Stormy Night – Growing Up in Dublin, Texas

Every now and again we get some pretty nice Thunder Storms coming through north central Texas. Well one night it came a gully washer. In the pasture there was trail worn in the grass which stood about knee high, it lead from the beginning of the pasture by the watering trough, which was across the road from our house, and went all the way down to the little barn for the cows. Dad would walk this trail every morning, very early in the morning to milk the cows. Anyway about half way through the pasture the trail would dip down as there was a low but somewhat shallow gully or ditch which ran across the pasture.

One night I remember we had one heck of a storm. The rain was pouring down in buckets, and the wind would gust so hard the rain would be pushed in and across the front porch of our house. First one way and then another it was literally whipping up on the storm as if it was trying to out do the rain. Well Dad got worried about the cows and put on his old army slicker, which was olive green and kind of a plastic like material, it had a hole in the middle of it where you could put your head through, poncho like, if you will . Once he had the slicker on he put on his cowboy hat and off he went disappearing into the darkness of the night and the heavy falling rain, lighted only the lightning and Dad’s monster flashlight. I call it a monster flashlight as it was like huge, it was a least a couple of feet long and must have held fifteen batteries. Mom was worried that the water which was rushing through the gully would make Dad fall, I was worried that he would get hit by the lightning.

After what seemed like an eternity I saw the light from Dad’s flashlight between the light from the lightning. The rain seemed to let up a bit, and we had the front porch light on. as i looked through this light and off toward the pasture I could see the flashlight was a bobbing up and down as moving toward the house.

When he got back he had something in his arms about the size of a small dog. It was a small pig. Dad said it was the runt of a litter of pigs the old sow had had. And i thought he was going to see about the cows.

We loved this little pig and feed it milk with a baby bottle, until it got big enough to go back to its momma pig.
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Hope you enjoyed my ramblings and that it brought back few memories of you childhood days, no matter what state you hail from.

© Texas Tortilla Factory 2006 – Mike Vauthier