I’ve been blessed, or cursed, depending on how you may look at it, to judge dozens of youth livestock shows over the years. In theory, I’ll have an image in my head of the perfect critter, and that’s the one I’m looking for in each class. Not surprisingly, I’ve yet to find that beast, but the idea is to base my evaluation of each animal off of that particular standard.
Maybe the toughest phase of judging a class of youth market steers, lambs or hogs, in my opinion, comes after I’ve lined them up and placed them. I’ve always figured it’s my duty to explain to the crowd of anxious and critical parents and grandparents, most of whom are five-star experts on at least one animal and kid in the lineup, what I see in a class and why I placed each animal where I did. And believe it or not, I’ve found that if I do that part of the job with any competence at all, most people are at least civil, if not completely satisfied.
Usually, one of the first things I tell the crowd is that I’m really judging a book by its cover, as it were. I’ve never yet been able to see and predict with 100% accuracy what’s under the hide, but the job requires a judgment, based on my evaluation of what I see on the outside anyway. I like to hope that most of the time, I’m somewhere close to being right.
We recently had a steer butchered for the freezer. Probably the only reason we butchered a steer instead of some shelly old cull cow was because I was too embarrassed to load this particular gem with his contemporaries when we shipped last winter. He was solid red in color with one crooked horn. He resembled a poor-quality Holstein ox. He never seemed to get fat and just grew taller and taller.
To finish off the ensemble, he had a wild eye and an attitude to match the physique. I tried to keep him in a pen by the house to fatten him up, but he spent as much time with the Puckerbrush Ranch cows half-a-mile down the road as he did at my place. If he got the hankering, he could clear any fence on the place. Of course, he always felt obligated to at least bust up the top rail on his way over the fence.
When I was finally able to haul him to Rogelio, my trusted local butcher, he bounced and banged incessantly around the trailer for the entire 15-minute ride. As I suspected, when Rogelio called to get the cutting and wrapping instructions, he informed us that the beast had the fat cover and marbling of a starved jackrabbit.
I have a granddaughter, Marlena, who just turned 4. Obviously, she’s as cute and smart as can be (just like your daughter or granddaughter). Of all my five kids, her mother seemed to be the one with whom I knocked heads the most as she was growing up. She was strong-willed and opinionated, and she always insisted on the last word. This didn’t sit well with me because the last word belonged to me. Despite how she so often appears on the outside, she has a tender heart and a natural ability to accurately evaluate a person’s true inside character – traits I hope her children inherit.
The other day, Marlena spotted an image of Condoleezza Rice in a magazine. Since Ms. Rice is one of her mother’s greatest idols, she naturally took notice. Marlena intently studied the image and resolutely declared to her mother, “Look! She has brown eyes. I’m just like Condoleezza!”
Now, far be it from me to pontificate on racial issues. The variety of opinions makes my head spin. As you might suspect, southern Idaho is not as racially diverse as – well – anywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, I can learn things, and I learned something from a little 4-year-old white girl from Cheyenne, Wyoming, whose life experiences are far fewer than mine or anyone who might read this.
I think it can hardly be argued that Condoleezza Rice, a Stanford-educated woman of African descent, is anything less than a person of high moral character. Thankfully, my daughter has somehow been able to instill in her own young daughter an ability to somehow look past the hide, as it were, and into a person’s soul through her eyes. I’m thrilled to think that my granddaughter thinks she’s “just like Condoleezza.”
I know all of the questions I’ve turned loose here can’t easily be tied up in a neat little package, but there are some commonalities and some things that can be learned. Perhaps a book can’t always be judged by its cover, just as a show steer can’t completely be judged by the fluff in its hair or, on perhaps a more complex level, a person can’t be judged by his or her T-shirt or pearl snaps. However, simply navigating through life demands that we make judgments and decisions every day, based on what we see and feel.
Just as I could easily and accurately predict what was in the soul and ribeye of the devil steer by looking him in the eye and watching how he behaved, I think our Creator has blessed each of us with the ability to see people’s hearts by looking into their eyes and watching their actions.
So take heed from both sides of this fence. Be mindful of your company and be mindful of how you behave.
