It was Christmas Eve several years back. We hitched Amos and Andy, our reindeer mule-team, to the rubber tired hay wagon and jingled around our Laurel neighborhood singing Christmas carols. I am a graduate of the one room country school of Slack and Christmas carols were part of our elementary curriculum. Not only were we required to sing them, we were expected to memorize three verses of the common ones.

At the time, I thought this was normal and always looked forward to the celebration of our Savior’s birth. Now that I am in the Montana Legislature and have extensive contact with the ACLU, I have learned I was unconstitutionally indoctrinated by Christian teachings and will likely suffer effects for the rest of my life. (No excrement! I think that is the purpose.)

Our Christmas Eve feast was over, dishes were cleared and we finished our traditional family-trivia gift exchange. Other than the question requiring the respondent to name the secret ingredient of my mother-in-law’s prune meat loaf recipe, there were no major family arguments.

It was about eleven o’clock, the kids were in bed and Dick, my accountant brother-in-law, was assembling a race car track under the tree. We were about to turn in when the ring of my cell phone shot me to my feet. “Doc, I’ve got a cow that’s having trouble calving,” Charlie pleaded. “Can you come out?” Since Charlie lived six miles from the nearest phone he was not one to cry wolf, so I said I would be right out.

“Come on Dick, we’ve got manger duty,” I fired over my shoulder. It was a dark, moonless night and a half hour later we slowly rolled down Charlie’s driveway before spotting him down at the barn swinging a lantern. In addition to phone service and water, Charlie’s place also lacked electricity so all light came from a Coleman lantern. Charlie never knew he was the downtrodden deprived of life’s luxuries due to the evils of capitalism; he thought he was free. In today’s world of 24 hour cable news, the political left would love to manipulate his story to make him the poster child for socialist programs.

Charlie was a big man with hands as large as a dinner plate and he didn’t do his own obstetrical work because his hands wouldn’t fit inside a cow. He was also quiet. I never remember him speaking for the sake of conversation. Communication with him was simple: You asked a question; he answered it. No words were wasted. In addition to conversation, Charlie also cared little for other senseless amenities of life like bathing, and you learned to stay up wind of him during the winter months. I doubt there was ever a trophy wife in Charlie’s life. His companionship was from the two or three Border Collies that were always with him. They didn’t say much either but they seemed happy and smiled more than Charlie.

Dick and I followed Charlie’s lantern into the corral. Within a few seconds we were surrounded by a pulsating mass of black cows that loped around the perimeter in belly deep straw. They were nervous; perhaps they winded us.

I couldn’t tell one black cow from another, when suddenly Charlie spooked one into the open barn door and said, “That’s her.” We followed Charlie’s lantern inside and shut the door behind us. After a few minutes our eyes adjusted to the dim light and I assessed the situation. The barn had a 70 year accumulation of straw so there was about five foot gap from the floor to the bottom cord of the rafters. In order to get a rope on this cow I had to twirl my lariat in the space between rafters and time my throw the exact instant the cow ran between those same rafters. Eventually I snagged the old gal, threw my slack over a rafter and dallied around Dick. (Dick stood about 6’5” and in the knee deep straw he made a good snubbing post…for an accountant.)

I stripped off my shirt, washed up the cow, and eased my hand into her birth canal. Sure enough, she was calving with a leg back. How Charlie ever recognized a problem just by observation, I will never know. Perhaps his dogs told him. Before long, I repositioned the errant leg and with a gentle tug on the chains, delivered the Christmas calf.

On the truck ride home Dick fretted about using a gas lantern in a 100 year old wood barn while standing thigh deep in straw. “If he dropped the lantern, that place would have exploded,” he moaned. But he didn’t, so all was well.

Over the years things changed. Charlie is gone now; God called him home. I don’t know what happened to his dogs, for all I know they are still tending his cows. Dick, my snubbing post, divorced my wife’s sister in 2002, so holidays with him are now just a memory. Not a Christmas Eve passes that I don’t think of them both.

May you all have a Merry Christmas.