Grandpa’s adventures with some goats:
At this point I feel the urge to reminds of some of the lighter happy side of a boy’s life. This incident began in the spring of 1899, I think. After the crops had been planted, father took a trip to northern Indiana to his boyhood stomping ground. He planned to stay until it was time to start to cultivate the corn. He judged the length of his stay by how fast the corn was growing in northern Indiana. He finally decided it was time for him to start home. The nearer home he got, he realized the corn developed faster than where he was making his judgment. The nearer he got to home the more worried he got, as it was past time to begin cultivating the corn. I had never cultivated, but Irvin had. We got the cultivators out of storage and put them together, and started to cultivating. By the time he got home, all of the corn was cultivated except a 20 acre field. Father was so happy about it that he said we could take a vacation, and he would finish the cultivating the first time over. (He was so slow getting his 20 acres cultivated that we could never get it clean enough to get a full crop.) We went on the train to Calhoun, a town 40 miles to the south. While there, we became enamored by some young goats that were for sale. We bought a Billy and Nanny and took them home. The baggage car of the train accepted them as passengers for a fee of 25 cents each. When we got to our home town of Tekamah, Billy had eaten the tag off of Nanny’s neck band, so we had a bit of trouble to claim her, but the baggage man was finally persuaded to let us have Nanny also.
We had great fun training and playing with Billy and Nanny. We made harnesses for them, and one of our prize pictures is of us driving them hitched to our play wagon pulling a cousin of ours. All went well for a time, but Billy finally disagreed with that kind of fun, and would turn around and start to fight. We discovered that Billy was mortally afraid of getting his beautiful wool caught in barb wire, so we controlled him for a time longer with a piece of barb wire for a whip, but that soon failed to control him, and driving our team of goats became a lost art. We had a board fence enclosing the yard around the house. There was a flat board on top of the fence. The goats had great fun in walking on top of that fence. All went well unless Billy and Nanny happened to be walking in opposite directions on the fence and happened to meet. Billy always solved the problem by giving Nanny a bump and knocking her off on the ground. He would look proudly down at her and give his accustomed snicker of triumph, that only a goat possesses. One stunt of fun was to take Billy by the horns and let him push us backwards. All went well until he got us going so fast backwards that we would fall on our back. That was always an occasion for his accustomed snicker. That fun finally gave out as Billy got too rough in pushing us. One of his happy moments was to catch us stooping over. When we were not watching, he would run from behind and knock us sprawling. That was always a signal for his snicker as he watched us get up. If we happened to leave a flat board standing up to the roof of the buildings, they were sure to spy it and go up on the roof and walk around. They would walk to the lower row of shingles and look down unconcerned. We were always afraid that Billy would catch Nanny on the lower row of shingles and give her a bunt. The roof of the buildings are too steep for a person to walk on in Nebraska.
Billy finally became such a nuisance, that we had to shut him in the yard with the other farm animals. The only way to keep him in the yard was to put a string of barb wire on top of the fence. He never got over being afraid of barb wire. He was an Angora goat with long fleecy wool, he was always careful to not get it caught in any entangling material.
For some reason Billy always had a great sense of revenge for anyone or anything that would disturb his beautiful wool. If he brushed a fence or any object, he would violently retaliate. Sometimes we would come home and find a gate smashed to splinters, and the livestock scattered all over the place. Once I saw him when a fence post had evidently shattered his serenity. A nail in the post had evidently pulled his wool. He began butting the post, gently at first, but more violently as he proceeded, until blood was dripping off the end of his nose. I would drive him away, but he would return to get revenge on the post for disturbing his beautiful fleece.
One fall we had more corn that enough to fill the cribs, and we made a temporary crib beside the yard where Billy was confined. He had evidently caught his fleece on a nail or something on the crib of corn. He began battering it, and when he hit it, a few kernels of corn would drop out. Evidently the corn dropping out enraged him all the more. He would stop and eat every kernel of it. He had access to all the corn he could eat, so he was not hungry, but it evidently avenged him to eat it. I do not know how long he battered and ate. The next morning he did not come out to the feeding of the stock. I found him lying down on his side (unnatural position) in one of the sheds. I went up to him and said “Hello Billy”. He raised his head and gave out a moan, and put his head back down. In about two hours he was dead. He had evidently eaten so much corn for revenge that it had killed him. There was no mourning at his passing, but he received an honorable burial.
Tuples and Attributes 