by Kathy Brasby | Apr 14, 2015 | Stories
My husband, sometimes known as the salvage king because he can spot diamonds in the rough from the far side of a yard sale, found a satellite dish for the taking a few years ago. You know the kind: 9 feet tall and once proof that the homeowner was a techie pioneer but now are older than your grandmother’s television.
He dumped the dish in our pasture until he could make a run to the recycler. “I put it face down so the kids wouldn’t get caught under it,” he assured me. Good plan because at that time our kids were pretty good at exploring in places where they didn’t belong.
He dumped – er, tenderly laid – the dish in the far corner of our 35-acre pasture. Shortly after, as the lovely prairie grass began to wave in the wind, we turned our sheep and goats loose to fend for themselves. It was much easier than tossing hay to them.
A few weeks later, I was doing my daily check of the herd and I could not find three baby goats. When you have 35 acres of rolling pasture, three little goats can find a lot of places to hide. I marched all 35 acres.
I was more concerned than their mothers, who munched the endless supply of prairie grass with no worries.
As I was completing my pasture sweep, our daughter said, “Be sure to check under the dish.”
“Oh, right. The dish that is lying face down on the ground so that you couldn’t get under it.”
She shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to look.”
So we looked. Three baby goats staggered out from under their dark cave.
I don’t know how they got under there. I don’t know why their mothers didn’t stand guard. I don’t know why it occurred to our daughter to suggest we search there.
But I do know those baby goats survived. And, boy, were they thirsty.
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by Kathy Brasby | Apr 10, 2015 | Seasons
Shirley was studying the lawn outside her window when her daughter arrived.
“Good morning, Mom,” Janice said. “How are you?”
“I’m looking for my little boys. They were outside the window a little while ago. And I think they just came in here.”
Janice scanned the tiny room that Shirley shared with Mabel at the nursing room. What little boys?
She asked and Shirley laughed. “Can’t you see them? Sometimes they hide, I guess.”
Janice saw no signs of little boys. So she leaned down and wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, leaning her cheek against Shirley’s cheek. “It’s good to see you, Mom.”
Shirley patted Janice’s hand and gave it a tender squeeze. And a second little squeeze.
“Bring him up here,” she said to Janice.
“Who?”
“My little boy. He’s behind me. Bring him up here. I want to see him.”
Janice glanced around again and then felt Shirley squeeze her hand again. “Mom, that’s my hand.”
“Your hand?” Shirley said. “Hmmm, I didn’t want your hand. I wanted my little boy’s hand.”
Janice sighed. ”Well, it was mine.”
Shirley leaned her head to one side. “I don’t mind your hand.” She patted it gently. “But you’ve messed up my story about my little boys.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Apr 7, 2015 | Hope
“You have to help me with this,” my mother said, swollen with a belly containing my younger brother. “I can’t do this alone.”
I pulled away from her. Dad had heard dogs in the night and chased them away, but not before they had torn into the lambs my older brother and I were bottle-feeding.
Death seemed to hover near the little shed where my lamb lay and I, at age 5, had a pounding heart and heavy feet.
Mom held out the glass bottle with a black nipple stretched over the mouth. “You have to help me.”
I gripped the warm bottle, the sweet smell of milk tickling my nose, and followed Mom out the back door of our farmhouse, across the yard and into the low shed where the two lambs lay in a bed of thick yellow straw.
My brother’s lamb struggled to its feet and searched out the bottle Mom held.
My lamb lay on its side, too weak to get up. I had named him Johnny and I whispered his name while stroking his wooly head. I tried not to look at his raw leg, slashed open by dogs’ teeth. It smelled like death to me.
I dropped into the thick straw, smelling its sweet scent, and lifted his tiny head. He could still suck on the bottle so I held it for him, his head cushioned in my lap.
He drank most of it and then closed his eyes and slept.
We trekked to the shed three times a day for weeks to feed little Johnny. He gained strength and soon was able to stand while he took his bottle.
In that time, my brother was born and then Mom took me aside. “You’ll have to change the name of your lamb,” she said. “We’ve named your brother ‘John.’”
I nodded quietly. The deed was done; the baby had been named.
So I didn’t argue with my mother about renaming Johnny. But, after all my lamb and I had been through, I didn’t do it, either.
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by Kathy Brasby | Apr 3, 2015 | Seasons
“This exercise is for our memories,” Sharon, the activities director, said. She stood in the center of a group of gray-haired aged elders, most in wheelchairs or in chairs with their walker parked close.
Then she turned to Mildred, who had problems walking because of a swollen foot but her mind was still clear.
“Mildred, can you say a nursery rhyme for me?”
“Come back to me, “ Mildred said. “I’m blank.”
So Sharon went to the next person in the circle.
“Three blind mice…. And that’s all I remember!” Charles laughed. “How does it go again?”
Several chimed in with “…see how they run.” And he chuckled. “That’s it.”
Jim remembered “hickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock.”
Sharon laughed. “What’s with mice today?”
Hazel, who was next in line, shrugged. “Eh, mice. We used to have a lot of them on the farm. We always had a cat for them. Lots of barn cats, of course.”
Sharon turned to her. “Do you remember a nursery rhyme?”
“Not right now. My mind is on cats and mice, I guess.”
“Ok.” Sharon worked her way around the circle until she got back to the start, where Mildred sat in her cloud of stuffed animals and fluffy pillows. “Let’s do another question.”
“Wait!” Mildred said. “I’ve been thinking the whole time you went around the room. I’m ready.”
“All right!” Sharon said. “What did you come up with?”
“Mary had a little lamb, her fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.”
Sharon clapped her hands. “Excellent, Mildred. Can you say the second verse?”
Mildred frowned slightly. “Well, no. I didn’t rehearse that far.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 31, 2015 | Hope
Hollywood’s car chases keep getting faster, louder, more explosive and destructive. Where would we be if Jason Bourne hadn’t destroyed innumerable police cars, several taxis and a few SUVs?
But my favorite car chase included a few cell phones, corn fields and an arrogant thief.
After holding up a convenience store on the Interstate highway in western Nebraska, the young man leaped into his car and raced away. As his speed zoomed over 100 mph at times, he probably assumed he could outrun the State Patrol.
Soon he had the Patrol out in full-force following him into Colorado. The driver soon realized he couldn’t outrun their radios and that reinforcements were assembling in front of him.
A couple of towns flashed by, hardly blips in his vision at his speed, before he swung onto an exit and headed into farm country.
Out where only corn and wheat fields swayed in the wind. No State Patrol. He could hide.
So the driver flew down dirt roads with no worries. He’d lost his trackers.
But he didn’t understand the nature of the rural mind.
Farmers tend those corn and wheat fields. And they know the traffic on those country roads. When an unknown car flashed by at high speed, a farmer grabbed his cell phone and called a neighbor. That neighbor called a neighbor.
Before long, the sheriff was alerted as farmers tracked the car careening through the farmland through cell phone calls.
While the racing thief thought he had outsmarted law enforcement, the network of farmers calmly plotted his course and helped the sheriff lay out a plan.
The sheriff and his deputies blocked the road ahead and behind because they knew exactly where their man had been. And was going. He was nailed.
So, don’t think that you’re hiding in farm country. You’ve never been more exposed.
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