The Bull Who Attended My Loan Meeting
The day a two-thousand-pound bull walked into my lender's conference room and sat through the whole meeting better than I did.
I spent twenty-two years behind a desk lending money to ranchers before I bought my own place outside Stillwater, so I figured I knew how a financing meeting worked. I did not know how a bull worked. His name was Deacon, he weighed about two thousand pounds, and he had never once respected a calendar.
The meeting was set for ten o'clock at the little branch office on the edge of town. I brought two folders, a pen that worked, and a pair of boots I had scrubbed in the stock tank. What I did not bring was a gate latch that held. Deacon had been studying that latch since March.
At ten past ten, the loan officer, a patient young woman named Marlene, was walking me through the equipment schedule when the glass door slid open on its own. That is what the automatic doors are for, I suppose. Deacon stepped through, looked at the ficus, looked at the brochure rack, and then walked down the hall like he had been invited. Nobody screamed. In Oklahoma we have a high tolerance for large animals showing up where they should not.
He chose the empty chair at the end of the conference table. Marlene, to her enormous credit, slid a box of tissues in front of him and said, 'Would you like to review the repayment terms too?' Deacon breathed on her printout. A little fog settled over the page. I have seen borrowers do less with a document.
We finished the meeting. Deacon sat through every item, never interrupted once, and did not ask for a lower rate. I led him out to the trailer with a bucket of feed, and Marlene told me it was the first time anyone on the premises had shown up early, stayed quiet and left without a complaint. The branch still keeps a chair at the end of the table. I am told it is labeled with his name. I have been on stories like this one for years over at farm.FM, and none of them top the day my bull out-behaved the board.