As many of you know, I was adopted by my aunt and uncle, Laverne & Loyd Graf Jr., when I was 10 years old. They quickly became mom and dad for me. My biological mom, Alta Mae, was not capable of raising two young boys. After starting and struggling through the first grade in Rosenburg, Texas, I was failing school and they rescued me from Houston, Texas, and brought me to Mt. Pleasant just after Christmas.
I was enrolled in Vivian Fowler School at that time and did extra work into the summer as I got caught up enough to be passed on to the second grade. It was also at this time that I started my youth baseball career in 1968 while spending the entire summer with Mom and Dad.
One place that holds a special place in my heart, as I spent many a day there, was my Dad’s ranch. Graf Brothers Ranch was a partnership between my Dad and his brother William Ed Graf (Uncle Bill). Uncle Bill was the proud owner of a trucking company in Ft. Worth and was basically a financial partner of the ranch more than anything else.
He had two sons who would come to the ranch once every few months. One of these cousins, Matt, and I became close, as we both loved to hunt and fish. With our ranch having three different stock ponds loaded with bass, Matt and I basically taught ourselves how to bass fish.
We both subscribed to Bassmaster Magazine and would read each one cover to cover while learning about new baits and techniques. Then when he would come to the ranch, we would go and apply what we learned.
Those stock ponds were a great training ground for learning how to fish and understanding bass behavior. Matt and I shared some great times for years until we got into our teens. Then I got more involved in sports and those fishing get-togethers became few and far between.
I still cherish those early childhood memories with Matt even though those trips dwindled over time as he also made fewer trips to the ranch. We’ve lost touch with each other over the years, but I’m sure he has fond memories like me.
One thing ranch life taught me was good work ethic. A ranch does not run itself as it takes a lot of man hours to keep things running smoothly. We weren’t what many would call a big ranch, but we did run anywhere from 100-150 head of cattle depending on the time of year.
A ranch is a constant work in progress with doctoring cattle, building fences, working on barns, and cutting and hauling hay to make sure cattle were fed even when weather was bad. There are no days off when you own a cattle ranch. Cattle need attention and must be checked on daily, especially when cows were getting ready to calf.
There was one job I absolutely hated! It’s what my Dad called “piling chunks.” On our ranch we owned both sides of the main road with one side all pastureland while the other side was half-timber and pasture. But over time Dad cleared some of the timber to create more pasture.
We owned a large D9 bulldozer that Dad used to clear the timber. As he dropped trees on the ground, smaller limbs that fell off the trees had to be picked up. We would then pile them up in small burn piles. This is what dad referred to as “piling chunks!” This process was hard work and took many hours over several weeks to get the job done.
There are many things that shaped me as a person, but the lessons I learned from growing up on a ranch were invaluable. My Dad was a man of few words and was not touchy-feely. He never really shared his personal feelings, but he did believe in hard work and taught me the value of this concept and how it builds character.
The ranch for me was a training ground on not just hard work, but on developing my skills as an angler and a hunter. It gave me the freedom to learn how to hunt deer and squirrels and how to catch a bass.
The number of hours I spent on my own in the woods and around our stock ponds starting at the age of 10 was endless. Most kids today don’t know how to be by themselves all day, making one cast after another and learning how to catch a bass.
Kids today don’t grow up sitting on a single 2×6 board nailed between two limbs in a tree for deer hunting. They’ve never built a duck blind on the bank of a stock pond and enjoyed a good hunt, and when you shot a duck over the water, you had to wait until the wind blew the duck to the bank so you could retrieve it.
Kids today would consider the work I did as kid a form of child abuse. Again, my parents did not sugar coat anything. Love, while not openly expressed much in our family, was understood. They had goals and expectations for both me and my brother whether it was a job to be done or school.
We never did without anything that was essential. My Mom and Dad provided for us as a family and made sure my brother and I had everything we needed to not only enjoy life, but to be successful.
I literally would not trade anything for the time I had growing up on Graf Brothers Ranch, as it taught me everything I needed to succeed in whatever path I chose for the rest of my life.
Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com