Saturdays Are The Bomb

Saturdays Are the Bomb

I have always said that I don’t vacation very well. It seems that I can take a few days and then I get the itch to get back to work.

Terrible habit…

I have been on the job hunt for about 6 weeks now. I left my previous job “because I needed a change”; nudge, nudge, wink, wink to quote Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

The first week or two was an amazing experience. For the first time in almost 30 years I woke up without a worry, a care or any anxiety at all. Nothing. Zilch. I think I was seeing what “retirement” was going to possibly be like. I spent the first week (which was July 4^th week) on the couch acting like I was taking some time off for the holidays. The second week I split around 2-3 cords of wood from an enormous oak tree that had died last year during the drought.

Splitting wood is rather monotonous and it lets your mind wander to a certain degree. I spent probably 3-4 hours a day splitting and stacking enough firewood for my niece and nephew’s grand children to use. I thought about old friends I haven’t talked to in a long time. I thought about my grandparents, and I pondered what in the hell happened to the San Francisco Giants this year. Before his crash, I hope Madison had fun on his dirt bike…

Week three I switched to job hunt mode. For the last 3 week’s I have spent the entire day on the phone, on the computer looking at job boards and practicing interview questions. I actually thought I would end up wandering over to You Tube and watching Van Halen videos, but I stayed true to form and pressed on.

I also spent a good bit of time calling business associates to explain what had happened and why I did it. I think my list had 100 names on it. That’s a good thing because everyone I worked with was a friend.

After about 2-3 days of dialing the phone and repeating the same story over and over again, I ran out of gas. I got to thinking, “Why am I spending all this time explaining myself.” Some of my friends honestly gave me leads and made calls themselves, but the majority would kindly say, ”Don’t worry, you’ll bounce back. You’ve got a great reputation in this industry and everybody likes you.” Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all the kind words and the encouragement. I realize I am a likable person and I will land on my feet, but the $1,000,000.00 question is

WHEN??

There are days when you have a phone conversation or a positive email and things start looking up. Then the inevitable message of “Sorry, but we have filled the position.” or “You’re qualifications  are not what we are looking for.” comes along. Although in one or two instances this scenario has happened and at 4:00 in the afternoon I get a positive phone call or email and the sun comes out again.

My situation is similar to the pitcher who is throwing a no-hitter into the 7^th inning and the whole team lets him sit by himself at the end of the dugout. No one gives him a look or a pat on the back. The team doesn’t want to jinx him. On an island sort of thing…

I do have friends who call or text fairly often and that means a lot to me, but I sometimes like the island life to a point. Maybe I need to be left to my thoughts and let me work this out by myself.

My brother has been in the same place I have been, but for a lot longer. His position was eliminated in January and he received an offer this past week. We have shared information and encouragement between ourselves and that has helped a bunch. My dad was about the same age as me when Mobil Oil decided he was not needed and they turned him out. Big difference is he had 3 kids. Dad took some time like me and relaxed for a bit, but he bounced back like a boss. He did an about face and left the oil business behind. I know I don’t want to leave agriculture and animal health behind, so that fork in the road won’t be approached.

I have had some really good leads and good conversations the last few weeks and I am confident someone will see my solid skills and chiseled good looks. Well at least the job skills…

I still remind myself that it has only been 6 weeks. Unfortunately it feels like 6 months. I keep reminding myself of what my brother told me;

“It ain’t that bad, every day is Saturday and you get to wear shorts all week.”

I’ll try to keep that in mind.

Cook Like You'll Eat It

Cook Like You’ll Eat It

Eating and cooking these days have added to our waistlines. Duh…

Here is my excuse.

My first recollection of cooking was making toast with my Mom, which at the time was a pretty important job for one so young. From toast I progressed to biscuits out of a tube and then on to bacon. Biscuits were easy, all you do is turn on the stove. Mom would let me cook the bacon standing on a stool in front of the stove when I was probably 9 or 10 years old. She would turn on the stove, let the pan warm up and then let me layer the bacon strips one by one. From bacon I graduated to fried eggs. Although I like my eggs over medium now, back then I felt the same way most kids did about runny eggs; yuck. To achieve the hockey puck texture of a hard fried egg, I had to learn to break the yolks and then use the spatula to gently toss the hot grease over the eggs until they were done.

Over the years I dabbled when & where I could, but never had to cook a full out meal. Oh sure, I became proficient in Hamburger Helper. I could warm up a mean Swanson Chicken Pot Pie and cook a pretty good hamburger in the iron skillet, but real food evaded me. Reality hit me when I moved out of my parent’s house for the first time. I was 17 years old that September in 1980, with 18 arriving a few weeks later. Before I left home, Mom let me make copies of recipes of my favorite meals to help me out. Spaghetti sauce, Cuban Chicken, Chili and others were the main ones. Mom even gave me an old tattered Betty Croker cookbook to take with me. Susie still uses it to this day for a few recipes.

Robert Skelton and I became roommates in the fall of 1980.

I don’t think Robert had ever boiled water before. I did most of the “cooking” which consisted mainly of yes, you guessed correctly, Hamburger Helper. Finally tiring of that, plus hamburgers and pizza, I decided to change the menu. I decided Spaghetti was to be my first creation. The recipe called for 3-4 cloves of garlic. Me being the classically trained chef from the Jane Guest (Mom) school of cooking, I theorized that a clove was actually a bulb of garlic. There was no way I could get the right hint of garlic from 3 little pieces, right? I think it took an hour to peel all three bulbs and then chop them up for the sauce. How in the world was Mom able to make spaghetti sauce so quickly? She must have mad knife skills.

The finished spaghetti sauce definitely had that hint of garlic. Robert gave it a taste and the look on his face was priceless. He managed to eat some of it and then told me he had a late lunch that day and wasn’t hungry. I forced my plate down and burped a lot the next day or so. I was soon set straight on the difference between a clove and a bulb. My Mom coached me through it but I know she was stifling a gut laugh.

Over time I read more cook books and tried to cook for myself, but cooking for one person can be difficult. For instance, Jim Young Oysters was a recipe my Dad would cook from time to time. The Young’s were friends of my parents and had eclectic food preferences. They fixed us Cherries Jubilee once and I solemnly believe that anything that you set on fire at the table is cool. Jim Young Oysters are an oyster dish sautéed in garlic, green onion, butter and white wine and served over toasted French Bread. Oysters could be purchased in pint jars, but wine, as you know is bottled in larger vessels. I only needed about a half cup of wine, and I didn’t want the rest to go to waste, so you can guess what I did with the remaining 28 ounces. I think the first time I cooked this oyster dish it was pretty good. I just don’t seem to remember much about that night.

While in college I was amazed that so many my friends either couldn’t or wouldn’t cook. They generally lived in the dorms the first several years and didn’t have to cook. When they left the dorms, they were hit with a task most had never done before. When I registered at Tarleton State University in Jan 1986, I was a 23 year old freshman and thankfully had been on my own for awhile. I could wash clothes, cook and take care of myself for the most. I went to Brian Mannen’s apartment once to study and he asked me if I wanted to eat dinner. He was making chili and I said I would be honored to eat dinner with him. Then he told me how he cooked it. Browned ground beef with a bottle of ketchup. I don’t know how I managed to get out of there before dinner, but I did. I’m not saying I was a better individual than Brian, but I just didn’t think I could force that epicurean delight down.

By the time Susie and I married, we both had come up with a pretty decent arsenal of recipes. On one of our first dates, she cooked a pot roast that was out of this world. I then cooked her my go-to meal of Cuban Chicken. Those two remain in the rotation to this day. Joining a cooking book club really put us over the top. Pretty soon we must have had 15 cookbooks. Celebrity chefs were beginning to be all the rage and the Food Network and Cooking Channel were going strong. In college I watched Justin Wilson’s cooking show on PBS. Cajun cooking at its finest. This eventually morphed into Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay. Julia Child would be amazed at what she started all those years ago.

I became interested in smoking food about 25 years ago. I paid $150.00 for a New Braunfels offset fire smoker at Academy, bought the cookbook “Smoke and Spice” and was on my way. It turned out this was like starting all over again and I was lost for about a year. My food would be cooked, but could never pass for barbeque. Thank goodness for the web, because I would spend hours pouring over cooking websites and chat rooms. I finally figured it out that barbeque/smoking is similar to braising in a few ways. Although you don’t use liquid like you would when you braise meats, the low temperatures over an extended period of time is similar. The greatest explanation of barbeque and smoking meats that I ever read, is that the meat is cooked beyond the point of done, but at a low temperature. The long cooking times had me thinking I had overdone it, when that was exactly what you do when smoking meats.

One of my greatest pleasures is cooking for others. I began this journey a few years back with Harry Caldwell. Harry was an Ivesco swine rep and he asked me to help him cook Christmas dinner for one of his customers, Texas Farms. We cooked app 60 whole pork loins and fed about 200 people. The next day we cooked for another hog farm in Kansas, but “only for 100 people”.  We cooked all the sides in Harry’s motel room (note it to be a motel, not a hotel) and kept tripping the electrical breakers in his room. When you have 4 or 5 electric steamers plugged into the walls, this happens. When we were finished with the parties, we washed the dishes and utensils in Harry’s bathtub. You work with what you got.

I helped Harry and other co-workers cook for customers over the next several years. Ken Callahan and I cooked app 120 chicken leg quarters for Sanderson Farms employees.

 We bought the sides at a local BBQ restaurant, but did everything else ourselves. Brandon Nicholson, Sonny Nolan and I have cooked for our customers in California over the last several years. The first time Brandon and I cooked together we cooked rib eye roasts for 100 people on a borrowed grill. We had a few mishaps, (flare ups from the fat dripping in the fire or the occasional fly landing on the food) but no one died. I think…

Amazingly enough, we were invited back. That has to be the biggest and best compliment we have ever received.

Hopefully next year I will take the plung and purchase a mobile cooker/smoker that I can haul around with me. I have been pining to do this for years and I think I might be able to swing it. Cooking competitions are next and I hope we can try our hand at them in 2017.

I don’t think I have the patience and drive to cook for a living. My energy level doing that every day would run low I’m sure. I also have a very discerning palate; I cook what I like. I don’t know if I could cook Hollandaise sauce, because frankly, it looks awful. Unfortunately, menudo falls in that category also. Sorry Susie. Friends of mine like Dario Borelli are more daring than me. Dario will jump into anything and either cook it or eat it.

He once texted me a picture of a duck head at a market in Sacramento.

God bless him.

 Sonny and Brandon's arm...

My Life In a Stall

My Life in a Stall

I know if sounds corny and overly dramatic, but I love horses. Women and girls say it all the time, but if a man says they are fond of a pony, well we might have to take his man card away!

Since my early 20’s, I have been involved directly or indirectly within the horse business. Directly, I tried to make it as a trainer/breeder, and then once reality slapped upside the head, indirectly as an animal health sales rep.

I was a late bloomer to say the least, not desiring to put my skins on the wall as a horseman until I was well beyond my formative years. All kinds of variables seem to have flicked the switch for me. A want of doing something that very few of my friends did was a contributing factor. Trying to impress people (mainly the female persuasion) is probably another. All I know is I am sure glad I made my move.

The big step for me was leaving the comforts of my hometown and moving to Arizona. I worked as an apprentice (glorified stall cleaner) for an Arabian horse farm in Tucson. I loved it from day one. The smell of alfalfa hay and sweet feed in the mornings did me in. The scent of the desert after the infrequent rainstorm didn’t help much either. While my horsey side kicked in, my mountain lust was beginning too.

That year in my life was financially strapping since us “apprentices” only made about $275 a month, plus a place to sleep. I learned a lot of basic equine techniques and had an education that at times was trying. The first time I saw a horse receive an injection of penicillin, my stomach did a flip. I never have figured why, but I’ve always hated being on the receiving end of a needle, so there you have it. The toughest day was when a mare got colicky and we had to put her down. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. We walked her for hours and she kept trying to lay down and roll. You could see it in her eyes that she was in awful pain. After the decision was made to put her down it took a  only a few seconds after the vet mainlined her, to drop right in her tracks. I was still holding the lead rope. Strange that we have moments like this that will define ourselves.

A trainer I worked for once in once told me, ”God put horses, cattle and other beasts on this earth to serve man. We, therefore, are obligated to care for them.”  Pretty intense words…

I moved back to Texas that next year and then after some searching, went to work for a cutting horse trainer (Joe Heim) in Oklahoma. Being in the saddle all day, every day was an education in itself. A horse’s individual personality became very apparent to me here. We rode every kind of horse here; mares, studhorses and geldings. Bloodlines like Little Peppy and Doc Bar to Colonel Freckles and even some racehorse lines. It took until several years after my time there that I started to realize the difference. Some of them loved their lives and never pinned an ear at anything. Others were cranky and would just as soon be back in their stall or in the pasture as to be in the working pen.

Joe bred and owned Docs Okie Quixote. Spoiled and brash, I have never known very many horses like him that thought their shit didn’t stink. One day Joe told me to exercise him, but this time, he told me to saddle him and put a side pull on his head. Big deal for me since Okie was worth a small fortune. Okie didn’t even wait for me to swing my right leg over his back; he intended to test me for all I was worth. After about 10 minutes of bucking and running off, throwin’ on the brakes and ducking left or right trying to peel me off his back, he simply stopped. He acted like a damn pleasure horse with a nice easy lope. We did this for about 20 minutes and then I stepped off and put him back in his stall. An absolute gentleman until I turned my back to walk out of the stall. I sensed a reason to turn and he tried to nip me on the shoulder. I rode him for another 3 or 4 days and he tried to buck me off every time. The fifth day I climbed on expecting another test, but he just walked off, trotted a bit and then we loped for the remainder. I think he finally figured I wasn’t going to be disrespected and gave in.

The last day I worked for Joe, that son of a bitch Okie bit me in the face. So goes respect…

Joe had to put him down a few years later because of colic. I hate to admit I shed a tear for Okie.

My mare care and repro years gave me the most respect for equines. I really miss working with the babies and the mares. Breeding stud horses are another thing all together. Don Henneke once told me that stud horses have to believe that you are the reason the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.  They will get in your hip pocket if they have half a chance. Fortunately I never had to work with any bad ones, but I heard some stories. I had heard of a halter horse stud who was a hand full. Halter horses can be the most unpredictable because they are constantly being picked at to stand still, hold their head a certain way , etc. This particular one was a world champion and he was a dandy. The guy I worked for was asked to help get the horse collected for breeding. He said as soon as they walked out of the stall, the horse came at him like a wildcat. He finally backed into a tack room to get away and had to fight the horse off with an ax handle. I don’t know if there was any embellishment to the story, but its probably most true.

I’ve seen some studs that would not “perform” when certain people were visible. Weird. There must be a backstory to that.

Some mares won’t give you the slightest clue they are in estrus. They hem and haw around wasting everybody’s time until you palpate them and see a follicle the size of Dallas. It is truly an art to be able to figure out if the shy ones are ready to breed or not. At least heifers will ride each other…

Foaling a mare was a super rewarding task. I wasn’t crazy about the hurry up and wait part, but when that mare foaled and the baby stands and nurses for the first time, well that my friend is a special moment. Sometimes it doesn’t go so well like a breeched birth or a mare that is in poor shape, but the good outweighs the bad any day of the week. Breeched births are unavoidable, but the poor mares are a shame. We foaled a mare in Utah that was owned by a well know person in the industry. Her ribs were like a xylophone and she was only middle aged; maybe 9 or 10 years old. She lived, but the baby didn’t. If she had been taken care of like we are supposed to take care of them, the baby would have been fine.

Halter breaking babies is very rewarding. The progress you see as the babies gentle up is rewarding. I read an article once about “imprinting” babies at a young age. Part of the article said to put yourself down to the babies level; basically eye-to-eye. You squat down in front and work with them to calm them down. Pretty good idea until you are working with a 4-5 month old that has been in pasture his whole life. I didn’t have to squat down much but tried to get to his level. It seemed to be working until he backed into a fence and bumped it with his butt. Next thing I know, his legs are on my shoulders and I’m getting a good look at his junk. I burned that article later that night.

I’ve known many people that have special relationships with horses or

a horse. Rocky Denard had a colt he named Wino that would do anything Rocky asked him to. Wino would gladly race cars. Yeah, cars.. Rocky & Wino would be trotting down Hwy 377 in Stephenville coming home from work. A car would be coming up from behind and he would throw Wino the reins and take off.  I’m talking Fast with a capital F. Wino was cruising through the bar ditch, ears pinned and taking unbelievable strides. Steve Adams, Grat Williams and I were at Rocky’s house, waiting for him to get off work.  I closed my eyes and cringed waiting for the wreck that never happened. An amazing horse who trusted Rocky to the nth degree and only wanted to please.

Wino hurt himself later in life and couldn’t race cars as much, so Rocky donated him to a disadvantaged youth riding program. Rocky said Wino’s picture is in the newspaper with these kids more than Trump.

Giggle…

I sure miss being horseback. Since I began my second career as an animal health rep, I haven’t sat on a single horse. I sold my good saddle before we moved back to California, but I still have one that I bought in a feed store in San Benito, Texas back in the late 90’s. It has a high cantle and big swells would keep you locked in. It has a tall brass saddle horn and was built in Pueblo, CO in the 50’s.  Pretty punchy looking. I keep it around because you never know.

Maybe one day I’ll get to sit on a horse again. All I want to do is trail ride these days, but I like to take myself back from time to time. I worked for a man in Arizona who said once, “We have the greatest job in the world. Someone is paying us to ride horses. It don’t get any better than that.”

It shore don’t…

 Another day at the office for Rocky and Wino.