Summer vacation

Summer vacation? You mean we had a summer vacation??

Summer vacation started with Memorial day. We visited the dead relatives in the cemetery and met and visited with some of the living ones also. The kids played with their cousins who came to visit. The last weekend of May was the the first 4-H horse show in Alamo 60 miles away. I hauled 3 horses and 4 kids in a venerable 79 Dodge crew cab that once belonged to the US Forest Service. On the way we put-putted 2000 feet up Caliente summit. We are talking 2nd gear and a few steep stretches in granny. I suspect the Dodge tried to vapor lock but luckily didn't.


June arrived in all it's green glory and turned out to be one of the coolest June on record. June brought the 2nd 4-H horse show in Caliente the same week as the state high school rodeo. Number one son and his father went to Winnemucca to compete at the rodeo and mom stayed home to cover the horse show. This time it was 3 kids and 3 horses in the venerable Dodge 15 miles down the road. The horse show was remarkable for the number of horses and riders who parted ways. Leo who seldom bucks, crow hopped through the barrel pattern. Number 2 son stayed with him to win 1st place in the barrels. June was also the month we celebrated my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. This necessitated a trek to the ranch 8 hours away. My siblings and I did a surprise party for our parents. It was a fun time. I cooked peach cobbler in the dutch oven for the guests. We got to visit with people we don't get to see very often. My children met some cousins they had never seen. We left number 3 son at the ranch for an extended visit with his grandparents. He returned with one of his aunts in time for the family reunion.

We returned home in time for the 4th of July and the Farm bureau barbecue. Dutch oven chicken, potatoes, and cobbler. Next came Pioneer day (July 24th) and the family reunion. A couple of hundred people mostly children converged to visit and play and eat prodigious amounts of food. Pioneer day celebration consisted of a pancake breakfast, races, a pig scramble (number 3 son furnished some of the pigs) another sumptuous dutch oven dinner, lots of visiting, a parade ( the kids and their cousins rode horse back).

August arrived and the frantic scramble to produce the county fair. Months of planning culminated in the 2009 Lincoln Fair complete with amateur rodeo, exhibits, horse show and jack pot roping. No one got killed or maimed although there is permanent dent in the arena panels where the saddle bronc number one son was riding in the rodeo collided with the panels and ejected said son into the top rail. He walked away without a scratch and won the saddle bronc riding that night. Number 3 son won 2nd place in the steer riding. Mom collected a few more grey hairs. Once the fair was finished then came the annual peach canning festival. Eleven 20 pound boxes of peaches into quart bottles for winter consumption.

School has started and it is my opinion that school is a vacation.