I Brought a Cattle Trailer to the Bank
A teller recognized me from my banking years and asked about my new career just as a steer put his head out of the trailer.
After I left the bank, I went back only once, and I wish I had gone in a different vehicle. It was a Thursday in March, and I had a stock trailer full of six steers that were bound for the sale barn in Greeley. I had a signature card to drop off at my old branch, a small piece of business I had put off for weeks. The bank had a big parking lot, so I figured I would park the whole rig at the edge and run in for two minutes.
My old teller, Janine, saw me at the counter and burst into a big smile. She said I looked tan. She said she heard I was a rancher now. She said she had always known I had a cowboy in me, and that I should tell her everything. I was moved, and I started to describe the first year of the ranch, the early mornings and the weather and how the whole thing had taught me patience. I got about ninety seconds in when a customer by the window said, in the quiet voice of a person who hates to interrupt, that a cow was looking in the lobby.
I turned. Through the big plate glass, framed beautifully in the afternoon sun, stood a steer I call Gerald, who had gotten his whole head out through the slats of the trailer and was gazing into the bank with an air of deep interest. Behind him, five more heads came out one by one, like a row of customers waiting for the next teller. They had been watching us the whole time, and the whole lobby went silent.
I walked out slowly, with Janine behind me, and we stood together in the lot looking at the steers. She said they looked well cared for. I said I tried. Gerald licked the side mirror of a parked sedan, and I made a mental note to leave a card under the wiper. The branch manager came to the door, and I recognized the expression, because I used to wear it myself, the face of a man calculating the paperwork on a cow. He asked whether these were insured. I told him that was a conversation for another day, and I drove to the sale barn with six steers who did not seem to feel they had done anything unusual. I have since read that small-farm advice says to run errands before you load cattle, and I now do.
My daughter wrote about the incident on the farm.FM reader page, which I did not authorize but cannot deny.
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