OPINION? EVERYBODY HAS ONE: Our steers and heifers are shipping tomorrow

Our steers and heifers are shipping tomorrow. This is the trial of feeding together the brothers and sisters. The manager at the feed lot assured me it would work out fine. I sure hope that old boy knows of what he is speaking. My close relative is so nervous about the ordeal that she is insisting we go along and make sure they make it. I like to follow the truck anyway so I guess we will.

I learned my lesson the hard way, as usual, several years ago when I wanted to try a different sale barn with 10 head of fat steers. I let a guy that we had known for years talk me into letting him haul them. This feller had been working most of his life in construction and got to sipping the hard stuff right regular. He quit the money-making work and started buying and selling cattle and doing some hauling. He had a real nice trailer and a fine two-ton truck so when he hit me up to haul for me, I agreed.

You need not believe that grown men make good decisions just because they are grown men. I don’t know how long sipping the hard stuff takes to start pickling brain cells, but not too long according to my experience. We got a call several hours after I had loaded him out and he wasn’t speaking too plain. He wanted to know if it would be alright to just unhook the trailer and leave it beside the highway while he made a side trip to look at some feller’s cattle.

You need to know the steers had already been loaded for three hours and it was just a 60 mile trip to the designated sale barn. My close relative took the call, scalded that feller’s ears right good and he never wanted to haul for us again!

So, therefore, we will follow the truck and watch them unload and weigh the cattle. I sure enjoy seeing those big buggers cross the scale. Not anything in my line of business is any more gratifying that I can think of, except new calves.

My close relative also loves to watch them and she also keeps track of the data, the weights and the particulars of all that occur while the cattle are fed.

We have made the trip many times - well, not a yearly trip and certainly not until we could figure that, if the cattle all died, we still would not lose the farm - but as often as we could. I know the aroma is sorta stifling, but looking at hundreds of head of fat cattle is a pure pleasure. I know we will get to eat at the big steak house on the way home tomorrow and that, too, is a treat.

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, taking pride in your production, no matter what you produce, is a pleasant thing. Repairing flats, flipping burgers, working at the bank or checking out groceries, it just doesn’t matter what job, do it to your best ability so you can be proud of yourself when the day is over.

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Bill is a pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 06/19/2013