You may find it surprising, maybe off-putting
when I tell you a favorite childhood recollection-- riding the gut sledge to the dump a mile or so from the home ranch. Hooked with a chain to a John Deere tractor, the wooden sledge was piled with entrails, stomachs, a mound of intestines, and a six-year old child in coveralls on the back of the sledge, dragging a stick in the dust, my black and white rat terrier trotting behind. It might seem odd that I remember with fondness watching the butchering of a beef for the ranch larder, the way the hanging carcass seemed like a cave, the blue, white, silver cavity cleaned with cold water, The concentration of the hired hand, the sound of his knife on the whetstone, Now I know what a privilege to be a participatant, even by watching, and to remember the blessing at my grandparents’ table: “Bless this food to our use, that it may nourish and strengthen our bodies.” |
AuthorNancy Harris McLelland taught creative writing, composition, and literature for over twenty years and Conducted writing workshops for the Western Folklife Center, Great Basin College , and the Great Basin Writing Project . An Elko County native with a background in ranching. McLelland has presented her "Poems from Tuscarora" Both at daytime and evening events at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Her essay, "Border Lands: Cowboy Poetry and the Literary Canon" is in the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters . Categories |