A True Story About a Red Bull and Two Young Boys

Okay, first a disclaimer. This is not about the popular drink; Red Bull. It is a true story about two eight-year-old bored boys in search of some excitement. This took place in a rural, agricultural, area in mid-Ohio. It was in the dead of summer in 1953.

During the summer my BFF and I were pretty much feral kids. Our parents were hardworking, not at home, and we were much on our own. We ate from the environment with berries and such that were in season. Elderberries, sassafras leaves, wild raspberries, and so on, we would try anything. Occasionally we would filch some produce from the truck gardens that were located on a swamp of black dirt that grew tremendous celery, carrots, watermelons, and other vegetables.

This day, in particular, we met up and decided to go to the creek that divided much of the land. At this place, a man and his wife, Frank, and Mary, would tolerate us and our shenanigans and sometimes invite us into the house for lunch. Did I mention we were pretty much skin and bones from our diet?

Frank owned a gravel pit and a quarry and a 45-acre farm. He was an ex-prizefighter who stood about 6feet 3 inches tall, a kind man with a flattened nose from his brief prizefighter career. He also made cinder blocks for the builders in the area in a shop where he worked almost daily.

Frank had a few cows and also a red bull that he kept to freshen the cows. This bull was a giant and had not been dehorned. He had a rack of sharp, pointy horns and his skin was totally red.

Why we did this I don’t know except that at the time in the early fifties traveling rodeos were very popular in Ohio.

So this day we decided to be rodeo clowns. These are the guys that would distract the angry bull from a dismounted rider to allow him to escape. We got on the square corral fence corners and then alternately one of us would jump into the corral and yell and wave our arms to get the bull to chase us and sometimes grab his tail. We would scramble up onto the corral fence corners and the red bull would crash into them and we would holler in glee.

This made a lot of noise which brought Frank down from his shop to see what was going on. When he arrived I can still see the fear in his eyes as he realized what was going on. He entered the corral and put the red bull into his stable. He then told us to go home for the day and to never do this again.

I was worried as we walked home about what my parents would have to say about this. I knew they wouldn’t be too happy. That night after supper Frank showed up at my house and told my parents what had happened. I expected the worst, but perhaps they had a guilty conscience about leaving us at home alone and really only lectured me about the danger of what a large bull with a set of horns could do to me if he caught me.

About a week later Frank showed up again only this time with a package of steaks and the red bull’s horns. He told my Dad that he should have done this before and he hoped that we would enjoy the steaks. I couldn’t eat the steak and just moped at the supper table. I didn’t mean for this to end like this and felt sorry for the red bull.

My Dad made me a powder horn from one of them for a keepsake, and my friend and I found other pursuits for the summer, some of which were also risky, but those are for another day.