After her two sons were born and became old enough to coin phrases, they called her Dainty Dish and sometimes Hooty the Owl. They renamed their food, calling it, for example, dog. They called other entrees caterpillar and coyote. The kitchen stool was Sam. They named a Christmas-tree ornament Hopping John. It had a talent for remaining unbroken. They assured each other that the cotton on the branches would not melt. David decided that he was a camel, but later changed his mind and insisted that he was “Mr. and Mrs. Booth.” His mother zakelijke energie described him as “a light-footed little elf.” She noted his developing sense of scale when he said to her, “A coyote is the whole world to a flea.”
One day, he asked her, “How long does a germ live?” She answered, “A germ may become a grandfather in twenty minutes.” He said, “That’s a long time to a germ, isn’t it?” She also made note that while David was the youngest person on the ranch he was nonetheless the most adroit at spotting arrowheads and chippings.
When David was five or six we began hunting arrowheads and chippings. While the rest of us labored along scanning gulches and anthills, David rushed by chattering and picking up arrowheads right and left. He told me once, “There’s a god of chippings that sends us anthills. He lives in the sky and tinkers with the clouds.”
The cowboys competed with Homer in the entertainment of Allan and David. There was one who-as David remembers him”could do magic tricks with a lariat rope, making it zakelijke energie vergelijken come alive all around his horse, over our heads, under our feet, zipping it back and forth around us as we jumped up and down and squealed with delight.” Somber tableaux, such as butche1ings, were played out before them as well. Years later, David would write in a letter: