Replies

Being a city boy, I have no personal knowledge on the subject; simply reporting something I read during Bible studies some years ago.

During my enlisted days in the Marine Corps, I served with a Marine who had been a sheep herder in IIRC Montana or Wyoming prior to being drafted. Anyway, this ex-sheep herder was one of the toughest, most self-reliant men I have ever met. Good humored and very even tempered but also a very self-contained individual. Did his two years, made corporal and went back home.

(Note: This was the 1969-1971 time frame and while the Marine Corps didn't like it, it did draw from the Selective Service draft pool starting in 1967. I had one in my boot camp platoon. Poor guy was a green card resident alien from Mexico. He had the double misfortune of being drafted and then being selected for service in the Marine Corps. Of course, we volunteer Marines don't feel it was a misfortune but remember he was drafted and the US Army was 3-4 times larger than the Marine Corps at the time. A good bit of the Army never saw Vietnam. Just the opposite for the Marine Corps. But I digress. Anyway, he didn't really speak English but the DIs still had to turn him into a Marine. So they "volunteered" some of the smarter members of the platoon (including yours truly) to help him out academically. He passed his tests (without any foolishness I might add) and graduated with the platoon.)

I want to thank Khashayar for his post and all the good pictures. I certainly wish the best for him and his country. I also hope he will forgive me for telling my shepherd story here.

Back in the days of punch cards when personal computers were just being born, we had a computer jockey who spent his younger days as a carrier fighter pilot in the Navy. At that time and maybe yet, Basque shepherds typically took the lonely job of herding sheep in the wide open spaces of the American West.

A training flight one day took our Navy pilot inland and he made a low pass over a notch between two mountains. He looked down and saw a herd of sheep, a Basque shepherd on his horse and a sheep dog not just real far from him. Flying a jet, he was quickly gone.

His curiosity got the best of him and he had to go back and survey the situation. All that he saw was the shepherd sitting on the ground shaking his fist.