The Calf Man Gerry Hubbard

The Calf Man

A feed bag on the mail box meant we had a calf to sell
And Paul “The Calf Man” Rickenburg, who always drove like hell

Would stop by in the morning to try and buy the calf
And he always started dickering at market price by half

He drove a dusty pick up truck with a high wood body box
On the left side was a small hinged door with a rusty old hasp lock

He always had ‘bout six or eight small calves there in his truck
That he sold to the Prattsville slaughter house just trying to make a buck

The deal all done he’d throw the calf real roughly through the door
It wound up sprawled & bruised & bleating on the hard truck floor.

One time my Dad gave me a calf to buy a baseball glove
A Rawlings “Marty Marion” Coach Everett Hubbard loved

“Hub” could buy gloves through the school at just about half price
For a young farm boy without a dime that deal seemed pretty nice

I was singing in the milk house, washing out the milk machines
When Paul stopped in to buy the calf, I was barely in my teens

He poked and pinched & weighed that calf and then he sadly said
“If I don’t take this off your hands, by night time he’ll be dead.

We talked and haggled for a while then he said “What the heck”
And quickly wrote in scraggly hand a blue twelve dollar check.

I bought the glove and nurtured it with lots of Neat’s Foot Oil
And played a little second base for the baseball team that fall

Then Reggie Haskin borrowed it & I never got it back
He said somebody took it while he worked out on the track.

So now that glove’s been gone for years and probably so has Paul
But I can still remember back and clearly see it all.

A young farm boy with lot’s of dreams alone there on that farm
And Paul “The Calf Man” Rickenburg walking slowly to the barn.