SALLIE WAS A COWBOY

“Are you gonna eat that?” he’d asked with a twinkle in his eye, reaching across the table with his fork and stabbing something he thought looked delectable from someone else’s plate. It never occurred to him that anyone would mind something like that. I mean really, just reaching over and eating off someone else’s plate? Actually, no one I knew minded. They thought it was just part of his charm.

He was born in 1899 and he passed away in1989. He must have seen so much change and history happening in his lifetime. He was called by a lot of different names: Tex, Jim, Sallie, Benny, James, and JNB to name a few. I just called him by one – daddy.

He used and treasured many tools in his lifetime. All of his tools were marked with his brand, JNB along with his gun holster, his boot jack and spurs, his hats, his billfolds, his mechanic manuals and journals. His Bible was also branded JNB on the front. It was either that brand, or his “mark” as he called it – 3 vertical short lines – that identified his tools and other property.

Sallie was one of eleven children, born in Texas. His father was a cotton farmer and from an early age Sallie picked cotton. But he loved his mother and was the one who helped her around the house, cooking, hauling water, hauling wood, and building the cook fires, keeping the fires burning at night, cleaning the floors, and washing dishes. His brothers dubbed him “Sallie” because he took care of a woman’s chores back then. He didn’t mind and enjoyed getting their letters starting “Dear Sallie.”

Both of his parents had already passed away when I was born. My grandmother died by being severely burned while washing clothes at a campfire/cauldron laundry. Her dress caught on fire, she started running, which caused it to spread rapidly. Daddy didn’t talk much about his father, only to say he couldn’t stand him, he considered his father a mean and less-than perfect parent. But JNB just focused mostly on the good things in his life. Looking back, that was a character trait I had no idea was such a good one!

James had lots of jobs in his lifetime, all of them hard manual labor. He never had a career or climbed the corporate ladder. He was never travelling on business or staying late after work for an important meeting. He ended each workday scrubbing grease and dirt from his huge work-worn hands, leaving some of it on the sleeves of his long-handles that he hadn’t pushed back far enough, and drying his hands on the dishtowel. My mom told him everytime not to do that, but I guess he just kept forgetting.

Tex was a cowboy first. Down in Texas he rode the range, drove cattle, and broke horses. He had left home when he was very young, a teenager, and went to work on ranches as a hand. His stories about “doctoring cows” and “punching cows” and “breaking horses” were historical and true. After he moved to Colorado, he was involved in some of the first rodeos down around Calhan.

Benny owned his own gas station in Kansas once, in the middle of a big pile of dust. It was small and very un-famous. But it was a big deal to him. I never really knew much about that time in his life. He was married to his first wife then. I had two half-brothers and one half-sister that already had families and children when I was born.

My oldest brother, Harley, was named after Harley Davidson, which Benny rode back in the late 1920s. I think that my dad must have been pretty cool back then! He told me the story about the time when he rode up to a gas station on his Harley Davidson, with Harley, my brother, in the sidecar. Benny got off and was going to fill the motorcycle tank with gas from one of the old gas pumps that were used at that time. Somehow it came out too fast and spilled onto the engine and caught the bike on fire. Benny caught on fire, but he grabbed Harley from the sidecar and threw him into a pile of sand and they rolled around to get the flames out. Benny had severe burns on the front of his body, and he was in pretty serious condition for a long time. He saved my brother's life.

I also heard Benny’s story about the time he saved a young woman from being raped. The perpetrator stabbed him, leaving a long ugly scar from the front around to the back of his torso. That scar always fascinated me. Daddy said he went to the hospital holding his insides in his hands. But he prevented a violent attack on the woman. I was always so proud of that.

Jim came to Colorado next, to earn a living working on a ranch down around Walsenburg. After a while one of his brothers convinced him they could make more money in the mines. He worked in the mines around Walsenburg, and then moved on to the mines in Telluride, Silverton, and last up in Fairplay. His stories of working underground in those terrible conditions back then would definitely outshine any miner’s experience today. The back-breaking labor, bad air, dangerous conditions, and the endurance required just to finish a day’s work helped me to understand just what a mighty man Jim had been.

I always loved gazing, with such wonder and reverence, at his huge hands and arms, heavily roped with veins, fingers as big around as some people’s wrists, and the likes of which I still haven’t seen on many men today. He never spanked me with those hands. My mom said he just didn’t have the heart for it.

James met Marguarite around 1951 in Fairplay, and they were married. She had two children from her first marriage, and they became a family. James and Marguarite’s relationship was much different than either of their previous marriages. The stories I heard about their first marriages told me it must have been sad and painful for them. But, out of the ashes they found a good loving relationship. I always told people I have three brothers and two sisters, and I’m an only child.

Daddy was 55 years old when I was born. He was twenty-two years older than mom. She said the day I was born he quit smoking. He told her “that little thing doesn’t need to smell all of this smoke.” Everyday he would come home for lunch just to see me. He spent hours with me going through the “Monkey Wards” catalog teaching me to identify all of the items for sale. He’d point something out and ask me for its name. He taught me vocabulary at an early age.

When JNB retired in 1965 he had been working for Park County as a mechanic repairing the road equipment, and also building and maintaining the roads and bridges in South Park, around the Hartsel Ranch. I always joke that we lived in every house in Hartsel. There were only about twelve houses there and at one time or another we lived in four of them. My parent’s first and only house they owned was purchased in 1965, in Salida after JNB retired. Owning that house was just a symbol for him. He’d already gotten the home he wanted with my mother, and he was a happy man.

He had a sense of humor that was pure and plentiful. He loved telling jokes, laughing so hard while he told them. He and I used to lay on the floor on Saturday night together, watching the early comedy shows, eating popcorn and laughing until our sides ached. We got the humor of each joke in the same way, and that made me feel so wonderful and so close to him. The memories of his laughter and twinkling eyes are precious to me.

Slang words and today’s street language couldn’t hold a candle to daddy’s favorite phrases. How could you compete with “slicker ‘n snot on a glass doorknob”? Or “shines like a diamond in a goat’s rump”? How about “strung out like a widder womern’s wash line”? And my friends’ favorite – “you ain’t just a woofin!.” People whose names he didn’t know well were called “old do Johnny” and groups of people were called “hon-yockers.” My particular favorite was “dryer than a popcorn fart.” I still use that expression on a regular basis! Just how dry is a popcorn fart anyway?

Tex is my hero - hard working, honest, respectful, loving, funny, and one of the last real cowboys. (And I think he was so handsome to boot!) He was someone who finished what he started, told the truth, made the best of what he had, loved his life, gave more than he took, followed the golden rule, and held his family close. My dad’s whole life was a testimony of what God can do in someone’s life, even when they themselves don’t realize it’s Him at work.

He became a Christian at the age of sixty-five. He heard the truth about Jesus and accepted His love, and there was no looking back for him. He read his Bibles until the pages fell out. He worked tirelessly in the small church we attended, doing menial hard labor when needed, and acting as deacon, praying, and taking up the offering during church. He pressed onward toward the mark until the day he died at 90 years old.

I stood by his bed for his last three days, wiping the death sweat from his forehead, speaking my last words of love to him. He looked into my eyes, and I could see his love for me, and his acceptance that he was not much longer for this world. I held his hand as the life passed from him, that last weak breath, and I laid my head on his chest and sobbed for what seemed like hours after he was gone. My life would never be the same after that night. It was almost a year before I could even listen to music or enjoy other normal things. I just remember feeling numb and exhausted clear into my bones, and so very sad.

No one would consider Jim as a success by most standards. He finished his life getting a trivial retirement from social security. He didn’t trade stocks and play the market; he had no idea how to do that. He was a mechanic and pumped gas for the last part of his life. He could fix a car blindfolded, and he was fair and honest with his customers. Alan Jackson has a song with a line in it that always reminds me of Jim

“My daddy skinned his knuckles on the cars that he repaired,

He never made much money, but he gave us all he could,

He never made the front page, but he did the best he could,

Folks drove their cars from miles around to let him look underneath their hood.”

When I think about my father, it is always with the knowledge that I knew he loved me. But he didn’t just say it, in fact sometimes not in words at all. He proved it in more ways that I could ever count. He was someone on whom I could depend. He accepted me with all my flaws and problems, and he helped me with whatever I asked of him. He sacrificed his own needs so that mine could be met, he gave me whatever was possible that I asked him for. He worked his fingers to the bone and late into life even after he retired so that I could have a Christian education. And all of that he did without me understanding him like I do now, or even appreciating what he did for me. Most of the time I was busy ignoring him or being embarrassed by his ways.

How much like our heavenly father would that be? Dependable, never failing, sacrificing, working for our good, and all the time with unceasing love for us. And yet here we are, taking and whining, seldom acknowledging what He gives because we are always looking at what we don’t have. We think we have all the answers, and our Father is just someone we have to deal with when we want something from his billfold. We’re rude, uncaring, selfish, and unthinking when it comes to our relationship with Him.

But he remains our Father, he never says I don’t want you to be my child anymore because I don’t like what you are doing. He waits patiently on our misdirected ideas and the wrong paths we take, watches us learn our lessons through tearful eyes, and throws His arms around us when we come home for a visit, so happy that we have returned. I can’t wait to see both of their perfect and beautiful faces, my earthly dad, and my heavenly father!

In one of his old, worn-out Bibles, with duct tape on the spine, the pages tattered, and so well marked with his favorite passages, I found this prayer written in his shaky penmanship:

“Lord – help me to do my best. Teach me how to do better work. Give me energy and cheerfulness. Help me to bring into my service the loving ministry of our Savior” I learned recently this was from a book “The Ministry of Healing” by Ellen G. White, page 474. His prayer has become mine now.

Real men love Jesus!

Most people wouldn’t consider JNB as a success, or important to this life. I disagree. He was a “nobody” that mattered. Every person, no matter how poor, disabled, weak, wealthy, brilliant, or evil matters to God. He gave His son to save us all.