Welcome to the West as I see it

Short pay and fast horses

There is an old phrase used by the cowboy set, ropin’ for short pay, which basically means long hours of hard work for not a lot of money.

Since roping was and is just a small part of the job to be done, short pay wages covered all the work that needed done.

It was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be the case for doing the work of a cowboy.

I broke into the world of a paying cowboy job when I was 15. My brother and I hired on for a summer of riding pastures checking yearlings on a high mountain Colorado ranch, which also happened to be our home.

Since I was the oldest, I got preferential pay of fifty cents more a day than my 13-year-old-brother. I was reaping in a big $5.50 a day while he had to settle for $5. In my mind, that made me the “girl” in charge. He fell for that most of the time.

About 4,000 yearlings arrived in May and came from a much lower altitude. The ranch pastures ranged in altitude from 7,500-9,500 feet or higher in some places that those critters managed to climb.

At that altitude, cattle often develop what is called Brisket Disease, Mountain Disease, or High Altitude Disease. The animal will develop edema in the brisket, along the neck to the jaw or the underline of the belly before it dies. Early detection is the only hope of saving them.

A daily check and count of every single animal was necessary and an accounting of the dead was a must for the record books. That was our job–to look at and count each one in all of the pastures we were assigned, bring in the sick, and cut the brand off anything we found dead.

We would leave early, often with a sandwich rolled up in our jacket on the back of our saddles, and hope to be in sometime in the afternoon before the late day rain showers.

We took turns opening gates as long as were we getting along. It wasn’t uncommon to say “we’ll meet back at this gate in an hour” and whoever got there first would go through the gate and wait on the other side, refusing to dismount and open the gate again for the late arriver. Excellent fodder for a teen shouting match.

Looking back, I’m thinking our short pay was probably due to two things. Economics of the times was one. I think Dad was managing the ranch for about $550 a month and raising four kids on that.

The other reason I surmise was our youthful unreliability. We got the job done — eventually. However, the days were interspersed with opportunities to go for a swim in a pond if it was hot. Often there was a horse race when we were sure no one could see us racing — a forbidden sport.

And about every other day there would be a knock-down-drag-out fight over his roping everything that didn’t move and then me refusing to give him the head count since he was busy playing.

Fortunately, I rode very fast horses. It saved my life on more than one occasion.

By Julie Carter

A Boston homemaker wife stepped out of a white Suburban and gasped as she, through rhinestone-edged sunglasses, took in the endless vistas that surrounded her.

She tugged her faux fur a little tighter around her, leaned into the wind as it whipped her hair in three directions and rolled a tumbleweed up against her bare legs with feet slid stylishly into strappy pumps.

Hardly the fashion for the upcoming job that would include breaking ice on water tanks, fixing the flat on the feed truck before she fills it with feed and, while she’s at it, climbing to the top of the overhead bins to check the feed levels to gauge when the next load should be ordered from the supplier.

Through my Web site, I was contacted by a casting producer at ABC television and informed that the fourth season of “Wife Swap” is underway. She asked if I knew anyone in the Western/cowboy community that would like have their family showcased.

The premise of “Wife Swap” is that one parent from each household swaps places for a week to experience how another family lives. Families can live anywhere in the U.S., but must consist of two parents and at least one child older than 5 living at home.

An honorarium of $20,000 goes to the selected family. I saw that as a possible alternate revenue source for the ranching industry.

I thought they’d be interested and, sure enough, upon hearing what it paid, a friend with a ranch and a husband asked if she could borrow my kid and “what did the city husband look like?”

Her husband was simply concerned if the incoming city gal would be able to help build a few miles of fence. And it would help if she looked like Angelina Jolie or Katie Holmes. That, at a glance, sums up the romance of the West.

In the interest of full disclosure, I felt it prudent to give Ms. ABC Television a full rundown of what would be expected of the unsuspecting woman in the ranch/city swap.

I suggested that first, as a warning, she should brief the unsuspecting suburban woman about the lack of charm in the “real West,” although it would become clearly evident to her within a few hours of her first day.

The first morning she will be faced with checking the calving heifers, cleaning up after the puppy that puked under the coffee table, the kid that has to make it to the bus before 6 a.m. to get to school 50 miles down the road, the husband who just remembered to mention the 27 people arriving to help work cattle for the day that will need lunch, a green colt that needs to be busted off before they start on the drive, and that she has to get somebody to run the mail today before she switches the valves on the water system and opens the gravity flow valves to waters in six other pastures.

In between these chores, the water tanks in all those traps have to be checked because the calves have been getting in them and breaking floats.

The logistics of enjoying any semblance of civilization should discourage thoughts she might have of seeing a movie in a theatre, dropping by for a pedicure while she’s in town 75 miles away, or having any kind of a “girl” conversation with anyone but the border collie and heifer she’s on duty to watch.

Minimal duties would include bucketing drinking water from the cistern, splitting firewood for the wood box and bottle feeding colostrum to the new baby calf thawing out in the bathtub.

I’m sure “Wife Swap” producers will think I made this list of “disclosures” up, but there is an entire world of ranch wives out there right now that would agree, but are, also, mentally making a list of the many things I didn’t include.

Okay ABC, bring it on. Let’s see how long this lasts.