{"id":938,"date":"2019-01-28T19:38:22","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T01:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/loosestringsfromthepast.com\/?p=938"},"modified":"2019-01-28T19:38:22","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T01:38:22","slug":"cat-skinners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loosestringsfromthepast.com\/?p=938","title":{"rendered":"CAT SKINNERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ken came in the door and announced, \u201cI hired a cat skinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had no idea what he meant.\u00a0 I was certain he was not going to skin cats and sell the pelts.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou did what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hired a cat skinner, a dozer operator.\u201d<\/p>\n

We had moved to Abilene.\u00a0 Ken and his dad had bought a Caterpillar D8 bulldozer and a root plow. They were in the process of starting a soil conservation business.\u00a0 A\u00a0 root plow had deep teeth that removed mesquite and brush roots.\u00a0 Native grass seed was then sown, and the land was reclaimed for grazing land.<\/p>\n

I met the cat skinner a few days later.\u00a0 He was a small, thin man with a wide, toothy grin.\u00a0 The dirt and grime on his body didn\u2019t seem to bother him.\u00a0 He had a large bandana that he pulled over his nose and lower part of his face when he was working.<\/p>\n

As the business grew and acquired more bulldozers, the contracts took them farther and farther away from Abilene.\u00a0 F. G. was the operator on a large contract near Fort Stockton.\u00a0 He had grown up in the brush country.\u00a0 He would often park the dozer by a windmill and camp under the stars.<\/p>\n

Ken went out to check on the job one morning.\u00a0 As stepped onto the track of the dozer, he noticed a burlap bag close to the driver\u2019s seat.\u00a0 It was moving.\u00a0 F.G. had plowed over a rattlesnake den.\u00a0 There was a rattler in the sack.\u00a0 F.G. asked to get off early to go into Fort Stockton.\u00a0 He thought the snake might set a size record.\u00a0 Sure enough, his picture was in the newspaper a few days later.\u00a0 He was holding the snake arm\u2019s length above his head.\u00a0 (The snake was dead by this time.)\u00a0 We do not remember the length or weight, but it was a big one.<\/p>\n

F.G. had a young son who would occasionally ride with his dad or play around the area. The plowed ground was difficult to walk over.\u00a0 The boy could run and jump across the furrows.\u00a0 One day he caught a jackrabbit.\u00a0 We could not imagine a boy catching a jackrabbit on level ground, much less in that rough plowed area.<\/p>\n

One job was on a large ranch near San Angelo.\u00a0 Ken rode with the rancher to the area to be cleared.\u00a0 They went through thirteen gates.\u00a0 Ken told the rancher that he couldn\u2019t do the job because he didn\u2019t have an operator who would open and close thirteen gates to get to the work site.\u00a0 The rancher furnished a ranch hand to follow the operator morning and evening to open and close the gates.<\/p>\n

One contract was in the Big Bend National Park.\u00a0 The operator saw something unusual turn up between the prongs of the plow.\u00a0 He immediately stopped and went to the headquarters for a park ranger.\u00a0 The plow had unearthed dinosaur bones.<\/p>\n

All of the bulldozer operators,\u00a0or “cat skinners,” were hard-working men.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Caterpillar D8 Bulldozer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken came in the door and announced, “I hired a cat skinner.” I had no idea what he meant.  I was certain he was not going to skin cats and sell the pelts. “You did what?” “I hired a cat skinner, a dozer operator.” We had moved to Abilene.  Ken and his dad had bought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[272,273,274],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-pioneer-man","tag-caterpillar-bulldozer","tag-root-plow","tag-soil-conservation"],"yoast_head":"\nCAT SKINNERS - Loose Strings From The Past<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/loosestringsfromthepast.com\/?p=938\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CAT SKINNERS - 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