Plans

As I grow older, I have stopped thinking about where I will be in five or ten years, and started going more by month to month. I have an idea of where I’d like to be, but I find I’m always surprised where I am even in a year. My twenties have been nothing but big and small changes. I just started working for a doggy daycare part-time. I love it because I get to be around animals that I adore all day long. But by this time, when I was little, I probably would have said I was going to be a vet, that I would be married, and possibly have children (definitely a couple dogs). However, as they always say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” I’ve had plenty of surprises in my life: switching my major from Biomedical Science to English, moving to New York to pursue a branding career, and returning back to Texas to write a book are a few of the major ones. If you would have asked me my plans a year before any of those, I had no idea what was coming. 
 

For my grandpa, plans changed in December of 1961. His mother took his dad to King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Temple, Texas because his dad had said that he couldn’t button his pants anymore. Something wasn’t right. After a couple days in the hospital, the doctors diagnosed him with nephritis. There were no kidney transplants or dialysis in those days. The doctors gave him three months. Three years later, he was still alive in the hospital. You can only imagine the seriousness because Grandpa’s dad didn’t believe in insurance. Mickan Motor Company could only exist under my grandpa’s supervision, and it needed to run well. It was, as Grandpa calls it, the biggest change of his life. But he says it now, as he knew it then, his dad had prepared him.

For the next five years, his dad would alternate between hospital stays while grandpa managed both the farm and the shop. Grandpa had always assumed he would work for the farm. In fact, for the seven years that his father was sick, he kept up with the farm work and the garage. He would be at the shop from before sunrise until long after it had set. Soon the shop became more of a priority.

By 1962, grandpa and grandma were already blessed with all four of their children. They also had a surprise in their plans a few years earlier in December of 1958. Grandma was expecting a baby, and went into labor. Grandpa’s dad always did say that Ethel was big enough to have twins. She felt like she was feeling twins, but Dr. Gaddy would say, “One head, one heartbeat; it’s going to be a biggen.”

On December 9^th, Grandpa took Grandma in to the old Georgetown hospital. There were two doctors, Dr. Gaddy and Dr. Benold, and Ethel’s sister Mimi was the nurse. That morning, Grandpa wasn’t allowed anywhere close. He had to wait on the front porch for the report from the nurses. They later came out to tell me that I had a real cute little girl. I thought, “Well good that makes two daughters then.” But after a bunch of talking they finally said, about 30 minutes later you also had a big boy.

The rest of the story is inside the hospital. When they were wheeling Ethel in, Dr. Gaddy still said, “One head, one heartbeat.” And so Cindy was born. Dr. Gaddy started cleaning up and told Mimi to take care of the mother, when Mimi hollered out, “Dr. Gaddy, there’s another one in here!” He said, “Oh my god, get Dr. Benold, we’re going to need some help.” All Ethel hollered out was, “What am I going to do in church?” She was worried about how to hold and keep calm three babies in church. After all, Pam wasn’t even a year old until two days later. Dr. Gaddy said, “If it was my wife, she’d say to hell with church.”

My Grandpa took on all that responsibility without planning to go into that career, yet it gave him work until he retired, and he’s still up at the shop on most days. As quickly as we can make plans, they change. But those little surprises or so-called kinks make all the difference. Now, of course I still plan, but only because I always enjoy a good chuckle.

A Little Bull

When you live in a town the size of Walburg, there’s not much else to do after a hard day’s work but chat about the latest goings-on and gossip. My grandpa is an excellent verbal storyteller. When I man the front of the gas station, as I do when Grandma and Grandpa go on vacation or, lately, to my cousin Morgan’s baseball games, people come in only to hear a good story. A look of disappointment crosses their face when I have to tell them that they’re out of luck today. I’m much better putting things on paper than telling them verbally. My verbal stories often in a look of confusion and people asking, “So, was that it?” I have to nod and try to backtrack and explain more, but by the time, the essence of the story is ruined. My grandpa, on the other hand, has perfected his verbal storytelling. Now it’s up to me to make it pop on the page.

When we were little, my grandpa used to make up stories for us, like the old tale of the Cocklebur Indians who lived on our property in Walburg. Imagine that! My grandpa is famous for his stories, but infamous for his tall (and sometimes long) tales.

“When I first bought this land, as a result of gullywashers, there were sinkholes—one of which you could drive the pickup into and not see it. That big of a hole washed out. In the spring when there was plenty of rain, it had water for some time and crawfish. Because of the crawfish, there were also snakes and fish cranes. When it turned dry, the whole strip down by the trees was solid cocklebur. One of the most unwanted weeds is cocklebur. The reason I say the most unwanted is because it could grow three foot tall in good soil and be almost as wide, and it could produce thousands of seeds. Each one of these seeds would be a ball surrounded by hooks. If you step on it, it’s hard to pull out. When you walk through it, it will go through your clothing. If you’re pulling barehanded, it will stick your fingers.

I knew about the Tonkawa Indians of Central Texas, and I wondered what kind of Indians could be here? Cocklebur. They were so called because, at that time, only the high class had moccasins and the rest were barefooted. The Indians would scatter cocklebur behind them, so that anyone chasing them on foot would run into the cocklebur and it would stop them. They were growing the cocklebur thick for harvesting.

You did a lot of bullshitting and storytelling in those days too. Indians would sit in a big circle where they would do their stone making. The technical word is flint napper. A napper would have leather on his lap and a special deer antler hammer to shape that stone just right so eventually he would have an arrow or an axe head. The Indians had a fire in the middle. The reason for the circle was for bullshit, naturally. In this circle, you had this old boy chipping away and damn near finished and he screwed up. It would be thrown aside. This circle is where you found all of these good quality discarded arrows that weren’t quite perfect, and that’s where they find the artifacts today.

There is also a thicket back on the land behind St. Peter’s church, which borders on our land. There weren’t a bunch of Indians, only about 30 or 40, and that thicket is where they ran into to hide. You can only see five feet inside, and by the time you think you see something, you got an arrow and you’re dead. They had the horses on the other side of the hill but they were fast on their feet; they could run. If they get to the horses, then they’re gone.

The mulberry tree in the pasture that is over 100 years old. Most of my grandkids knew it only as the Cocklebur tree. The Indians would blow into the hollows and holes of this tree in order to make the branches grow so all their children could sit. The tree still sits in the pasture out back.”

In the end, there’s always time for a story. Every time I’m in the shop I’m still amazed at the people who take the time to sit, listen, and shoot the bull. My grandpa told this tale last week, and it’s also all too appropriate.

"Three bulls are sitting in a pasture, a big one, a medium one, and a small one. They are all looking longingly at the other side of the fence, wanting to get out and explore. They stay close to the edge of the pasture, and finally the big bull finds a place to escape. The medium bull and the little bull keep roaming, but soon the medium bull also finds a way out. Now it’s just the little bull scaling the pasture’s edge. He had all but given up hope when he found a place to squeeze through. The moral of the story: There’s always room for a little bull."