The toothless cattle company

I got my start in the cattle business in the fall of 1973. You old moss backs will recall that was a very dark time. From September of ‘73 through March 1975, fed cattle lost money every month. Lots of money. For you mathematically challenged, that’s 19 straight months of going further and further into the red. I suppose times for cattlemen could have been worse. It could have been their money they were losing, not the bank’s.

It was during this time that I gathered with my financial advisers, a professional poker player and a derelict member of our local chapter of Gamblers Anonymous, to come up with a business model that would work during these trying times. The plan we settled on was for me to buy shelly “one shot” cows at auction markets that would be in calf and look like they had a 50-50 chance of spitting out an additional offspring in their tarnished golden years.

Of course the regular reprobates gathered around the sale rings laughed every time I’d buy another cow, and it wasn’t long before auctioneers were announcing the buyer as The Toothless Cattle Company, The Gummer Group LLC or the Runnin’ on the Rims Ranch.

Ha, ha. Very funny.

I wasn’t laughing because I could sympathize with the bovine victims of inadequate dentition because I had similar problems. Without boring you with medical jargon, let me just say that I have a condition in which my eyes produce no tears and my mouth no saliva. This creates a situation in my dry mouth where bacteria thrive, and they’ve eaten away at my teeth to the point that I regularly have to get another tooth pulled. I’m running out of teeth, which means I eat a diet that consists mostly of gruel. A jack-o’-lantern has more teeth than I have. If I were a cow I’d be in the slaughter run.

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