The Bill House Story – Transcript

July 1, 2023
Pioneer Bluffs Prairie Talk by Carol House
Note: This is a computer generated transcript and will contain some inaccuracies

[0:00] Music.

Introduction by Nancy Mattke, Pioneer Bluffs Board President

[0:27] At Pioneer Bluffs we preserve and share the ranching heritage of the Flint Hills and one of the ways we do that is by having these family stories told.
This is one of our best ways of preserving ranching heritage and we will learn about right now a legend in the cattle industry, Bill House.
Bill’s work on the national and international level impacted the entire cattle industry.
His legacy lives on through a foundation that provides educational opportunities that foster agricultural, food supply, and economic growth.
Bill loved his community and his wife, who’s here today to tell Bill’s story.
Please help me welcome Carol House.

When Lynn asked me to do this, I at first said, oh no, I can’t do this.
I am not a public speaker.

[1:23] And the more I thought about it, the more I thought there’s really not much that I’d like to talk about more than Bill, and why not try?
So I decided that I would try to do it.
Well, Lynn wanted me to go mostly into the impact he had made on the cattle industry.
Bill was born in January, on January 23, 1916, and he was the firstborn of three boys and his parents were Swain and Matilda House.
He had two brothers, Bob was two years younger, and then Alvin was quite a few years younger than Bill, or than Bob.
And so the three of them lived there with their family and Bill was ready to start school but he missed the cutoff date by a few weeks.
And his father knew that he was smart enough and he knew that he was ready for school.
So since his dad was on the school board, he pulled a few strings and got Bill into school a little bit early.
Now you can see the three boys, Bill’s sitting down and then the little guy in the middle is the youngest, Al, and then Bob is standing on the right side.
The other one is a picture of Bill when he was a tiny baby.
Bill.

[2:51] Either had to walk or ride his pony to school. They didn’t have school buses and mom didn’t take kids everywhere they wanted to go back then.
So he usually rode his pony and I’ve tried and tried to remember what the name of that pony is, but I can’t.
But he was a very gentle pony and Bill just had no problems at all with him.
Well, Bill’s grandfather had had a violin, a beautiful old violin, and he had told Bill’s father and his uncles that whichever grandchild played the violin first could have the violin.
And so Bill decided to play the violin when he was a little bit older.
Well, I still say I’m not sure if Bill really wanted to play the violin or if his dad just wanted to keep that violin in the family. But they proceeded to have him join.

[3:50] Orchestra at school. Well, he had one little problem. The days that he had to take the violin and the big old case to school, his horse would balk and step aside and just give him all kinds of trouble. He didn’t like that big old case. So Bill struggled with that several times and finally he thought I know something better I can do. So he ended up putting the the case on the fence post.

[4:22] Then he’d go get the pony and ride the pony over to the fence pick up the violin and just throw it over his shoulder and the pony never balked again after that. So he got around that really, really good. This is the, inside of Bill’s dad’s harness shop. He was a horse and mule trader and he was definitely a hard-working man and Bill helped him a lot. Anyway, Bill would deliver a lot of the cattle for his dad and he he joked and said he he was 14 or 15 before he knew he could go anyplace without leading a horse or a mule that, was his job was to deliver animals to people that bought him from out of town so Bill was really pretty pretty active helping his dad and then the depression.

[5:32] Hit and you know what the Depression did to people and they were just so poor and Bill had been raising a few head of cattle that was going to be a college fund and he had been working with those for quite some time and finally he.

[5:51] Got ready to sell them, and his dad took them to the sale. And when his dad came home, he said, son, I’m sorry, but he said the feed bill took them.
You don’t have any money left.
And Bill would tell people, he said, I went broke when I was 15 years old.
And that just made him more determined than ever to get a college education and to get out of Cedarvale.
That was his goal.

[6:22] So by now, we’re up to his college days. And Bill had relatives that lived in Arkansas City.
And so he decided to go to school there because they said they had a place that he could live.
And he lived with them. And they lived a ways from school. But he could walk back and forth.
And he didn’t have a car.
He didn’t have a car until after he was married.
He went all through college without wheels and he decided to play basketball because he hadn’t had time to play basketball in high school.
He didn’t have a time to go back and forth for practices and school and everything.
So Jack Stark, I think some of you remember Jack Stark, his dad’s name was Dan Stark and he was the basketball coach And he took a real liking to Bill, and he was really good to him.
And Bill said one of the highlights of his basketball days was when Dan Stark’s wife Audra would feed the basketball team.
She would occasionally make homemade biscuits and sausage gravy, and Bill never forgot that.
He would tell.

[7:43] Their son Jack about it later, and I know Jack fished with Bill and on the ranches until just a couple of years ago.
They were lifelong friends. Well, it was time to move on to the finish his degree to get his bachelor’s, and, he enrolled at the University of Kansas, and he used to have a lot of people say, well, why would you go over there when you didn’t go to the Ag School, Kansas State? And Bill would just laugh, and he’d say, say, well, I guess the hitchhiking was better on 75 than it was on 77.
And he was joking, but he wasn’t joking, because that’s how he was getting back and forth to school.

[8:22] So he had had a gentleman from Cedarville tell him that he had a friend that owned a small cafe in Lawrence, and it was called the Rock Chalk Cafe.
And he told Bill he was sure that if he would go apply for a job, that he would give him one.
So he did that, and Bill said it was really, really hard work.
But he said, and he only made a few cents for a shift, but he said the good part was that they, got to eat their meals.
And he said this gentleman would let them eat anything they wanted.
There was only one thing they couldn’t have, and that was steak.
They could have pie, ice cream, anything, hamburgers, French fries, but they couldn’t have steak.
So that didn’t bother Bill at all, and he gained weight, he said, while he was there.
Well, besides that, he did anything he could to make money. He was totally on his own.
His parents had no money to help him with college.

[9:22] He parked cars for events. He said he never could go. He didn’t have the money to go and he didn’t have the time to go because he was working.
But he would park cars just for a little extra money and that helped getting by.
Sometime in there he had some friends that realized that he had a sport coat, and a lot of them didn’t have sport coats back in the Depression days so they would ask Bill if they could borrow his sport coat to go to a dance or a special date or something and Bill never needed that so he would loan it to him, and he said they’d always bring it back clean or dry cleaned and they’d be in pristine condition and ready for the next friend that wanted to borrow the sport coat. So it really got passed around. Well while he was living in Lawrence he got a room from a professor that lived there. His name was, well I don’t know what his name was, just professor. He was a crippled man and he, was just slightly crippled and he was, Bill said he could barely get up and down the stairs, that he really had to have help and so he told Bill he could live in the attic in the winter where it was warm, but he had to keep the coal.

[10:45] Stove going, and he had a lot of other chores that he had Bill do, and then in the summertime he could live in the basement where it was cooler. So Bill was very thankful for those provisions. That was really a pretty good cheap way to live. So after he got his degree, his bachelor’s degree, he was accepted into the School of Law and he got married. He married a girl from Cedarvale. Her name was Catherine Holdroyd and she had been attending school in Ottawa and her.

[11:26] Father said that they could get married but and he would pay for her school but Bill had to pay his own way and pay for everything else but he would pay for her school because he wanted her to finish so that’s how they did it. Well Bill had a a real blessing happen in those two years of law school.
His grades were so good that he was offered a job in the law library there on campus.
And he ended up, he could study any time he wanted as long as a student didn’t need help at the time.
So he said instead of having to work a job and then go home and study for hours, he could study while at work. So it made it a whole lot better.
His grades continued to soar and he ended up earning the Order of the Coif and I know some of you know what that is but it is the highest honor you can get in law school. It’s the only given to the top 10% of the graduating class and he.

[12:25] Received that and and he was through with college so now he’s ready to get on with life and he was through with college. So now he’s ready to get on with life and he ended up, we’re into the 40s, and he ended up setting up a little law, office in, Sedan, Kansas and.

[12:57] Tax law was his favorite thing. He loved tax law and he did a lot of tax work for people and he also, Did Income tax for people after hours. He did that for extra money and.

[13:13] He also was the, The attorney that represented the Keeney Valley Valley Electric Co-op when they were trying to set up in Cedarvale, Kansas, and he saw them through on that. Well, he still loved the outdoor in his Herfords, and he knew his heart was still in ranching. And so he ended up deciding that he could do both, and so that’s exactly what he did. He ended up, in the 40s, beginning to buy land and cattle, And the land he’d buy were just little pieces here and there.
They weren’t even all attached.
But he eventually got enough of them bought that they started attaching.
And he bought his foundation herd from the Teo Ranch in Raton, New Mexico.
And he went down there and personally picked the first bunch of cattle.
And his first purchase was 400 head.

[14:18] And he got them back to Kansas. And they were really nice cattle.
And that was showing the kind of cattle that Bill liked, the little, short, stocky, short-legged Herefords that were real thick.
And they couldn’t be polled. They had to be horned.
And that was quite a little joke with Bill, because he really thought they looked different.
And so he always had the horn variety.
So this was, let’s see, he.

[14:51] I told you about where the foundation stock came from and he ended up going down there every spring and he would help, The people it’s a teal ranch work cattle, When he would go down to buy more cattle and he said that way he could look over the herd and he could really see, What was what and he could pick the cream of the crop as he thought so by now he is he’s getting to be kind of well known for his Herefords and he decided to get involved with the American Royal in Kansas City and he ended up winning.

[15:33] Shows and he you can see that when he got grand champion one year and he got it more than one year but he really enjoyed showing cattle and he was winning a lot of awards and he was becoming really well known to the Hereford Association and so in 1960 they asked him to be on the board of the Hereford Association, the American Hereford Association. And the one thing that was funny about Bill and his first load of cattle, it says grooming cattle was new to Bill. So his first load he took to Kansas City and he got them all.

[16:23] Unloaded, situated, watered, fed, thought everything was in good shape and he left and went home or went back to the hotel and had a nice dinner, good night sleep and he got up early the next morning and he went back down to the stockyards and when he got there he looked around and he realized that just about everyone else had probably been up almost all night grooming their cattle, washing them, brushing them. They all looked pristine and his looked like they’d just gotten off the freight train, which is exactly what they had done. He, said he was so embarrassed that he could hardly show his face that day, but that never happened again. So, in the 60s he was really, really starting to fight for the cattle industry. He had, like I say, he was on the board and between 1962 and 1963, he really worked for the.

[17:33] The import bill limiting the number of cattle that came into the United States from other countries and the cattle business was so bad at the time that no one was making any money and he was really, really feeling that something had to be done.
And so in 63, he became the president of the American Hereford Association.
And Bill had just decided he was going to look for like-minded people, people that wanted to improve the industry and help the market.

[18:13] So he was leading a group of ranchers from the Corn Belt, from some southern states, Western states and they became real respected and well-known and it just kept growing. So the American Hereford Association was paying all of Bill’s expenses and that was really handy because he was doing a lot of traveling and with this traveling he was not only promoting the Hereford cattle, he was really promoting his goal to get this import bill implemented. This photo that we have here was actually done by a professional photographer. The American Hereford Association called him one day from Kansas City and said we’re going to send someone down to take a picture of you or to take a series of pictures for for publicity. So that’s what that picture’s about and he ended up kind of getting to choose which one he wanted. We still have that one in the office. Now it’s still the 60s and Bill’s still working hard to get this Hereford-Grover.

[19:37] Coalition to flourish and this caricature picture of Bill, an artist did that in Dublin, Ireland and he would do pictures of people and then after it was over he would mail them to them and he’d have an envelope in there with a letter saying that for $10 you can keep this picture and as a memento and all so Bill kept it and we still have it. And the Dublin, Ireland, the reason he was there It was the World Hereford Conference that year.
And he was representing.
United States and he didn’t know a whole lot of people there, but he knew a few and he knew, important people that were there and he.

[20:25] Was just sitting there minding his own business he said and Enjoying the show and he said, this gentleman came up to him and this fellow had on a suit and a necktie and, And he leaned over to Bill and he said, Mr. House.
And Bill said, I looked up at him and said, yes sir. And he said, the queen mom would like for you to come sit in her box with her and visit.
And Bill said, he couldn’t even think for a minute. He said he knew they probably were there because he knew they had a huge herd of Hereford and the English royal family.
And so he looked up at this gentleman, and he said, sir, he said, thank you very much.
But he said, I’m fine just right here where I am.
And he said, this man puffed up like a toad. And he said, Mr. House, you don’t realize, this is not an invitation, it is a command.
And so Bill said he gathered his paraphernalia, and he quickly followed this gentleman over to where the queen mum was.
And he said that was probably the biggest delight of the whole show.
He said she was so well-versed and so smart and just absolutely was a delight to talk to.
He spent the whole afternoon with her.

[21:48] So, after he gets back from there, we’re moving on to, he spent a lot of time in Washington.
And in 1964, he was really still seeking out people to help with this import bill that he wanted to get set.
And he appeared before the Senate hearing, and he gained a lot of support there.
And then at this time, he was president of the Kansas Livestock Association and, the American Hereford Association.
So he had a lot of help recruiting help. And actually, the bill was needed just because, they had to do something and had to do it quickly. The market was still getting worse and worse.
So finally, he had enough help that the bill passed the Finance Committee, and then it did pass the Senate.
And the limit of 6.5, excuse me, 7.6% of imports.

[23:04] Was the limit that they could bring into the United States from other countries.
And the bill did pass, and it went into effect in July of 64, and he said it passed by 76 votes.

[23:21] In the finance committee, and that 38 of those votes were influenced directly by cattle people.
So it was very, very successful, very happy, but he had worked for years on this. Well, by now, he’s been elected vice president of the American National Cattlemen, and that’s what is now the National Cattle Association.
And he was voted vice president in 66 and 67.
And then in 68 and 69, he became president. And he was the first Kansan to hold that office.
There have been other Kansans since him that have held that office.
But although the bill had passed, there was still undercurrent.
And he finally discovered what was going on.

[24:23] He found that the Ford Motor Company and the John Deere Company had set up plants in Argentina and Australia and New Zealand.
And they were making a lot of money and selling a lot of equipment and they were very happy to have the cattle going out of there.

[24:47] And so he realized that they were the ones that were helping finance the lobbying effort in Washington, D.C.
So not only that, but then he found that, to add insult to injury, the King Ranch in Texas had leased 11 million acres, and they were raising cheap cattle and sending them up here and so there were people within the association that were trying to get it repealed too. So they were they were really having a rough time thinking it was all over with but it wasn’t. So by now they’re getting help at a higher level. Bill is the one sitting to the just to he’s on the right the way we’re looking at it, but on Nixon’s left. And a couple of the others are cattlemen from various states and that were helping Bill so much. And Nixon had met with them a couple times and he just was very sympathetic to the cattle business. And And so he ended up.

[26:06] Telling him that he would see that that would not be repealed during his tenure, and he said that he would give a speech about that, and he did.
He gave a speech in Texas, and he just said he gave his word that the bill would not be repealed while he was in office.
So during that time, there was a young man that was from Oregon.
He was just a farm kid and he was working in Washington.
He was actually, he took a liking to Bill and he was feeding him some information on people that would help and wouldn’t help and who to talk to.
Bill said he really did help him a lot. He suggested that he have a cubbyhole party.
I don’t know if you guys know what a cubbyhole party is, but in the White House, they have the little alcoves under the stairs, and they have parties in those, and they have sometimes a liquor bar, sometimes just tables and chairs, and they’ll have intimate small meetings.
This guy said, Bill, you need to invite 12 to 15 influential senators that you don’t know so well and have them come to this party and you can get more help that way.
So he did that and Bill said, I had to pay for that party, but he said it ended up not being as bad as I thought it would be, because a lot of the food was donated.

[27:34] But at that time, after that, while Bill was spending so much time in Washington, he had a couple of funny things that happened on the elevators, and I thought you guys would get a kick out of them.
I don’t know if you know who Senator Dodd from Connecticut was.
This has been a long time ago, but he also had a father, Senator Dodd, but this was the younger one.
One day, Bill and Senator Carlson were on the elevator, and the elevator door opened to let someone on, and it was Senator Dodd.
He looked at Bill and he said, ”Oh,” he said, ”I love your stets.” He said, ”I’ve always wanted one of those.
I just really like that hat.” Bill said, ”Well, if you give me your address, I’ll get you one and send it to you when I get home to Kansas.” He said, Senator Dodd just put his hands in there.
He goes, oh, no, no, no, Mr. House. I’m under investigation right now for bribery.
I can’t accept anything. Don’t send me a hat.

[28:37] And so Bill just, at the time, he said he felt real bad. But then he thought it was really funny later, because he didn’t know anything about it.
And the second thing that he thought was especially funny to Bill was Strom Thurmond.
And I know all of you have heard of Strom Thurmond.
Well, he was well-known. He was just a fixture around there.
And he was on the elevator one day when Bill was getting on the elevator with Senator Pearson.
And Senator Pearson introduced him to the senator.

[29:10] And he said, Strom, he said, this is Bill House. He’s the cattleman from Cedarvale.
He’s just a little further to the right than you are. And Bill said, he took that as a real compliment.
So, that was his funny elevator stories. He had so many good stories.
I wish I could talk for another hour, but I can’t. As president of the American National Cattlemen, he had to go to the Democratic National Convention and the Republican.
Republican was in Miami and the other one was in Chicago.
And he said they were pretty uneventful, but he said there was so much rioting and so much trouble in Chicago, that they had to get police escorts to get them.
From where they were having their meetings to hotels. They couldn’t even get back to their hotel. They had to, Transfer them to another hotel get their luggage another day. He said it was awful He said the writing was horrible, and so he didn’t enjoy that at all He said there was a little bit of that sort of thing going on in Miami, but nothing like it was in Chicago, so the American National Cattle Association, Convention is in Hawaii that year and And Bill took a good part of his family on that trip.

[30:34] And he knew there were still a few members that were working to repeal this import bill.
And the night before the general assembly of the convention, the final meeting, he said three or four men came to his hotel room and started pressuring him, telling him he needed to resign, that he was not representing the cattle industry the way he should be.
And Bill said he wasn’t going to resign. He was doing all he could to make it better.
And these men, he said, stayed for over an hour.
And they just argued and argued, giving him all these reasons why he should resign.
And finally, he said, one of them turned to the others and said, he’s not gonna budge.
He’s not gonna give in. We might as well leave. And so they did.
And Bill said as they were leaving, he said to them, he said, why don’t you bring it up on the floor in the morning and if you wanna get rid of me and do that.
So they did. They brought it up the next morning in the meeting.
And as I’ve been told, it was quickly, quickly cut off.

[31:44] They told him they were out of order and that they weren’t going to do anything about Bill.
And that that bill that was passed that import bill stayed in effect for over 30 years and you know I like to say Bill truly put his life on hold for the cattle industry he really he really did and I have a couple other pictures that I I promised Lynn that I would explain what this is.
She came to my house to talk to me about doing this, and I had this big fiberglass bowl in my side yard, and she wanted to know about it.
So I told her it was my fault that it was there.

[32:34] Bill and I had gone on a couple of car trips over the years, and he would see these things, in antique stores, and he wanted one so badly.
But they always wanted at least $1,000 for them, and he’d say, well, no, I could buy a real bull for that, I’m not going to do that.
But I knew how bad he wanted one, so I was always getting on eBay and trying to find Hereford Treasures to surprise Bill with, and this thing was on there.
And the bid was low and it was staying low, and so I decided that I was gonna try to buy it.
Because I knew he was gonna take it over to the ranch. The first ranch was over 15 miles east of Ark City, and it’s right on Highway 166, and I knew it would be out of the way.
And so I won the bid, made all the arrangements with the people, and they called me back the next day, and they said, Mrs. House, we’re really sorry, but the freight was figured wrong on this and it’s gonna cost almost what you’re paying for to get it shipped to you.
And they said, would you go in halves on the shipping?

[33:42] And I said, no. I said, my husband doesn’t even know I’ve done this.
And I said, I don’t know. I don’t wanna do it that bad.
I said, no, I think I better just pass on it.
And I hated it because I really wanted to do it. still didn’t know I’d even bid on it. So they called me back a few hours later and they said, Mrs. House, would you mind if we delivered the bull? And I said, I don’t care how I get it as long as it’s in good shape and and I don’t have to pay more freight. And so they said, well we’ll just bring it over. It will fit in the back of our pickup. So here they came from Arkansas and wouldn’t you know the weekend they came it was a snowstorm, a horrible snowstorm, and they barely could get up our driveway. They were a nice young couple and and by now I told Bill what I’d done and he was excited but it was storming you couldn’t see out very well that night and so they came inside just a day before cell.

[34:48] Phones and so they wanted to use our phone to find a hotel so they could spend the night because they couldn’t go back out so they did and they they ended up no one had a room in the in in town that everything was full so I told him I said we have an extra bed and bath and and I’ll fix you a good breakfast in the morning and you guys can stay there if you’d like to oh they really they were so excited so they stayed and we had the nicest visit with them and they were really a sweet little couple and so in the morning after we ate they got ready to leave and and we follow them outside and.

[35:30] Jim was his name, he says, where do you want the cattle? The cow, and I said, well, and I put my arm up to say, it’s 15 miles east of here, and as I started saying that, Bill said, well, I think it’d just look real good right there.
And I know my jaw hit the floor, and I said, what?
He said, well, don’t you think it’d just look good right there?
And I said, I thought you wanted it for the ranch, Bill. I thought you wanted to put it over there.
Well, hon, you know people are ornery. He said, they’ll just shoot it up or somebody will steal it.
He said, I think we ought to just leave it right here. Oh, God. I was so embarrassed.
I was so embarrassed for several years.

[36:11] People, the UPS people, people thought that it was real when they would drive in and it, oh, it was awful.
Well, after a few years, I thought, I’m going to have this thing here.
I might as well have some fun with it.
So, I remember, I don’t know if some Some of you remember how people used to dress the goose up, the geese up on the porches in clothes.
And I thought I could put some costumes on that bull and make some fun out of it if it’s going to be there.
So I started doing that and I take pictures and post it on Facebook and everybody enjoys them.
Everybody kept saying I needed a name for him and I said he’s just Mr. Bull. So we have had fun.
He said Bill’s been gone about 15 years and Mr. Bull’s still there and he’ll be there after I’m gone. The kids will have to get rid of him, I guess.

[37:10] And then this is a collage of pictures that my son Jeff put together that that picture, of Bill and I on the left was at his 89 and a half birthday party.
The reason it was 89 1?2 is his birthday’s in January, and I wanted to have a cookout and a band and everything fun like that, and you can’t count on doing anything fun in January, so we decided to have a 89 1?2 birthday party.
So that’s what that picture is from.
Then the one of the little kids on the bottom with the bull are my three grandchildren.
That picture was taken about 14 years ago because the baby in the picture, Canaan, is Bill’s namesake.
They named him Canaan Swain, and Bill’s name was Swain William.
And the little guy playing the violin beside that is Canaan Swain.
And I only wish that Bill could have seen him play the violin.
It would have thrilled him to death.

[38:13] The picture above is my two boys with me. It was the day we got married and I laugh.
I say, Bill holding his chin like that looking off, it’s like, what have I gotten myself into?
But he didn’t feel that way. He loved my family. We had some really good years.
We were married 17 years and they couldn’t have been better.
The picture up above, the picture with all of us in it, that was just a couple of weeks before he passed.
We had been to the National Cattle Convention in Phoenix and on the way home we had driven because he wanted to stop and buy some bulls at a place in Oklahoma.

[38:56] And so we did. And Bill was not quite acting like himself the last couple days of that trip, but we got home and went to bed early that night and when we got up the next morning, oh, something was really wrong. I thought Bill had had a bad stroke.
And so we called the doctor that we got him to the hospital and he ended up within an hour.
Jason was in Manhattan and he got down from Manhattan and was with us when we got the news and they told us that he had multiple brain tumors and they couldn’t operate on any of them.
There were too many and some of them were too big and they wanted to know, you know, How long have you been having problems? And Bill, he had been giving speeches down in Phoenix.
Nothing was wrong. He said he had never had a headache in his life.
And when they told us that, of course, Jason and I were in tears.
And the doctor left and the room and we’re sitting, Bill’s being really pretty unaffected by it.
And I thought maybe he wasn’t really understanding what they were telling him.
And so pretty soon the doctor came back in and he said, have you guys had some time to think about this?
Because he told him, if you have radiation, it might give you three or four months extra and you could get things in order and stuff. And so Bill said, I’ll do the radiation.
So when the doctor came back in, he said.

[40:23] He said, how are you doing, Mr. House? And he looked over at Jason and he looked at me and we’re both standing there bawling and he says, well, I’m doing okay, but these folks are really having a hard time with this.

[40:40] And the doctor looked at us and I thought, that was Bill, always worrying about everyone else.
He was just one in a million. And the traveler came out and took this picture.
They heard we had told the gentleman that had the bull calves that we didn’t weren’t in any hurry for them because they weren’t gonna be any good for a while and so when I found out Bill was only gonna be there a few weeks I called, him back and I said how quick can you get those delivered up here I told him what was wrong and he said well I can get him up there day after tomorrow so I got the guys from the ranch to bring a whole gob of portable fence over and we put it in my backyard right outside my great big picture window and put those calves in there and for the last couple weeks of Bill’s life he just sat in front of that window and watched those cattle and it was the best thing we could have done. I was kind of sorry after we had to take him out of there it took my yard a long time to get back to normal. Six bull calves in there but it, was worth it. Thanks for letting me share these stories. I wish I could tell you a whole lot more. There’s people here that have known Bill longer than I did and I kind of had to leave them out because we were kind of concentrating on the.

[42:02] Political part of it. So thank you for sharing. I appreciate your time.

[42:13] Music.