Herd Them, Chase Them, Cuss Them

How a Mother Got her Children Home from Sunday Mass in the Middle of a Cattle Drive

Oct 21, 2022

So begins Russ Mullen’s latest memoir excerpt in The Blazing Star Journal, a new online magazine launched by AgArts. Mullen, an emeritus professor of agronomy at Iowa State University, grew up on a diversified family farm in southern Cass County. His mother was a devout Catholic, his father an atheist. Against the wishes of their families, they joined forces in the 1950s to raise a herd of cattle and a large family of children.

“I learned my land conservation ethic from the family farm of my childhood,” Mullen told me.

And I’d guess he got his smarts and wit from his parents.

In his memoir excerpt, Mullen, riding his horse Poncho, dramatizes a cattle drive, the whole family moving their herd 12 miles down gravel and dirt roads.

I closed on the bull who was lagging behind. He was an enigma. He wanted to keep close to the herd but he didn’t want to be bullied in front of his harem and used some blustering head movements to show his leadership and power. His looks backed up his bluster. He had a massive head and shoulders, but it was those two horns that signaled trouble. One horn angled up and one horn angled downward and forward. He was a bull that could gore you to the right, to the left, and to the front. I was surprised that he didn’t have a horn on his tail so he could gore you from behind! He turned and faked a charge when I approached him with Poncho. Poncho used a four-legged stop and shifted into reverse. I lurched forward but stayed on the saddle. We waited, unmoving. The bull changed direction and returned to the herd on the north side next to the creek running through the corner. I could feel Poncho relax under me and my own legs relaxing too. The crisis was averted, but not forgotten.

And the next crisis was just down the road. Vaca Loca waited to greet Russ and his siblings.

The only thing Vaca Loca heard was the internal command to charge. She bolted out of her stance like someone poked her behind and snorted some derogatory label and cuss word at Jeff in cattle language. Jeff easily translated and backpedaled, scared to turn his back to the charging cow. She bore down on him and closed fast.

He stumbled on a rock, lost his balance and fell on his back. He raised his boots to absorb the impact of the head butt and to use her head as a momentary brace to pivot his body away from trampling legs. It was a fortunate decision. Vaca Loca stopped her charge just as his boots touched her forehead. She focused and butted them several times. . .

In the middle of the cattle drive, Patricia, the devout Catholic, insisted that her children stop and attend Sunday Mass. Her children teased her about driving home so slowly, so she answered their taunts with some herding instincts of her own.

Barb fell back into Steve’s lap when the big Buick roared to freedom, down the hill faster and faster. I was in the front seat and looked at the accelerator. It was pushed flat against the floorboard, no wiggling, no wavering, just a small, black short-heeled dress shoe that couldn’t possibly be part of our sweet, cautious, church-loving Mom. Fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five – all joking and comments ceased. Ten hands gripped the front car seat and 16 eyes stared at the windshield. When the speedometer reached 80, the only sounds were the roaring motor and gravel pinging the car.

“Better slow down, Mom.”
“I’m scared.”
“Mom, slow down, or you’re going to get us all killed,” we started shouting.
Mom braked hard to make the corner, resumed her cautious gravel road speed, and calmly turned to us and said that she didn’t want to hear any more comments about a slow driver. But I saw her from my front row, passenger seat – a young Patricia Waters. Her scarf barely holding on to flying hair, dark eyes flaming, nostrils flaring over a jaw set in firm determination. She was flushed with excitement, spirited, reckless. A young, Catholic woman throwing caution to the wind and arguing with her parents that she was going to marry that rough heathen, nicknamed ‘Moon Mullen.’ I smiled knowing that this momentary glimpse into her youth was the reason we were all here in this car.

Steve asked if we all trusted the good in Mom during the last half mile. We all had our doubts for the rest of the way home. When we pulled into the driveway, Danny ran to Dad. Danny’s sandy, sun-bleached hair, cut in a butch style, made him look bald from a distance. Hence Dad nicknamed him ‘Baldy,’ a family nickname that stuck with him into adulthood.

“Dad, we got saved from Mom today at church!” Baldy shouted.
Dad glanced at Mom with eyebrows raised. Mom was herding her flock out of the car toward the house in an unsynchronized parade march that only 18 legs — ranging from one to three feet long — could muster. There wasn’t a song in the world that could harmonize this march. She returned his look with an all-business glare.
“If you want to help me change the kids’ clothes, clean the house and peel potatoes for lunch, I will tell you all about it.”

Read Russ Mullen’s full sample chapter from his memoir.

Read Mullen's Full Chapter

Herd Them, Chase Them, Cuss Them

How a Mother Got her Children Home from Sunday Mass in the Middle of a Cattle Drive

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