Despite Father's warning, the first time we took the drive, Margie and I drove off the road! We were very close to the house where we thought a slight deviation would be perfectly safe. The jeep immediately sank to the hubs.

"What are we going to do now?" I moaned. "Father is up to his eyebrows in summer work, and he's going to have a terrible fit if we ask him to come pull us out." I had visions of Father's precious jeep sinking slowly out of sight if we had to leave it over night. Margie was desperate to get out of telling Father, since she had been the driver. She said she was going to go ask the neighbor to take pity on us and pull us out. The neighbor knew my father well enough that he quietly got out his tractor and a long chain. To our great relief, he was able to extract us from the unstable depths of the giant slew. We thanked him profusely for saving us from a hard 'cussin.'

But the slew was not through terrorizing me. One day Father took me up to Giant Slew Ranch to help him with some cattle. He saddled a little mare he had given me, that belonged to the former owner. We headed out toward the slew. To my absolute shock, Father said we were going to cross the swamp to get to the pasture where the cattle were. I yelled, "Where in the hell are we going to cross, Daddy?"

He pointed to a trail of sorts that led across what looked to me like the DEEPEST part of the swamp. There was even a little stretch of open water. "We can't cross there!" I protested firmly, as though my father were an insane, strong-willed child.

"Nonsense," said my father calmly. "These horses have lived on this ranch since they were born. They cross this way to get to the pasture all the time."

"Let me take the long way around," I pleaded shamelessly. "I am scared to death of this slew."

Well, there was nothing my father hated worse than a cowpuncher who showed fear, let along one related to him. "We haven't got time," he said tersely.

He headed into the swamp. There was nothing I could do but follow his lead. The horses sank deeper and deeper into the mire, making giant lunges until they reached the open water. There my horse swam as though her very life depended on it. She, frankly, acted scared to death. I was petrified. I couldn't even enjoy the work, which I normally did, I was so worried about the return trip. After the work was done, I followed Father numbly into the bog, but I was thinking to myself, "He is going to find out that I have mysteriously disappeared next time he needs me to go to Giant Slew Ranch. I'll make some excuse, and he'll never know the difference."

You had to handle my father like that. He thought risking his life every other day and yours as well was part of being a cowboy. You couldn't reason with those old western cowboys.

But I can tell you this, I never crossed the Giant Slew on a horse again!

As summer begins, I am reminded of what I used to do during these months in what we seniors are so fond of calling 'the good old days.' I lived in the country, and after planting a huge garden we would 'bottle' all summer long. The Cattle would all be on the mountain, so it was time for us daughter cowpunchers to slave over a hot stove.

We had no electricity in the remote area where I grew up, so we'd have to carry in the wood from the woodpile, along with chips, and coal, whatever we needed for a roaring fire. Sometimes we'd even have to chop the wood if the men 'forgot.'

Our mother would tell us the string beans were ready or whatever else was 'coming on' in the garden. We'd cut the beans into either quart or pint jars, and then we put them in a pressure cooker to cook at a certain temperature for around an hour. The tomatoes we'd have to boil in hot water to parch their skins. We'd cut them up and heat them in large pans. When they'd boiled long enough we would bottle them in quart jars, sealed with new lids and rings. We'd slice the corn off the cob and pressure cook it, the quarts for an hour and ten minutes. Everything that could spoil had to go in bottles, which included all our meats except the ones we cured. We dried venison and salted and cured ham and bacon. Summer was for bottling all the produce, winter for the meats.

My mother tried to bottle around 200 quarts each of peaches and apples and apricots every year to feed her family and the hired men, and 100 quarts each of corn, beans, and tomatoes, if our tomato patch was productive. As we girls got older, Mother retired to being straw boss, and she could disappear faster than any woman I have ever seen, especially when the produce came in. She was always out trying to bring in an electric power plant.

We did dill, bread and butter, sweet, sour and mustard pickles as well as pickled beets. Why, we even went out and gathered berries in the wilds. Some folks didn't think we had quite enough to do. That included elderberries, blueberries, and pottowatamie plums. Since we ate jelly or jam at every meal, we had to make all kinds of preserves and jellies. I will tell you when somebody came along and said they had a bushel of apples or peaches for us, I used to wonder if somebody would take me serious if I fainted. I remember grinding away with the apple peeler for hours since apple sauce was a familiar dish at every table, as well as apple pie. My grandmother on my father's side, probably the greatest bottler who every lived, prided herself on never running out of apple pie. My mother tried valiantly to keep her five daughters busy all summer keeping up with grandma. I don't think we ever succeeded beating one old woman at a skill she had absolutely mastered.

I was always trying to get out of the bottling, which is why I jumped on a horse at the slightest provocation. I preferred crossing the deadly Death Holler trail to peeling five bushel of peaches all day. There was no comparison. They know how to work kids in those days!

In the winter we bottled our beeves, pigs, chicken, sheep and venison, along with the mince meat made out of venison.

There was never a more joyful person than I was when electricity, with my mother's help, finally arrived in our town when I was 15. We were able to buy freezers, which saved an awful lot of lives. They can talk about the good old days all they want to, but all those hours of bottling made a profound lover of modern conveniences out of me. The only thing I said we never had to do was grind our own corn. We found 30 grinding stones in one place the Indian women left centuries ago. They were the only women I felt sorrier for than I did us.

Since I moved to the city, I have never bottled again. I developed chronic fatigue syndrome starting at eleven. It figures.