Why Aunt Eleanor Shot the Goat

As we sat down to the feast at Thanksgiving Aunt Eleanor would always say, "This year I'm going to eat slow and a long time." My cousin Jim would always say, "Mom, you always say that."

Then one Thanksgiving silence flooded the dining room when Aunt Eleanor said, "This year I'm going to eat slow and a long time." A place had not been set at the table for Jim, and never would be again.

Aunt Eleanor never again said, "This year I'm going to eat slow and a long time." And every Thanksgiving the rest of us heard her not say it, and remembered why she didn't.

Hanging on to the traditions

As the years passed and we began to scatter, we got together less often at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But we started a new tradition for the Fourth of July.

Our small groups would migrate separately to a quiet campground located roughly the same travel distance for all. There we would spend the long weekend performing our family bonding rituals while sitting around a fire under the spruce and pines.

Pinedale, Wyoming

(visitpinedale.org)

That is why, on a July weekend in the late '60s, we were gathered in a Forest Service campground near Pinedale. And that is how it came to pass that one of us said, as someone always did, "Aunt Eleanor. Tell us about the time you shot the goat."

Everyone chuckled and turned expectantly to Aunt Eleanor, including a perplexed guest who had never heard the story. Billy Penton, an old friend from Lander, had joined us for a drink. We hadn't seen him since his family moved to Pinedale almost twenty years before.

The rest of us knew the context of the goat story of course. In the early '50s Pete and Eleanor were living on a small ranch north of Lander.

The property included a slaughterhouse where Pete made a steady income on the side by doing custom butchering. (In those days, some people still bought their beef and pork on the hoof.)

(cutesypoo.com)    

Attitude

(bathroomreader.com)    

Not even their goat

One summer Pete and Eleanor looked after the livestock on a nearby ranch while the family went on vacation. They agreed to bring the kids' kid home where they could keep an eye on it. The neighbors' two boys, 10 and 12, had a pet goat, three months old.

As anyone familiar with goats knows, the young ones are . . . Cute. Affectionate. Frisky. Clever. Inquisitive. Athletic. Exploratory. And especially, Incorrigible.

The goat raided the garden. It climbed on the vehicles. It found its way into almost every structure on the place. And finally, it broke into the house.

Aunt Eleanor corners the goat

As Aunt Eleanor told the story that day near Pinedale:

"I'd been in town shopping. When I carried my groceries to the back door, I saw a hole had been punched through the screen.

 "I searched through every room. Every house plant had been nipped off at dirt level.

"Finally I got to our bedroom. The goat was standing in the middle of our bed. He looked me right in the eye, said 'baaaaa,' and crapped.

"I grabbed him by a leg, dragged him to the back door, and threw him outside. Then I grabbed the .22 by the door and shot him. Got him right between the eyes."

"But Mom," a cousin objected on cue, "You never shot a gun before in your life. And that was Dad's gun from the slaughterhouse. It didn't even have any sights."

"I don't care. I hit the little shit right between the eyes."

Everyone around the fire laughed, enjoying the familiar, oft told tale. Everyone, that is, except our visitor, Billy Penton. Chuckling, he rubbed his chin and said, "My brother Bobby and me always wondered what happened to that damn goat."

My mother, Rhoda, and her sister Betty

(family album)    

Retraction

Recently I reported on this blog that an uncle of mine was shot, in 1940, by a jealous husband (Too Much Handsome, Too Much Devil, April 10).

Subsequently my son Jim came upon another historical source--a service based in Salt Lake City that provides clippings from old newspapers. Here's what he discovered:

Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, New Mexico) · 

Mon, May 13, 1940

So the issue wasn't betrayal and sexual infidelity after all. My uncle was killed during a petty squabble over a $10 loan.

Readers will understand the personal cost to me of issuing this retraction. The original version of the story was far more fun to pass on.

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Great-Great-Grandmother Buys One Ticket, One Way