Lonely in life, in death, too soon forgotten

Everyone deserves to be remembered. Some people are unforgettable for their well-known good deeds, others for evil.
But for the humble, the quiet, or alone, unless they write their own story, their narratives are left to those who knew and loved them, be they family or friend. Most at risk of being forgotten are those who never marry and have no children to tell their stories.
I was lucky enough to become friends with one such individual—Leonard Doyle Perkins, or “Perk” as he was known. Shy and quiet, Perk never married and lived his simple life alone, though he had no shortage of friends.
With his boyish smile always accompanied by a twinkle in his eye, he was one of those kind, considerate people that most folks find easy to befriend.
When I got to know Perk well, his home was a modest green trailer at the north end of Monticello behind the old Beeline Station.
Back in my cowboying days, in the 1980s, we had a corral next to Perk’s trailer, ensuring I got to know him well.
In retirement, he would sit at his kitchen table watching and longing for someone to come by to share his garden produce with.
When I had business at the corral, I could always count on him emerging from his lair to spin a cowboy yarn or two. Though 38 years separated us, the sight of me loading a horse in the pickup transported his mind back to his cowboy days 30 years earlier, unleashing a flood of memories he loved to share.
In the early 1950s, Perk worked for the SS Cattle Company alongside his mentor, Rulon Somerville. The Dugout Ranch was their home during the winter and spring, when their days were spent riding Indian Creek and its tributaries.
Perk loved to talk about that time in his life, but there was only one story I remember because he told and retold it so many times.
On a spring day back in the early 1950s, he and Rulon were miles from the Dugout when they encountered a newborn calf bawling inconsolably over the still-warm body of its dead mother, who had died mere seconds after her calf took its first breath.
Perk and Rulon gazed on the scene, pondering what they could do that would give the calf its best chance at a life lasting more than a few hours.
Suddenly, they heard the bellow of a cow not much more than a quarter of a mile away. Between cries, that cow nuzzled the lifeless body of her calf.
If you own more than one cow and you haven’t had the chance to be an adoption agent, don’t worry, you will.
I have no experience adopting children, but I am sure it is a far cry from getting a cow to adopt a calf. Bovine adoptions require abundant patience, combined with aroma therapy, costume design, voodoo magic, prayer, outright deception, and a host of other tricks too numerous to mention.
To apply any of these arts, good handling facilities are a must. Any cow instinctively takes a dim view of allowing the calf of another anywhere near her udder.
Without means of confinement, it is next to impossible.
Rulon and Perk were miles from such luxuries as a corral. They were about to give up when Rulon looked at the calf still crying over its deceased mom and the mother a short distance away wailing over its dead calf. He looked at Perk and his two-week beard and greasy old cowboy hat and had an idea.
“Perk, pick up that calf and put him over your saddle. We’re going to introduce him to his stepmom. It probably won’t work, but we have to try.”
In a couple of minutes, the calf was nosing around the bawling cow, trying to get his lips on a teat, only to receive a sharp kick. After a few minutes watching that act play out, Rulon had another idea.
“Perk, take your hat off, it’s going to be a milk bucket today. Milk that cow into your hat, and we might get at least a swallow in that poor calf.”
Perk got off his horse, removed his hat, and stood ready while Rulon shook a loop in his rope.
But as soon as he did, the wild cow inexplicably calmed down, changed her attitude, and sidled up to both Perk and the calf, allowing herself to be milked without the constraint of a rope.
She still wouldn’t let the calf suck, but the calf put its nose in Perk’s hat, stuck its tongue to the milk, and at least got a taste. At that, the cow looked at the tiny creature at her side, calmed down, and poked her nose at the orphan. At that gesture, the cowboys knew they had best leave if their hopes were to be realized.
At the end of his tale, Perk would say, “I’ve never seen a range cow behave that way before or since.”
I never heard him say if the adoption was successful, but they left knowing they did all they could.
I often wondered why this story from his days in the saddle left such an unforgettable impression. Only recently, I learned from histories written by Perk’s sisters and nieces, that his 28-year-old mother had perished while giving birth to his little sister, who managed only a couple of breaths before she too was gone. Perk was five on that day.
In the years immediately following his mother’s death, Perk was his dad’s right-hand man, accompanying him on several freighting trips to Mancos and Dolores to gather supplies and bring them back to Monticello and Blanding in a horse-drawn wagon.
He didn’t know it at the time, but these early experiences with his dad prepared him for the challenges he would soon face.
Despite doing everything he knew to keep the family together, his father’s gallant efforts were not enough. After a short time, Perk and his three sisters were placed in other homes, mostly family, but his sister Erma went with Judge Fred Keller and his wife Mabel.
Perk was placed with his Aunt Sarah Barton and her husband George. Perk didn’t know that the day his mom passed, his life would be filled with tragedy.
In the following two short years, his dad was also taken ill. He kept on working as he silently suffered through the intense pain pulsing through his body.
Then, in 1924, he gave in to the urges from his family and friends, and he and his buddy Perk drove to Salt Lake City to see the doctor. Medical attention from those in the big city was not enough, and Perk soon lost his only remaining parent and best friend after several miserable days in a strange hospital, in a strange town.
Perk returned an orphan, and at eight years old, bore the responsibility of delivering the sad news to his three sisters.
Perk and that calf had more in common than I knew.