Cornbread Thinks: Ice Water

I’m writing this on June 27, and I happened to recall this is the day in 1922 that the American Library Association awarded the first Newbery Medal for the year’s best children’s book: “The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

The air went out in my office last night, and this is North Texas. Just like every other summer of my life, it is not an ideal temperature. We live up on a hill – almost a cliff. Outside my windows, it is covered in a dense and diverse growth of native trees and plants. Heat rises, so this pulls air up through the shade; a fair amount moves through the windows.

Geezer secret: there is nothing more comfortable than a white, fine cotton, long-sleeved shirt for this. Drink lots of water, sweat away and let the miracle of evaporation cool you. But, I still put up the emergency “Bat Signal” for Danny Purdue to come scare it.

Now Buttermilk, she doesn’t like to sweat, so I feel sorry for her having to sit in some freezing cold poker room making grown men sweat over her taking their money. But I’m straying, so back to it.

Trainers are on “Sweat Savings Time” by now, stepping on the first one by 3 a.m. and stepping off the last one before the manure spreader starts making flies. Many try to sleep, but it’s pretty much hopeless. You know what is more frustrating than a cheery customer showing up five hours late? Trying to get a kid to be quiet in the middle of the day…So, get ya some books from the library and read the little kids to sleep. The bonus is this gives you a window of opportunity to make more kids to read to.

For serious though, there is little better for young children than reading them books. It’s extra special and extra credit when dad does it. Teach them to love reading. Teach them to think. Teach them to go get their own answers. Teach them to be leaders, not followers.

The cornerstone of cowboying is independence. Independent people don’t have to borrow their answers. Those store-bought ones never fit right anyway. Just because they zip, doesn’t mean they fit. You’ve got to make them, but use good materials.

I wonder about people being all dithered out because it’s hot, cold, wet, muddy, froze, howling, storming and such, but they are cutters in love with a sport that is controlled by those things.

It is a certain kind of weather when cows and horses get bred, and a certain kind when they hit the ground. It’s another kind when we wean them, and yet different some more when we start riding them. And again, when we start really “asking” them. Then it’s nearly wintertime when we go and ask them for all they’ve got.

All we do is based on the seasons. They didn’t say, “It’s sure nice in the late fall! Let’s have a big ol’ cutting.” They said, “When will we have everything squared away for winter and get enough wet saddle blankets done that we can get through a run.”

This weather stuff is just a sign, and since your daddy taught you to read, all you’ve got to do is follow the instructions.

Cornbread Thinks: ’Twern’t no ice water, but made you look.