It was my job as a young man to help rope and wrangle young calves. At one to two weeks old they were amazingly strong. Nub horns would be removed. Any needed medical treatment would be applied. Young bulls would be rubber banded so we could have steers. It was also my job to keep the cattle fed and watered.
We had a herd that varied in size from 20 to 30 head of cattle. I say “we” had a herd because Grandpa Adler had paid me for work I had done for him. The payment was him giving me a registered polled Herford heifer. Her name was Mabel III, and I was proud to hold her registration documentation.
It took a while to watch the cow water tanks fill. It took that project longer than getting down the hay and spreading out some chop. So, every now and then, my attention would get diverted and I would let the tanks overflow. Not a happy day when Father found out. Additionally, it was my job to clear the moss type stuff that grew and floated on top of the water. That was fairly easy to flick those out of the tank with one of the random sticks that always appeared to be about. There wasn’t much else to do as I waited for the tanks to fill, so I decided it would be good to have some fish in the tanks. Besides, they might eat moss.
Although our farm was on the eastern side of the subcontinental divide, the Wabash River was close by to the West. A fishing pole and five-gallon bucket soon brought home several small catfish. Into the tank they went. Constant entertainment for an otherwise boring job. Most of the fish I was able to catch were small. But I did have a great fish story. On one cast of my pole, I caught eight large carp. The rest of the story was that they were in a gunnysack floating down the river. Someone else’s loss was my great fish story.
I couldn’t help thinking while fishing that it would be great to have a Huckleberry Finn type raft and float down the Wabash River. Grandpa Howard lived at Sterling, Ind., just across Coal Creek from Veedersburg.
I could start at our farm, a few miles from Ohio, and raft down to Grandpa Howard’s, a few miles from Illinois. Of course, I would have to practice on shorter runs. So, I carried numerous cedar fence posts to the back of the farm. My theory was to float down the ditch to Yellow Creek and then to St. Mary’s River. I would stop in Decatur just six miles downstream. If all went well, I would make a larger raft in the Wabash River and would be on my way to Sterling. I spent all day building the raft.
Tomorrow adventure was to begin. Alas, that night the water receded, and my raft was stuck. All I had to do was wait until the next large rain. A few days later, when Father found my concoction in the ditch, he let me haul all of those waterlogged fenceposts back to the barn.
My project had failed, but not forever. Years later I canoed much of the Wabash. (Ouabache State Park memorializes the Indian word that we pronounce “Wabash.”)