Chapter One
The host Gus ran the meeting like a church board of elders--by Robert's Rules of Order. Everyone had an equal say. There was no forced agenda, no 'officers' or 'staff' running the meeting--just ranchers. They opened with a prayer and then everyone took a few minutes to each introduce themselves and tell a little about their operation. Cattle in Connecticut are not the same animal as in Wyoming but in the end they all have to sell in a marketplace. That was the issue of the day. That was what brought them together.
After everyone finished introductions, Jesse pulled Gus aside and whispered in his ear. Suzy was missing this morning. Jesse was afraid she might be calving early. He had been keeping her in a separate pen, but she was gone. He had found a hole under the fence where she must have gotten out. He hated to miss the meeting, but he just had to go back out and see if he could find her. He'd be back as soon as he could.
"Of course Son. Go. You find her. She'll be fine," Gus whispered back.
As Jesse quietly slipped through the dining room
and out the kitchen door Gus launched into the heart of the meeting, "Seems
to me we are in agreement. We may have different cattle, different politics,
different religions, whatever. One thing we all have in common brought
us together here. We're being robbed sure as I'm standing here. We are
being robbed sure as some street punk walked in that door with a gun and
emptied our wallets. We're being robbed sure as some no good pond scum
was rustling our cattle and we've got to stop 'em. And another thing I'm
sure of. No one else is going to do it for us. Not the USDA, they wouldn't
recognize what's going on if it hit them in the face. I'm not so sure
they aren't part of the whole plot, taking payoffs. Sure enough no one
has proved they're not. They got the Packers and Stockyards Act. That's
the strongest law on the books against corporate crime. The USDA's the
policeman. They're supposed to enforce that law and they are not doing
a thing. It's like the sheriff being in bed with the crooks."
. . .
The ranch house was silent when Frank finished. The Wyomingites had re-learned the naked truth. The out-of-staters sat in stunned silence. They knew he was right, dead on target. Their minds were racing.
Gus got up to get the meeting moving again. He asked Miss Becky, “I know you own part of a feedlot in Nebraska that sells, or used to sell, to the packers. Can you please tell the group what happened with your feedlot?”
Miss Becky stood tall. She reminded Martin Seibold of a sycamore tree. She just had that kind of strength and beauty about her. “Sure Gus. It isn’t a pretty story but it goes directly at what Frank was saying. These packers are closing out our markets. To avoid the sunlight they’re not buying in the open, public markets. They keep all their inside information to themselves. They’re getting more and more producers to sell cattle to them direct on contract without their buying being reflected in the public market price. It would be like entering into secret stock trades off the stock exchange with no reports to nobody. It’s just exactly the kind of stuff Joe Kennedy had to stop in order to save the stock exchanges.
“But for our feedlot in Nebraska it was worse than that. I don’t know what you call it in legal terms. Here’s what happened. My partner in the feedlot is very active in the Nebraska Cattlemen’s Association. He got so fed up with all the packer’s tricks he started speaking out at the NCA meetings. He went on some radio talk shows. He called for the USDA and Justice Department to look into the practices of the packers to see if they were violating the law. He called for a police investigation. Well nothing happened. At least nothing happened from the USDA or Department of Justice. But something happened with the packers.
“They quit buying cattle from our feedlot. Just flat out quit buying. Now, we couldn’t sell one head if we gave it away. We’re out of business boys. As I read the Packers and Stockyards Law, this is a major violation by the packers. But we can’t even get a low-level P&S clerk to come out from Omaha or Denver to look into the situation. They tell us they’re too busy. And this isn’t just happening to us. It’s happening to people all across the prairie. I’m at my wits end on this.”
Martin jumped to his feet. Red in the face he spit between his teeth, “Folks we gotta kick some butt here. Miss Becky what you’re telling about goes to the very heart of our dilemma. The packers have us so deathly scared we’ve been frozen in our tracks. Heck, half of you here wouldn’t come if this meeting was taking place in an airport hotel somewhere. So we’re meeting in the most anonymous place we could find. No offense Gus, but it’s true.”
“No offense taken Martin. What you’re saying is pathetically true.”
Martin continued, “Boy if that’s not the nail on the head. Pathetic, that’s what we’ve become, pathetic. We’ve been crawling on our bellies and it’s time to put a stop to this. Not only are they stealing our cattle, they’re stealing our pride, dignity, and our basic rights.
“And you know something folks? We got to spread the word. Instead of forty at this meeting there ought to be forty-thousand. Heck there ought to be millions ‘cause these corporations are doing the same thing to every farmer and rancher in America that they’re doing to us.
“Sure we got to take ‘em to court,
but we also got to get every farmer and rancher in America on this train.
We got to use the Internet, we got to give speeches, we got to write papers
until we’re blue in the face, and until everybody understands what’s
really going on, knows the truth.”
. . .
“Cowboy economist? Are you really an economist?”
Oksana asked more to prolong their moments together than for the substance
of an answer. “What a stupid question,” she thought to herself.
She already knew he was an economist.
“Yes. I’m an agricultural economist specializing in wheat, hay, and cattle markets. Agriculture—ranching—is very important to Wyoming. Much as it is to Ukraine and Russia. In fact my father’s family while originally from Germany, came to America from Sarotov—Russian wheat country, and not too far from Ukraine, on the Volga River. There’s a large German contingent in Sarotov. You must know, the Russians call them the Volgadeutsch.”
“That’s amazing,” Oksana beamed. “You even know ‘Ukraine’ instead of ‘the Ukraine.’”
“Small world stuff,” he said wondering if she knew the idiom, then wondering if he knew the idiom. Was it British or American?
“Small world?”
“It’s an Americanism. Means we all have a lot in common. People are people.”
“But you have silos, you have ICBM’s targeted at Ukraine right here in Wyoming,” Oksana blurted without premeditation as her utter disgust with the US/USSR arms race spilled out.
“Excuse me! You have silos too. You have ICBM’s right there in Ukraine. You even make ICBM’s in Ukraine. Small world.”
“Touché,” Oksana laughed as her dimples dimpled.
“Touché. If I’m an economist,
what are you?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Montgomery, Alabama
Something strange was happening at the Montgomery
International Airport. People were coming into town from all over—private
and commercial. Montgomery Approach was so busy they had to skip their
cigarette break just to handle the traffic. The total number of visitors
coming into Montgomery rose from the tens to the hundreds and then to
the thousands. All the hotels and motels filled up. You couldn’t
get a table at any restaurant. Something was afoot. Folks were coming,
by land and air, from all over America.
***
The jury in Jones v. Monolith Global deliberated six hours twenty minutes. There was not a seat to be had in the musty courtroom. Miss Becky, Martin, Dusty, Clay, Ardith, Nick, Susan, Monte, Gus, Adam, Grandpa, Jesse, and thousands of others waited shoulder-to-shoulder for the verdict. The courthouse lawn had never known so many feet.
The jury filed back into the stiflingly hot, humid Montgomery courtroom with faces of stone to return a...
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