{"id":4430,"date":"2010-12-27T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-27T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/?p=4430"},"modified":"2022-02-12T14:15:34","modified_gmt":"2022-02-12T21:15:34","slug":"rusty-lard-bucket-and-one-spur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/rusty-lard-bucket-and-one-spur\/","title":{"rendered":"Rusty Lard Bucket and One Spur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rusty Lard Bucket and One Spur
\n<\/strong>By Hal Haralson<\/p>\n

Gus McCall was 88 when his wife died. Gladys was 84. They had been married over fifty years.<\/p>\n

Most of those years had been spent on their Big Bend Ranch. Gus took care of the cattle and Gladys cooked and "cleaned house."<\/p>\n

There were always two or three cowboys in the bunkhouse but mostly they lived alone.<\/p>\n

It was a lonely life. The trip to Ft. Davis was made once a month. It was over a hundred miles, round trip.<\/p>\n

The kids had grown, married, and had children.<\/p>\n

Gus and Gladys were frugal and saved their money. They had done well.<\/p>\n

All was rather smooth `till Gladys died. Gladys left a will .<\/p>\n

Gus sat in the lawyer`s office and listened in disbelief as he was told that Gladys left her half of the "estate" to her grandchildren.<\/p>\n

"What half?" "She never done nothin` but cook."<\/p>\n

The term "community property" was new to Gus. He listened as the lawyer explained that half of everything they had belonged to Gladys and she left it to their grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Gus stumbled out on the street. At eighty-eight he was nearly blind. He kept a room in a boarding house in Ft. Davis but preferred the solitude of the ranch.<\/p>\n

That day, $300,000.00 worth of municipal bonds (the kind anyone could cash just by signing) disappeared from their lock box at the bank. Gus got a ride to the ranch and no one saw him<\/p>\n

for a month.<\/p>\n

Gus was too blind to drive but knew the ranch so well he got along fine once he got there.<\/p>\n

Three years later, the father of two of Gus`s grandchildren sat in my office and asked me to represent his children. It seems the $300,000.00 had not been found and none of the land had been divided.<\/p>\n

As far as he could tell, it was all in the hands of a "big law firm in Odessa" and nothing had been done.<\/p>\n

I agreed to take the case. I filed my suit and gave Gus McCall notice I was taking his deposition in Odessa on March 18 at 2:00 o`clock. No one had deposed him since Gladys died. Nothing had been done to find the $300,000.00 in bonds.<\/p>\n

When I got to the conference room of the "big law firm in Odessa" there were five other lawyers waiting to hear what Gus had to say.<\/p>\n

He was nearly an hour late. I could hardly believe what I saw when he came into the conference room.<\/p>\n

His felt hat had grease and sweat all over it. It must have been fifty years old.<\/p>\n

His Levis and shirt were covered with dust and grime and did not appear to have been washed in months. There were patches on the patches.<\/p>\n

Most noticeable were his run-down\/worn-out boots and the one spur he wore.<\/p>\n

After the usual introductions, I identified myself as the attorney representing his grandchildren.<\/p>\n

His look became sullen and his half-blind eyes squinted as he tried to make out what I looked like.<\/p>\n

"Mr. McCall, I`m going to ask you some questions and the court reporter will take down your answers, just like you were in court. Understand?"<\/p>\n

"Yup."<\/p>\n

"Mr. McCall, (this was my misguided effort to "soften" up the witness before I really got down to business) I notice you only have on one spur."<\/p>\n

"Yup. "<\/p>\n

"That`s rather unusual. Would you mind telling me why you are only wearing one spur?"<\/p>\n

He looked at me as if I were a complete idiot.<\/p>\n

"You ever put your foot in the wrong boot?"<\/p>\n

Without waiting for an answer, he exclaimed, "Hurts, don`t it?"<\/p>\n

"If you just have on one spur, you know which boot that foot goes in."<\/p>\n

That logic was a little fast for me, so I decided to go for the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

"When Mrs. McCall died, there were $300,000.00 in municipal bonds in your lock box at the bank. Do you know anything about that?"<\/p>\n

"Yup. "<\/p>\n

"They disappeared. Do you know anything about that?<\/p>\n

"Yup."<\/p>\n

"Did you take them?"<\/p>\n

"Yup."<\/p>\n

Are you going to tell me where they are?`<\/p>\n

"Nope," he grunted. “When you lawyers and judges back off and leave me alone, they`ll turn up."<\/p>\n

I decided to play a long shot.<\/p>\n

`What did you do? Bury them on your ranch?" The surprised look on his face told me I had guessed right.<\/p>\n

"Yup, but you`ll never find them."<\/p>\n

"Mr. McCall you are nearly 90 years old. Has it occurred to you that you might die and no one will know where the bond`s are?"<\/p>\n

"Yup, I thought about that. They`ve been hunting for that lost gold mine on my ranch for years. Someone will find `em."<\/p>\n

I knew what I wanted to know. I brought the deposition to an end and dismissed Gus McCall.<\/p>\n

The other lawyers left. They knew what they wanted to know. I never understood why no one had bothered to ask for 3 years.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, Gus`s attorney called and said he had brought the $300,000.00 worth of bonds into his office in a rusty lard bucket and dumped them on his desk.<\/p>\n

I suspect Gus`s lawyer told him after the deposition that now that he had admitted taking the bonds, he could either bring them in or the judge would carve out $300,000.00 worth of land from his ranch and sell it. Either way, the grandkids get what Gladys left them.<\/p>\n

Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt".
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rusty Lard Bucket and One Spur By Hal Haralson Gus McCall was 88 when his wife died. Gladys ...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,34],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6349,"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4430\/revisions\/6349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianethicstoday.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}