Summary: A Really Lost Episode. Educating My Brothers Was Never Easy
Word Count: 2200
Adam’s Memoirs: Chapter 1125
It is definitely not always easy being the eldest son in a family. No, it really isn’t. I spent most of my life watching out for my younger brothers, being responsible, being serious, being Pa’s right hand man.
For a mighty long time, Pa depended on me to help out with my brothers. That job started when I was a small boy. I was barely six years old when my brother Hoss was born. His mother, Inger, died when he was only a few months old. Sadly, she had a run-in with an arrow and lost.
Little Joe was born six years after Hoss and his mother died a few years later, depending on which series episode you watch. REAL Marie had a run-in with a horse and lost. It really wasn’t the fall that killed her; it was the sudden stop when she hit the ground head first and her neck snapped. Don’t believe any baloney those Australians tell about Marie getting killed in an explosion when Joe was around ten. There isn’t a lick of truth in that story, nor that some horse bit my brother Hoss’ butt. It was Cosmo the bartender whose butt was bit but that is an entirely other story. You know how things get in a busy saloon on a Saturday night in Virginia City….
Anyhow…That unfortunate run of bad luck with his wives left Pa alone with just us boys and a bit shy to ever marry again.
It wasn’t easy being the oldest son. At least I didn’t have to wear any hand-me-downs, thank goodness. Or be the one to use the recycled bath water either.
One early summer day, when I was not more than eight years old, Pa went off early to help one of our neighbors with some emergency… a sick mare. Or maybe it was a cow? Or a colicky hamster? Anyway… The animal had come down with either some serious ailment or had a breech birthed two headed calf or was rustled by rustlers. Maybe it had a broken tooth from biting someone’s butt? (Just joking!)
Now that I think about it, it must have been a cow as a hamster wouldn’t have a calf.
Way back then, there weren’t too many hamster herds or guinea pig flocks in Nevada Territory. All that type of livestock, as well as disco, came years later. At that point in time, when Hoss was a tot, hamsters were rarer than hen’s teeth or long-term marriages in the Cartwright family.
Herding hamsters didn’t come into popularity until quite a few years later, just after the Civil War when Doc Martin #2’s brother, Dino, opened a pharmaceutical lab & casino up near Reno called the Dino Martin Pharmaceutical Company, Casino and Disco. They even had one of those mirror balls in the disco too, where they invented a mighty fine drink made from gin and vermouth that the brothers named the Martini after themselves. They used to do a lot of celebrity roasts too.
The Martins tested the cosmetics and medications on guinea pigs and hamsters and even on some of the Derby Royal bunnies that my youngest brother Joe had managed to hide from soft-hearted Hoss. They paid Little Joe for the bunnies with jugs of martinis and samples of their hair care products. Joe particularly liked the free hair mousse as it kept his curls soft and manageable even in hottest weather or when the wind blew or gals raked their fingers through his hair. Little Joe shared the martinis with all of us. We even had enough of those free Martinis to celebrate Pa’s birthday with a big cocktail party. Hop Sing cooked up a load of hors d’ouvres like bacon wrapped water chestnuts and mini quiches, and Cosmo had recovered sufficiently from his butt biting to work as the bartender. All three Doc Martin’s attended, along with Roy Coffee and Clem Foster, most of Pa’s friends, and a few visiting widows from out of town.
Hoss never knew that Little Joe had this side business from those squirreled away rabbits until one time he found a Derby Royal bunny hip-hopping across the North pasture wearing turquoise mascara and scarlet lipstick. Even then, I was able to calm Hoss down by explaining that it was date night for bunnies and this one was all gussied up. Thank goodness, Hoss hadn’t noticed it was a male rabbit or I would have had to spend an entire evening explaining the difference of manly men and less than manly men, and that Pa was considering offering domestic partnership medical benefits for some of our hands like Ennis and Jack, those sheepherders from Wyoming. We Cartwrights accepted folks as they were, as long as they did an honest day’s work and were good to their mama.
Like I was saying, educating my younger brothers was a never-ending job. And I’m not talking about formal education from books, either. Don’t get me wrong, no one loves formal education and books more than I do, but there is more to life than book learning.
Pa taught his sons quite a few things about being a manly man. First, Manly Men don’t do sissy things like wearing turquoise eye shadow and scarlet lipstick or silk nighties with ruffles. Pa did have that maroon velour bathrobe with the satin lapels, and when I asked about that, he gave me one of those glaring looks that only Pa had and I shut my mouth tight. I knew never to bring that topic up ever again if I wanted to see the light of day. I suspect that robe had been a gift from one of his close lady friends, like one of those out of town widows like Mrs. Barkley or that nice Shirley Partridge, and Pa was just being discrete. Pa always said, “A gentleman is always discrete and doesn’t brag about his relationships with ladies, though if I was going to brag, I sure would have a lot to brag about.” Then he would give me an elbow in the side and wink.
Speaking of winking, Pa had real long eye lashes. All of us boys got his long Cartwright eyelashes. I had naturally long eye dark lashes, as did Little Joe, and we both had to wallop quite a few guys who suggested that we used mascara, which we didn’t. Not even Joe.
Hoss, on the other hand, didn’t have that long eye lash problem. It wasn’t that his eyelashes were sparse or short, but that his face was so large and his neck so thick that, in comparison, Hoss’ blonde lashes looked skimpy and it was rare that anyone ever teased Hoss about using mascara.
Pa taught us that Manly Men can’t hit ladies or even beat the crap out of child-like women who whine, but can beat the men who pick on women, depending on the mood of that Manly Man. I’ll always go to my grave regretting that I didn’t put Laura Dayton over my knee, but by the time I thought of that, she and Cousin Will had taken off together for Carson City. Joe and Hoss said that Will did me a favor by taking Laura off my hands, but it was an awful shame they rode off with one of our best surreys and one of our best horses, a couple of bottles of Pa’s good brandy, the last jug of martinis, and most of Joe’s stash of hair mousse from the Martin Company. Too bad they didn’t take Pa’s maroon velour bathrobe with the satin lapels too.
Maybe that was why the two of them rode of without Laura’s daughter Peggy. But that is another story in which I’ll tell you what became of Peggy.
Hoss said the joke was on Will and Laura; Hoss had shoved a half-eaten tuna salad sandwich and a sack of raw chicken gizzards in Laura’s luggage and Joe sent a wire to Sheriff Lobo in Reno saying they had stolen a team of horses, kilt someone and hid the body in the lady’s trunk. I sure wish I was there to see the look on Will’s face when they got pulled over on the Carson City Road, just past the McDonalds, near the turn off to the Bower’s Mansion.
Anyhow, back to the original story I was telling about me being a boy and babysitting my brother Hoss when he was about two or so. Either way, while Pa went off, I was taking care of my younger brother Hoss. Pa was always helpful and a good neighbor… especially if the neighbor had a criminal record, a drinking problem or a terminal disease and a pretty wife. That was sort of how Pa met Marie, Joe’s mother, by way of her first husband Jean who croaked while working for Pa.
Anyhow, Pa told me to mind my brother Hoss while he was at the neighbor’s spread and he would be back to the Ponderosa by dark for supper.
I wanted to go fishing and Pa said it was fine. He would love to have fish for supper when he got home but I should mind Hoss didn’t fall in the stream. He was not quite three and would walk with me no matter how far but would sink like a sack of anvils if he fell into the water. Pa figured it was never too young to learn how to fish as long as I didn’t let him drown. I was eager to teach my brother how to help put food on the table and the swimming lessons would come later.
“How, was fishing, son?” Pa asked when he got back. He must have sensed my despair but didn’t let me know. Pa was good at sensing things.
“Not so good, Pa,” I said. I couldn’t help but frown. I was mighty hungry and had my mouth set for fish, particularly those little round gefiltes that Mr. Kauffman was so good at catching in Lake Tahoe in the spring or some of those rectangular fish sticks that Mrs. Paul cooked up and went so well with tartar sauce.
“Didn’t catch anything! Not one fish, Pa!” I reluctantly admitted with a single tear in my eye. ”Not even one measly fish!”
Pa said not to worry. He was proud that I had tried and that was all that mattered. There was some hamster fricassee and lima bean soufflé left from the night before and that was what we ate with some croissants the neighbor had sent home with Pa.
It was plain food but hearty.
“I’ll never do that again! I’ll never take Hoss with me fishing ever again!” I told Pa that evening when he sat down at the table. “I didn’t catch a thing because of Hoss, Pa!”
My brother Hoss had barely picked at his hamster fricassee and fallen asleep, his head pillowed on a flaky croissant. It was amazing how loud that little kid could snore! It wasn’t until years later that Doc Martin # 3 discovered half a petrified croissant jammed up Hoss’ left nostril and we found that was the cause of years of snoring but that is another story.
“I really had my mouth set for fish but I didn’t catch a thing!” I repeated glumly, looking down at my tin plate of hamster fricassee. I hoped Pa hadn’t noticed how angry I was or that I hadn’t even touched my lima beans soufflé. I didn’t like him to know I had a bad time and set him to worrying unnecessarily. After all, I was almost eight and thought I was pretty grown. Pa really didn’t approve of sulking or passing gas unnecessarily either, though he did make loads of lima bean dishes with the barrels of lima beans he had stored in the root cellar. Those were lean years while we were building up the Ponderosa.
“I don’t think I should have brought Hoss along, Pa,” I repeated cautiously.
“Oh, next time I’m sure Hoss will be quiet and not scare the fish away,” Pa said. “You’ll teach him and he’ll learn. He’s hardly more than a baby. You can’t expect him to be still, Adam.”
Then I said, “It wasn’t that, Pa. He was pretty quiet.”
”What was it, then?”
” Hoss ate all the bait.”
“No wonder he picked at the fricassee,” Pa said, scraping what remained in Hoss’ plate into his. “Waste not want not!”
“Well, at least he didn’t pick his nose,” I defended my brother.
Then Pa gave me a lesson that I remembered for the rest of my life. He said, “You can pick your friends but don’t pick your nose, son.”
The End
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