"It makes me sad
when I see something like that," Steve said, and he nodded at a knot of landscape. "You know there used to be a farm there."
"To me, this is all home."
"Pretty, how it's all starting to get green."
"You're a pretty courteous driver," I observed.
"I'm in no hurry," Steve said. "My wife says I'm a pretty courteous dancer, too. There's no sense risking somebody's life just to save a minute."
"The only thing that has changed in my business in the last fifty years," Steve said, "is the size of the truck. The trucks have gotten bigger. Otherwise, it's the same."
We stopped at a "farrow-to-finish" hog operation belonging to a big corporation. The dead hogs had been pulled down to the end of the driveway, right out by the road. A sign was posted with big letters: "No entrance without appointment." "They don't want a truck driving into their yard for fear it will bring in disease," Steve said. "I don't think it would. My landlord was worried about me being in the rendering business - he has cows on the place where we live. I've been doing it for five years and he hasn't lost a single animal from disease due to my being in this business."
"When we get to the rendering plant," Steve warned me, "you can't get out of the truck. And you don't want to get out - you'll never get the stink off your shoes."
"On my dad's side, I'm related to Schindler," Steve informed me. "On my mother's side, I'm part Jewish. One of my relatives was on Schindler's list. I have that movie. Watched it many times."
"You notice we've been driving for a few hours and we haven't run into many towns," Steve said.
I saw little metal bridges regularly spaced crossing a creek, I wondered at that. "Irrigation," Steve said. "The irrigation rig crosses the creek on those bridges."
"My wife and I bought a buckboard," Steve told me. "We're going to train a horse to pull it. I'll put a stuffed dead animal in the back, put a big Wisner Rendering sign on it, with our motto - 'Your Local Used Cow Dealer.' The motto was my wife's idea. I get a lot of compliments on it. So, of course, when I got this truck, I had to have it painted on the door."
"A lot of cattle feeders haven't even seen this new truck yet," Steve said. "That's why I have big signs on the side of the truck, so they know who I am."
We pass a big feedlot operation. "Four brothers own this one," Steve said. "All their kids work on the place. The only guy they've hired is a fellow who rides pens. He goes into the pens and looks for sick cattle. He doesn't ride a horse, he rides a mule."
"Boy, is this a swamp," he said, looking out across the operation. All the rain had turned the surface of the feedlots into a heavy gumbo of mud and cow shit. "When you are riding pens and it is so muddy, so much clay sticks to the feet of your horse you have to take a power-washer to get it off."
To be continued....
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