How I Learned To Drive

Heading off into the foothills of Gold Country brought back a lot of memories.  This caterpillar was the sight I saw when I began to reminisce.  When you grow up on a ranch, you learn to drive early.  Someone has to go switch the water from check to check, pasture to pasture.  Truly, I didn't mind because I got to drive the Jeep.  Jeep, as she was affectionally named, came through World War II with more than a few bullet holes.

You had to have magic feet in order to get the transfer case to shift.  I don't know who, probably my Dad, screwed wooden blocks on to the brake and accelerator pedals so we could reach.  My first trip around the yard ended up straight into a tree.  I think I was maybe six?

It didn't take long to figure out this was FUN!!!  I learned to drive long before that license would be required.  In the meantime we learned how to head on off down the road to the back pastures.  By seven, I was a pro.

One day when I was about 15, we were moving cattle by truck to Mariposa.  Dad threw the keys to me and said get in.  Wait ... what?  You want me to drive this huge truck full of cattle?  No WAY!!!

Yes WAY, and off we went.  Also a stick shift, this one had to be double-clutched in order to shift gears.  Clutch in, shift out of gear, clutch out and accelerate, clutch in and shift INTO gear, clutch out.  I got pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.  That part where I almost tipped the truck over going around the first curve when the cattle all shifted to the left was ........ well ......... scary and a real good lesson!!

Later on when we basically went broke and had to sell all the cattle, our neighbor came by and suggested we grow rice.  That's when I saw a D9 Cat, similar to this one.  I was in heaven!!  I begged and begged to operate one.  Finally my dad relented (I was maybe a freshman in high school by then) and said I could disc the field but I better NOT get stuck or I'd never drive again.

Lucky for me, I had a good ear for those powerful engines and knew exactly when to lift the disc to keep from bogging down in the mud.  At the end of the day I was so proud to tell him ..... see I didn't get stuck, not once!!!  That landed me on the little D4 cat discing the back 40 for days on end.  It was heaven I tell you!!!

Lots of memories of driving cattle trucks and horse trailers through this country.

One of the places we rented to graze cattle was like this one.  See those lines crossing the side of the mountain?  Those are rock fences.  Way back in the day, barbed wire cost way too much for the people trying to raise livestock here.  What they did have a lot of was rocks and Chinese gold miners.  

Most of the walls in this area were built by the Chinese rock masons, although occasionally the Scottish put in their two cents worth of masonry skills.  The walls cleaned the fields of rocks for livestock and were an easy way to keep cattle in a specific area.  Built in the 1850's with no mortar of any kind, many of these walls still stand today, all over these foothills.

There are also lots of lone dead trees, perfect for your photography skills.  Watch out though, this road is very narrow and winds around corner after corner.  There are very few places to pull aside.  Most of the time driving those cattle trucks, I took up the entire road.

Is this not the cutest face?  He and about ten others were in a small corral next to the cemetery.  This little boy was the most curious, coming right up to the fence to see what I was doing.  I miss those critters.

So today I'm off to the dentist.  I got a call yesterday to reschedule my appointment they cancelled due to C19.  Wear a mask they said.  Ummmmmm so just how do you clean my teeth if I wear a mask?  Oh you don't really need one, we just have to ask you all these personal questions and tell you to wear one.  Okay ......  hey, if it's safe for protestors and rioters, it must be safe for me.