Ken and I were teaching in Fort Worth in the late nineteen fifties.\u00a0 Ken and six of his fellow teachers hunted on 800 acres in eastern Stephens County.\u00a0 My brother had beef cattle there.\u00a0 The cows expected food when they heard the horn of my brother\u2019s pickup.<\/p>\n
One of the guys was unable to travel with the group on their first trip.\u00a0 He was to arrive late in the afternoon.\u00a0 Ken told him to honk his car horn when he got inside the gate and someone would come to lead him to the campsite.\u00a0 He arrived, honked, and waited.\u00a0 Before long, cattle began to come toward his car.\u00a0 He had never been around cattle. As more and more cattle arrived, they surrounded his car.\u00a0 He had no clue what was going on.\u00a0 The cattle were looking at him through the windows expecting him to get out and spread range cubes on the ground.\u00a0 He was frightened as the critters looked him in the eye.\u00a0 He was even more dismayed when he saw Ken disembark from the passenger side of an approaching car and move between the cows.\u00a0 He thought Ken would surely be trampled. Ken rescued him.\u00a0 The poor fellow provided the others a good laugh.<\/p>\n
It began to rain late one evening.\u00a0 The men hurriedly moved their sleeping bags and gear into an old structure.\u00a0 It was an old dynamite house used during the oil boom of the 1920\u2019s.\u00a0 It was solid and dry but small.\u00a0 They were crammed close together trying to sleep.\u00a0 If one turned to another side, they all had to turn.\u00a0 Fortunately, the rain stopped the next morning.<\/p>\n
On one trip, they helped my brother \u201cwork calves.\u201d\u00a0 This meant catching the calves, branding them, and castrating the male calves. Ken was the only one who had ever done this.\u00a0 They thought it was fun, not work.\u00a0 They built their evening campfire and began to cook food. Ken and one of the cooks prepared the \u201ccalf fries.\u201d\u00a0 (The by-product when a calf becomes a steer.)\u00a0 As they were eating, one of the fellows remarked how good they were.\u00a0 He asked, \u201cWhat is this?\u201d\u00a0 They told him.\u00a0 He immediately went into the darkness and tossed them (along with his other food) on the ground.\u00a0 I am sure none of the others laughed at him.<\/p>\n
At that time, I was teaching foods to ninth grade girls.\u00a0 (No boys were in homemaking classes in those years.)\u00a0 One class had a smart alec girl who blurted out anything to get attention.<\/p>\n
There was a chart in their textbook on cuts of meat.\u00a0 I more or less pointed it out to them and went on.\u00a0 She and the girl next to her zeroed in on variety meats.\u00a0 They started giggling.\u00a0 The other girl asked if we were going to cook liver.\u00a0 Before I finished saying no, the smarty girl blurted, \u201cCan we cook mountain oysters?”\u00a0 I said no, and kept going before anyone asked what she meant.<\/p>\n
I was aware at an early age that working calves meant branding and making steers out of the bull calves.\u00a0 My mother sometimes cooked the by-product and called them calf fries.\u00a0 I had never heard the term mountain oysters until I heard Ken telling my brother about his friend throwing up the mountain oysters.\u00a0 If the girl had asked the question one week earlier, I would have had no idea what she was talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ken and I were teaching in Fort Worth in the late nineteen fifties. Ken and six of his fellow teachers hunted on 800 acres in eastern Stephens County. My brother had beef cattle there. The cows expected food when they heard the horn of my brother’s pickup. One of the guys was unable to travel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[255,257,256],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1955-to-1972","tag-calf-fries","tag-deer-hunters","tag-mountain-oysters"],"yoast_head":"\n