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30 Tamale Ridge by: Chuck Cusimano

winter, they will last longer. I found some good picket corrals here that Uncle Trent built and I

used them. I wanted to expand the corrals for all the horses that I planned on having someday.

It would be dark and lonely in the cabin every night and I’d fix a little meal for myself but I

wasn’t enjoying eating. I found myself too tired to fix a good meal, so I just got by with

whatever I could find. I usually had a deer or elk hanging somewhere for meat and in the winter

months, I used to like to fry up some cotton tail rabbit.

I’d been craving someones cooking besides my own. I could have rode over to Joe and

Molly Simmons but I would have been too embarassed so one afternoon, I went to the water hole

scrubbed up real good and rode the 12 miles to Newberry.

It wasn’t much of a town but the closest thing to a good hot meal I could buy. I got to town right

at dark and went to the Newberry Inn. I sat down at a table and when the girl came over, I told

her I wanted a cup of coffee and the biggest steak dinner in the place. I found the Inn clean and

it felt good to sit down and relax to enjoy a meal that I hadn’t fixed myself.

Like I said, I ate my share of elk and deer that I found in a great supply on the ranch and once in

a while I’d get together with a couple of neighbors and we’d kill a beef and split it up. Molly

Simmons would can some of it for me and I’d make some into jerky to trade her and her husband

Joe. I didn’t get to enjoy a beef steak very often.

The girl, known as Lucy, brought my food and I set to eating like I might never get to eat

again. While cleaning up my second slice of apple pie, Billy Watkins walked in.

“Well, well, look who came to town”, He said.

“H’lo Billy”, I said.

“What brings you all the way to Newberry?” He asked.

“I just got tired of my own cooking, what you been doing?” I asked him.

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