I’ve always admired and respected the words of wisdom passed down by my elders. My life has been easier when I adhered to their advice. Now I want to pass down some of my hard-earned observations of life accumulated during my years on earth to date. These “Trewisms,” as I call them, will never be chiseled in stone but I hope you enjoy their content.
- If, upon entering a bathroom, you are disappointed at not finding a Montgomery Ward catalog to read while waiting, you might soon receive a birthday card from the president.
- Never take a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time.
When you are an old man, an old woman doesn’t look half bad, and vice versa.If you meet and shake hands with a man whose hands smell like bacon grease, you can bet he is milking a cow with sore teats.If you still think “whoa” when stepping on a brake pedal, you probably know how to grease a wagon wheel and harness a horse.If you can instantly distinguish stinging nettle from other broadleaf weeds, you know what “squatting in the woods” means.If you know what cow kickers, hog ringers and monkey wrenches are, you know how to cuss.If you passionately hate grass burrs, goat heads and splinters, you went barefoot until half-grown.If you know about the spark on a car, the impulse on a magneto or have ever owned a mule, an X-ray of your arm will show an old break or two.If you have never had a “nob-cobbing,” felt the thump of a thimble on your head or the sting of a razor strop, you are probably an only child.If orange juice still tastes like castor oil, you buy Vicks in the economy size and you know how to make a mustard plaster or mix a hot toddy, you probably don’t see a doctor often.If you have ever slept in a feather bed, under five homemade quilts with a hot brick at your feet, you don’t complain much about cold weather.If you ran a trap line on the way to school and brought in the milk cows on the way home, you never had any problem holding down a job in later years.If you think all men are created equal, you’ve never been afoot when a man on a good horse came riding by.If you judge horseflesh by, “one white foot, eye him; two white feet, try him; three white feet, buy him; four white feet and a white nose, fed him to the crows,” you’ve owned some good horses.If you have ever placed carrots or mineral oil in pinto beans, or rubbed two ends of a cucumber together to prevent gas, you don’t buy many antacids.You may be a little slow if you have ever forgotten to curry your horse’s back, been snipe hunting twice or ate yellow snow. FC
Delbert Trew is a freelance writer, retired rancher and supervisor of the Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean, Texas. Contact him at Trew Ranch, Box A, Alanreed, TX 79002; (806) 779-3164; email: delrutrew72@gmail.com.
