Please accept my advance apology for the following lengthy reminisce. The topic here awakened the memory of an incident in my life that I can't seem to resist telling. It is about the time when I tossed my nuts into the dirt.
As a summer job long ago I worked on a cattle ranch in Kittitas County Washington. It was roundup time when cattle were herded to a large livestock corral area where dipping, vaccinating, branding and castration of the bull calves took place. Being from the city I enjoyed watching the cowboys on horseback rounding up cattle and driving them down to the area of the corral which was bustling with much activity.
What I found most interesting and exciting was the activity taking place inside the corral. Cattle were running, dust was flying and there was the smell of burning hair from the branding. It looked so easy how a cowboy would bulldog a calf to the ground and then with assistance drag it over to a fire pit for branding and castration if it was a bull calf. Back in those days I was a lean and mean 6' 3" and about 200 pounds, so I thought how hard could it be to bulldog a calf? Heck, I could probably even drag the struggling bugger over to the fire pit all by myself. Yep, that's what I thought until I gave it a try. My first attempt at bulldogging drew a standing ovation of laughter from those experienced in such matters. Tears of laughter were rolling down everyone's cheeks but mine. I was too out of breath from the struggle to exert my remaining energy on laughter.
What I remember most was the first bull calf I castrated after much observation and some direct instruction of the process. I was told to carefully cut the scrotum sack off with a circular motion of the knife and toss it to the side. I was then to grab the testicles in one hand and with the knife in the other to not simply sever them, but to carefully strip the cords with the knife in a fraying motion to detach them. After being detached I was told to; "toss them nuts in the pale over there by the fence". The final part of the processI was to squirt the open incision area with a black medicinal liquid with a name I've long forgotten.
Okay, that sounded easy enough. So with one cowboy holding the calf's head and another using feet and arms to hold the rear legs spread apart I was ready to go. Not so difficult. Everything actually went well until I held the detached nuts out for everyone to see before tossing them over my shoulder and into the dirt. At the very moment those nuts hit the dirt there was complete silence and world seemed to come to a stop. The dust settled, the cattle stopped running and the odor of burning hair was gone. Everything seemed to come to a standstill except the jabbing of a finger pointed in my face and a cowboy shouting; "hey boy, why the hell did you throw them nuts in the dirt?"
Yep, I'd done everything right except the part about; "toss them nuts in the pale over there by the fence". It was at that moment when I was abruptly awakened to the reality that these cowboys saved the nuts for some damn reason. I soon learned that after roundup all the neighboring ranchers and farmers would get together for an annual community picnic. A part of the picnic tradition was to have the the nuts prepared as a 'delicacy' by breading them and then pan frying them like chicken. With beer flowing freely only men were supposedly allowed to partake in feasting on the fried nuts, which I suppose the women didn't strenuously object to.
I returned home soon after working that roundup so I never knew if my 'dirty nuts' ever made it to that picnic for pan frying. What I do know is that I will long remember that day as a time in my life when the world seemed to momentarily stop . . . I also know that I will never again toss my nuts over my shoulder and into the dirt.
