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It May Not Seem Fair
She was part
Of what held
This family together
When it didn't want or
Didn't think it needed
To be held
Now she tells me
Of growing up on the ranch
In the early nineteen hundreds
Why their father left
Coming by with money
Putting in a couple days of work
Then heading back out
As the held together
Four young girls and their mother
On a ranch
Needing at least
Two stong men
Just to hold the horses
Horses that were halter broke
Yet still needed to learn
To repond
To the bridles
Givin instructions
They needed
To be taught
But never question way
They would turn
Trot canter pause
Cut gallop or stop short
When they felt
The pull in their mouths
The slap on their flanks
Expected to be saddled
Carry pull
And be ridden
For the rest of
Their lives
Working a ranch
Herding a small
String of beef cattle
And milk cows
Guess he was not ready for that
He drove his six horse team
Trained to haul heavy loads
Logs - railroad ties - or
With high sideboards
Loads of tanbark
The girls had turkeys and pigs
To raise
Cows to milk
Chickens to feed
Kill pluck and clean
Eggs to collect candle and sell
Deer they shot
Needed to be dressed out
Venison jerky seasoned hung to dry
Tall green stalks of corn to grow
Apples to pick and put up
Pots to clean
A garden to tend
Vegetables to sell or barter
For flour salt coffee fabric
Lanterns to trim and light
Clothes to mend and wash by hand
And then hang to dry
All by hand
Without his
He was in town or
Out of town on the road
In the winter he drove
The mail coach
Three day drive north to Eureka
Overnight stops for supper
Fresh horses
After meals for passengers and locals
Playing his fiddle for dancing
Drinks for the driver
The trip in a car now takes
Only about an hour
Up the Redwood Highway
Not a fair race
We don't go by the way of
Briceland Ettersburg
Redway Garberville
Out Bells Springs Road
To pick up and deliver mail
On to Harris Alderpoint Fort Steward
And in between
Laying up overnight
Back to Phillipsville
Through Miranda Meyers Flat
Shively Pepperwood
Stafford Scotia Rio Dell
and Alton before again
Overnight in Fortuna
I have been shown where the coach stop was
Fresh horses more dancing
An early start on to Eureka
She has told me
More stories
As I listened this morning
She tells me of things
From my parents to her grandparents
Living on the South Fork of the Eel River
She has outlived
Her three sisters
She is the last
Now giving me
An explanation of why
Their father left
A wife to run a ranch and raise
Four young daughters by herself
On her mother's family homestead
poem
by
Tom J. Mariani
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