The Meat Wagon.

 The Meat Wagon.

 

My great-grandfather Sterling V Camp was a rancher when he died, but he had many jobs before he resettled on the Camp ranch in Montague County here in Texas. The nearest settlement, where my daddy went to school while his parents were working in Ft. Worth at a factory, was just a few miles from the homestead. As a child, my daddy could not pronounce V, so to distinguish between his grandfather and his great-grandfather who had the same name, Daddy called his granddad Daddy B. Daddy B’s doctor had advised him to stop riding his horse and working cattle or he would die because of his enlarged and congested heart. No one else was there to do the work and be sure it was done right, so he rode and roped and otherwise took care of the cattle. And yes, the doctor was right. My memory of him was being held in his arms while he led his horse. Of course, you can imagine a little one wanting ON that horse, but that did not happen. His horse was a working horse, and his great-granddaughter was a tiny bit of wiggling energy. Anyway, something made me think of him this afternoon—the smell of our city water.

 

My great-granddaddy rode the trails into Oklahoma as a young man and went with the cattle drives to keep the cattle fed in the plain’s grasses of that state. Then he was supposed to bring them home when they were slick and fat. However, a disease struck the herds south of the border and no one was allowed to cross the Red River or the Rio with cattle to prevent infection of Texas cattle. So, he and his herd were stuck in Oklahoma until the quarantine was over. Not sure if a camp fire got away from someone or if lightning struck and set the high grasses on fire, but Granddad Camp ended up having to skin a steer and drag the hide behind his horse to try to contain and put out the fire. Not sure if he was the only one to have to do this, but they got the fire out. One of the drovers used that hide to make a lariat for my great-granddad. My oldest son now has that rope in his possession. For years we had it mounted on a board with my spurs and some barbed wire. Of course, back then they did not have fences, much less the barbed wire, but Lewis mounted it and made it look pretty neat in my estimation. At one time the museum here wanted to use it in a display of Western lore, but they had no way to insure it or the other things they wanted to use. It just seemed like a really good way to lose something without recourse to recovery, so it never went on display. One of the things that really mattered to me other than that lariat was my great-granddad’s 30-30 Winchester.

 

Did you ever hear of someone giving their gun a name? Not sure who in the camp gave his gun its name, but while he was riding herd in Oklahoma, his rifle became known as “the Meat Wagon.” It never failed to hit whatever he aimed at. That skill came in pretty handy when he married my great-grandmother. She was very young—13—and he knew better at 21 to mess around with a girl that young. But such is life, so they left the ranch and went to live in Oklahoma around Hobart. He had a wagon that served many purposes beyond taking his little wife to Hobart. They settled there and in order to make a living, Great-Granddad became a butcher. Now we think of going to the store to buy a roast or a slab of bacon or ham or even hamburger. No such things happened back then. In 1905 he went out and shot elk, deer, pigs, bears, or whatever moved. Others began to call his rifle “the Meat Wagon.” Yes, he took his wagon out to the prairie to bring back the animals that he killed and field dressed. Then he would take the meat back to Hobart and cut it up for sale. Back then, folks had smoke houses and places to hang meat in the winter. But if they brought an animal to Granddad, he would slaughter and dress it for them. The “guts” had to be removed from the city limits in order to keep things clean and fly free. But sometimes it took more than a couple of days to process everyone’s deer or steers. Therefore, the “gut wagon” sometimes pretty well reeked to high heaven before he took it out to clean it. And yes, maggots got in the guts. Yuck! So, if something stunk bad enough to gag a maggot off a gut wagon, you could bet it was pretty rank.

 

On July 1, 1906, my grandmother Thelma Faye Pollard was born to Hazel Anna Walck Camp and Sterling V Camp. No matter how he felt about having to get married, Sterling was very proud of that little baby. Back then it was very unusual for a baby to have its picture taken, but little Miss Thelma was a very loved little baby. And eventually she was spoiled rotten, but that is a story for another day.