Cattle Call

Tonight, we went to the Prairie Rose and enjoyed a barbecue dinner and western entertainment. Now, I’m not normally a western-type person, but this is an enjoyable place just northeast of Wichita, and I urge you to try it if you haven’t yet.

In any event, during the entertainment, one of the songs the group sang had to do with cattle calls and someone calling cattle. I don’t know the name of the song or the words, and that isn’t important. And for those of you who don’t know, stockmen of old had certain calls that they used to call in their herds of cattle from the pastures when it was time to feed them, count them, doctor them, or whatever needed to be done. Some of the cattle would accept training to come when called and the others would follow.

During that song, I was reminded of the calls of my dad. He had two calls that he used at the pasture northwest of town where he kept his cattle. I can play them in my mind as if I heard them day before yesterday.

The first was a loud suc-calf call with the emphasis on the second syllable. His voice started rather high, but not too high, and it went up rather than down, kind of like he was asking a one-word question. There wasn’t much melody to it…it was just kind of a yelling of that word somewhere around middle C on the piano.

The second was a soo-ook in definite falsetto. The o’s in the word were pronounced the same as in the word took. This call started somewhere around the C above middle C, went down during the mid point to somewhere around G or A flat, then went up a half step or so at the end. The emphasis was on the first syllable primarily, and on the end of the word secondarily, with the middle note just a kind of connecting tone.

This second call could (and did) put chills up your spine. I don’t know what it was about it that did that, and I don’t know if any other of us siblings had the same response to it, but when he used that second call more than just a time or two, you knew he meant business. That second call also carried farther than the other, many times from the lot all the way to the far end of the pasture over a half mile away.

Dad had a kind of a bond with his herds. Oh, they would come and go, and some did better for him than others. But he’d talk with them, move among them, feed them well, doctor them when needed, and never allowed flies to torment them longer than it took for us to make the time to go up and spray them. We used a hand sprayer so as to not have the loud noise of a mechanical one upset them.

Once in awhile, there was one in a herd that just seemed incorrigible, and he’d sell him so as, it seems, to not spoil his experience with the rest of the herd. Dad never abused his cattle. He never used whips, prods, electric shock, or other means of that kind to get them moving, and he didn’t appreciate it when others came to load them up to take to sale and did use that kind of thing. He believed, I think, in the basic dignity of all of God’s creatures, even those that were destined for slaughter, recognizing that they were providing him with a means to feed and clothe his family. And he appreciated that, and treated them with respect.

I could tell of times he sent me to the pasture to bring the herd up to the lot, of times with the branding irons, of giving shots, treating for pink eye, chopping ice, filling the tank, fixing the windmill, shoveling grain, putting up hay or silage, cleaning out manure, fixing fence, chasing down strays that would get out, going to the sale barn, putting up electric fence on fall wheat, mowing prairie hay, spraying for flies, and a host of other experiences with cattle, now only memories. Those were good times, and times I’ll always cherish.

Dad’s cattle calling days are long over, and his voice has long been silenced by death. But the flood of memories that have come over me as I write this have caused me to appreciate even more my upbringing and the hard work and incredible risks that my parents took to provide for us. And in so doing, they provided us with life lessons that are with us all today in some way, shape, or form (respect for life, care for those [human or animal] who cannot care for themselves, relief of suffering, providing for family, perseverance, patience, the miracle of the creation, and a host of others). We are blessed.