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62 Tamale Ridge by: Chuck Cusimano

The train blew its whistle and we headed for the station. Once on the train again, we settled

down for a long ride and looked out the window at a lot of different ranches. We saw cowboys

working with cattle and we saw men herding sheep. Once in a while we could see the road

where the automobiles traveled. There was more and more of them all the time. Sometimes we

saw the railroad fence crew working on the fence to keep cattle off the railroad tracks. I had seen

a lot of barbed wire while in the Marine Corps and I noticed more and more of it on all the

ranches. Ranchers were dividing pastures into smaller pieces. I guess it made things a little

easier and helped to keep your cattle contained in a confined area. I still didn’t much like to see

the country fenced like that. I knew that bad fence makes bad neighbors so what little fence we

did have, we kept up to the best of our ability. The elk sure don’t cotton to barbed wire much.

They keep the fences torn up. I have found deer tangled up in it also. I had a horse or two get

cut because of it and it wasn’t my favorite thing. Gilberto didn’t like it much either.

He came up with a suggestion that I found to be useful though. He and Juan took some

barbed wire and stripped all the barbs off of it. They put some pieces from four feet long to ten

feet long and left them in the weaning corral for the colts to get used to and therefore let them

feel it around their feet without cutting them. It was working. We had a filly get her foot over a

barbed wire and she didn’t panic. She just stood there and let Juan and Gilberto get her foot off

of it. Gilberto proved to be a big asset to me and Tamale Ridge.

I had heard talk that Trinidad was trying to get a College established someday in the future

and secretly, I wanted to get things lined up so that Olivia could come to America to further her

education. If she was anything like her brother, it would be money well spent. Things were

getting hectic as far as paper work. The Government had installed a tax called Income Tax, back

in ‘13’ based on the money you could earn in a years time. Taxes were already a headache and it

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