Selene
Copyright© 2022 by Old Man with a Pen
Chapter 44
Just flattened that puppy. Then he drove over trees ... kinda scrub trees ... third growth ... some of the stumps were first growth. Huge!
Daddy was having a great time ... half the fence was still attached to one of the tracks and the fence naturally got balled up ... posts and all.
I can tell you that was one OLD fence.
I’m in college ... graduate student ... Doctoral Candidate ... and I have to come up with a thesis that is ‘original.’ I even thought about barbed wire ... not the wire per se ... but the socio-economic factors that had to evolve for ‘sharp’ wire to become necessary.
Texas is huge ... there used to be huge spreads ... ranch terminology ... big ranches with lots of cattle. In the east ... a couple of acres will keep a head of cattle growing. Out here ... a hundred or more acres per head is the norm. In order to think about the why ... there has to be a how right along with it.
Someone had to think about how to keep his cows at home. They won’t go where sharp pointy things scratch.
Once upon a time there were cattle in this place ... livestock. They were gone. The wire was no longer needed. I don’t need to beat a dead horse.
Bobwire has its aficionadi ... collectors ... even groupies ... and, in my quest for the socio-economic factors, I looked at several collections. Texas A&M has a good one. So, I know barbed wire and this fence was from 1877. Joseph Glidden developed this wire in response to his wife’s complaint that HIS cow was in HER garden ... again.
While I was ruminating daddy was driving around the big stumps and knocking down the small understory on his way to 969 and the bridge.
I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Stop.”
Wonder of wonders ... he did.
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