D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
February
2008
Voice of Ranch Woman, Part Four
Page: 2That's just what it is — it's a waste of money.
Our daughter-in-law said, "I think Valentine's Day is the stupidest holiday. We should show our love to each other all the time, not just on that day."
That was very well stated.
Jerry is a McDonald and his mother was a McCauley, and our children have always been really proud of their Irish ancestry.
So when Matt got called to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to Ireland, Jerry's sister took up a collection and paid for us to go to Ireland and pick Matt up off his mission.
Matt took us around to all the people that he had taught the Gospel to. In one place, this sister's husband had just baked a sweetbread, and I thought I'd help her butter the bread. So I was buttering that bread, and pretty soon she grabbed that knife from me, and she put butter on that bread about a half an inch thick.
That's just the way Jerry is. I thought, "You know what, I should have come to Ireland a long time ago. I would have understood that man so much better."
Because he's an Irishman.
He loves to feed people, and he wants them to have all they want to eat, and it makes him happy to do that.
So we do, we feed a lot of people here at the ranch.
Jerry's family left Ireland before the Famine. The McCauleys left from Carrickfergus in the 1700s, and the McDonalds left in 1833. Grandma Mary Ellen McDonald's husband left before she did.
We went to the place in Ireland where she sailed from, Dingle, in County Kerry.
She was so afraid of the water. She was scared to death of the water, but she knew that she had to leave, too. She would go down to the seaside and she'd go, "How will I know where to go? There's no stone wall to follow." Because there were stone walls all over Ireland.
Her husband had sailed over; then they sent two children with friends, and then she still had two children left. One of them was four years old, and one was only two.
She boarded the ship and set sail for Newfoundland and her two-year-old baby got sick and died. She had to bury him at sea. She could never even go back to the grave.
But she went on.
They lived in Newfoundland for 20 years and then they came to the Midwest, and from there the McDonalds came across, from Iowa.
Actually, Jerry's grandfather Jeremiah McDonald ran away from home because his mother had died — but that's another story.
I continue to love Jerry even more as time goes on. Jerry's the hub of everything that goes on in my life and on this ranch, because of his value system and the way he looks at things.
He has a talent — we've talked about this in our family a lot. Everybody he's around, he makes feel like they're important.
Then he starts expecting things of you. It doesn't matter if it's some teenager in his Sunday school class, or if it's one of his children, he just makes people feel like they can achieve things.
He's a very well-respected man in the community. People love him. They respect him and they look to him as a spiritual leader.
Of course, he came from a respected family. But he's kept that up.
In some ways, he's a real McDonald. But in some ways he was actually more influenced as a young child by the McCauleys as far as his character. I don't know if it was an inherited character, or if he learned it, because he spent so much of his time with his McCauley grandparents when he was going to school.
He does things different than his McDonald dad, Jonnie, did. When they're out working cattle, McDonalds never hollered. Now, if you weren't doing something right, they might run over you with their horse and get you straightened out. But they never hollered.
But the McCauleys did. Of course, the McCauleys had nine children, and when you've got that many kids. . . .
Jerry took that attribute. He hollers when he works cattle.
But Jerry doesn't get nervous and jittery in a serious situation. That's a McDonald trait. Like when Grandpa Jonnie McDonald's brother, Taylor, died, he said, "Well, I guess I better go check the water."
Grandpa Jonnie McDonald also had the philosophy, you do the best you can each day. Jerry also tells me, "We'll just take it one day at a time." That's a McDonald philosophy.
But if you asked Jerry whether he is more McDonald or McCauley, I don't know how he'd answer you.
You do what you are expected to do, you do what you are asked to do and you do it to the end. You don't quit. That's the McDonald way.
When we were at the Cienega and the ranch division was going on, they were wanting us out of there. I said to Grandpa Jonnie McDonald, "They want us out of there, Grandpa." And he says, "We said we'd get out the end of June, and we're gonna get out the end of June."
He didn't tell me, "Now you go home and hush." But the intonation was: "You go back down there and you sit there and you do what you've been expected to do." He wasn't harsh with me. He just said, "We'll get out when we said we'd get out."
Then I was in the 4H Club, and we were having some problems and I said, "I think I'll just quit. I'm not going to do this anymore." Grandpa McDonald came up here specifically to say, "You're not going to quit."
So I didn't quit.
That's been something that's been taught to our kids. You don't give up and you don't quit.
Another McDonald-McCauley philosophy is that you always look out for the underdog.
I'm keeping a record of things Jerry says, because that man has a way of putting things. He'll still come up with a new saying I haven't heard. Sometimes he makes it up; sometimes it's a McDonald saying; sometimes it's a McCauley saying.
He was talking about the skid loader, and to describe the boys' ability with the skid loader, he said, "Those boys can pick their nose with that skid loader." Can you just imagine?
About somebody: "You could run an elephant across the pasture with a slicker tied to its tail and he wouldn't see it!"
Jerry took his generator down to get it fixed and they weren't fixing it. So he called them up and said, "It's been there long enough to grow a new one!"
Or Jerry will say, "The grass is getting green. Gerry Billings and I were down on our hands and knees looking at it." That meant it was very short.
"You sick?" he told a friend of ours. "You might be able to find some horehound. It might not make you well, but it'll make you forget what you had."
Once I announced, "Buffalo meat is good for women, so let's be getting a buffalo." Jerry said, "We'll just get one skinny cow."
He said to David McCauley — they were going to work cattle — "You got to round up the kids and the cattle!" Because when the kids are young they get lost when they're out there working. He had to round me up, too.
"That gun would scatter fur over three zip codes. Can you hit the broad side of a barn when you're in it with that new gun?"
"He hits that jug pretty good, but he's never sick. Better than a flu shot!"
Talking about our grandson Foster being in bed: "Gravity grabbed him and he's in bed. Foster, get up, breakfast is ready. The Might Giant arises! It's a good thing you didn't get up all at once, the house would have fell on you."
"Getting ahead of Granny is like trying to smack a marble. It always slips out."
Poor Granny says, "I can hear a car comin'," and Jerry says, "No, you've got ticks in your ears."