When I was growing up we made trips to McBride once or twice a year. Mostly these were day trips but there was at least one overnight campout. It was a challenge to get to the canyon. We had to enter the ranch — Bivins Coldwater Cattle Company back then — and navigate the dirt ranch roads to the ranch house. I say navigate because if there had been rain at the very least the roads would be rutted and there could even be benign-looking but treacherous puddles concealing mud that would suck a vehicle in right down to the axel. Our family car was a low-slung Pontiac entirely unsuitable for off-roading. Continue reading “Our early visits”
Our early visits
by rakeeter 
Joyce kept two black hens from the first batch of chickens she raised when that flock had gotten too old to lay. The two were pets, more or less, and while one died some time ago, she thinks one of the black hens she has now is the other from the first flock. That hen has always wanted to sit on a clutch of eggs but was never allowed to since the eggs were needed for human consumption. For a while now the egg production generally from the current flock has been light and spotty. It appears Joyce will allow the current flock to live out their lives and not replace them with a new flock. 
McBride, David Nichols (1849-1928). David Nichols McBride, Panhandle rancher was born on October 22, 1849, in Henry County, Illinois. In the 1870’s he arrived at Fort Sill, Indian Territory and made a living by trading in horses and other items with the Indians on the reservation. There, on July 2, 1876, he married Abigail Catherine Stringer, a native of Indiana who was teaching at the agency school.