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Y'all, I have a question for you this morning, and I have a feeling the answers might depend on which side of the country you grew up on.
Do you call it BOB WIRE or BARB WIRE?
Now, I know the proper name is barbed wire, but down here in Texas, I’ve heard it called everything from barb wire to bob wahr! And truthfully, I don’t think those cows standing on the other side of the fence care one bit what we call it.
The cows know that it’s there for a reason!
I learned a lesson about Barb wire fences the hard way!
Let me take y’all back a few years. Okay, maybe more than a few, but who’s counting?
I was just a young girl, spending time at my grandmother’s house. My cousin and I were doing what kids did back then. We were outside, entertaining ourselves, climbing trees, and probably doing a few things our parents would have frowned upon.
We had decided that climbing a pine tree sounded like a wonderful idea.
Anyone who knows anything about pine trees knows those limbs aren’t exactly made for supporting little girls with big adventures on their minds.
But did we know that?
Apparently not!
Up we went, climbing higher and higher, feeling pretty proud of ourselves.
And then it happened.
CRACK!
The limb I was standing on decided it had held me long enough!
Down I came!
And wouldn’t you know it, of all the places my body could have landed was right beside the fence we had just used to climb up into the tree on. My thumb found the BARBED WIRE FENCE!
Not the soft grass. Not a nice little pile of pine straw.
NOPE!
My hand met that rusty, sharp, unforgiving wire, and my thumb paid the price!
I can still remember that awful cut.
It's barely visible now, but inside that black circle above was my long scar.
Now, if you grew up in my generation, you already know what happened next.
There was no rushing to an urgent care clinic. No fancy first-aid kit with twenty-seven different kinds of bandages.
We had Ma Bertha, (My grandmother) who seemed to be well educated in taking care of cuts like this.
And Grandmother had something that could supposedly cure just about anything.
MERCUROCHROME!
Oh, mercy!
Does anybody else remember that little bottle of reddish-orange medicine?
That stuff was a childhood legend! Scraped knees, cut fingers, bicycle wrecks, you name it. If you were bleeding, somebody was headed for the Mercurochrome bottle!
Ma Bertha, took one look at my thumb and went straight into action.
Out came that famous little bottle, and onto my thumb went the medicine. Then she found a clean handkerchief, tore off a strip, and pulled that cut together, wrapping it nice and tight.
And just like that, according to Ma Bertha, I was going to live, and she sent us right back outside to play..
One thing I can tell you for certain…I never again had the desire to climb a tree anywhere near a barbed wire fence!
Funny how some childhood lessons don’t require a second teaching.
And speaking of barbed wire…
Have y’all ever stopped to think about how much of that stuff stretches across the United States?
Miles and miles and MILES of it! Here in Texas,
it runs alongside country roads, stretches across pastures, separates ranches, and marks property lines that have been there longer than some of us have been alive.
Some of it is shiny and new, stretched tight between sturdy fence posts. Other stretches are rusty, sagging, and held together by what looks like a little wire, a prayer.
If those old fences could talk, can you imagine the stories they could tell?
Shug.....
