Bent Nails

So earlier this summer my neighbor that lives behind my lot was putting up a new fence. The heavy winter had blown the old one down, too much snow, too much wind, and those old 4x4 posts were getting rotten. Craig propped it up with some pieces of pipe temporarily. So one day I see him building the new fence and I walk over to say howdy. Craig and his wife Lynn are very nice folks, about my age and they keep their house and yard nice and are always friendly. So as I'm talking with them I ask what they're going to do with the old fence. He wants to cut some of it up to make bird houses and the rest will go to the dump. I ask if I can have the rest to which he readily agrees; saving him dump fees and I get free wood. Bit by bit I've been trying to dismantle the six foot sections which Craig stacked neatly in the lot. The fence boards are very dry and brittle so they crack easily. I figure if nothing else I'll use it for firewood. So from time to time I go over with my hammer and try and pry a few boards loose. I've been saving the nails, bent and crooked as they may be. Which brings me to this...

Right around '67 or '68 my folks bought 32 acres of property in Garden Valley, which is a remote area north of Placerville and Coloma, up in the mother lode region where gold was discovered in the 1800's. The property was beautiful rolling hills, two springs, some trees, and lots of open space. No buildings, no water line, no sewer or electricity... but nice! There was an old barbed wire fence that was in disrepair but other than that it was just bare land. My folks vision was to build a ranch there, from scratch; an ambitious goal, to put it mildly. I don't think we ever intended on moving there permanently; it was more of a weekend place or a summer getaway type thing.

One day, when I came home from school, my dad said he needed my help to tear down a little one room cabin/storage shed building out in Meyers. I recruited my friend Rob Calvert, who had a pickup, to help. The place was just a small, one room structure with a corrugated metal roof. My mom and dad did most of the work. Rob and I mostly just hauled away the stuff that couldn't be reused to the landfill. Dad saved every board, the window, door, and yes, even the nails. The boards, the tin roof, all of it was stacked on the side of the driveway at our house on Glennwood.

My dad would make weekly trips with his pick up loaded with these old boards down to "The Ranch." One of my jobs was to straighten the nails. Hold the nail by its head, lay it on the work bench, and tap it with a hammer to get it into something resembling straightness. The ones that were really bent over, I put in a vice. I had 2 coffee cans full of nails, the bent ones and the ones I "fixed." A regular little assembly line!

So my dad, the self taught carpenter, built this one room cabin at our new ranch in Garden Valley. Now, granted, it looked nothing like the building it was up at the lake; my dad just sort of eyeballed it and, with no plans or anything, he built a new cabin using old wood, the tin roof, and even my somewhat straightened nails.

It was a fine little cabin. Mom and Dad had a bed in one corner and my brother Eric and I had cots and sleeping bags off to the sides. By this time we had electricity run in and a well dug. So we had running water and electricity but we had no toilet. Dad built an outhouse about 50 yards from the cabin out of some more old lumber. This was 1968 so the outhouse was named "The Far Out House." My Mom and Dad had put in a small wood stove, a refrigerator, sink unit, and even a little 12 foot, snap together above ground pool to cool off in during the hot summer days. We all kidded my dad about about the cabin even though it was built real well. We ended up naming the cabin "Cattywampus" as in maybe a little crooked or off kilter. We had the fine little one room cabin and outhouse but now we needed cows and horses. So my dad buys a pair of Black Angus yearlings in Gardnerville and loads them into a U-Haul trailer... an enclosed trailer! He shows up at the the Tahoe house and says he needs my help with the cows he's taking to the ranch. I go out into the driveway and sure enough there are 2 cows inside this little trailer and the thing has no air vents. I crack the door and brace myself against it to give them some air. So Dad and I head over Echo with the cows, stopping frequently to crack the doors so they get some fresh air... crazy. The cows made it fine and I hosed out the trailer once we unloaded them at the ranch. Lottsa cow shit on the inside of that little U-Haul, that's for sure!

My dad kept building and fixing things on the property. I helped string new barb wire fence along the front of the property as well as help build a wooden fenced entry way from the road. Dad made a large hanging sign on the arch over the entrance that read, "ROCKING R RANCH", spelled out in white rope on a dark stained piece of wood. That name, "Rocking R" has been in my family as long as I can remember and now it was becoming a reality. We had a few horses and a burro and some cows. Everything was going along good. Every chance we got we'd leave the lake and go to the ranch. At night I'd lay on my army cot in my Coleman sleeping bag and listen to the rain pelting the tin roof, my brother Eric to the left of me in his sleeping bag, Mom and Dad in the corner in a small bed. All was right in the world.

Then things began to change. It was the late 60's and a lot was goin' on. Protests against the war in Vietnam, rock and roll, sex, drugs; hell, people were rebelling about everything. It was a chaotic time and I jumped in with both feet (bare feet, of course) with a big smile on my face. I didn't go to the ranch as much as I used to but my folks forged ahead. They heard of some horses for sale in Idaho - not just a few but fifty. Yes, 50 horses. Some old guy had a herd and he was in bad health and wanted to sell the whole lot of them. They weren't in the best of shape; hooves overgrown, skinny, and only green broke. Green broke is a horse that's just barely used to humans. You can't ride them as they won't stand for being saddled, let alone brushed or fed by hand. I guess you could say they're just a bit below being full-on wild horses. They were all registered half Arabians with papers, but we found it near impossible to match which horse to which paper. Dad had a large corral built and a bunch of stalls where they could feed and get out of the sun. Also a squeeze chute was built so we could inoculate and tube worm the horses.

A squeeze chute is two fences that come together into a "Y" that funnels into a narrow fenced enclosure with no room for the animal to move. Once you push, pull, or drag the horse in there you slide boards in behind it so it can't back out. So this is how you do it. You corral maybe ten horses at a time and approach them slowly with lasso in hand. Be sure to be wearing leather gloves and a good pair of boots. Spot one horse and stay focused and calm. If the horse doesn't get spooked you may be able to walk up slowly and place the rope around his neck and lead him to the chute where the veterinarian is waiting with the syringe and worm medicine. But all too often the horses panicked and it was rodeo time. Good thing I watched all those Roy Rogers films as a kid! I actually roped some of those crazy horses and dug in my heels as we tried to herd the beast into the chute.

Tube worming was quite an experience, for the horses as well as myself. Once you get the frightened horse into the chute the vet jabs him in the hind quarters with two different shots. The next thing you do is try and grab him under the jaw and lift his head. You have a quart bottle of de-worming liquid that's attached to a length of surgical tubing and at the end is a nozzle that you insert into the horses nostril and then pour in the medicine into the horses nose. Challenging? You bet! Fun? No! I did about ten horses and that was it for me. The horses were terrified and I was exhausted. My folks ended up hiring a guy named Twister Heller and his wife to finish the job and start breaking and training the horses.

We were now in over our heads in this venture. The price of alfalfa and oats was on the rise and there wasn't much of a market for barely ride-able horses. Eventually my folks sold the ranch and the horses and things returned to normal... well, sort of anyway. My folks did lots of things as I was growing up that made me scratch my head and go, "What?" But the 50-horse deal definitely ranks in the top 10 in the "What?" category.

So this all came to me as I was pulling out some bent nails from some old fence next door. Yes, I will straighten the nails and yes, I will re-use those old boards. Who knows, maybe I'll build a cabin with a tin roof.

Happy Trails, Bob