On the farm where I grew up my Dad raised feeder

cattle (heifers or steers).The cattle were mostly Herefords. 

On occasion he would buy Angus and Shorthorns.  

Herefords were brown with white faces. 

Angus were all black. 

Shorthorns were a reddish color.

All were to be de-horned and all free of calves.  

Sometimes this was not the case.  

When the heifer was carrying a calf it was a negative.  

Horns were dangerous.

It was about how to make a profit from beef.  

The 1960’s were a time when a small

farmer could make a profit. 

Dad had 100 + cattle and raised his own corn

and silage to support the investment on a farm of 400 acres in

northern Indiana.

Dad would buy young heifers or steers at about 500 pounds

and these cattle would arrive at our farm by truck.  These

cattle would  be fed our corn and silage for a period of time until

they reached 1,000 or 1,200 pounds. Once the goal was reached

they were loaded on a truck and taken to Chicago to the stockyards.

At these stock yards our cattle would be in fenced in lots waiting for a buyer..

My Dad would go to Chicago and watch the cattle be auctioned off

to the highest bidder.  I went with my Dad on these trips to Chicago.

At the stock yards the men would say to my Dad  “what is your boy’s name?”

My Dad would laugh—girls were not usually present. This was a man’s world

a place for Fathers and sons.  I was lucky to be let into this space. 

I would learn the position of outsider—an exception to the rule. 

Identity became real. 

These little memories stick in my mind like a pin in a cushion.

Time passes. 

Dad gone. 

Chicago stockyards gone. 

Me here reciting for the record some stuff that I grew up with. 

Cattle were a constant conversation. 

Noon radio gave the price of pork belly, beef, corn, oats, beans,

and so on. 

When I was a kid in 4-H I raised my own cattle. I took my Hereford /Angus/Shorthorn

to the county fair.

Here I paraded him/her around the ring to be judged. 

Here I learned more about commodity and cash and competition. 

Here I learned more about how many

dollars it took to put on a pound of beef.   

I look back and forward thinking about the farm and cattle and all 

that obsession—what it meant then and what it means now.  

It was a place to learn and check out how things work. 

I am still thinking about how things work. 

Things change people change. 

Cattle and corn and old ways of doing things then were new  

and now are mostly gone.  

I left. 

They stayed.

It all merges into a distant landscape filled with sights and sounds. Cattle and

barns and smells of corn silage and manure and fences and trucks and cash.

Dad hoped for 25 cents a pound. That was a good deal.

Hopes are just that.

I would return to Chicago in 1968. 

I was 21.

More about that later.