Shuga'

Maxwell

Before we moved to the farm, the Dempsey ranch was my all time favorite place. Our families met when Mother and Katherine Dempsey happened to be hospital ward mates when Priscilla was born, the summer of 1949.

This GoogleMap shows the small town of Maxwell. The drive was from North Platte to Maxwell along Route 30, east, then south along Snell Canyon. The road straight south that barely shows up was a winding, narrow, barely maintained dirt and gravel road, just a notch above a two-track. The trip seemed to take forever and I always was car sick by the time we got there; I don't remember ever throwing up but every minute on that bumpy road I was sure I was going to!  Nevertheless, a Sunday on that ranch was the best.   

They had a son named Roger, and the baby Darlene.  He and I ran around their corrals and the yard*, played in the huge barn** that had a hayloft on top with a lot of fresh hay, stalls for horses that had grain bins and hay racks, on the walls were ropes, bridles, horse blankets and places for saddles. It had a pleasant earthy smell of hay and manure. Sometimes there were horses in the stalls, but mostly they roamed the pastures with the herds of cattle.  

Approx location and terrain of Dempsey ranch

One of the horses we were able to catch and ride was a silvery grey horse name Sugar, literally an old grey mare. Roger and I road together, bareback most of the time, unless his dad, Wilbur, had time to saddle us up. We weren't big enough to heave the saddle onto her back, cinch it tight so it wouldn't come loose, slip off and toss us to the ground.  Either way, we rode out across the pasture and canyons,*** carefree, wandering around the grassy hillsides and talking with each other about kid stuff I guess, as I don't remember a single conversation I ever had with him.  Once in a while Roger would put her into a gallop, he would hang onto her mane for dear life and I would hang onto him. We never fell off.

During one of these Dempsey weekends I met Jack Harwick who was a city kid like me. He lived with his family in Curtis, where I eventually went to high school. Jack's diction was never very good and he called the horse Shuga'.  It wasn't until I was in school at the University of Nebraska School of Agriculture (UNSA), I learned that my kids dad (to be), Galen Corlett and Jack had been friends. They remained so for life.





*The large area of land surrounding the house and all the out-buildings

**..shaped like a real barn, (not positive if theirs was white but it seems like it) unlike ours in Wellfleet, which was a rectangular building with a pointed roof and a lean-to on one the side.(similar to this photo)  

***The map shows the canyons, ridges like fingers that rose maybe 20-40 feet high with smooth grassy pasture land in-between.





First Draft Summer 2010. First Revision May 2020.