LIVING HISTORY
across the screen for a few seconds when the ABC television
program Discovery 1968 did a 30-minute feature on the ranch
and the Sloans.
Besides the horses, the menagerie around the barn over the
years included Moses and Warren, the tame deer, and Spots
the pig, a wild hog Kathy and Debra raised at their home and
later retired it to the ranch. There were also cow, hog and bird
dogs in the pens, including for several years, my dad and his
friend Vinnie Gorham’s English Pointers, Speck and Laura,
which they had acquired for quail hunting.
READY FOR A JEEP RIDE?
Our most common pastime was riding around in the Jeep,
first in the old Willys in which a couple of kids could sit up
front on the bench with mom and dad and the rest of us on
the benches over the wheel base in the back.
Then Vinnie Gorham, who owned the road-contracting
company Gorham Construction, had his shop crew outfit a
newer Jeep with a dog box and a bench seat over it, a setup
that elevated the bench and provided a terrific vantage point
for seeing game if you were hunting or, in our case, for taking
in panoramic views of the ranch on Sunday afternoons.
Depending on schedules and desires, we visited the ranch
in smaller groups and when hunting. That was when Dad
would usually just take one boy at a time, rotating who the
lucky one would be. When we were all on the Jeep I’m sure
we looked like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies or The
Grapes of Wrath.
If Dad was just taking one or a few of us, we’d drive Old
the Blue, his 1957 rusty blue Ford Mainline with holes on the
floorboard that gave you a view of the terrain over which we
were traversing, to the ranch.
If it was a family outing, more often we’d take Mom’s ’67
Plymouth Fury wagon, nicknamed New The White, in which
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Dan Grigas takes the Jeep for a ride with Catherine and Meg Enns and their
great-uncle and great-aunt, Bob and Christine Gladwin.
the two youngest, Meg and Jonathan, were stowed, without
seatbelts, in the middle luggage compartment. Once aboard
the Jeep, we’d sing a highly repetitious verse we’d made up
called “Old The Blue and New The White.’’
After driving down the long marl road from the ranch entrance,
we’d reach the headquarters, get out and switch to the
Jeep, which was kept under the barn near the cowpens.
LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOONS
Arriving at the headquarters, there’d be any number of
people taking advantage of the Sunday afternoon off. Sometimes
one of the cowboys was scalding a hog in the big pot in
the motor barn near the cow pens. You could also often find
GREGORY ENNS
The ranch headquarters at Cow Creek has changed little over the past 50 years.
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