July 2019 ⋆ danbodine.com

Dan Bodine

That’s Jenny over there, 1950 or ’51, I think. Me on her. We won 1st place (long forgotten the category), Annual Johnson County’s Old Settlers & Reunion Parade in downtown Cleburne, TX, that year. None other like it. Always held 2nd week in August, it seems. So if anyone wants to taste what a county fair is like before the big state fair in Dallas in October, this is your chance!

Crowd excitement helped us get this prize, I guess. I never could figure it quite out!

But the incident reflects back to a period when it seemed everybody was allowed to be somebody — e.g., individuality, even in animals, was respected — and I wanted to add this footnote as a way of saying, even today a half-ass mule still deserves respect!

Jenny got tired at one point back then and just sat down! Middle of the parade; middle of the street! Stopped everything!

I got off and pulled and tugged. She wouldn’t get up. No way no how!

Caused quite a stir! Parade up front had to stop, too.

“Got a jackass down in the middle of the street back here!”

Some official with a mouthpiece explained it up front a ways to parade participants, ahead of us — as to why they had to stop!

Police and sheriff deputies came a runnin’! Convergin’ from all sides! Shoved me out of the way! Me, a 7(or 8)-yr-old-boy and the only person Jenny’d ever listened to!

The men heaved and tugged, grunted and groaned, big-time! Jenny wouldn’t get up. Went on and on and on!

Finally I stepped back into the melee, politely. And calmly mounted Jenny again, as she laid there.

It was a scene a bit like we’d often done near our home outside of town several miles, along the Godley Highway.

Only she’d never actually set down. She’d just wait for me.

For earlier, just to be ornery on our after-school rides, sometimes she’d take off running lickity split! It was her moment!

The damn Tea-Party Republicans today on a crusade about Liberty don’t have any more of an idea of what this means than a man on the moon drinking Lone Star beer does!

It meant I had to respect her ’cause I couldn’t control her! Not totally.

And eventually in these bouts I’d end up being thrown off onto the ground along the side of the road somewhere — down toward the Hedricks place — with cars and trucks going by, honking and hollering.

“Hee, haw! Hee, haw!“

When these trips, though, were along the side of the highway — and not somewhere back into the deep pastures somewhere, as they often were, too — Jenny never would leave me alone. But would stop finally, turn around, and wait up ahead.

Then I only had to get back on, lean over into her ol’ floppy left ear, and whisper kinda loud, “You ain’t supposed to do that, Jenny, darn ‘ya! Let’s go!”

And she’d go plopping along again, happily. Eventually we’d get up close to the “Y” — where the Godley Hwy. melted into the Fort Worth Hwy., there at the Fix-It Shop — and cross the highway and return home.

At the parade that day, that remounting scene is what came to my mind — and that’s what I finally did. As she laid there blocking the whole damn parade!

Back on her, reins in hand and a tuggin’, l leaned over into that same left ear, and told her in that same Darn it I mean business voice, “We need to go!”

Sure enough, she got up — to the cheers of the hundreds who’d lined both sides of the street — and started plopping along again.

And like some giant slithering serpant stalled — because of some small malfunction in its middle section –the whole parade followed suit almost instantly.

The wild outbursts on each side then (that erupted as the parade resumed) — waves of Hurrah!!! crescending up and down the downtown streets — were eternally seared into my young mind. Already I was half way to Heaven!

And, too, Jenny’s ol’ floppy ears perked up, and seconds later proudly were standing tall — as folks on both sides cheered wildly as we moved up the street toward the market square and the courthouse in downtown Cleburne!

“What in the world is this!?” she no doubt was thinking.

I guar-on-tee-‘ya! She never thought that a half-hour or so later she and I would be honored with that first-place award — for her damn contrariness!

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By Dan Bodine

This little cactus produces more flowers than any other in the Casa Verde Gardens. It’s name? Would you believe **Pudge**? And the encroaching succulent coming in on the left? This could be a hint on my *raw* naming system. In Mexico folks call this crawler “**Chisme**” — Spanish for gossip — because of the way it spreads. *(Desert Mts Enterprises photos)*

By Dan Bodine

Yeah, I have a cactus garden, too — today’s landscaping thing, no? But three years into it hasn’t rattled off a lot to write home about. Maybe posting this will draw enough comments for me to either step it up and expand my thinking somehow, or turn it over — one way or another. Cold turkey!

No doubt my health and advanced age are factors keeping the excitement thermometer down in this new hobby. And some of it could be, indeed, that part about old dogs can’t learn new tricks!

Names of most common landscaping shrubs, flowers and trees in North Central Texas (D-FW area) where I grew up, I learned as a boy, i.e. — by working many years after school in a plant nursery. But were cacti in landscaping plans then? Uh…

Cactus is a plant, too, yes. But 60-65 years ago that region was heavily farm & ranch land — with prickly-pear cactus flaring throughout it like acne on teenagers.

Oh, there was more than one type of cactus then? Few people discussed the topic.

Now cacti and succulents together are the rage of the globe, and learning the names of these strange critters is more than a bit difficult to a flatlander. Thus in the mountainous desert I usually shift to my default naming position — e.g., what does it remind me of? The first thing that jumps in my mind?

I started the cacti collection like this 3-4 years ago now, I think, after attending an El Paso Garden Club sale one weekend.

And then, it turned out, (like thousands and thousands of others, no doubt) I fell victim — e.g., I HAD TO ASK, about an image I saw online somewhere. And thus I gained 3-4 more plants.

Where it ends? Who knows? These things are more serpentine than Mother-In-Law Tongues! (The plant, of course!)

Daughter Maiya Kareli, i.e. (to family, Kareli [goes by middle name, like Noemi and I]; to friends — her 1st name, Maiya) bought me a Cactus of Texas Field Guide last year, and it’s been helpful. But it’s limited to Texas.

So, as I go thru these few photos below of my little collection, be aware my personal naming system is at work. Don’t scream I’m desecrating or belittling in some way.

You want to know the real name of them? Type in “cactus photos of the southwest” in your search engine? And happy hunting for that one, identifying photo!

More-‘n-likely you’ll be hurdlin’ a Latin naming system whose different names on papyrus Cleopatra used to rotate daily with a little clip at the end of her backscratcher. Damn thing burnt out when she was 38 and supposedly she hadn’t even gone thru half of the alphabet yet!

Maybe some glorious day I’ll get more personal with these critters and actually learn what types of cacti they really are! And respect their history, too, etc., etc.! But don’t bet on it. I’d probably have to give up watching Sunday and Monday night football or sumpthin’!

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