I’ve got a pitchfork hanging in my kitchen, one my son wants to inherit. It’s wooden, and old, at least a hundred years, likely much more. On the bill of sale beside the fork, you can see that my grandpa bought it for 75 cents at his father’s estate auction.
And you can see that the tines on the fork aren’t even. The tip of one is broken off, by my dad, when he was young and impatient with a bull. From the fuddergang, the feeding alley, he had already pitched the morning hay into the mangers of the horses. They had stood nicely back, making my dad’s job easy.
But then, he came to the bull, a pure-bred Jersey. Once this bull had been a docile, curious calf, likeable and easily led, at least with a staff clipped to its nose ring.
But now he was 1200 pounds of brawn, gentle one moment, but aggressive the next. And this was not his best morning.
Each time my dad tried to pitch the hay, the bull blocked the fork, over and over. Finally, my dad decided to show who was boss and brought the fork down across the head of the bull, breaking a tine.
“You know what happened to that bull?” my dad asks as he tells me this story.
The glint in his eyes is noticeable, until he grimaces and uses two hands to shift his leg.
“Some years later,” he says, “after the bull grew even meaner, your grandpa harnessed up a team of horses and hitched them to a wagon. He laced a rope into the bull’s nose ring and tied the rope to the wagon. And he told the horses to giddy-up.”
Only they couldn’t. The bull wouldn’t go. He propped himself against the wagon, skidded his feet, and refused to take a step. The bull had made a decision. And no amount of prodding helped.
My grandpa changed tactics. He put a staff into the nose ring of the bull and led it across the fields and up a hill to the slaughterhouse.
But my grandpa wasn’t stupid. The horses pulling the wagon came right along with them. And on the wagon was a farm hand with a rifle. Just in case.
My dad flinches from leg pain as he leans back in his chair and folds his arms. I rarely see gloat in his eyes. But at this moment I do.
“Now, why do you want a pitchfork hanging in your kitchen?” he asks me.
And I’m not sure.
But I do.
Apple to Apple 