A "Fun Family Adventure"

One last report on our Memorial weekend is in order.  I felt I must talk about another Manville/Corkle type holiday event.  Back when my children and their cousins were school age and a holiday came along 2 things usually happened.  1.  We would plan to celebrate with some kind of meal with local relatives which most often meant  at least the Corkles came out to the ranch.  2.  Since there was a lot of extra help, Bob and/or Uncle George would plan to get some kind of project done before we ate.  This could include moving cattle, branding or working cattle for some reason or other, putting in a garage/shop door, some kind of irrigation project, fixing a piece of equipment or testing it, or whatever.

The moving cattle thing was the worst since there was always a lot of extra traffic on our country roads.  Campers, fishermen, hikers and so forth wanted to get where they were going and didn't feel the need to be sitting still while a herd of cows and calves balked at crossing a bridge or mama cows tried to go back to find their calves who had ducked under fences.  So of course someone would always lean on their horn and come plowing through the herd scattering them everywhere.  This project never went as planned ("Oh, it ought to take about an hour just to move them up to the North Field") and by late afternoon we might get to eat the planned noon meal!  there were usually some of the kids' friends and lots of cousins involved in this and not all of us were on horseback, either!  It seemed like no project that was attempted ever worked out the way it was planned so the kids always knew to eat a big breakfast when holidays occurred!

Now to the present, when my children and some of my grandchildren are all  grown up and only Bob and I are left at home.  The Corkles are also grown up and we don't seem to get together as much any more so Bob and George don't get to make plans for projects--or do they........

Bob seems to still be in the mode on a smaller scale since there are just the two of us around usually.  Especially for Memorial Day.  As it happened, Bob had just had a new to us John Deere Crawler delivered to the top of the hill on Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend.  On Sunday, he announced that we would drive up and get the Cat and then I could drive the car back down to the house and he would bring the Cat down.  I had been down sitting on the porch enjoying the rest of my coffee, reading and hearing Bob playing with his new toy, pushing trees off the road. I was so absorbed in my book I didn't realize how time had passed and the next thing I know, Bob is walking in to the cabin!  The new crawler had quit on him about a quarter of a mile up the road!  He was fuming as this has happened to us before with used equipment we have purchased.  His first strategy was to go to the neighbors to buy about 10 gallons of diesel since we only had gas here.  When we got over there (about 2.5 miles away) they weren't around so we decided to go into town to get it (about 20 more miles away).  We got the diesel and some groceries and headed for home an hour or two later.

We loaded the two 5 gallon cans onto the 4 wheeler and took it up to the Cat.  Bob mumbling the whole time about filters and clogged fuel lines, and 30 day warranties.  I suggested we only use 1 can of diesel in case running out of fuel was not the problem and we wouldn't waste the expensive stuff if we had to drain the lines (a brilliant idea, I thought!).  We poured in the 5 gallons , said a little prayer, and hit the starter.  Whoopie!  It started right up!  A true first in the annals of Manville fun family adventures!  I was able to take the 4 wheeler home and prepare lunch a few hours behind schedule!  I was so excited I forgot to take a picture of the stranded Cat.  It was quite picturesque, too.  Well, I feel sure there will be other opportunities.......

The culprit in our fun family adventure!  Notice the Delaney Butte in the background where our home ranch was and the sight of many of our holiday adventures.