Tall Tales and One Tall Cowboy

One of my earliest memories of my Dad was standing in front of our house and watching as this tall concrete cowboy was put in place. My Dad said he had never seen such a tall cowboy in his life. A couple weeks ago I started thinking about this cowboy and decided to go and take a picture of it before something happened to it (it has been there at least 54 years because we moved from that house when I was 4 years old). This is not a great neighborhood and I took the picture quickly and left.

My Dad had a dry sense of humor and loved to kindly tease us children. He always told us that doughnut holes were poisonous and to not eat them. We would cautiously eat close to the hole making sure to not break into the hole itself and leave the rest on our plate (of course he would gather them up and eat them).

After my Mama would gently remind us to ask for items to be passed at the table and to not reach for them, Dad would chime in with "its not reaching as long as you still have one foot on the floor." I am sure she loved that. My 6'5" son loves this one and points out there probably isn't anything he couldn't reach using this rule.

If you look at the picture of my Dad in the last post you can see he was missing parts of 2 fingers and his thumb on his left hand. When anyone would ask what happened he would say one time he was so very hungry he didn't stop eating when he got to the end of his sandwich. Little kids eyes would grow large in wonder. As I got older I doubted the story so I asked my Mom because I would never have let my Dad know I didn't believe everything he told me.

The real story: When he was 12 his family was having a new well dug on their property and the crew had blasting caps. My Dad and his brother picked some of them up and tried to set them off by smashing them with rocks. Time came to do chores so my Dad picked up the ones that hadn't gone off and put them in his pocket. He was using a walk behind plow to weed crops and the handle rubbing against his leg caused one to explode and he lost parts of his fingers.