Blue Ribbons and Water Balloon Fights

I can almost see the pitch forks being hurled through the air and hear the yelling matches begin...

It’s that time of year in my area where the kids load up their livestock, bake that final pan of cinnamon rolls and head to the county fair. It’s a week full of rich tradition and history. It’s a week full of smoldering hot days and cold water balloon fights. For many, it’s the week they consider “vacation” off the farm. It's a big deal in the Midwest. 

Below is a collage of ribbons won by my Grandparents and Great Grandparents between 1942-1945 while showing cattle and pulling horses. I’m especially proud of the first place showmanship ribbon from the Indiana State Fair, 1945 and the Champion Aberdeen-Angus steer, 1944. A family with deep roots in livestock production, I saw this as the perfect way to showcase some of those successes from sixty years ago.  

In the days that lie ahead, I’ll be showcasing stories and photos from county fair experiences. 

Stay tuned...you just may read something you can relate to. 

Lessons from the Cow Path

Grass is tall right now in Indiana. The Greens Fork River is finally behaving and got back to it’s banks; the sun is shining and everything is growing quicker than a mower can keep up. The grass is green and tall and beautiful. 

And itchy. Thank goodness for cow paths, I’d never get anywhere.

Do you know where cow paths come from? A cow path is formed when a cow finds a desirable destination and continuously takes exact same route to get there; eventually others catch on to this trend, find the path and follow. Through constant wear from multiple steps, a trail is formed. And just like that, in the middle of the tallest grass or most thistle-filled lot, there is a clear, laid out walkway to the destination. 

That’s the thing about cow paths: They always lead somewhere with a purpose. They don’t just span pastures and get the cow from one end of an acreage to another. They provide an easier route to the water tank, feeder or the gate.

I suppose these paths are similar to the paths we take in life. Always a clear starting point, potentially a bit winding, always through hills and flatlands, covered in dust or water or fallen tree limbs. 

They represent the journey we’re on from start to finish. They also mirror the way some folks live this life; on the beaten path, doing what every one else has done. Doing what is easy. 

I have a cousin just young enough to still see cow paths through a child’s soul. 

Because of a tall tale my Momma told that little beauty a few years ago, Kinzee Jean believes cow paths are actually indian trails, paved by the Native Americans that still roam the pastures of BSG. Kinzee is always so careful to stay on the path and look for clues as to where these never-been-seen indians actually live. The excitement and curiosity that dances in her eyes as she walks the narrow trail is something I wish I could bottle and keep forever. I can’t help but wonder, what mystery lies ahead on her own cow path?

While the sun went down, I spent last evening trying to capture a photo of one of our momma cows. In my quest to capture the Indiana sunset holding tight to the silhouette of one of our gals, I found myself right in the middle of a life lesson. 

I set out across the tall grass. As I usually do, I was wearing cut off shorts and quickly regretted that decision; within a minute of my trek my legs were itching and covered in seeds. But, about that time the regret set in, I found a cow path.

I was able to easily jump on that tried and true trail to walk a great distance with out a single bother of tall grass or weeds. It was convenient. It was easy. And it worked. 

Until I got just far enough to realize that I wasn’t going to get the best light, behind the most distinct silhouette, by staying on that path. 

Where I wanted to be was right on that beaten path where my legs could avoid any thistles. 

Where I needed to be was thirty yards west, across the ravine. 

I looked at that setting sun and I looked across the way; I either choose now to stay the easy path and get a sunset shot, but not the one that would make me happy, or choose to take the road less traveled, through the not-so-fun stuff, go out on a limb and get the shot I had originally set out to find. 

Sorry legs, in all faucets of my life I’m pretty serious about getting to where I know I need to be. 

I learned a lesson as the orange sky turned dark and crickets started talking. 
It’s alright to not follow that cow path others may have followed for years. 
Think off the beaten path. 
Make your own way and consider the new opportunity that awaits in making a trail of your own. 

It's true: Some of life’s best moments are captured twenty yards off the beaten cow path, where you run into the thistles and frogs. 

Wordless Wednesday: Never Grow Up

On Memorial Day, my quite extensive (seriously - Dad was one of 12 kids) Bowman family got together for our annual breakfast. This is a heck of a deal. The breakfast is cooked over open flame and serves dozens of people, spanning generations. Many thanks to Brian who married into the family and faces the fire and hot cast iron skillets annually; I went to his wedding - open flames in 80 degree weather was NOT in the vows. 

Not only were babies there for the first time...

Happy Harrison!

there were also four-year-olds that I thought may have straggled over from another reunion on the opposite side of the park. Turns out, we were related. Sorry, kid, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Your dad, my first cousin, graduated high school the same year I was born - how was I to know? To make up for those tears, I’ll give you twenty-five bucks if I’m invited to your high school graduation party in 2027 - but that’s only if you can remember my name. 


Good luck. 

Of course I took my camera, and followed around a crazy little blonde girl I adore so much: My niece Marlee. 

Consider today Jean’s second-ever “Wordless Wednesday” - And special thanks to my fantastic brother-in-law Scott who helped me capture these moments!

This is where things got interesting...Marlee and Cousin both wanted to ride the whale...

Minor break down...

So, Marlee decides to be interested in ants on the whale....

And she gets Cousin off the whale and excited about ants, too!

Then Cousin forgets about whale and Marlee celebrates!

Dirty work is done...

Whale time!

Future so bright...It's Scary!

To you, everything's funny
You got nothing to regret
I'd give all I have, honey
If you could stay like that

Oh, darling, don't you ever grow up, don't you ever grow up
Just stay this little
Oh, darling, don't you ever grow up, don't you ever grow up
It could stay this simple

I won't let nobody hurt you
Won't let no one break your heart
No, no one will desert you
Just try to never grow up, never grow up

Just Like Johnny

Last weekend in Greens Fork we celebrated Johnny Ringo Days. That’s right folks, one of the West’s wildest gun-slingers was born right here in this (now) sleepy town. While I’d like to tell you he learned to be tough the same way we did, out in a pasture playing chicken with a bull, I’m pretty sure those infamous boys of the rangy plains acquired their pistol tricks somewhere west of the Mississippi.  

(I’d like to think) Ringo and I have a lot things in common. 

• We both spent our primitive years in Greens Fork. He moved West and never came home. I moved East...And returned. 
• He got his kicks out of shooting a pistol and rustling cattle. I get my kicks out of shooting a camera and looking at cattle. 
• He kept company like Wyatt Earp. I keep company like Katie Thomas. 
• He rode a horse into town packing heat, I ride a Focus into town with a 6th generation feral dog in the passenger seat. 

Let's not fool anyone. We’re basically brother and sister. 

Can you imagine walking out of the old general store, minding your own business, and coming face to face with someone as mean and ready to fight as Johnny boy (I can call him that; he’s six feet under somewhere in Arizona)?

I can. 

It happened to me once. 

I got home late one Thursday night last summer. It was late-season and I had spent the evening around a bonfire with friends, catching up and enjoying one of the last reasonable nights of the year. I turned my car around in the driveway to find Copernicus, the neighbor goat, in my yard. I parked on the street, set my purse on the trunk, and called the friendly old pet. 


He met me on the street. 

I put my hand in his collar and began leading him down the street just few yards to his driveway. Copernicus was not impressed. Before I knew it he turned around, I lost my grip and...... 

Wait, did I mention Copernicus wasn’t a pygmy goat? 

Cappy (pet name) was a full size billy goat. The family didn’t want a dog like everyone else; they wanted a goat. I remember the first time I saw Cappy, long before I knew who he was. I was home from Washington, DC and sitting in the Greens Fork diner having breakfast with Dad and Luke after feeding cows. I saw a goat walk by the diner window; I rubbed my eyes and wondered if anyone one else had seen what I did?! Dad and Luke agreed; there was a goat walking up the highway. Funny thing about small towns; Dixie can be a gypsy for approximately 17 minutes before someone reports a “dog running down the street...Wait! My son said it was a fox!”. ‘Ol Copernicus could roam all over town, as long as he made it back to his pen by sundown. Have you ever seen a full-size goat roaming town in the middle of the day? No? Well, you haven’t been to Greens Fork. 

Back to the modern day street fight.....

I lost my grip on that old goat and he bucked me with his horns right into the thigh. I was shocked. “Cappy! You jerk!,” I scorned, fairly certain I heard the goat laugh. Before I knew it, the goat was on his hind legs pawing in the air at me. I’m almost embarrassed to say, I was petrified. I grabbed ahold of his collar once again and tried to pet him and calm him down. That didn't work. With out warning, Cappy rammed his horns into my abdomen twice. It was a really horrible feeling. I knew exactly why he did it; he was farm animal who had been domesticated for a couple years. He found a way out of his elaborate pen and felt a little rambunctious. 

He put his head down and started pawing at the ground; I was at the point where I really felt like I was going to be sick because of the pain, and I knew he meant business.  He rammed towards me; before he broke more skin, I grabbed that goat’s horns and gave this head the toughest twist I could give it. 


My only thought, “If I die....at 26.....in the middle of Greens Fork.....during a street fight.......with a GOAT......I'm going to be really, realllllly ticked...”

The super snap to the neck didn’t work...didn’t tug hard enough. 

Cappy came back with a vengeance. Like an idiot, I ran to the nearest street light and stood against it. Cappy reared up on two legs and penned me again the wooden light pole. All I could see where his sharp hooves coming right at me. I ducked and ran to my car and grabbed my phone from the purse. I called the goat’s owner, who happened to be working nights then. He thought I was prank calling him when I said I was in the middle of Maple Street and scared that Cappy was going to kill me. While Cappy was still nailing my legs with his horns, I screamed out the names of my closest neighbors, trying to wake them. They slept through the whole deal. 

Within minutes, Cappy’s “mom” came out of her house and down the driveway screaming, “ Copernicus!! Come here right now!!” And just like that, that mean-as-a-snake old goat lowered his head and walked calmly down the street to his driveway. She unlatched his pen and he went and laid down. 

It didn’t take long for my sympathetic neighbor to feel feel really bad about the street fight that had just taken place. She was a little confused in the beginning, but as soon as I showed her my abdomen and legs, she was furious. 

Within a week, Greens Fork was one less resident/goat. He didn’t die. He went to a farm in the country. 

There are very few times in my life I felt like I was legitimately in danger. One was leaving an event in Washington, DC, walking home across the city alone and having a strange encounter; one was getting my rental car stuck on a wet gravel road/path just 25 miles west of Nowhere, Wyoming with nothing but a camera  and cell phone with out service; and one involved a mangy goat with horns the size of elephant tusks in Greens Fork, Indiana.


I learned one thing that night. Just like Johnny Ringo, if you want to acquire the reputation of a real, rough outlaw, you've got to be fearless and prepared to face anything, anywhere, anytime....Goats included. 


I'm barely prepared for the trash man, who comes to town every Tuesday at 7:03 a.m. on the dot. And I've never been much of a fighter. 

'Tis the Season

I’m starting to hear rumblings about family vacation plans from co-workers. Virginia beaches, California coasts, Florida sand, Idaho fly-fishing and even Australian adventures. Families set out on these well-planned trips and come home with tan lines, trophy catches or surf boards. 

Weird. We always came home with frost bite, 13 shampoo and conditioner sets and about 20 lbs. of continental breakfast fruit from the Three Rivers Holiday Inn. 

We rarely took vacations off the farm growing up; any child of agriculture reading this blog understands where I’m coming from. It certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but it sure made you thankful that most families vacationed in the summer when school was out. Can you imagine coming into class and having to look at a classmate’s jar of seashells and sand when you just got done cleaning out and bedding pens?!

I remember one summer when Mom kept on Dad for never taking us anywhere exciting.  Boy, did she come to regret that. Dad asked her to pack a change of clothes for everyone, frisbees, hola-hoops and a couple meals to travel. Within an hour my well-organized Momma had us all ready to go. 

Smoky Mountains, you ask? 

Nope. Dad drove us to I-70 (1 mile from home) and took us to the rest-stop that was just off the next exit - 2 miles from our home. We “vacationed” in a rest area we could have seen from our farm, had the leaves been off the trees. 

It’s the little things. 

And I know you’re wondering. We didn’t spend the night. 

No questions asked, we did take one snowy, numb vacation a year. We drove to Pittsburgh and watched the mighty Steelers dominate the opponent annually. This was back in the Neil O’Donnell days...

14 may or may not have been my lucky number for 5ish years. 

These were great vacations. We usually had fantastic seats and loved being able to hear the player profanity in real life; much like getting an education without having to step foot in the classroom. It was always frigid and Mom spent the majority of the games in the women’s restroom under the hand dryer. Us kids always stuck it out with Dad, who loved the jumbo pretzels but was always too numb to notice he had a tablespoon of spicy mustard stuck in his mustache. Ahhhh, the good old days. 

I remember those trips pretty well. Except for the one where there were only four football tickets for the five of us. Wanna guess which kid stayed home and didn’t get to go watch the Steelers play?

The one blamed for breaking the family symmetry. 

Young Jean

I guess my parents thought they’d leave me home because I would be too young to remember it. False. I don’t remember who watched me that week, but I do remember rebelling by hiding under my bed every evening and brushing my teeth with Kool-Aid before I went to bed. I also remember the “gift” my siblings returned with to compensate for leaving me at home: a picture of Laura and Luke with the a few of the Steelers players. 

Really? 

Really.

No questions asked, I got my sense of adventure from Dad. While Mom swore she heard banjos playing if she didn’t know the exact milage to the nearest hospital, Dad was the one who lead us out on great adventures. Days before the trip he’d pull out an atlas, ask one of us kids to close our eyes, and do the ‘ol swirl and stop trick on the map. Where ever our finger stopped, we went.

Grand Canyon, you ask? 

Nope - Turnip Hole, Pennsylvania

View Larger Map

It’s a real bad feeling when you drive around on winding roads for 45 minutes and can’t find the town that the toothless old man at the last gas station said should have been....right.....here. There was no GPS. There was no cell phone. Just one confused father, one nervous mother and three impatient kids. 

Dad broke down and stopped at a house; the only house we saw in 10 miles. 

On the porch was an old man; as I remember it he had to have been 173 years old and 450 lbs, wearing bib overalls with no shirt underneath. He sat in a recliner out on his front porch next to the washer and dryer, which his foamy-mouth grey dog was sitting on. He had approximately 7 strands of white hair combed over from one ear to the other and was chewing a soggy cigar.

“We’re looking for Turnip Hole - did we miss it?” Dad yelled from the car window. Heck no, he didn’t get out. 

The old man howled. “Miss is it?! Hell, ya’lls in it! This hea is Turnip Hole, Pensi-vana and I have been the Maya of this village for long nea 59 yeas - since I was long ‘bout 19! Born en raised in dees hills en I don’t suppose I’ll eva be leavin’”

Ohhhhh my. 

While Dad laughed about the the whole deal, the three of us kids, who expected to see a pretty deep hole with tons of turnips in it, were thoroughly confused and highly disappointed. There was nothing in the burg except for one jolly old man hopped up on soggy tobbacco and his dog, which I’m fairly certain was half wolf. 

To make up for it, Dad changed the plan and drove us north to Niagara Falls. 

Ahhhh, nothing like riding along a major waterfall with a Momma who hates water....

Some look back at our family vacations and wonder how we lived through them. We made it through pretty easily, I’ve always thought. We didn’t have a luxury SUV or XM radio. We had each other, the alphabet game, a car that had room for a middle passenger in the front seat, should matters in back get too rambunctious and continental breakfast fruit that always held us over until the next meal. We never went anywhere that sold postcards or keychains, but we sure had fun getting carsick together amongst those American backroads. Made for really great memories. 

Stop in Mars, Pennsylvania

Generally speaking, we spent more time in any given Mom-n-Pop shop learning about the the local culture than we ever spent in any museum. I guess that is why the three of us have no problem talking to anyone with any background these days. I will admit, we went to Disney World one year; it wasn’t quite what any of us expected and I suppose one day I’ll tell you all why. 

I have a good friend who remembers her "last family vacation"; the one where the kids forgot to speak to the parents because cell phones had arrived and it took a month after they got home to even realize they'd been to the Grand Canyon and back. That trip ended their vacation time together. 

I don't know. I guess I'm such a traditionalist that I still believe one day we'll load up the crew, from grandparents to grandkids and set off on the next big adventure to.....

maybe Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati?

Guess that's why they say, "The family that survives vacations together in podunk America, will happily survive anything"


 They do say that, right?