The inside of a half-ton that is used on a farm has a smell all its own. Is it dust? Is it straw? Manure? I’m not sure, but this morning when I got into the old half-ton to hide for a few minutes from the steady rain, there it was, familiar as old shoes, and just as comforting.

I’d been enlisted to go along out to the north pasture to bring a cow and her calf home. The cow is too skinny and yesterday appeared to be wobbly, so they want her here where they can feed her up and keep a watchful eye on her. So Loverboy, his brother B, Pa, and I drove out in two trucks, hauling a livestock trailer behind one.

I stood out there shivering beneath my black umbrella while the three of them decided how to set up panels and gates for optimum herding, and then helped dump chop onto the ground from five-gallon pails while B struck out on foot across the field to urge the cattle toward us. Normally they come stampeding over as soon as they see someone, but this morning perhaps the rain affected the way sound carried and they couldn’t hear the repeated calls of “ka-boss!”

Finally they came, the cow and calf were quickly cut from the herd and loaded into the trailer, and we were on our way home ... until the greasy road impeded Pa’s progress with the trailer and he and B ended up leaving Loverboy and I waiting in one truck while they went to get the tractor to pull it out.

But oh, the cursing and yelling! All three of them are as bad as each other, and if I could not see who was speaking, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish which was Loverboy and which was his father. They all fly off the handle the moment the other one does not read their minds or things don’t go just right. I wanted to be a million miles away while they were going for each other’s throats.