There is an epidemic going around our outfit these days. More of a mania, than an illness. Contagious, none-the-less. It started with a wintertime welding project; a constructive way to kill time between feeding hay and chopping ice. It has grown into a full-blown obsession. One that I have dubbed, Stock Rack Mania.
You see, this is how my husband imagines himself. Tooling around the West with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the essential tools of his trade: a good horse, a saddle, and a bedroll.
It is true, he bears a marked resemblance to modern day Will James character. I worry that Stock Rack Mania is taking this admiration too far.
The only time in recent memory I have seen one in use was in 2006, in grocery store parking lot in Roundup, Montana. I walked out of the store, toting a baby on my hip, to find 400-pound pig caged in a creaky wooden rack parked next to my economy car. While I hurriedly (and fearfully) stuffed my child into his car sea, the sow’s pick-up rocked and rumbled with grunting indignation.
Fast-forward eight years, we find my husband enthusiastically proselytizing upon the wonders of the stock rack to me, his dubious wife. It is not solely stock racks in general that I fear, it is the fact that ours looks decidedly homemade. It is the macaroni necklace of stock racks, if you will. Despite my skepticism, it has saved time and tires this Spring.
It has been such a success, Guy and crew have scaled up their stock rock aspirations. Go big or go home.
Heck ya! I grew up with some that fit a 65 Ford. They were made out of two inch tubing and expanded metal. They were heavy, just not as heavy as my Dad’s gate that moved with us everytime we moved.
Ha! American ingenuity!