One opportunity ranch kids might have that isn’t available to most young people is riding with their dad for a couple of hours in the cab of a pickup.
It sounds pretty boring, and often it is, but I cherish the times — from elementary school age all the way through to adulthood — that I sat on the passenger side of a beat-up vehicle, dust on the dash, wire pliers and a hatchet in the floorboard, maybe a rope in the seat and the side mirror cracked.
I would be the gate-opener as Dad drove from one pasture to another, feeding cattle. In the early days, Dad called the cows, with their calves following close behind, and bulls with the pickup’s horn. Later, the horn gave way to a louder siren. We bumped through Texas Panhandle range on dirt roads and often off the road to get to a flat feeding ground or to watch for the animals from the top of a hill…