Market and Life Chaos

Market and Life Chaos

Bill

Heritage and Blood

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The cattle market is uncharting.

            The indicators are demonstrating apoplectic movements as if there is no roadmap to any points of the compass. Trying to make sense of it is an experience somewhere between shock and anger. Look at the indicators. A reasonable assessment would lead a first-time visitor to any American supermarket to believe there is a national shortage of beef. In fact, it is so acute it seems to be matched only by the disappearance of toilet paper. Where on earth have these standards of living gone?
            At one point last Thursday, there were exactly five one pound packages of hamburger at Walmart in Deming. When did that last happen?

Conversing with the sales associates, updates are offered as to when shipments are expected. They aren’t sure. Skepticism seeps into their opinion as to the authenticity of what is actually happening. Trucks aren’t arriving with expected products.

Empty displays don’t do much for allaying fears of shortages. It only stimulates buying when and where anything can be found. The obvious is at hand. It is hard to deny the fact normal supply chains in the beef business are essentially empty.

Evaluating livestock auction results over the past six weeks, though, certainly doesn’t suggest there is a shortage of live cattle. Prices are mixed and generally suggest the market is going to be better than 2019, but the uncertainty can and has erased supply pull factors. Prices don’t reflect underlying demand. Prices don’t reflect short numbers of calves, either. For example, try to find straight loads of 450 weight steer calves to finish orders for grass and wheat needs in northeastern New Mexico and the Panhandle of Texas.

They don’t exist.

Then look at what prices are being offered for those calves of such limited quantity. The market is upside down. The board is gyrating as it tries to mimic the actions of Wall Street, and, what the traders are looking for, they are going to find. Panic is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Run for the doors screaming and hollering!

 It will only get worse.

The grass is going to get greener as it warms, and those wheat fields needing calves for grazeout are only going to look less crowded. Maybe the market isn’t as true as it should be, but it is what it is, and Walmart is empty.

Bill

What is a 50-year span of time other than a bunch of days strung together?

We ended that drought when I found a number and called him on Friday. Too long it has been. I can remember the first time we met. Our mothers were standing talking after having told us we were related. At that time, he had never seen me, and I had never seen him. Both of us were using our mothers as shields as we angled around eyeing and sizing up one another. He wasn’t dressed like a city boy, and that was an immediate bridge. He had boots on.

We kicked the dirt one after the other.

His mother said he liked to play baseball. I was alright with that.

He had a horse. Well, alright!

You need to come ride with him. You bet!

And, we became friends as well as cousins. We played baseball on the same little league team and were undefeated over a two-year span. We played football together and experienced only those things that teammates under Friday night lights can understand. We ran track together and when he was a high school senior and I was a junior we ran on a regionally undefeated mile medley relay team until the state finals. The night of the finals a thunderous storm dumped a sea of water into what used to be University Stadium on the campus at UNM. He helped me set the blocks for the first 220 leg. We were standing in ankle deep water in the inside lane. The outside lanes were dry. We tried to protest, but they made us run anyway.

We didn’t win.

Then life took us in different directions. What we had but didn’t always know was a common heritage. In time, I finally understood how the family connection was configured. It came about variously, but the story of how his grandfather was named was part of it. Bill has Texas in his roots, too. His maternal great grandmother arrived in New Mexico in 1882. She was the sister of my maternal great great grandfather who arrived two years later.

When a baby was born to that grandmother, her young nephew (one of the sons of her brother) was asked what they should name the baby. Name him after me, the boy said.

So, it was that my own great grandmother’s brother, Tom Shelley, named new baby boy, Tom Cox. They would be raised close together, and their lives were forever intertwined with colorful heritage and blood.

Heritage and Blood

Life and livestock markets don’t always conform to hoyle.

Starts and stops, defeats and victories, and uncertainty are present. Life stories they become. What we can hope for is reasonable health, relationships with God and family, and good endings. If we have success, we should be grateful, but when you reach a certain point, success is only a conditional subject, anyway. What you overcame and who is there with you at the end is most important.

What shaped you before you were even you becomes more interesting as well.

Bill Conner and I lived in transitional times. The influence of our family, especially our grandfathers, was a large driver. They taught us to wear boots and made sure we had hats. Good, bad, or indifferent, their lives and what shaped them were imprinted upon us, and, unknowingly, we carried on a worldly impersonation of them.

Now, we have some catching up to do, and … I look forward to it.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Hey, Cuz!”