It has been said that a person can pick their friends, but family you are born with. Well, that is true, to a point, until it comes to in-laws or outlaws whichever the case maybe.

On our old ranch, I had one of those in laws that I was not really born with. He was a married to my Aunt Dora. They had the ranch next to us. His name was Ed Bauman, a hard-headed old Dutchman. In his younger years they lived in El Paso, Texas and he worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad as a boiler maker. He was so used to punching that old time clock that he could never get away from it. When they moved to the ranch, he did not change his town ways much. He never did know how to punch cows, he never owned a horse. For the most part he set ranching back fifty years before he ever got out of bed. They had one well on a forty-section ranch, and that was the only water that the cattle had. His way to round up cattle was to shut the gates until they came to water. Not the cowboy way, but it worked for Ed. He just had a very different way of looking at the world.

When my Aunt Dora died, Ed stayed at the ranch by himself for a good number of years. He had his schedule that he would not change for anyone. He pretty well did things the way that he damn well pleased.

In the 1970s he had a chance to sell the old ranch for a very good price. He was hard-headed but he was no fool when it came to a dollar. He sold the place and they let him live there until he died. He could fall in a pile of manure and come out smelling like a rose.

Along with not being what one would call a cowboy, Ed could not drive worth a damn either. When on the road, he spent most of his time on the wrong side. You could not tell him any different, just stayed out of his way when you saw him coming.

When he sold the ranch, he bought a brand new Cadillac. That was about the only thing that he ever herded in his life, damn sure could not drive it.

In years to come he also latched on to a widow lady in El Paso, they went out every Wednesday night. They had to do the same thing every time that they went out,’ cause that is the way that old Ed was.

The people that bought Ed's ranch leased it out to a man in El Paso to run cattle on. He had Black Angus cattle. They are hard to see in the dark. One night. after Ed had taken his lady friend out, he made his way back to the ranch. It was off an El Paso Natural Gas pipeline road that was paved. Ed liked to have a few drinks, but was always in control, for the most part.

He got about a mile away from a pumping station where several families lived. He did not see the cow that was standing in the middle of the road, and he nailed her dead on. There was one wrecked Black Angus cow in the middle of the road, one wrecked Cadillac left steaming. Ed was not hurt, just a bump on his hard head. He walked to the station in the middle of the night to get some help.

He knocked on the door on one of the families, and a man there took him back to the cow wreck. He took a gun to finally put the cow down. Ed just got a good start on her. He shot the cow, dragged her off the road, and took old Ed home that night. Next morning Ed was on the telephone. That Cadillac had to be fixed by next Wednesday, come Hell or high water. With no rain clouds in sight, the job could not be done by then, so Ed bought a new one.

Several weeks went by. Ed made no attempt to pay the owner for the cow. He stopped by to visit Ed one day, to see what they could come up with. He was polite to the old Dutchman, but he was wanting his money. He asked Ed, " Mr. Bauman, I stopped by as we need to settle up on that cow of mine you killed couple of weeks ago." Ed got red in the face, he got mad as he let the man have both barrels. " Now you listen here sonny boy, I did not kill you damned old cow. You just don't come back here talking like that to me." You got up there to that station and see the man that shot her, he killed your damned old cow."

That is just about the way that Ed saw everything when it came to cowboyin'. I would guess, to this day, he still does not think that it was his fault. Damned old cow should not have been there in the first place. She should have known it was his night to go to town. It was all her fault that she got in his way.