Most people probably associate cattle
drives with the last century, and the wild West, but out here in
Spottswood, in the Shenandoah Valley, there’s a man who’ll tell you
different, and he’ll tell you first hand.
“Back in the 20’s we drove ’em in spring, up in the mountains, thirty
miles beyond Monterey — right through the streets of Monterey — for the
summer, where the pasture’d be good and it was cool; and in the fall
we’d drive ’em back down the mountain to the Staunton markets. It’d be
about eighty miles; and we’d be goin’ three – four days.”
He tells it matter of fact. Characteristically so. To Mr. J.W.Woods
there’s no special glory in the telling, nor romance in the event, just
part of something he’s been doing all his life.
Born in Rockbridge Baths, near the turn of the century, Mr. Woods
started working at the Silverbrook Farm, near Middlebrook, when his
father took on there, and he was still only a boy; and he continued
there after his father died, and through all the time of his own
children’s births and then upbringing.
He remembers that when hard times
came, back in the thirties, Mr. Clemmer told them he couldn’t afford to
pay more than fifty cents a day, but added that if things got better
they’d be paid better. So he stayed. And for a long time afterward he
was foreman before the Silverbrook Farm was bought by Mrs. Groves of
Texas, and the famous King Ranch family.
