By Veracity O’Haney

I was a youngun, in my early seventies, when me and Grandpa, who had got married to an innocent young thing just turned eighty, and his young wife “Cindy” took a notion to do some homesteadin’ in the Big Bend District in Texas, figurin’ that was a good place to raise a family.  They got me to go along as a sorto’ baby sitter and handy man.  And there was this herd of wild cattle knockin’ down our fences.  So I ketched one to do the plowin’.  I bent his horns a little bit ketchin’ him cause he didn’t want to be ketched, and I was pretty rough in my young days. Work didn’t agree much with him, and he kept shrinkin’ and shrinkin’, except his horns, ‘til I had to keep makin’ his yoke littler and littler.  He finally shrunk so, except his horns, that he couldn’t hold his head up and had to walk backwards and drag it and got me to feeling sorry for him, but the plowin’ had to be got done somehow what with Grandpa’s family getting’ so big.  I named him Cecil ‘cause he was so ornery and when I would call Cesall, Cesall, he’s stop whatever orneriness he was doin’ and come a-runnin’ cause he knowed how kind I was.  He ended up backin’ over a cliff and hangin’ hisself in a scrub oak, and the buzzards didn’t leave nothin’ but his horns which is hangin’ on the wall with his yoke; and that is gospel and I got poor Cecil’s horns to prove I ain’t lyin’.                                                

My heart was broke but you just have to face up to life’s everyday happenings.