Weekly Posting of the Conservative Cow Doctor

Thanksgiving Past

When I was a pup the Thanksgiving holiday kicked off with a miserable two-hour car ride from our ranch east of Ingomar to the family homestead west of Parkman, Wyoming. My two brothers and I were clad in these dinky bow ties and wool sport coats and because the wool collars were not irritating enough, my mother always lathered herself with a special holiday perfume. It was nauseating. When the dog rolled in something dead, he rode in the back of the pickup, or he got left back at the ranch. Apparently, this travel rule did not apply to Mom. Playing with cousins offset the misery but traveling for my first Thanksgivings left a foul taste in my mouth.

Thanksgiving became the perfect holiday once I was in college. Most indoctrination centers closed on Wednesdays, so I cut classes Monday and Tuesday for nine days back home during pheasant season. Thanksgiving became my epic escape from the big city. After my eight-years in college, I learned real life does not operate on the semester system. Nine-day pheasant hunts went extinct in 1983.

I remember one Thanksgiving gathering cattle with my father during the beginning of a record-breaking snow season. About 300 cows had drifted with a storm and trapped themselves on the wrong side of the winter pasture. Their winter feed was two miles west and over the top of the huge bench they had blindly crossed in the blizzard. It was a circuitous route trailing them back because of the snowbanks, but they couldn’t winter where they were. That was my first Thanksgiving centered around horse sweat and cow manure rather than pheasant hunting and the holiday aroma of Hoppe’s No. 9 gun cleaning solvent. For the purple-haired, non-binary, anti-hunter, city-kid types who have never smelled Hoppes #9, its inviting aroma is like pumpkin spice for rednecks.

In 1979, my freshman year of vet school, a mega blizzard slammed central Wyoming thereby cancelling our Thanksgiving travel plans. After telling everyone we were staying put, two routes home miraculously opened. We chose US 287 through Shirley Basin, and it became the best decision we ever made. Lifelong friends we had not yet met were headed for North Dakota in this same storm and they chose the I-25 route north. They and 50 other travelers became snow bound in Chugwater, Wyoming for ten days.

Have the happiest of Thanksgivings whether you are trailing cows, harvesting pheasants or just spending time with family. Thanks be to God for the blessing called America.