Barbed Wire Fences And Post Hole Diggers

Our sixth grade teacher at Drummond, Montana, once gave us a much hated assignment: Write an essay on My Pet Peeve. I didn't even have to think about mine. The title was Digging Post Holes. Until I left the ranch to head for college at the age of seventeen, the only post hole digger my old man ever owned was...me.

Not that I'm griping about it. Quite frankly, had I not learned how to work hard before reaching adulthood, I'm pretty sure I'd have ended up one lazy, worthless so-and-so. But when you're eleven or twelve years old, working a spud bar and a #2 shovel to produce holes some two or three feet deep in a place appropriately named Granite County...even bucking bales looks good by comparison.

Especially since haying season in Montana occupies three months of the year or less, while fencing--whether construction or repair--is there to be done any time you can get around to it. So, did I cheat when the ground was just so terribly rocky that a full depth hole seemed more impossible than difficult? Sure I did. But not often. Dad caught me at it every time, and one of his warnings was usually enough to keep me on the straight and narrow for two or three years at a stretch.

Stretching barbed wire, making gates, building fence corners that would hold up to a quarter mile of taut wire without keeling over sideways...these were valuable skills, and I learned them well. Even so, I always kept an eye out for a way to get ahead of Dad. I couldn't whip one side of him in a fight, so that was pretty much out. He never asked me to do anything ridiculous or unnecessary, so I couldn't apply logic to the situation. Still, I...plotted.

And one day my chance came. Hunting season was still open but winding down. Dad, a hired man named Dave, and I were repairing a section of horse corral manger fence one mild December day. No barbed wire here, of course; heavy planking was used that allowed livestock to stick their heads through a sizeable gap to munch hay forked into a wooden trough (manger). Yes, indeed, I saw my chance.

Gazing momentarily at the dozen mares in that corral, each with a foal at her side, I began.

"Dad," I asked most casually, "Which colt would you say is the best of all this year's crop?"

He thought for a moment, though we all knew the answer: "I would say Baby's colt," he said finally. Of course it was the right answer. That young gelding was a stunning, deep red bay color with black mane and tail, a white sock on one foot (four white socks is considered a bad luck critter among horse people), and a white blaze on his face. Even more importantly, he had beautiful lines and an equally beautiful, easygoing personality.

Everything was set. Almost everything. With Dad, his word was his bond... especially if he said those words in front of at least one non-family witness. Every intelligent child learns the Rules for dealing with his particular parent(s). Dave was my witness. Now, just one more careful step....

First, I openly agreed: That colt was clearly the best of the bunch, wasn't he? Yes, indeed. No question about it. Then the closer:

"Hm. If you were to put him up for sale, what do you think he'd be worth on the open market?"

I didn't literally hold my breath, but close to it. In that day and age, a baby horse of that quality but with no breed papers might bring as much as $100. Certainly he was worth $75 if he was worth a penny. Dad opened his mouth.

"Oh...I'd say...seventy-five dollars."

"SOLD!!!" I bellowed in a voice that could have been heard at the house some 300 yards distant.

Dad was stunned. His jaw dropped. He tried to wiggle out of it, but did not dare actually back out against my will. There was that witness.... I had the money, and ownership of the year's finest "new horse" on the place transferred to me. Of course, he got his counter-revenge too, in a way. When I wanted to name my new colt Bonfire, he forbade me to do what was (to him) such a foolish thing.

Never mind that it was no longer his horse. Resentfully, I finally settled on Bobby, though naturally I called him Bonfire whenever the two of us (horse and rider) were alone. When Bobby/Bonfire was three years old and had been trained (by me) as a fine, gentle pleasure horse, I sold him for the princely sum of $200 to a pair of secretaries from Missoula, Montana. That $200 paid for my first long term set of wheels, a 1952 Chevy.

Even better, only after I graduated from Drummond High School and headed off to college did Dad finally buy himself a power posthole digger for the back of one of his tractors.

Elvin M Baker, the father who taught me so much whether I wanted to learn or not, passed from this world in 1997. His teachings continued to bear fruit, however. For example, my first wife and I had bought a house at the edge of Belgrade, Montana, in 1966. We had it less than a year before moving and putting it back on the market, but during that brief time, two key events took place.

Event #1: In June of 1966, during summer vacation from college at Montana State University, I decided to quit rodeo after an injury in the bull riding event at Blackfoot, Idaho. The quitting and the injury were not directly related--but that is a topic for another Hub. One thing was crystal clear above all others, though:

If I was done with rodeo, I needed a day job. Fast. And I found one: Building fence along the new section of I-90 just going through the area at the time. My foreman, Cliff, was a mighty good man out of Butte, and we got along well indeed. We did good work, and that same fence (with intermittent maintenance) stands yet today.

Event #2: At the same time, I build a much different fence around our new home's sizeable back yard. The treated fence posts were much the same, but instead of barbed wire (hardly a trademark of suburbia), I wove 1x4 boards in a truly pleasing pattern.

In 1998, being in the Belgrade area for a family wedding, I decided to take a look at "my old house"...and most importantly, my old fence. Instead of acting like a dork by knocking on the current owner's door and introducing myself, I snuck around (that's cowboy for "sneaked") by the Conoco station that now borders that property.

The fence still stood. One busted board needed replacing, and it could have used a coat of paint, but every post remained "sentinel straight". Thirty-two years old at the time, looking like it could well last for another hundred.

Yes, Dad taught me well. Even so, if I need to plant more than a few posts at any time in the future, I'm looking for a power post hole digger. If I had to go back to using nothing but a spud bar and shovel, I relatively certain it would even today qualify as a pet peeve.

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32