Saturday, March 6, 2021
I had the good fortune to get to work cattle alongside Cliff quite a bit back when I was just a kid. To me, he was the embodiment of the old-time, real-life cowboy. I'll never forget the way that gold tooth of his would flash when he smiled (which was often), or the way he never failed to try to buy my amazing dun cutting horse Dandy Joak out from under me every time we'd move cattle up at Russell Springs. Then there was the time he let me drive our old John Deere 4020 pulling a flat-trailer loaded with wooden posts and barbed wire all the way from our little feed lot 8 miles west of town way up 15 miles or so northeast of town to fence some pasture or another we'd rented somewhere. I couldn't have been more than 13 or 14 and Cliff just laid down on that trailer with his hands behind his head, I imagine with a big smile and that gold tooth shining in the sun, and trusted me with his life for the next two hours. To have the trust and respect of a man like him meant a lot to me. He was truly one of the last of a great generation of Americans, and he and those like him, which western Kansas produced so many of, will be sorely missed. God bless his many friends and his family.
