When I was 12 to 14 years old, it was my job
to keep a good supply of wood for mother’s woodburning cook stove and for
the woodburning fireplaces. She kept a stovewood box beside her cookstove
and she wanted it kept full all the time.
My father used to keep one or more yokes of
oxen to work on the farm, to pull the plough, wagon, sled, or logs.
I found an old ox yoke in the barn loft and decided to use oxen to haul
in firewood. We had several head of cattle on the farm. I chose
2 near the same size. One was a hereford bull that seem to be of
good moral character and decent temper. The other one was of such
a mixture of breeds that it would have been impossible to trace its family
lineage or write about its family tree. I called it a low lifed,
mean, honary, contrary, lazy Jersey Scrub Bull. I don’t think it
made much difference with him who is grandfather or uncles were.
They were not too hard to train. They soon got used to being tied
together with one yoke tied around both of their necks. They didn’t
seem to mind having a light load to pull. But soon the scrub bull
decided he was in the wrong career. He didn’t see any sense in having
to work like that for a living. He had always lived a carefree life,
running wild on a hillside pasture land. He became very lazy, didn’t
want to pull and wouldn’t mind a word I said. He wanted to decide
when he would stop and when he would pull. He could take more hard
whippings with a 7 foot switch than any ox I ever saw.
One Saturday I was hauling some firewood from
the Buckbranch. We got down to the schoolhouse and that scrub bull
came to a dead stop. I gave him a good whipping, he bravely took
it but wouldn’t pull another pound. Then he laid down right there
in the road. I couldn’t get him up by whipping him. I had to
think of another way. The branch was right beside the road.
[omitted] maybe he thought old satan was going to get him now ‘fer
shore’. He jumped up and started pulling like he was happy to work
for me. His old habits were gone and he was given a new life.
He was the best working ox I ever had. He was a born-again ox, converted
bull.