It was a Sunday afternoon. I was 10 or 11. I had been playing in the backyard with a neighbor kid. I noticed my face feeling funny and my eyes starting to itch. My friend said I looked funny, so I went inside. My mother asked what in the world I had gotten into to make my face all puffy. I didn’t know.

I spent most of one fall, winter and spring hauling hay for a friend – who lived roughly 850 miles away. This was the same guy I helped move down there – about 100 miles due north of the fabled “Area 51.”

Wes McPherson had a Fu Manchu mustache to die for. Full and just the right bit of dark hair mixed with the gray. A well-worn cowboy-style hat – felt, for all but the hot summer.

The most interesting individuals I’ve met have to be those in the hinterlands of cow-calf ranch country. The Bell Brand Ranch had places in southwest Idaho and the main ranch south and west of Jackpot, Nevada – either in the O’Neil Basin or over a ridge from it.

I’m sitting here near you wishing you were abed convalescing but still dealing with the medical people saying there was no more they could do for you.

Pea soup. I think that’s what the seafaring bunch calls it. So foggy that if anyone had known how bad it would be they would have stayed somewhere warm, dry and safe. At this late date, I don’t remember if we were loaded or empty.

I discovered the Great Divide Basin the year we delivered a few loads of hay to the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

Some time back, traveling with some grandkids along, we had stopped at a rest area. After making use of the facilities and walking off some travel stiffness, I noticed my wife having an animated discussion with the rig that had parked near us.

One bright sunshiny afternoon decades ago in southwest Idaho, I observed an incident ahead of me on the I-84 freeway. All lanes were still open, but there was a truck tractor and its two trailers lying on its side near an exit from the road.

’Twas one of those days that my patience and consideration for most of anything was lacking. I had stopped at the local WinCo supermarket, and the shopping cart on the end of the row refused to come loose.