*
The family doctor has returned in some places, but finds rural medicine in the strictures of corporate medicine, the grip of big pharma and the squeeze of welfare politics. In 2015, the Kansas Hospital Association reported that 31 of the state’s 107 rural hospitals were “vulnerable” and at risk of closing. In October that year, Mercy Hospital, a 41-bed institution in Independence, closed; 17other hospitals serving rural areas were at risk of closing.
Of the nine hospitals that have closed since 2006, six have been shuttered in the past five years. A disparity remains between family medicine and rural health care.
*
The 35-member Rural Justice committee is headed by Supreme Court Justice K.J. Wall and is composed of judges, lawyers, rural legislators and lay professionals who work with the judiciary. Among points of study are rural-urban population shifts, demographic trends and social factors ‒ why young adults reject small town life ‒ and examine current rural attorney recruitment projects. The committee is to submit a report, with recommendations, to the Supreme Court in 18 months ‒ in time with the 2024 wheat harvest.
Houseplants in your Home
We visited a large conservatory that housed many tropical and warm climate plants. All of these plants could be houseplants in your home. People really love their houseplants! Some are easier to care for than others but we are always willing to give growing them a try. One unique houseplant that has colorful strap-like leaves and is easy to care for is the dracaena (Dracaena). Growing naturally only in the warm climates of U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 10 through 12, dracaena typically grows indoors for most Americans. Although the plants grow very tall in their native environments, the same plants reach much shorter heights indoors. One such example is the corn plant dracaena (Dracaena fragrans), which grows up to 50 feet tall outdoors in tropical parts of Africa and from 4 to 6 feet tall indoors. Dracaena exhibits an upright form no matter the cultivar.
Types of Dracaena
While all dracaena are easy to grow, they do have different features. For instance, dragontree, also known as Red Edged Dracena (Dracaena marginata), which grows up to 6 feet tall indoors, resembles a small palm tree with narrow, green leaves on woody, upright stems. Song of India (_Dracaena reflexa ‘Variegata’) has a more compact shape with whorls of variegated green leaves edged with yellow; it grows from 3 to 6 feet tall. The corn plant has broad, variegated leaves that are about 2 feet long and 3 inches wide.
Containers and Placement
Containers must promote good drainage. Choose clay pots with drainage holes that allow the soil to partially dry out in between watering, but don’t allow the soil to dry out completely. Place your pot where the plant can get bright light but is out of direct sunlight. If the leaves on your plant begin to fade and grow longer, the plant may need more light.
Soil and Water
Dracaena thrive in rich soil with plenty of organic material, such as a well-draining, high peat moss commercial potting soil. Water the plant thoroughly once a week, allowing the water to run through the container completely. Do this by placing the pot in the sink to water or by having a saucer deep enough to catch the water as it runs through. Water slowly, only until you begin to see water in the saucer.
Feeding and Pruning
Like all indoor plants, dracaena thrive with only one or two feedings with a fertilizer designed specifically for houseplants. Feed the plant only during the growing season, between March and September. Dracaena plants respond well to pruning, so if you want to reduce the height of a dragontree for example, cut off the stem and a new crown of leaves will grow back. If the leaves on your plant have turned brown from too little light or from underwatering, cut them off and new ones will grow in their place.
Problems
Pests and disease are rare problems with dracaena, but fluoride in your water may cause the plant’s leaves to turn yellow or brown at the tips. Try using distilled water or rainwater to see if you can solve the problem. The same symptoms may result from low humidity, so add a layer of gravel in the bottom of the plant’s saucer to create a more moist atmosphere. The water held by the pebbles will evaporate into the air directly around the plant in a slow and consistent way, thereby creating a small, mini-atmosphere of moist air around the plant.
Warning
Dracaena can be toxic to both dogs and cats if they eat the plant. Symptoms of poisoning can include vomiting, depression, weight loss, hypersalivation and dilated pupils.
