50th

Lisa wrote a series of blog posts about attending her parents' 50th anniversary celebration. My parents had theirs over a decade ago. It was a nice celebration, just of immediate family, though.

There were reasons for that. Chief among them is that one of my cousins, an exceptional child to the eyes of her mother, had been consuming large amounts of drugs for decades and had, by past self-absorbed conduct, made a circus of other family celebrations. As the story was told, one of my other cousins went to my father, who was by then the family patriarch, and said something like: "I am going to shoot her the next time that I see her, so you might want to consider not inviting either her or me to the next family function."

It was a nice celebration. Papa was tired, more than usual. He said that he and my brother were starting a new enterprise and that he was tired from that. We purchased his favorite brand of vodka for him, as the resort was nominally a "dry" one, and he was pleased by that. His obvious exhaustion, though was very noticeable to those of us who had not seen him in some time.

Less than two months following the celebration, Father finally went to see a doctor. The diagnosis was cancer, most likely from the smoking of cigarettes that he had begun in the Army during the War and then for many years after that. There was chemical therapy and radiation therapy, all of which only served to delay the inevitable. He and Mother did mark their 51st anniversary, but by then he was deteriorating rapidly and he did not last for very much longer.

If there is a point to this tale, it is this: Enjoy the presence of your beloved family members when the opportunity is presented. You may not have a chance again.

Eating Bert and Ernie

Although my parents were city folk, my father always dreamed of having a farm. When he retired from his first job, my parents began searching for a farm to buy. They eventually found one and, after fencing off a couple of pastures, bought a small herd of sheep.

They also bought two steers. The idea was to grow the steers over the spring and summer and then send them off to be butchered. They bought two steers so that nobody would know which steer was providing the meat for dinner any particular night. Mother named them Bert and Ernie, although which one was which didn't seem to matter.

Bert and Ernie resided in a pasture that was several acres in size, which was surrounded by a fence that had a couple of shock-wires to keep them in and dogs out. The pasture had a small pond that was fed by an underground source. Every day at four in the afternoon, they were given a bucket of grain. If whoever had the duty of feeding the steers grain was running late, the two steers would stand by the fence where they go their grain and bellow until they were fed.

One day, for a reason I've forgotten, Bert and Ernie escaped their pasture. As we fixed the fence, I wondered aloud where they had gone (I had returned home after military service). Papa told me not to worry, they'd come back. He was right, for a little bit before 4 PM, the two steers walked up the road to the farm and stood by the gate to their pasture. He let them in, they went over to where they were fed and Father gave them their grain. Other than that one escape, they were not any trouble.

Grain was their undoing, for it was a bucket of grain that lured them into the livestock trailer that took them to the slaughterhouse. A few days later, the deep freezer was nearly full of beef wrapped in white paper.

As it turned out, Bert and Ernie were ahead of their time. Grass-fed beef wasn't the rage and most everyone who dined on their meat thought it was too lean. Two steers provided far too much meat for my parents (I had moved out). Bert and Ernie ended up doing community service by appearing on the menu at the local shelter and in the food bank.

They were the only beef my parents ever raised. Raising lambs turned out to be far more manageable, at least in the size of the consumption units.