Soapweed
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FRUGALITY AND FUNNY SMELLS
By Steve Moreland, April 26, 2016
Having taken a few cows to the Gordon Livestock Auction today, I had dinner at the sale barn café. In visiting with some friends at the same table, the subject came up of how there had recently been a nasty smell in a church building. Thinking that a dead mouse was probably the cause of the offensive odor, an extensive search was conducted. Finally it was discovered that the terrible stench was coming from a deep freeze unit in the kitchen. The pastor immediately remembered what caused the problem. He had been the head cook for a church dinner, and had temporarily unplugged the deep freeze, to use the outlet to plug in the grill. He definitely had planned to plug the deep freeze back in when finished with the grill, but in the hustle and bustle of the dinner clean-up, another kind gentleman came along and coiled up the extension cord. Inadvertently, the freezer didn't ever get reconnected to electricity, and this caused a big stinky problem. Fortunately, the door of the deep freeze was never opened, and the whole kit and caboodle was loaded onto the bucket of a tractor and hauled directly to the city dump.
This brought to mind a story I heard on Paul Harvey many years ago. It seemed that in a certain intensive care unit of a hospital, whichever patient was in the room each Friday morning would die. Finally it was discovered that when the cleaning lady came in once a week, she would unplug the life support system so she could plug in her vacuum cleaner. Of course without life-support the patient would perish.
My dad held an annual Green Valley Country Music Hereford Bull Sale at our ranch from 1973 through 1983. When designing the sale pavilion, Dad had made a nice auctioneer's box out of plywood and wooden braces. It was a square enclosure 4' x 8' x 4' high, and was mounted on supports to overlook the sale ring, as well as the spectators seated on the bleachers. The box had a desktop and room for the auctioneer, the clerk, and one or two other people besides my dad. This box also made an excellent calf warmer during calving season, as a tarp could be placed over the top, and a Knipco space heater could be placed at the doorway.
One afternoon in the middle of May, after Dad and I had attended a branding at Mrs. Bowring's ranch, something was needed out of the sale barn. We opened the door, and a terrible odor greeted our nostrils. It didn't take long to figure out that the last calf we had tried to warm had not survived. Quite evidently the dead calf had never been removed. Fast forward a couple months, and things were a grotesque mess. The tarp had fallen in on the carcass, and maggots were having a heyday. We both lost a substantial portion of the good branding dinner we had so enjoyed a few hours previous. A lesson had been learned. Final determination was that Dad had a lot stronger stomach than me, and it befell upon him to clean up the mess.
The last couple school terms that Merriman had a high school, from the fall of 1966 through the spring of 1968, the superintendent was Mr. Newman Card. He called Chadron, Nebraska his home town, and he and his brother batched on a little place a couple miles south of town. Mr. Card was a kind old gentleman, and he appealed to me because he had mannerisms and talked similarly to my favorite movie actor, James Stewart.
Mr. Card was possibly the most frugal fellow I have ever known. He had been married for a very short period of time, and probably obtained a divorce when he realized how expensive it was to have a wife. Mr. Card told of always desiring to see Snake Falls near Merritt Dam south of Valentine. One summer day, he packed a lunch and drove from his home at Chadron to Valentine, and then south to Snake Falls. This was a total distance of about 160 miles. Upon arriving at the featured destination, it was discovered that the Kime Family who owned the property was charging 50 cents per person to get to see the falls. Mr. Card instantly "saw red" and was completely disgusted that anyone would have the audacity to exploit a work of Nature for their own personal gain. He stood on principle, saved his 50 cents, ate his lunch in his car on his way home, and never did get to see Snake Falls even though he was within a hundred yards of it.
One of the years that Mr. Card was superintendent in Merriman, he went back to Chadron to spend the two-week Christmas vacation. Being the frugal fellow that he was, he cleaned out his refrigerator so it could be unplugged, thus saving electricity for the two weeks. Upon returning to Merriman, an unsavory odor greeted him when he walked into his house. It didn't take long for him to realize that he had forgotten to empty the freezing compartment of the refrigerator. Being an avid fisherman, this was full of the fish that he had caught and cleaned. A couple of my classmates, Vonda Goodwin and Mary Robertson, made very good wages to clean up the mess. Mr. Card didn't like to spend money, but his stomach was not strong enough to do the deed himself. The wages he paid the girls came to much more than the value of the electricity that he saved.
Mr. Card often traveled west of Crawford going up or down Smiley Canyon. Coming down the canyon, he generally turned off the ignition of his car and coasted down the hill in neutral, to save gas. On one occasion he had a different car, and he shut off the engine to coast down the hill like usual. This new-to-him different car had a feature that locked the steering wheel into position when the engine was off. Mr. Card had not taken this into consideration, and when the road turned, the car went straight. It went off into the ditch, fortunately on the uphill side, but flipped over anyway. Had it gone off on the other side of the road, the car and Mr. Card would both have fallen a long ways. Sometimes a penny saved does not equate to a penny earned.
When my dad Bob Moreland was a boy, he lived with his parents, Jack and Grace Moreland, and younger brother Stan on the JO Ranch a mile south of Merriman. One time, there was a terrible stench that spread throughout the house. Grace went to extreme measures to try to determine what was causing the offensive odor. She thought that some animal had died under the kitchen floor, so she even displaced boards of the floor while doing her detective work. Finally she went through the closet where the outdoor clothes were hung. She found a slicker that my dad had worn a few weeks earlier on a rainy cattle drive. He had a lunch along that day, and had saved a hard-boiled egg in his slicker pocket to eat later. Hard boiled eggs don't stand the test of time very well.
The winter of 1978-1979 was a bad one. Snow started falling in early November, and it got deeper and harder as the winter progressed. A neighbor, John Christensen, had his car parked in the garage for several months, as only a four-wheel-drive pickup could get around at all. The side window of the car had been left open, and unknowingly a tom cat had found the seat of the car a wonderful place to sleep during that winter. When spring finally arrived, and John went to back the car out of the garage, it was found to stink too badly to drive. They never were able to get that awful smell out of the upholstery, and the car was traded off for a new one.
Frugality and funny smells don't seem to naturally go together, but sometimes one can be caused by the other.
By Steve Moreland, April 26, 2016
Having taken a few cows to the Gordon Livestock Auction today, I had dinner at the sale barn café. In visiting with some friends at the same table, the subject came up of how there had recently been a nasty smell in a church building. Thinking that a dead mouse was probably the cause of the offensive odor, an extensive search was conducted. Finally it was discovered that the terrible stench was coming from a deep freeze unit in the kitchen. The pastor immediately remembered what caused the problem. He had been the head cook for a church dinner, and had temporarily unplugged the deep freeze, to use the outlet to plug in the grill. He definitely had planned to plug the deep freeze back in when finished with the grill, but in the hustle and bustle of the dinner clean-up, another kind gentleman came along and coiled up the extension cord. Inadvertently, the freezer didn't ever get reconnected to electricity, and this caused a big stinky problem. Fortunately, the door of the deep freeze was never opened, and the whole kit and caboodle was loaded onto the bucket of a tractor and hauled directly to the city dump.
This brought to mind a story I heard on Paul Harvey many years ago. It seemed that in a certain intensive care unit of a hospital, whichever patient was in the room each Friday morning would die. Finally it was discovered that when the cleaning lady came in once a week, she would unplug the life support system so she could plug in her vacuum cleaner. Of course without life-support the patient would perish.
My dad held an annual Green Valley Country Music Hereford Bull Sale at our ranch from 1973 through 1983. When designing the sale pavilion, Dad had made a nice auctioneer's box out of plywood and wooden braces. It was a square enclosure 4' x 8' x 4' high, and was mounted on supports to overlook the sale ring, as well as the spectators seated on the bleachers. The box had a desktop and room for the auctioneer, the clerk, and one or two other people besides my dad. This box also made an excellent calf warmer during calving season, as a tarp could be placed over the top, and a Knipco space heater could be placed at the doorway.
One afternoon in the middle of May, after Dad and I had attended a branding at Mrs. Bowring's ranch, something was needed out of the sale barn. We opened the door, and a terrible odor greeted our nostrils. It didn't take long to figure out that the last calf we had tried to warm had not survived. Quite evidently the dead calf had never been removed. Fast forward a couple months, and things were a grotesque mess. The tarp had fallen in on the carcass, and maggots were having a heyday. We both lost a substantial portion of the good branding dinner we had so enjoyed a few hours previous. A lesson had been learned. Final determination was that Dad had a lot stronger stomach than me, and it befell upon him to clean up the mess.
The last couple school terms that Merriman had a high school, from the fall of 1966 through the spring of 1968, the superintendent was Mr. Newman Card. He called Chadron, Nebraska his home town, and he and his brother batched on a little place a couple miles south of town. Mr. Card was a kind old gentleman, and he appealed to me because he had mannerisms and talked similarly to my favorite movie actor, James Stewart.
Mr. Card was possibly the most frugal fellow I have ever known. He had been married for a very short period of time, and probably obtained a divorce when he realized how expensive it was to have a wife. Mr. Card told of always desiring to see Snake Falls near Merritt Dam south of Valentine. One summer day, he packed a lunch and drove from his home at Chadron to Valentine, and then south to Snake Falls. This was a total distance of about 160 miles. Upon arriving at the featured destination, it was discovered that the Kime Family who owned the property was charging 50 cents per person to get to see the falls. Mr. Card instantly "saw red" and was completely disgusted that anyone would have the audacity to exploit a work of Nature for their own personal gain. He stood on principle, saved his 50 cents, ate his lunch in his car on his way home, and never did get to see Snake Falls even though he was within a hundred yards of it.
One of the years that Mr. Card was superintendent in Merriman, he went back to Chadron to spend the two-week Christmas vacation. Being the frugal fellow that he was, he cleaned out his refrigerator so it could be unplugged, thus saving electricity for the two weeks. Upon returning to Merriman, an unsavory odor greeted him when he walked into his house. It didn't take long for him to realize that he had forgotten to empty the freezing compartment of the refrigerator. Being an avid fisherman, this was full of the fish that he had caught and cleaned. A couple of my classmates, Vonda Goodwin and Mary Robertson, made very good wages to clean up the mess. Mr. Card didn't like to spend money, but his stomach was not strong enough to do the deed himself. The wages he paid the girls came to much more than the value of the electricity that he saved.
Mr. Card often traveled west of Crawford going up or down Smiley Canyon. Coming down the canyon, he generally turned off the ignition of his car and coasted down the hill in neutral, to save gas. On one occasion he had a different car, and he shut off the engine to coast down the hill like usual. This new-to-him different car had a feature that locked the steering wheel into position when the engine was off. Mr. Card had not taken this into consideration, and when the road turned, the car went straight. It went off into the ditch, fortunately on the uphill side, but flipped over anyway. Had it gone off on the other side of the road, the car and Mr. Card would both have fallen a long ways. Sometimes a penny saved does not equate to a penny earned.
When my dad Bob Moreland was a boy, he lived with his parents, Jack and Grace Moreland, and younger brother Stan on the JO Ranch a mile south of Merriman. One time, there was a terrible stench that spread throughout the house. Grace went to extreme measures to try to determine what was causing the offensive odor. She thought that some animal had died under the kitchen floor, so she even displaced boards of the floor while doing her detective work. Finally she went through the closet where the outdoor clothes were hung. She found a slicker that my dad had worn a few weeks earlier on a rainy cattle drive. He had a lunch along that day, and had saved a hard-boiled egg in his slicker pocket to eat later. Hard boiled eggs don't stand the test of time very well.
The winter of 1978-1979 was a bad one. Snow started falling in early November, and it got deeper and harder as the winter progressed. A neighbor, John Christensen, had his car parked in the garage for several months, as only a four-wheel-drive pickup could get around at all. The side window of the car had been left open, and unknowingly a tom cat had found the seat of the car a wonderful place to sleep during that winter. When spring finally arrived, and John went to back the car out of the garage, it was found to stink too badly to drive. They never were able to get that awful smell out of the upholstery, and the car was traded off for a new one.
Frugality and funny smells don't seem to naturally go together, but sometimes one can be caused by the other.