A Sweater and Deck Shoes

A few days ago I was in my farm car heading out to feed my animals. My farm car is a 98 Chevy Malibu. It holds all my kids and stuff, plus it gets pretty good gas mileage, so I usually take it out to the farm.

On this particular day it was really crowded in my little car. My wife, son, granddaughter and 3 dogs were going with me. I was feeling rather tight and closed in, almost claustrophobic. I suppose part of it was because the kids were arguing about who saw the tractor whacker first. Tractor Whacker is a game where the first to see a tractor gets to hit other people that are playing and say “tractor whacker.” It’s a rural version of the “slugbug no return” game. The problem with slugbug is that there aren’t very many Volkswagen Beetles in the country.
So anyway, the kids were arguing about who saw what tractor first and the dogs were whining because they were so excited about getting to be out in the country. We live on a busy street in the city so the dogs don’t get out too much. You see, we are not really country folk, but we want to be, so we bought land and we hope to build there, but things like that take a while.

On the way out we passed a couple of tractors and a roping arena, and since we were getting close to our property the dogs were really getting loud, especially the little jack rat terrier. His name is Skipper, and sometimes when we are heading out to the land he gets real excited and starts running back and forth in the car. He hops on the back of the seat and runs across our shoulders from one side of the car to the other. On this day all of the running was accompanied by a significant level of howling which was quite audible over the road noise, kids arguing about tractor whackers and the moaning of the beagle and corgi.

I was quite ready to stop the car and boot out some of the noisier occupants so that my wife and I could continue on to our land. I didn't do that because I did not want to get in trouble with the authorities or our future neighbors.

So, with only one and a half miles to go I saw something just in front of the car. On the left side of the road was a trotting Black Angus steer being chased by a large middle aged woman in deck shoes and a sweater. I slowed down because no one wants to get 2 sides of beef through the windshield of their car.

As we passed the steer and the woman, my wife asked, over the barking, if I thought that the lady needed any help. The kids at this time got really quiet because it is not that often that you see a large lady in deck shoes chasing a steer down the road. The dogs had quit barking for what I suppose was the same reason. I slowed and asked the woman if she needed any help. She replied that she did not think so because she just needed to get the steer turned around. Once she did that everything would be fine.

I could tell that everything would not be fine because she was not gaining on the trotting steer. I looked for a place to turn around and head back to help. The first place that I saw was the next intersection. In the intersection was a tall middle aged man and a twenty something girl. They were chatting quite nicely to each other. I asked them if they were helping the lady with the steer and they said that they were. I told them that I would go back and try to get in front of the steer and help the woman. They said thanks and continued their conversation while I turned around and headed back to the woman chasing the Angus.

I started thinking about how standing in the middle of the road seemed like an odd way to help. I mean I knew that it was important to keep the steer from heading down the wrong way but I was really confused. I suppose the thing that confused me most was that the woman doing the chasing seemed like the person least suited to the task.
I began thinking of possible reasons why the job of chasing the steer fell to the woman in deck shoes. Maybe she was the one that let him out, or maybe the other two helpers had health problems. The truth is that I could think of no reason why this woman was chasing the steer instead of the other two.

In just a few moments we passed the woman and the steer and then we stopped at the house in front of the roping arena. My wife and I, as well as the two kids, poured out of the car and hurried to get in front of the steer. We made it, but the steer avoided my wife and myself and Skipper, the jack rat terrier, and scooted across the street into the yard of the house that had the roping arena behind it.

Skipper was barking and chasing the steer while my wife and I were waving our arms and running around the yard. The woman in deck shoes caught up with us and started running around waving her arms too. I have noticed that running around waving your arms is pretty standard cow chasing behavior. Soon the wayward steer was headed back down the road toward the two helpers at the corner. My wife stayed out side of the car and walked with the woman in deck shoes. Soon everything was okay. The steer was home. The woman was home. The helpers were home, and my carload of kids and dogs was again headed to our property to feed our animals.