For the last four years my son, Rhett, and various buddies of his from the track and football teams have tackled some big ranch projects for my outfits. They have built tons of miles of jack leg and wire fence, sometimes in steep, rugged, rocky holes that not even a self-respecting mule would attempt to access. He even formed a little company, did all the pre-requisite paperwork, got his tax ID, and made the businessman in dad smile proudly.
Right now he is down with several of his buddies on a big fencing project on one of the Colorado ranches. Their mission is running 5 miles of rustic jack leg fence on boundaries and along roads. They have battles with a tractor that never seems to want to start, and materials arriving helter skelter from Wyoming and Colorado from various timber suppliers since the job is too big for just one supplier to handle. In the meantime, he managed to total the truck which got him through high school, necessitating an interim rental car and frantic searches for a permanent replacement vehicle. Of course, his buddies need to be back in Montana by the end of this week to head off to college, and he is the ride. He needs to be back in Colorado next week to start his freshman year in a small town on the western side of that state. Orientation is in fact the 22rd, classes more or less start August 25th, and he’s supposed to report to football on August 27th. There is also the small matter of the laptop computer he desperately needs for college. He has done a fine job of procrastinating selecting and purchasing that obvious necessity for the entirety of the summer. It would probably also be a good idea if he found a few minutes here in the next seven days to choose his classes for the first semester. It is looking like Dad is going to have to pitch in on a number of levels on several critical aspects of this timeline, or things simply are not going to happen. Several of you have mentioned how parenting is never done. How true, how true. But it’s all good!