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Booger lives
December 31, 2006My family is really, really bad at naming animals.
Really, really bad.
But it didn't always start out that way.
Our first two family dogs -- a female and male collie -- were named Cindy and Button. Plain, but simple; nothing too embarrassing.
But then the namings just started to go downhill.
There was the cat that only had three legs, the result of getting his hind leg caught in one of the belts in a car. We named him Scruffy.
I know.
I had a cat named Favorite because it was, duh, my favorite.
As we've grown up over the years, age hasn't made us any wiser about names, either. In fact, it's only gotten worse.
There was this one dog we had named Osmosis because my teenager sister wanted to name him Ozzy and my mom wanted to name him Moses, hence an odd combo.
And then there was the cat, Turkey Lurkey Phil Collins.
My dad had caught it in our barn out at the farm in Cottle County and brought it to our house in Clay County on, you guessed it, Thanksgiving.
But one of my little sisters was going through a Phil Collins phase, so the name Turkey Lurkey Phil Collins was born.
Did I mention she was a GIRL cat?
There are currently three cats and a dog on the farm. There's Blackey (cuz it has black stripes), Pinky (cuz it looks pink from a distance), and Brave Kitty because he was the first to come up and eat out of my hand.
The dog is simply BD, which stands for Big Dog or Bad Dog, whichever you like.
At the Clay County house, we have an inside dog named Shepherd, who goes by every nickname imaginable -- Sheppy, Sheppo. Pepo, Peppenstein, Pepperoni, Peps, Peppy, and Potto.
The outside dogs are named Calisto and Hercules. Or, as we call them, Hurk and Lissy.
Then there's the cat named Rasputin cuz he's pure evil. It was a wild kitten my sister down at College Station literally brought in from the woods to her apartment and then decided the kitten was too wild for college (too wild for a college apartment?) She brought it to my parents' house and it has wreaked havoc on all of us. Nicknames run the gamut -- Poots, Pooty, Putin, Pootenstein.
And all of this brings me to the point of this whole story.
We've got a new dog, a beagle mix my dad recently picked up at the pound to keep BD company out in Paducah. If you're keeping track, this is our 9th family animal.
The whole family had made logical suggestions for names, settling either on Lucky or Buddy.
Good, wholesome dog names.
Papa wanted to name him Booger, but we all nixed it. We couldn't have a dog named Booger, we all told him.
But two weeks ago, the young pup ventured out into the pasture at the farm in Paducah around 3 p.m. and wasn't home by dark. Or midnight. Or the next morning.
We all assumed he was dead, fetched up by the coyotes that roam the night, which has happened to a lot of our animals over the years.
About 4 p.m. later that day, he finally wandered up to the house. Papa joked that the pup didn't say where he'd been hiding all night.
We were just all glad that he made it home.
"That pup's one tough Booger," my dad replied.
Sigh.
Welcome to the family, Booger.
Posted by Lara Richards at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Cotton-pickin' candle
December 11, 2006The reporter looked at me suspiciously, part fear, part intrigue spreading over her face as I gave the candle to her in our newsroom.
I had been walking around a local department store earlier that day in Wichita Falls when I stumbled upon a new candle collection. One candle's scent was labeled, "Fresh Picked Cotton," complete with a picturesque scene of a boll in full bloom.
Wait a cotton-pickin' minute, I thought to myself.
Having grown up in the midst of cotton country, I knew that this "scent" was merely a romanticized notion of cotton dreamed up by big-city companies who were trying to sell more over-priced candles.
The candle smelled familiar, yes, even kind of pleasant. Fresh linen, maybe. A garden after a spring rain, plausible.
But definitely not cotton, and I knew I probably wasn't the only person in North Texas to question and find humor in the candle's dubious title.
A farm and ranch show was going on at the MPEC that weekend and I told our one of our regional reporters who covered agriculture to go over to the ag center -- candle in hand and photographer in tow -- and get folks to smell and comment on it.
It turned into a delightful feature. From the agriculture expert who explained that real cotton has no scent to the cotton farmer who quipped, dryly, "Fresh picked cotton smells like sweat," the story was a great read.
We even got a great picture of a girl holding the reins of her horse while she smelled the candle.
A large part of this business is covering the wrecks and fires and shootings and meetings.
But I like to think that there are lots of "candles-to-the-ag-show" stories out there just wanting for us to find them.
Posted by Lara Richards at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Rawhide
December 05, 2006Reason I love Texas, No. 3,247:
The sign above aisle 4A at the United Market Street supermarket on Kell Boulevard in Wichita Falls lists the following items:
Cat food. Cat litter. Bird seed. Pet care. Pet supplies.
And rawhide.
Nothing screams "You're in Texas" more than a sign pointing you to the rawhide.
Posted by Lara Richards at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Getting the story
December 04, 2006Sometimes, being a reporter in North Texas means more than sitting down with a pen and a pad of paper for an interview.
Sometimes, it means feeding a calf first.
Photographer Torin Halsey and I arrived at Don Riddles' ranch in Joy back in 2004 prepared to get the story.
Don had found an unusual way to honor his father, J.Y. Riddles, who had passed away in 1992. He had placed his father's old boots on fence posts around his property, inspiring others in the small community to add their worn-out boots to his collection over the years.
Around 100 or so boots lined the fence around Don's land, which sits at the corner of Texas 148 and FM 173. Torin and I estimated the interview and pictures would take around an hour or so, but Don had a small delay in mind.
A young calf that had lost its mother several days earlier was in the pen. Don hadn't been able to catch the animal and feed it by himself. The calf was hungry and Don needed help.
Don needed OUR help.
Without hesitation, Torin and I abandoned our respective camera, notepads and pencils in the car and went over to assist. While Don chased the calf down the chute, Torin reached out his arms to help guide the animal through, and I readied the bottle of milk.
About 30 minutes later -- all parties involved a little sweaty from the unexpected activity -- the calf was fed and we all sat down in Don's bunkhouse to do our interview.
The story about Don's fence boots, in my opinion, turned out great.
But I kind of like the story behind the story better. It's not every day that I get to feed a calf at an interview.
Posted by Lara Richards at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hidden gems
December 01, 2006Some days, the most interesting tidbits you'll find in our newspaper are on our obituaries page.
Take the Nov. 30 paper. Dorothy S. Hines, who was born March 14, 1913, sounds like she had a great story to tell. The end of the second paragraph in her obituary reads: "At birth she weighed only one and half pounds; she was very proud of the fact that she survived."
And in that same day's obituaries was Jack Kimzey, who died Dec. 1. He was born on Oct. 11, 1912.
That's 10-11-12, if you didn't already figure it out.
Posted by Lara Richards at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
