When I was quite young, my dad gave my sister, and me each a calf. I am not real sure that they were ours or whether we just claimed them. We did, however, train them to ride and to hitch single or double, just like a horse or a team of horses. We could make them do anything within reason, but no one else including our dad, could do anything with them.

One time, when Carmelita’s calf was about a year old, Paul Streeter, a neighbor boy, who was about the same age as Carmelita, decided that he would show us that he could ride our calves too. He got on and almost immediately got off again, not by choice, but by request from the calf. Some how or other he had gotten one of his hands entangled in some of the rigging and that calf took him, skidding on his belly, around the corner of the corn crib and out through the barnyard, cow dung and all. However, the only thing that was really hurt was Paul’s pride, but it did destroy his determination to ride our calves.