Square Nails ... That's OLD!

 Four days of sitting on the couch doing nothing.  It's pretty boring, but I just can't trust this little guy not to chew on his hip.  He remains much quieter if he can lay beside me, so that's what we do. I have used the collar on occasion, but am a little leery of him jumping off the couch with it at 14 years of age.  

SO ... I scrounged through my drawers and came up with an old camisole that was no way EVER going to fit me again.  A little sewing here and there and VOILA!!  A T-shirt that he tolerated much better than I thought he would.  FINALLY ... the frantic jumping around has slowed.

It is actually healing up with lots of neosporin and is nowhere near as RED as it was.  The spots are old man age spots.  Hopefully he will be back to normal SOON!!!  It is surprising just how strong his jaws are when you are trying to stuff a pill down his throat twice a day.

Just for kicks, on the way back from the vet, I drove by the old ranch.  This is where I spent most of my life growing up.  I was looking for the 100-tree eucalyptus grove that surrounded it, all over 150 feet tall.  I drove right past this place before I realized THAT was the ranch.  Sorry for the dirty windshield!

I was in complete shock!  Almost every tree was GONE!  Even as I stared at the house, I didn't recognize it at all.  Everything is gone ... the fences, the trees, the yard, the fuel tanks ... even all the ditches have been filled in.  Previously, you could not see the house from this view because of the trees.

This is the old quonset hut I have mentioned before.  It's where we parked the small tractors and mowers, and it's where we stored the cattle grain and salt.  We used to sneak in and eat the salt.  All of those big front doors slide open sideways.

As I turned down the road and looked back, I saw all the tree stumps lining the canal.  That was our swimming pool as a kid, and where we played with the dead carp at the end of irrigation season.  What a shock it was to see this.  I just can't believe it.

The house looks so small.  I lived here from about 1954 to 19-something when I moved out and my parents built a new house for them just past the barn.  Shortly after, I moved back in.  This is a two story house with a bedroom and large attic on the second floor.  The stairs were very steep and barely wide enough to climb up.

This house was made with square nails, it's that old.  The internet says they quit using square nails in the late 1800's.  I'm not sure the house is that old, but all the 2 x 4's and framing were hand hewn.  You could see the axe marks in the wood.  THIS is where I learned how to reroof a house.  I spent many hours up top tearing off the original roof, which is how I know it was all put together with square nails.  

The large section to the right with the fireplace chimney ... that was added on some time in the 80's.  Jonathan was born and raised in the kitchen, which was the largest room.  I say large, but really, the entire original house was maybe 20' wide by 35' long.

Between the house and the barn were an amazing set of corrals, perfect for working cattle.  I was so sad to see everything gone.  No freezer house where we stored all our meat and home canned vegetables, no loading chute for the cattle, no scales to weigh the cattle ..... nothing.  The corrals covered the space between the road where I am, and the back of the barn.  

Although it looks attached, the second structure on the left has a driveway between it and the barn.  That's the saddle house, and where the caterpillar was kept out of the weather.  The saddle house was of course the Jail where the Sheriff put the bad guys.

Inside the barn was a long rope attached to a sliding hook used to lift hay into the barn using horse power.  That's what we used to swing on out the top door and over the feed trough inside.  Oh the memories.  If you got hurt, you never mentioned it because we were not allowed to DO that!!

So so sad to see it in this terrible shape.  I guess everything disappears over time, but this is heartbreaking.  The ranch is now used for farming tomatoes and cotton.

This is the house my parents built after we sold all the cattle and switched over to growing rice.  That's a story for another day.  You can tell it's a farm house because the entire left half of it is a garage and repair shop.  I lived here after both my parents passed away.  This is where I was going to live the rest of my life until my brother (who lived in the other house) decided he was moving away and the ranch had to be sold.  That's yet another story.

Further on down the road as you look back at the ranch houses, for as far as you can see was pasture for the cattle.  It was 640 acres of beautiful green where I acquired my addiction to running.  I would spend hours after work, just running the perimeter of the fields.

So that's the end of an era I suppose.  Raising cattle is now the occupation of big corporations who bought out all the little guys.  In this entire area, which used to be huge cattle country, only dairies remain ... also owned by big corporations.  Life moves on I guess ... but it's kind of sad to see.