Little Things

These things that were on the screen porch at the ranch aren’t valuable except to us who collected them. Skulls of a hog, a fox, and an armadillo, dried stink gourds, rocks with fossils, pieces of rusty metal and barb wire, bottles, feathers, and bird nests. But I packed them up when I left and packed them again when I recently moved to a different house closer to town. I moved them myself to the storage unit and moved them from there to this new house.  

Sarah and her family and I share this house and I have a partial garage that is connected to my new Bear Den. It can’t be used as a garage because the previous owner took half of it in as more living space in the walkout basement. So I’m developing it into what we’re calling the Cantina. It’s a cross between the screen porch at the ranch and a place to hang out. It has my table because I didn’t have room for it in the Bear Den but didn’t want to turn loose of it. It has some of my sign collection, my growler collection, a cabinet that Justin’s mom gave me before she passed away, and a little rustic black cabinet that Sarah and I bought in Junction back when we just had the little camper there. It cost $30 and we used it to hold our tiny 13” TV that could only get one channel out of San Angelo and sometimes not that. It was before internet and satellite. We just had an outside antennae that blew around when it was stormy. 

I can’t finish the room yet because there are a few things I need to get out of there still. My washer that is waiting on hookups in a closet under the stairs and some things waiting to be donated or picked up by others. Still I was able today to unpack the 10 boxes of ranch stuff. One box went into the shed attic, and a few things were moved to the lean-to on the back of the shed where I’ll hang them when Spring comes. But I got most of the things on this wall. 

They hold no value and to most people they aren’t even attractive. But to me they are the triggers for many good memories. How Rickie and I sat on the porch as he showed me the rock he found with little tiny shell fossils from back when that area was under the sea. The canister of deer jawbones that he used to teach us how to age a deer. The hog skull from the one feral hog he shot from the back porch. When my friends and I went to the ranch the next weekend for a girls trip we found it cleaned to the bone by the other hogs. 

The turkey feathers from my favorite wildlife there remind me of how many we had on our place, sometimes over 100 in a group. The time the electrician was installing the breaker box on the side of our little cabin, the result of a 15 year dream, and he felt someone watching him. When he turned around about 75 turkeys flew up when startled by his movement. How he was awed when he told us that story. 

The whiskey bottle I found under a cedar tree left by hunters when it had been a working ranch. The wreath we made from cable that had once held an old wooden deer stand, long collapsed when we bought the place. The tiny green wooden camper that I kept to always remind us of how far we had come from the early days and how lucky we were to have what we had. A plaster of paris deer footprint Sarah made the first year we had the property. The washer pitching game Rickie loved to play with the grandsons. The brush he bought for Gus and Woodrow, who soon decided they weren’t going to stand for being brushed. Some green marbles made from coke bottles that were salvaged when a train carrying them crashed; we bought those at a flea market in Boerne one year on the way out to spend the Thanksgiving holidays at the ranch. The dinner bell that would call Gus and Woodrow up from the pasture. 

The memories of a life well lived and well loved. If you tried to sell them you wouldn’t find a buyer that would give you a nickel for them. But I love them enough to pack them up when I’m leaving new furniture and appliances and cabins behind. And when I get older, if I do, and my memories fade, I hope I can look at these little things that made a good life for Rickie and me and for the ones we love, and recall the stories attached to them. And the feelings attached to that memory, though it often comes with tears attached. And remember how lucky I’ve been to lead the life I’ve led.