Chapter 1

I’ve heard people say they’ve been lucky all their lives, and maybe some folks really have. Well, when I say I’ve been Lucky all my life, I’m telling the honest to goodness truth.

You see, my name is - Lucky.

My Daddy’s name is Robert Jo Roundtree and his nickname is Lucky. It just came natural for him to want me to be Lucky too. When I was born, Momma named me after him.

Lucky Roundtree is the name on my birth certificate, no first name, no middle initial. Just plain Lucky. I’ve been just plain Lucky all my life, and I don’t mean just because that’s my name either. I’ve been blessed with good luck and good fortune.

Momma told me that when I was little, she’d put me in a swing out in the yard and tie me in so I wouldn’t fall out while she was hanging the clothes on the line or taking them in.

She said that every time she looked over at me I was sitting there swinging and grinning, staring cross-eyed at one of those little pointy nose butterflies that’s supposed to bring you good luck when they light on your nose. She told me that sometimes it seemed that they would just swarm around me waiting their turn to perch on my nose and bring me luck.

“You’re lucky you didn’t end up permanently cross-eyed from that.” She still tells me now, when it comes up in her stories she likes to remember.

Daddy works on the ranch where I was born, a few miles west and south of Shamrock, Texas – up in the panhandle. I grew up right here, attending school in Shamrock. If you drew a line on the map and crooked it just a little, we’d be just a little closer to Amarillo, Texas than Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Shamrock is known for its oil and natural gas, its Rock Island Railroad Station, and U. S. Route 66 that runs right through it. Of course being in Texas, we got cattle here too.

The ranch where we live was only 6,000 acres back then, and though I didn’t grow up wealthy by any means, we had what it took to have a good living. Daddy worked hard and Mr. Lars ‘Swede’ Johansson saw to it the Roundtree family was taken care of.

Mr. Swede is a big man with some of the wildest looking blonde hair you’d ever see on a grown man. Hell, it looks like little yellow wires - all tangled together.

He stands seven foot two inches tall and I know he’ll weigh at least three hundred and twenty pounds. There’s not an ounce of fat on him either.

He can throw a three hundred pound calf to the ground and hold it down by himself while Daddy sticks a hot iron to it’s hip and burns a 4-leaf clover on it.

Mr. Swede is married to a woman from Sweden and she’s almost as big as he is. Both have that wild hair, and I often wonder if they’ve ever tried to get a comb or brush through it, not that I thought they could.

She even looks a lot like him, and I’ll leave it at that.

Ms. Inga Johansson has the biggest titties I’ve ever seen on a woman. I’ve never seen them naked, but I have pictures of them in my mind that I can flip through just about any time I want to, and they look good in those pictures.

The Johansson’s are both sixty years old and have long ago given up hope of having a family here in America. They told Momma years ago, that they’ll not give birth to any heirs. I kinda feel sorry for them that they didn’t even have any family at all living here in this country.

They do have a daughter living in Sweden that Mr. Swede talks about sometimes when it’s just him, Daddy, and me riding across his ranch to take care of something, that needs taking care of at the time.

It’s 1950 and I’m a junior in high school, itching to graduate next year and seek my fortune. Mr. Swede has already offered me a position on his ranch. That’s what he called it, a position. He said he needed someone with some book sense to step in and watch over all he’s got going on.

I just wasn’t sure I wanted to work on a ranch all my life, even though I love it out here, in the wide open. I’ve seen pictures and read of all the places there is to see in America, and I’ve always wanted to go take a look at them when I graduate from high school.

We were talking about that one night at the supper table and I was telling Daddy about seeing a man at the Conoco station up on Route 66. He was putting gas in a big Harley Davidson motorcycle. The man told me he was touring the USA and he’d bought that motorcycle in Chicago, Illinois and had been on Route 66 since the day he left on his way to California.

“Lucky, you sound like you’ve got a case of wanderlust. I knew you’d come down a dose of it one day. But you need to hear me out before you jump up and ride off into the sunset, chasing some wild dream. You can go see all of this big country you can set your eyes on, and you’ll never find a place as good as right here, or a man who’s as good to work for as Mr. Swede. You haven’t given him a chance to tell you all about what he’s offering you in that position, he calls it. He wants you to run this place for him and he trusts you to take care of his books, his interests in all the oil and gas wells, the cattle, and all his farm acres too. Just do yourself, Mr. Swede, me, and your Momma a favor and set down with him. Let him talk to you man to man. He wants you here, but he wants you to want to be here too.

“Daddy, I reckon I never had a thought about anyone other than myself. I do owe it to Mr. Swede for all he’s done for you and Momma, as well as me, to at least listen to what he’s got to say.”

“Lucky, this has to be about you. It can’t be for your Momma or me, or even for Mr. Swede. You’ve got to listen ‘cause you want to hear what he has to say, and besides, you just might want to take him up on his offer.”

“Thanks Daddy. I reckon I’m not as grownup as I thought I was. I’ll talk to Mr. Swede, and I’ll listen too. I don’t need to start off being a man by being a fool about it.”

“Well said Lucky, and whatever you and Mr. Swede decide, your Momma and me will back you up on it.”

The next morning I was standing on Mr. Swede’s front porch, leaning against a porch post with my hat in my hand when he came out at daylight.

“Lucky, you’re here early. Do we have trouble or something?”

Mr. Swede and Ms. Inga both talk with an accent and though they’ve been in Texas forty years, they still have that heavy Swedish accent.

“No Mr. Swede. I’m here to have a talk with you, man to man. Not as a boy.”

“Lucky, you go saddle our horses and I’ll be with you as soon as I see your Daddy about some things we need to get done today.”

“Yes Sir, Mr. Swede.”

If Mr. Swede ever has something bothering him, he wants to ride his horse until he can sort it out.

Mr. Swede’s horse is one that fits him perfect. It’s a big Thoroughbred-Morgan cross. A horse you could pick out of a herd a quarter mile away, because it stands that tall above the herd that much.

Thor is his name, and it fits him.

He has a custom-built saddle that’s nearly half again as big as mine and it’s decorated with some fancy tooling and conchos all over it.

Mr. Swede went to a livestock sale with my Daddy one day last year and bought me a horse. Well, he bought two that day and gave them both to me. I stood there at the gate when I got home from school that day and cried, I was so happy when he told me they were both mine.

They’re both four year old Palomino geldings that stand almost as tall as Thor but don’t weigh nearly as much as that big horse.

My favorite, if I could even pick one, is the one I call Rowdy, cause he’s always itching to run, strut, and show off his high stepping gait.