You can go home

During the course of my vacation last week, I made a couple of Angus stops. Some people might find this odd since I was on vacation. But, I truly consider many of the Angus breeders and Association members family. As a matter of fact, I see many of them more often than my family so last Saturday on my way across Nebraska's Hwy 2, I made a stop at the Kraye Angus Production Sale in Mullen. Now, mind you my family and moved to Cox Hereford Ranch in 1978 and moved away in 1983, when I wasn't quite a decade old. But I learned alot about ranch life in those old Sandhills, which is some of the best cow country on Earth.

So I was perusing through the bulls at Kraye's when I ran into John, the second of the third generation on this family operation. He looked at me, and just started shaking my hand, and said, "Shelia Stannard, how are you? I can't believe you drove all the way from St. Joe to come to our sale!" Well, I explained to him that I was passing through town on my way to the Panhandle to see family and I couldn't forget their sale day. He mentioned that he was honored I was there from "the Association." And, I looked at John, and smiled, thinking to myself, I wasn't really on official business, and I could never forget where I came from.

Well, his dad, "whispering" Fred, didn't think one thing about me being from the American Angus Association. When I walked into that sale barn, Freddie put his arm around me and I was that 9-year-old third grader again. He led me around from rancher to rancher, exclaiming, "I bet you don't recognize this old gal," only like Freddie could! Very few people did recognize me, but hello, I wasn't wearing my bell-bottom Wranglers, my ball cap pulled down tightly over my ears and my leather belt with "SHELIA" engraved in the back with a little hereford belt buckle like I did so many years ago! I would hope I have straighter teeth, straighter hair, and am not quite so goofy looking! I got to talk to the Coxes, the ranch we lived on and worked for. And I got to see most of the Kraye family. It was just like being "home".

Oh, and why do they call him "whispering" Fred? Well, they say if you walk into the barns in Denver, and all the cattle are laying down with the fans blowing, Freddie can say "hello, friend," to the first person he sees, and it will be so loud all the cattle in the barn will stand up. He's been that way since I first met him in his feed store back in the late 1970s and he'll always be that way. It's nice to know that you can go home.