Jedi and Ruth Flake

When I was young the Branch President of the little LDS church in Young was Jedi Flake.  He owned the Bar-X Ranch, and our families became friends.  The Flakes had young children, and it was nice for us to have friends to play with when we went to church.  Their oldest little girl was nick-named Silver, and we thought she was awfully lucky to have such a cool name.

Once in a while we visited the Flakes at their ranch.  Their farmhouse was big and old fashioned, and it was lots of fun to get to know them better.  They had a pond behind their house, full of little sunfish. When we put our little fingers in the water, the fish would come up and nibble them.  Maybe they thought we were worms.

One Sunday when Keith and was staying at the cabin with Grandma and Grandpa they stopped to visit at the ranch on their way home from church.  While Grandpa and Grandma visited, Keith and his cousin went out back and let the fish nibble their pinkies.  When Grandpa found out, he was mad at them for going fishing on Sunday.  He had promised that they could come back to the Bar-X on Monday to ride mules, but he wouldn’t take them after all because they had broken the Sabbath Day.

 Once we were invited to the Bar-X to watch a rodeo.  We sat on the fence around their corral and watched as they rode horses and roped cows and had lots of fun.  Later they let each of us ride their horses, or at least sit on them for a minute.  I was really nervous about getting up on those huge animals.  You know, horses look pretty normal until you get up close, and when you sit on their backs you discover just how tall they really are!

One of the fun things about the Bar X Ranch were the peacocks that roosted in the big tree across the road from their house.  We always watched for those peacocks when we drove into Young.  Even after Jedi and Ruth moved the peacocks lived in those trees for a long time.  It was always surprising to drive by and see them sitting on a limb, but the best part was when one of the male peacocks was strutting around the yard, showing his tail off for the females.  Those tails were so beautiful!

One summer Sunday Jedi told Dad that he and his cowboys would be working in the meadow across the creek from our cabin during the following week.  They were rounding up cows to brand them.  Jedi invited Keith to join them if he’d like to help, so on Monday morning Keith walked down to the creek, crossed it, and climbed up into the meadow to help the cowboys.  He must have been about 12 years old at the time.  All morning the rest of us kids listened to the moos of cows and the calls of cowboys as they rounded up their cattle.  We could smell the fire they built to heat up their branding irons.  About noon Keith came walking back up the hill to the cabin.  He looked kind of white and sick, and Mom suggested he stay home the rest of the afternoon.  It turned out that being a cowboy wasn’t as much fun as he thought it was going to be.

Jedi and Ruth sold the Bar-X to someone else and moved away after a few years.  I always remembered them, it seemed so strange to drive by the ranch and not know the people who lived there.  They had become our friends, and I often wondered what had become of them.  It was sure fun, five years ago, to move to Snowflake and find that this was their home.  Jedi had passed away a few years earlier, but Ruth and her children are still here, and I see her often.  It feels like coming home whenever I do, especially now that Mom and Dad have also passed away.  Somehow, visiting with Ruth makes me feel safe again.