Guns 'N' Roses

This blog would actually better be described as "Guns 'N' Mesquite," but not everyone knows what mesquite is.  Or huisache (pronounced "wee-satch" in Texas).  They both have thorns, grow like weeds, and, if left unchecked will slowly (or not so slowly) fill a pasture with their kith & kin, making it generally impossible for cattle to graze, grass to grow, etc.  Huisache is worse than mesquite:  mesquite, if left alone, will grow into a fair-sized tree, and early Texas settlers, I'm told, used the seeds (or the pods around the seeds) to make jelly.  The wood is also an amazing flavoring agent for smoking meat or barbecuing.

Huisache, well, I don't know of any uses for huisache.  So we try to get rid of it.  Bulldozing and shredding are common frontline tactics.  But, unless you keep up the shredding at regular intervals, it just keeps coming back.  So, another frontline tactic is to mix a noxious weed killer with the right amount of diesel, load it into a hand-held (or truck-mounted) sprayer, and tromp forth into the wilds, spraying every thorn you see.

This was a regular summer chore for the kids in our family, and if you're thinking "That doesn't sound like something kids should be doing!"  You're right.  But, this being Texas, it's a normal past-time for lots of kids (ages 8 and up, mostly); along with baling hay, running tractors, shredding, driving trucks, branding cattle..... and all sorts of other things that, in more civilized parts of the world are done only by bonded, licensed, insured adults who are receiving at least a minimum wage payment (with benefits), and who are wearing a wide range of protective clothing.

We wore boots in case we ran into snakes.

But the snakes turned out to be less of a bother than the neighbors.

My brother Michael (why do the interesting things always happen to Michael?) was about 8 at the time and he was spraying up near Sonny's house.  Sonny wasn't home at the time, but his mama was.  She was sitting on the front porch either crocheting covers for tissue boxes or making fig preserves.  Judging from the number of tissue box covers and fig preserves she gave my parents, both of these activities were full time jobs for her.

The fence line for the pasture Michael was working in ran just a few yards away from Sonny's front porch, and that's where Michael was working.  Mrs. Porche was approximately 200 years old and blind as a bat (she had to be, to use the neon-red yarn she favored).  But apparently she could hear well enough.  Sort of.

"Who's there?"  She hollered.

"It's me, Mrs. Porche; Michael, your neighbor."

"Who?"  She hollered again.

"Me, Michael, your neighbor!"  Michael shouted from 10 yards away.

Mrs. Porche picked up a shotgun.  "I don't know who you are, but you'd better get off my property!"  She bellowed back, cocked the gun, and fired.

Fortunately, since she was blind, she missed.

She cocked the gun again, and Michael, not trusting to blind luck again, dropped the sprayer and ran.

All the way home -- a good mile, across rough ground, through two barbed-wire fences, a cattle tank, several acres of huisache, and a herd of cows.  I don't think he even stopped to crawl through the fences; he was trailing a length of barbed wire when he got home.

My parents found some other places for Michael to spray after that.

I think my dad went to fetch the dropped sprayer, but I'm willing to bet he called first.