Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest

Growing up in a city, I always wondered during car trips through ranchland how the people there lived. Was it a hard life? Lonely? Were they like us in the city?I knew from movies and TV that calves in pastures were grown into large steers through a gradual process of fistfighting and gunslinging, with the cowboys taking frequent breaks to drink whiskey and play poker. But that was only part of the story. What role did the women and children play? Why the windmills? Who provided basic services?All these questions and more have now been answered by a Supreme Court Justice, of all things. Lazy B is Sandra Day O'Connor's memoir of her girlhood on a ranch in the desert Southwest. The simple unaffected style of her writing is just right to convey the power of the story: a family living on a desolate ranch for 113 years--a happy family, a resourceful and persistent family.The Day ranch had already been operating for 50 years when Sandra was born in 1930, and was still going strong when she was appointed to the high court 51 years later. The Days didn't have hot running water until 1937, but when they did it was from a solar heater designed by Sandra's father--40 years ahead of the solar energy craze of the 1970s.That sort of self reliance and innovation is one of the main themes of the book: when they needed more water they built windmills to bring it up out of the ground. When the windmills broke, they fixed them. Before the windmills and solar heater, the limited hot water for bathing was used in sequence: first Sandra's mother, then her father, then the children, then the ranch hands, if they had any interest in the water that remained. Not a cushy life, but several of the cowboys liked it enough to stay at Lazy B for over 50 years.The self-reliance in the area of first aid is even more striking: Sandra's father successfully mending the uterus of a cow with a wine bottle and some stitches; one of the cowhands giving himself a root canal with red hot baling wire, or taping his broken finger to a nail so he could keep working.And while all of them--Mom,Dad,kids,cowhands--did whatever they had to do to keep working, O'Connor's memories are overwhelmingly happy ones of card games and wild animal pets and riding through the desert and, more than anything else, conversations. One gets the impression that no one ever had a better childhood.O'Connor may or may not be a great justice--I don't know much about the law--but it seems to me that she was a part of something great long before she ever got a law degree. A happy family and a solvent ranch are two things which are hard to maintain for more than a dozen years. The Days did it for a dozen plus a year and a century. Looking at the picture on page 257, I see the very bedrock of the country.

Sandra Day O'Connor is simply one of the most impressive women to have lived in the 20th Century. I've only very recently reached this opinion, primarily based on listening to her read 'Lazy B'. Her childhood was remarkable, and it is indeed a testament to her character. Her voice is distinct and understated. Yet, one can tell that she is at once humble and proud. I highly recommend listening to her reading of the book, and I believe that you will come away with a strong impression of this distinguished lady.

Despite her status as the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and her background as a Stanford graduate and prominent lawyer, Sandra Day O'Connor was not--repeat NOT--a child of privilege. Granted her Daddy ran a cattle ranch spanning two states and she never really wanted for anything, but the childhood which she relates (with her co-author, brother Alan) in "Lazy B" was a most challenging, liberating, independence-building one indeed.Her grandparents started this life and her parents took over--running a huge cattle ranch, raising three children and instilling traditional values of frugality, self-reliance and hard work. We learn about her dad, DA; her mom, MO; and several interesting, independent cowboys, among them Rastus, Jim Brister, Bug Quinn and Claude Tipets. Just names in a review, these lonely, uneducated, but remarkable men take on real life--real cowboys in the twentieth century! Here's an example: Brister, to tame an unruly horse, wrestles it to the ground in a display of awesome strength--while sitting on its back!!Sandra accompanies her dad on his treks around the huge ranch fixing windmills, rounding up cattle, fixing fences, and, in general, doing the work of the ranch. She is an important part in the running of the ranch. Her father barely acknwledges her when she is late delivering lunch to the men working far from the homestead--despte the fact that she has had to change a flat tire on the ancient truck with its frozen lugnuts all by herself.The book stays focused on her childhood, her family and the ranch. We learn about her adult life, including her appointment to the Supreme Court in just a few pages. At first I was surprised at such a cursory treatment of such an important career. But in learning about her childhood upbringing on the Lazy B we really learn all about the adult Sandra Day O'Connor. This is an interesting read both as biography and as the evocation of a vanished time and place. I recommend it highly.

"Lazy B" by Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother, Alan Day, may fall within the genre of a memoir, but this book is so much more than that. The reader is allowed to visit the American Southwest during a period of time when life seemed so much simpler, albeit, in ways, much harder. This is a heartwarming account of life growing up on a cattle ranch, filled with humor and insight. I loved the story Ms. O'Connor tells when her to-be husband meets her father. A great story and highly recommended.

Sandra Day O'Connor and Alan Day have written a book that portrays ranch life in a desolte area of Arizona and New Mexico so vividly that the reader is swept away to a place and time that can be visited only through reading the Day's memoirs.Most people know little of southwestern ranch life except as presented through Hollywood's interpretation on the silver screen. "Lazy B" reveals the every day struggles of ranchers and cowboys, with intimate knowledge of and compassion for the characters, the cattle and for the land. The authors share what it was like to grow up on a ranch far from a paved road and without neighbors or playmates. Some of the antics are side-splitters. The hard work and uncertainties of life on the ranch are told in a way that touches the reader's sensitivities.It was hard to put "Lazy B" down while reading it and I was sad when I finished it; it was something joyful and heart-warming to look forward to every evening. I heartily recommend "Lasy B" for its marvelous stories, its historical value, its humor and the strength of character it presents. One of our country's most prominent women and her brother have given us a wonderful gift by sharing their lives in this book.