Jim Hill, approaching 80 years old, sold 26 cows and 10 heifers at the Crete livestock barn's regular Monday sale after an association of 50 years with the American Angus Association.
ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, February 11, 2008 6:00 pm
CRETE — Jim Hill has decided to exit the cattle business — again.
Last time, in December 2004, he changed his mind at the last minute and kept six of his beloved Angus heifers and two of his favorite cud-chewing Angus cows off the truck.
Soon his numbers were back up at his usual 40.
“I got real sad,” Hill said Monday as he perched on a stool in the cafe at the Crete Livestock Market, waved at his fellow cattle connoisseurs, and pondered his previous change of heart. “I said, ‘Don’t put them on.’”
Why the second thoughts? “I was cuckoo in the head.”
This time, as he approaches 80, he went through with it, selling 26 cows and 10 heifers at the Crete livestock barn’s regular Monday sale after an association of 50 years with the American Angus Association.
And why did he carry through with it in early 2008?
“Because I just know I’m getting old,” said the father of six, grandfather of 23 and great-grandfather of three more. “I have three families down in Florida and I’ve never been down to see them.”
Just about all of the potential bidders climbing into the bleachers and plunking down on recycled couch cushions at Crete had the look of serious cattle producers.
They were bundled up against a February day in hooded sweatshirts, insulated coveralls and often grimy winter headwear.
Jim Hill arrived capless, full head of hair carefully parted, clad in a spotless red parka. It might help to know he always combined a job in the insurance industry with what was never meant to be anything more than a cattle-raising hobby.
One of his favorite stress-relievers has been to drive from Lincoln to rural Dorchester, where his cows once lived, and more recently to the Milford area, to watch them lick their latest offspring and think what passed for placid cow thoughts.
They always stayed on somebody else’s land as part of some sort of partnership arrangement.
It’s said of some people they’re all hat and no cattle. Jim Hill was a guy with lots of cattle and no pasture.
“The amazing thing about this story is I never owned any land.”
When his kids were young and his family lived at Papillion, there was an unusual set of Angus memories formed about cold calves and cold winter days. “They remember black baby newborns in the basement bathroom shower.”
Dad kept a nitrogen-cooled container filled with semen from a prized bull named Colossus under the basement steps. “You could lift the lid up and steam would come out.”
It would have been easy to mistake all of Jim Hill’s smiling, hand-shaking and hob-knobbing before the sale as a sign of a good mood. But thinking about a life without cows was not any more uplifting this time than it was last time.
Behind all of the frivolity, “I’m sad,” he said. “I’m real sad.”
Still, in the hours leading up to showtime, he worked the cafe crowd, handing out bags of store-bought cookies and offering to buy everybody coffee or even lunch.
The Monday special of chicken-fried steak was a popular choice as early as 10:30 a.m. among people who wanted to be ringside by 12:30 p.m.
Auctioneer Bill Rut did what he usually does to keep everybody focused.
“They’re just kind of ready to go to work for you,” Rut said as the first dozen Hill cows, all of them heavily pregnant, crowded into the ring. “We’ll sell you all of them or we’ll sell you one.”
The bleachers were mostly filled and the bidding mostly spirited — although it trailed off when a lone cow who failed to achieve the pregnancy standard was sold for slaughter.
Hill got tired of trying to keep up with paperwork that went with keeping his cows on the purebred registry — so his animals sold as regular stock cows and his best price of the day was $1,325.
After the sale was over, his one-word assessment of the results was “fine.”
He had been more responsive earlier as he talked about sitting next to fellow Angus breeder J.C. Penney at a 1950s sale. He bought a bull back then from his seatmate named Homeplace Eilienmere 106.
That, and so much else in Jim Hill’s cozying up to cattle, is now history.
Still, right up to the time when auctioneer Rut thumped the sales desk and said, “Sold!,” you could expect Hill was shoving back more second thoughts about keeping his herd.
His last cow and his bull won’t hit the show ring until April.
“Well,” he said from his cafe perch, “you just never know.”
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.