Shaking Out The Burlap Bag

"You know all my old friends, both cowboys and Indians, are six feet under, I said
Even the lonely cowboy doesn't know real loneliness, until their compadres are dead
Some died with their boots on while feeding cattle, and others from drowning sorrow
Alone in a tavern where emptied bottles filling with teardrops, time they couldn't borrow"

Well, that is all I feel like typing out this morning. The thing is very few working ranchers care about cowboy poetry anyway. It is a fading way old cattle hands entertained themselves around the campfire. Now with all the instant entertainment, improv campfire chuckwagon poetry is dead. Who wants to sit around a campfire and listen to the, made up on the spot, verse of cattle hands with maybe a harmonica adding a mournful sound? Very few, but put rehearsed and choregraphed verse, song, and such on stage with a spot light shining on entertainers gussied up in clean cowboy hats, boots, and western clothes, call it an important gathering with important people, and then many will go whether they give two fat stinking pack rat tails about the verse or not. If you have never smelled a male pack rat, then lucky you.

I could just make a post about my feelings this morning and probably get a lot of, likes and sorry to hear that and so on, but that isn't me nor is it the way I was raised. I was raised on cattle ranches, both Colorado and Texas, where conditions were harsh and barns were sometimes more comfortable than the ranch house. I wish I was making that up, but is the way my story shakes out of the burlap bag.

I was never allowed to whine, complain, or sow seeds of dissention. My father loved verse both cowboy and other, my mother lived by the word found in the Bible. Both were from old time ranch families. My dad and one great uncle, encouraged me to express myself with verse. Verse expressing concerns was not considered complaining.

One great uncle and aunt were fiddle players and square dance callers on Saturday night and full time ranchers the rest of the time. They had 10,000 acres in West Texas and it was no country for complainers. Like my dad, they expressed themselves with verse if it would be considered complaining if just in plain talk. I could have said, "When uncle spits tobacco across the room, even though he hits the spittoon, it is disgusting and it smells and makes me sick to my stomach." Such would lead to, "Well leave the room or fix your bunk in the barn and smell horse manure."

"Flying tobacco, makes a girl puke and sick to her belly,
As it rings true on the spittoon, and reeks so smelly
So out to the barn, making my new bunk, so lucky
The aroma is better than tobacco spat, the smell of horse pucky"

That verse would more times than not, earn me a bigger serving of peach cobbler. My auntie made the best peach cobble, picked fresh from the tree. After the hands tricked me once into eating a green persimmon, I didn't complain but had a new verse saying, "Oh go suck on a lemon or better yet a green persimmon." That went over better than, "Oh, go stick it up your pie exit hole, Bill."

When shaking out an old burlap bag, one never knows what is going to fall out.

@Faye Fox, you often write from experiences that are unfamiliar to me so I don't often comment on your threads or posts, but I do enjoy and appreciate them.

@Faye Fox I’ll betcha there aren’t too many of us who remember the real burlap bags and that some families wore clothes made from them, way back when.

I probably had 50 of them when I moved the first time in the late 70’s. I knew I should keep them, but I couldn’t , so I gave them away.

I remember my grandpa had lots of burlap feed sacks. He didn't throw nothing away. We would use the sacks to store garden potatoes in them.

Faye, please keep on shaking!

Connie Bennett said:

@Faye Fox I’ll betcha there aren’t too many of us who remember the real burlap bags and that some families wore clothes made from them, way back when.

I probably had 50 of them when I moved the first time in the late 70’s. I knew I should keep them, but I couldn’t , so I gave them away.

Click to expand...

I even remember the smell of those burlap bags, Connie.

I still have old burlap and use it for covering plants to protect from late frost. It breathes but yet keeps the frost from damaging plants. I remember when I showed steers, the smell of molasses treated grain in burlap bags.

I started to write a book with my collection of ranch stories, naming it Shaking out the Burlap Bag, but it was too much work and my eyes are too bad. I had a pile of burlap bags and also baling twine. I made hanging plant holders that were nice because they drained nicely plus I could spray the burlap and really slow moisture loss in hot weather.

Burlap bags were also great for transporting chickens and other small animals.

We had them in Idaho, but my folks called them “gunnysacks”. My mom made me an “Indian costume” from one for the Thanksgiving play. I must have been an Indian in it.
She pulled the strings in the bottom, so that it had fringes at the bottom and the arm holes.
I remember that they smelled, too.
Maybe from the potato farms ? I think that is mostly what we got that came in gunny sacks. The onions had a similar one, but it was more of a mesh.

When I said in my opening post, that sometimes it was better sleeping in the barn than the ranch house, shaking the old burlap today, reminded me of my bedroom that was an old porch that was enclosed, but poorly insulated. It was shut off from the rest of the house by an always closed door and unheated. I didn't select to live in it until I became a teen because my bedroom next to my folks, didn't offer the privacy one seeks at that age. Winter temperatures at night, fell to below zero, but a pile of quilts and a knit ski hat, kept me comfy. Heavy fleece PJ's also added to my survival. Despite it's discomforts, I felt independent. It was my little sovereign nation when indoor living was my best choice.

A poem written while under hand quilted cover, came to mind today.

"It is blowing hard outside, with heavy snow
It's cold, the mercury fell to twenty below
Visions of eunuch monkeys, made of brass
I prayed for spring, with tall green grass"

I looked forward to going out in the barn, at calving time. I lived there from start to finish during calving season. I keep the fire going in a small area that worked as a place to stay warm and keep coffee and chili going on wood/coal stove top. Also a cast iron skillet was there to fry eggs and an old toaster helped stifle the late night or morning hungries. That old barn kept warm since the back of it was to the wind and snow drifted so high, you couldn't see the barn from the house. Using the outhouse on the far end of the, roofed 3 sides enclosed, calving area, was a real test of wills and reserved for relief of a secondary nature. Primary relief was done in a warmer corner of the calving area where peeing on straw didn't present any problem.

We had an old radio out there and irresponsible blasting wasn't a problem. The cows favorite song was "The Devil went down to Georgia." After they would eat their afterbirth, I would reward them with a bucket of warm salt water.

Is it ranch tales or ranch tails?

I suppose pushing 80 head out of a ravine, spending the day watching the backside of bovines, would be a ranch tale about ranch tails.

On the other hand, I question that young cowboys at rodeo, fixated on the young ranch ladies bottoms, pushing denim to the max, while leaning on the arena corral, qualifies as a ranch tale about ranch tails.

Young ladies these days, have no appreciation for us oldies and the old heavy non stretch denim jeans. It was an art squeezing into those jeans of old.

Rodeo, with denim clad tails, on the old Oregon Trail
My tales of those tails, may send me to hell
But I say, oh well, it's past, I can't change it now
So with stretch denim clad tail, I now take a bow
Not caring that my aged tail, no longer a catalyst for bail
Is no longer a rodeo belle or even a ranch tale

I used most of my old burlap bags/sacks to fuel my bee smoker when I had honeybees. I am sure I had other uses for them as well.

Faye Fox said:

I still have old burlap and use it for covering plants to protect from late frost. It breathes but yet keeps the frost from damaging plants. I remember when I showed steers, the smell of molasses treated grain in burlap bags.

I started to write a book with my collection of ranch stories, naming it Shaking out the Burlap Bag, but it was too much work and my eyes are too bad. I had a pile of burlap bags and also baling twine. I made hanging plant holders that were nice because they drained nicely plus I could spray the burlap and really slow moisture loss in hot weather.

Burlap bags were also great for transporting chickens and other small animals.

Click to expand...

You can use voice dictation.
Short stories you can call me and I will return a file. Stories should not be left to die.

We had a bunch of burlap bags around the farm, used for various things or just stored for future use. I'm not sure what they were originally used for, but I imagine animal feed. Sometimes, I didn't pay close attention to farm stuff. We had a bunch of horses, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and, at one time, my dad must have had a small dairy farm because we had 20 milking stations, although we were down to only one cow by the time I came along. Dad farmed several 40-acre plots, varying his crop, although I think potatoes were the cash crop.