The Dynamic Duo

Well, its been an exciting week with lots going on in Idaho. Jim (UB’s little brother) is fighting a big forest fire near Boise in very rugged terrain. There are a lot of very big forest fires, due to the hot, dry conditions, and recently, a couple of young firefighters working for the Forest Service were killed in a fire near Salmon.
Johnny (of recent poetic fame) has garnered notoriety once again; his engine crew had their pictures taken with the Blue Angels, the Navy’s precision flying team, who will be performing at the soon to be World Famous Arco Air Show tomorrow. Arco is 30 miles from Howe (where I live), and is where I work and where UB went to High School. It has a population of about 1,000. It is a VERY big deal for the Blue Angels to be coming to Arco, and the town isn’t really sure how to go about getting ready for upwards of 50,000 people inundating their town. Today and yesterday, the 6 aircraft and pilots that comprise the Blue Angels were practicing, and the whole town turned out to watch. It was breathtaking watching the close formations; sometimes they flew so low, one could read the writing on the wings of the plane. I am looking forward to watching them, and many other aerobatic pilots tomorrow as we wend our way through throngs of people in 90 degree (Farenheit) heat. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Also, we are getting our manufactured house put on a permanent foundation starting Monday, so will be unable to live in said house til the work is completed. We will be staying with John’s brother, so hopefully, will not wear out our welcome. It should be interesting; they are going to jack up the house and work underneath it to complete the foundation work. So, I will probably not have access to a computer for a week or two. So, if I don’t post for a couple of weeks, IT IS NOT MY FAULT!

Okay, I know that what you REALLY want are more tantalizing, embarrassing tidbits from the childhood of the enigma whom we know as UltraBob. Rachna, I really thought about writing about that Mexican jail thing, but since UB made the whole thing up (or else has been in a Mexican jail without my knowledge or permission, and since I am no good at prevaricating (no, really I’m not), I decided that I must only write the truth. I noticed that since I branched out a little bit creatively , I have had very little response from readers… I shamelessly crave your approval, so I’ll end with this charming little UltraBob childhood tale.

Important to this narrative are a couple of definitions:
Liverwurst: a sausage containing ground liver, or other ingredients having the taste of liver

Afterbirth: Placenta and fetal membranes expelled from the womb after birth

When I was first married, my husband was running a dairy farm. He milked cows twice a day in a semi-primitive barn (with electric milking machines), and calves were continually being born.After the calves were born, they were taken from their mothers and raised on a bottle with “calf milk replacer”. I know it sounds cruel, but the cows really didn’t seem to mind. It used to take me almost as long to feed all those calves as it took John to do the milking. But I digress. Later, after John tired of the hard work and of the low price of his product, we sold the dairy cows and calves, but still usually kept a few cows around.
Sometimes, we took Bob (probably about 4 yrs old) out to watch the miracle of birth, including the expulsion of the afterbirth, which the cow often times ate after completely licking off her calf. Bob was fascinated.
I had a dog at that time; my first dog actually. He was a black Irish setter, a cross between an Irish and Gordon. Jeff was the sweetest dog in the world, but not the brightest. He also enjoyed the birth of the calves, though perhaps for different reasons, and was always told to “scram” when we caught him sneaking into the corrals.
(On a side note, Bob had recently been visiting his grandparents who sometimes ate liverwurst for lunch. I think that Bob was not particularly fond of this delicacy.)

One summer day little Bobby came running into the house from the yard, where he had been playing, in great agitation. ” Hurry Mom. Come quick. Jeff has the liverwurst!”
Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest. What Jeff really had was not liverwurst at all, but the expelled placenta of a recent bovine birth. Jeff was not at all happy to have his prize confiscated, and then had to suffer the further indignity of a bath to remove a powerful stench. I’m not sure if he ever figured out that Bob “ratted on him” or not. After that, afterbirth had a new euphenism. And a new family legend was created.
Sincerely Yours,
UltraMom