Babe’s Cadillac and the calves

By Doug Crowe
Tuesday, August 7, 2007 1:48 PM MDT

As a young man, I worked on the Grieve family ranches west of Casper. At that time, the family owned the UC, the Diamond Ring and the Dumbell Ranches.

The patriarch, Jim Grieve, ran the UC and Diamond Ring operations, while his sons Jimmie and Bun operated the Dumbell. The Old Man himself lived on the UC and it was there that I spent much of my youth.

Old Jim was a man of considerable means, but you would never know it from looking at him. To begin with, he was nearly 90 years old when I knew him. He looked common, dressed common and spoke common.

He drove an old, filthy, battered, green Ford pickup. Being more partial to horses than to mechanical devices, he drove it poorly.

Jim's wife was Wyoma Natrona Grieve, which explains why she went by the sobriquet "Babe." I liked Babe a lot, but she was different than Jim. Not better or worse, just different.

She sort of liked to "put on the dog" a little bit. She kept fancy horses, rode fancy saddles and drove fancy automobiles. When I first worked on the UC, Babe's fancy automobile was a purple 1955 Cadillac.

Old Jim always ate with the hired hands. Babe would eat some meals with the guys, but usually did not rise early enough to take breakfast with us. She was, therefore, absent one morning when Jim noticed two calves had gotten into the hay meadow.

He turned to me and said, "When you finish your breakfast, saddle a horse, gather those calves and put them in my pickup. I'll take them back to the calf pasture."

Just as I finished this job, the old man came out of the house, crawled up in the cab and began to grind on the starter. As usual, he flooded the engine. Also as usual, he kept grinding away until the battery was dead.

He then got out, slammed the door and shouted at me, "Put those calves in Babe's Cadillac."

I couldn't believe it, but it was his ranch and he signed the checks, so I drug those two bawling calves out of his pickup and stuffed them, slobbering and crapping, into the back seat of Babe's Cadillac.

Jim crawled in and it started right up, but it was too late. The commotion had attracted Babe's attention. Her face appeared in the kitchen window and shortly thereafter, she came flying out the door with her hair in curlers and her robe flapping.

I stood far enough away to avoid any shrapnel and waited for the drama to unfold.

She raced up to the driver's side of the car and began pounding on the roof above Jim's head.

"Damn you, Jim Grieve," she screamed, "get those nasty calves out of my Cadillac."

Jim had locked the door, and I could see him fumbling with something on the inside panel. I realized he was groping for the button that operated the driver's side automatic window. He found it and the window descended to half-mast.

By this time, Babe was so mad I thought her hair might burst into flames. Jim, however, was as cool as a Baptist preacher with aces wired. He smiled at her serenely and said, "These calves bought this Cadillac, by God I guess they can ride in it!"

Then he roared off in a shower of gravel, leaving her fuming in the driveway.

It has been more than 50 years since I witnessed that scene, and I still cannot think about it without getting the giggles. Lord, how I loved that old man.

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