Words of Wisdom
Krayton Kerns
2.14.07
An incident occurred on Saturday February 10th that made me scrap my column idea for this week and take the topic in a different direction. Sometimes thoughts come to mind that I just must put on paper.
One of the great benefits of being a cow doctor in Montana is the close friendships you develop with folks who understand the purpose of a bread wrapper in a cowboy’s overshoes. Over the years, you hear their personal words of wisdom as you exchange ideas over a cup of coffee at their kitchen table. Some suggestions are so amazing you spend the rest of calving season rattling down the road reflecting on their advice. Others aren’t so profound, but let me ramble.
Ray of the Rawhide Ranch north of Laurel, advised me once, “When everyone else is running, you walk. When everyone else is walking you run.” His point being there is a certain benefit to place yourself on the contrary side of all the wild market swings of the cow business. When the numbers are down and everyone is shoveling out cash for anything pregnant that might be a good time to market a few cows. Conversely, when you can buy bred heifers by the semi-load, perhaps you should. I sold all my cows in ’02, my horses are getting fat, and now my tractor won’t start. Now what do I do?
Every ranch needs a good dog. The long days can be made shorter with the four-legged help of someone who can’t complain and wouldn’t even if they could. Steve, my Polish friend on Pryor Creek, once made an off-hand comment about Odie, his aging German Shepherd, “You only get one good dog in your lifetime.” Odie was always chute side and loved to help even when he could barely walk. (Actually, that reminds me of Steve before his hip replacement.)
Eventually Odie passed on, so I made arrangements for Steve to adopt another reportedly good ranch dog from the cow country around Jordan. Steve’s new dog is very, very, very long on enthusiasm and will never, ever, die. The first complaint I heard when I asked about the new dog was, “He can’t catch an antelope,” Steve said. “He will chase them for two solid days but he can’t catch one.” Perhaps Steve was right, “You only get one good dog in your lifetime.”
This brings me to my final point, trophy ranches and trophy wives. Trophy ranches are easy to spot as you bounce down the back roads of Montana. There, at the end of a washboard gravel road will be a paved driveway framed by a huge log entry-way the size of the St. Louis Arch. If you stop and stare, there is not a rotted post or a wire splice anywhere in the fences for as far as the eye can see. Magnificently groomed burr-free horses are loping across the green rolling foothills, and they also have a cow.
Trophy wives are a little harder to spot. Some folks mistakenly think a trophy wife is twenty years younger than the husband, has 5% body fat, recently remanufactured breasts, and is comfortable using the word “neato” three times in the same sentence. They are wrong, and here’s why:
For the first time in my 27 year marriage, my commitment to the legislature has meant I only see my wife on weekends. After Saturday’s House session I raced down the highway to get home before dark because I had a job to do. My airplane had been at Northern Skies Aviation for some annual maintenance and I needed to hop it two miles from the Laurel Airport to our home airstrip and this weekend was my only chance. Friday evening I phoned my wife to check the depth of the fresh snow on the runway. “Six inches of light snow” was the report so the landing was doable, so I went straight to the airport and fired up my plane. (Now, don’t get ahead of me here.)
I buzzed a quick circle west of town, made the approach, landed and then taxied up to the concrete apron at my hangar. As the engine was shutting down I sat and marveled at my surroundings. The 60 foot apron was completely shoveled clean and the roller-track guides to the hangar doors were swept dry and ice-free. “I knew we wouldn’t have much time together this weekend,” my wife explained as I stumbled out of the plane. “So I shoveled the apron this morning so you didn’t have to spend an hour doing it when you got home.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a trophy wife.
