Stretching Fence

It was just another hot, dusty day on the Earl Platt ranch. Several of us cowboys had the job of repairing some badly worn-out fence at the East Barth pasture. The East Barth is a property Earl owned in New Mexico, about 35 miles east of St Johns. It was one of the furthest points on the ranch. It took at least an hour to get there and another hour to decide whether we wanted to start working or not! 

  The first order of business was to get rid of the existing tangled wire. The fence section was nearly a quarter mile long. We spent the rest of the morning cutting the barbed wire from the posts or removing staples. Luckily, the posts were still in fairly good condition. Digging post holes in clay is an all-day job, for each hole! Plus, we would have to drive several miles to find a cedar tree with large enough limbs to work as replacement posts.

  We rolled the old wire as best as we could and threw the spools into a developing erosion gully. The environmentalists would have loved us! By then, it was time for lunch. On the ranch, it is extremely important to follow a strict lunch schedule that does not change. The schedule is quite easy. First, we ate our lunches. Secondly, we took a 2-hour nap! This was easier since the boss was in town, probably eating at the cafe, 35 miles away. At his top speed of 15 mph, we would be home eating dinner before he could show up to check up on us. Lunch time siestas are not the same without shade, so we set out driving across the hills in search of a shady cedar. We found an adequate shade tree and promptly fell asleep. We probably scared animals for miles around from our chorus of snores. The nap was then followed by some exploring of a large Indian ruin that we had unknowingly parked on. A few arrowheads and quite a number of colorful pottery shards later, we decided that we had better get to work. 

  We unrolled the large roll of barbed wire by attaching one end to a braced post and rolling the heavy bundle down the line of fence posts. One full roll was just enough to reach the entire length. The clock was ticking and we didn't want to spend another day on the fence, so we decided to hurry things up a bit. 

 The usual method for tightening the wire on a fence is through the use of a wire stretcher. This is done by either a ratcheting or pulley device with one end attached to the wire and the other to a brace post. The ratchet or pulley, known as a come-along, was operated by hand to tighten the wire. After the wire was tightened sufficiently, we would attach the wire to the post by using baling wire or u-shaped staples. We had decided, however, that this particular method, though tried and true, was too slow. Once again, when cowboys get ideas, it is often a dangerous combination. We rolled the wire, attached the end to a metal bar secured to the pickup and slowly drove forward. The wire was so tight we could have played a fiddling tune on it. We were thrilled by our sheer intelligence and ingenuity. Three of the four wires were stretched and attached to the posts within an hour. One wire was left, the bottom.

 We rolled the last wire, attached it to the drop hitch, and began to stretch it. We had already decided that all the Cowboys must be in the cab of the truck for safety reasons. Thank heavens we had decided on that particular rule. We soon found the reason this was necessary. 

The truck got stuck on a hump of grass and the driver, who remains the anonymous author to this day, gunned the motor slightly to get over the hump. As the truck lurched forward, all four of us heard the small ping behind us and instinctively ducked. Within seconds, the truck was encased in a tangle of barbed wire. It took at least 30 minutes and four sets of wire cutters to untangle the truck for the drive home. We had to make new plans to return in the morning to fix our error.

  As we drove toward the main road, along the fence, we discovered the mess we would have to clean up in the morning. The best we could tell was that the wire broke somewhere toward the middle. The wire had recoiled like a stretched spring and wrapped itself around wires and posts for several hundred feet. It was a disaster of epic proportions!

  We drove out the next day and spent another morning cleaning the tangled wire off the fence and ended the day stretching the new bottom wire the old fashioned way, by hand. We returned hot, dusty, and sunburned with a very good lesson learned. Sometimes it is best to stick with the old ways. There is usually a very good reason why the old-timers continued to do certain things the same way every time.