Baker's Branch

  I am not a technical guy. Often, I cannot properly turn on my cell phone, nor my computer. As a consequence, I frequently leave both off for days and days at a time. Text? Send photos with my cell? I'd as soon send smoke signals, and could actually do it much, much better. For years and years I wrote this column longhand on yellow legal notepads, turned it in to the office secretary (thank you, Harriet), hoped for the best where deciphering of my handwriting was concerned, and learned the intoxicating aroma of darkroom chemicals developing my own column pictures before the Digital Age arrived. My old friend, Bryon Test of Guymon, way out in No Man's Land, called me on his cell one day last week. I took his call at home using the old "landline". He was calling me from his hiding place behind an irrigation pipe, pivot wheel way out yonder in the middle of a harvested cornfield. He was getting in a few last licks on the geese before the closing of the "regular...

  Editor’s Note: Conrad gets mail; sometimes about things that pertain to the nature of his outdoor column. An old college chum of his, Butch, neither a hunter nor a fisherman, recently wrote and asked a question about meadowlarks, and got his money’s worth in the reply. Conrad, My grandmother made the best chicken and noodles in the world. She said she got the recipe from her mother so who knows how old that recipe is. We still use the same recipe today except that we substitute Crisco for lard. That’s what we’re having for lunch tomorrow. Chicken and noodles. Wish you were here. Butch P.S. Are Eastern meadowlarks common? Would that be the type of meadowlark I grew up with in Kansas? Are they song birds? What is a song bird anyway? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Butch, Yes, eastern meadowlarks are common, an...

  I own an old Dutch oven. Actually, I own several. But the one of which I speak was given to me by my mother, whose mother gave it to her, whose mother gave it to her.  Did you keep track of all that? I knew all of those mothers very, very well; the last one mentioned as well as the first one mentioned. In fact, to one degree or another, all three of them got in their licks mothering me at one time or another.  I can’t prove it, but think my Dutch oven was given to my great grandmother Taylor ( née  Keener) when she was only nine years old by her own mother. That was when Grandma Taylor’s mother died, leaving Grandma to raise a younger brother (five) and sister (two) by herself, her father being a “travelin’ man”, which is as much as I know about that part of the story. Anyway, all these years later, I own the Dutch oven (you tell me how old it is), and I use it often.  Dutch ovens were, and are, (you can still buy them, new or used) cast iron pots with short l...