Old Times

   Old Times 

                                                                   By

                                                             Mike Capron 

Big space and fewer people created a different lifestyle years ago. Lots more grass and lots more possibilities to get a start in the ranching business.  If a man could manage to get a few cows , grass was available.  Lots of stories of how men got a few cows to get a start and the grass was around for a long time. The best grass went first, but some of that brushery country was available until the second world war. Men had to be tough and craving the lifestyle. Hadn’t been long ago when a head of livestock was profitable enough to support a ranching lifestyle, but now it takes some outside moonlight jobs and certainly helps to have the mineral royalties and hunting rights.  I am not going to say that men were tougher back then……..????  But I heard a story that sure makes me wonder if I would have been tough enough back then……..

Frank Lindley tells a story about one of these individuals back in the day…….  “My grandad Frank Lindley was born in 1893 In Sherwood Texas. He had so many sisters and brothers that his mother never named him they just called him squirrel. He was 7 years old when he came home from the barbershop and told everybody his name was Frank. He loved to go fishing and went on several trips to the Pecos and the Rio Grande. Once when he was going fishing he was loading supplies in front of the mercantile store in Sherwood and when he got on his horse his pack mule ran around and made the lead rope pull up under his horse’s tail. Well the bronc ride was on. He had a .45 in a holster hanging on the saddle horn but it wasn’t lashed down and it flew up out of the holster and the hammer hit the swell of his saddle. It went off and shot him thru his wrist and traveled up his ribs and lodged in the back of his neck. He died at 93 years old, and still had that bullet in his neck. When I was a little boy, I would get up in Grandad’s lap and ask him if I could feel his bullet.   He would say sure and it was still there.    Grandad never talked much but he served in the Army in WWI. He was in France in a foxhole and stayed wet and cold. Then when he got married and had 4 sons and they came of age when WWII got started. He told them to join the Navy so they would always have a dry bed and be able to stay warm.” 

Don’t forget your Grandaddy’s stories ……….They might make this day a little easier.