Paul Russell Paul and dad had been friends for a long time. In the mid 70’s, when we had built up our Brahman herd somewhat Paul decided he wanted a couple heifers and a bull. He came over one Saturday and wanted to look at the calves. He ended up picking out and buying 8 heifers that day and we made a deal with him to breed them the first time so he could go an extra year without a bull. He bought the heifers in the early summer so in the fall when they were ready to breed we sent our FR 355 son that came from Herman Beville over for him to breed his heifers. He kept the bull about 3 months until he was sure that they were bred. He had picked some really good heifers and, since he was a really good friend, dad had sold them to him at a discount. They calved out and not only did they have a really good set of calves, 7 of them were heifers. Paul came over to buy a bull to breed the cows back but dad knew he didn’t have as good a bull right then as he wanted Paul to have. So, we loaned him the Sugarland’s Esto 4 son that we had. This time he wasn’t quite as lucky, he only got 7 calves and 2 were bulls but they were all very good calves again. When these calves were about 3 months old, dad got a call from Paul asking him to come up. He didn’t tell us what was going on, just that he wanted to see us. We got there and he was sitting outside in a chair under the shade. It wasn’t at all difficult to see he had lost weight and just wasn’t feeling too good. He told dad that the Doctor had told him he had to cut back and he wanted to sell us the cattle back. He told dad he just wanted beef price for them because he wanted them where he could come and see them and not split them up. So we bought the 8 cows, 12 heifers and 3 bulls back for beef price. As it turned out things were much more serious than just needing to cut back. Paul did come out once about 3 months later and looked at the cows but he had someone driving for him and he felt so bad we only got through about half of the pastures before he had to leave. 60 days later Paul had passed. He never got to see the 3 calf crop out of the cows. It was very sad to say good bye that time. He was such a great guy and he loved those old cattle. I guess I just wanted to post this story to say that if you like them and want them, then go after em, as with everything else in life, enjoy all you can because none of us know when God will call us home. I know this one is sort of rambling but there is a very strong lesson here as well.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 14:40:22 +0000
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