Tempers, rocks and rusty nails

One of my neighbors told me an interesting little tale of his youth here while back, which I found vastly amusing. The story that follows is based upon that and is more or less true, but what's true and what's exaggeration is up to the imagination of the reader.

We were talking about Old Jack, a fellow who used to live up the road. Now Jack passed away many years ago, but when he was alive he had a pretty big operation. He had cattle, four chicken houses and a row-crop operation. He handled the row-crop part of the farm and the cattle and chickens were tended to by his boys, Andy and Woodrow.

This worked well until Andy got drafted into the Army, so that left Woodrow to take care of the cattle and the chickens, so Wayne, one of their neighbors and the source of this tale, would come over to help Woodrow quite a bit.

What got Wayne started on this story was Old Jack's temper, which was well known. This was a man you simply did not want mad at you. That's all there was to it. His boys, who were both strapping big fellers, walked mighty softly when their daddy was on the warpath.

Woodrow had a cousin named Robert who was visiting. Now, this Robert was kind of a thug and something of a smartass. He was also a city boy and had little knowledge and even less interest in farming.

Woodrow had gathered up a bunch of cows and had 'em in the pens so he could doctor 'em for pinkeye or blackleg or some such. Since it's hard to handle cattle by yourself, even with a good corral, Wayne had came over to help.

Cousin Robert was supposed to be helping too, but his version of help was to throw rocks at the cows, usually right about the time Woodrow was trying to catch one. Woodrow kept telling Robert to stop, Robert ignored him.

Now, you're probably thinking that Robert was being pretty obnoxious right? Well, truth be known, what he was doing was also pretty dangerous... Not to him, but to Woodrow, who was after all, the one in the pen with the cows.

The rock throwin' went on for a while and Woodrow was getting madder by the minute, when Robert got tired of throwing rocks at the cows and started throwin' em at Woodrow.

Woodrow tried to ignore him, knowing by then that to argue would only encourage him, when Robert picked up a rock about the size of his fist and chunked it at Woodrows' head.

The rock connected and Woodrow nearly fell down. He stood there shaking his head like an angry bull while Robert stood across the fence and laughed at him.

"Now that by Gawd is enough!" He roared and charged the fence. Robert was too busy laughing to try to escape.

Truth to tell he was probably hoping for a fight. Robert liked to fight. He was a big boy and played football and a lot of folks was scared of him.

Not Woodrow. He was a good sized feller himself. He grabbed Robert by the scruff of the neck and the back of his belt and dragged him, kicking and punching all the while, over to the barn. There on the side of barn, driven into one of the posts, was a forty-penny nail about five feet off the ground.

Woodrow hung the protesting Robert by the belt on that rusty nail and walked off and left him there. He walked back over to the cattle pens and went back to doctoring cows. Robert thought he'd get lose but he wasn't able to. He begged and pleaded to be let down and was ignored by Woodrow.

A couple of hours later, Old Jack came in from the fields. He saw Robert hanging up there and asked what in the devil was going on, so of course Robert told him that Woodrow had hung him out on that nail, naturally leaving out the reason why he'd been hung up on that nail.

Old Jack got him down and while Robert stood there and snickered, Jack took off his belt and headed over to the cattle pens. He was planning on giving Woodrow the whuppin' of his life... I've probably failed to mention that Woodrow was a grown man by this time, with a wife and a young'un. Didn't matter to Jack. He was going to teach Woodrow a lesson.

He got in the pen with Woodrow and they commenced with a shouting match until Woodrow finally made Jack understand why he'd hung Robert on the side of the barn. Old Jack turned his baleful glare towards Robert, who realized right quickly he was in deep shit if Jack caught him, took off for the house at a dead run. He climbed into his old jalopy and left a cloud of dust as he headed back to town.

He spent the next several months avoiding Woodrow and Old Jack and didn't set foot on the farm again until after Jack had passed away. He may have been a thug and a bully, but he wasn't stupid...