The Loan Committee Meets in My Barn
A county loan committee holds its meeting in my Hico barn, and the cow I called Madam Chair takes her seat far too seriously.
The winter the roof of the conference room caved in at the bank in Hico, the loan committee asked if they could borrow my barn for the quarterly meeting. I said yes, because I had sat on that committee for years and knew that nothing frightens a banker like a free lunch he has to pay for himself.
I set up six folding chairs in a half circle and a card table at the front. What I did not count on was Josephine, my oldest Holstein, who had decided long ago that any chair in her barn was a chair for her. She walked in at five minutes before nine, looked over the arrangement, and parked herself behind the card table like she was calling the meeting to order.
The committee were polite people. Nobody wanted to be the first to ask a cow to move. So the vice president said good morning to her, and the secretary wrote her name in the minutes as Madam Chair. By ten o'clock Josephine had chewed through the agenda, and I will tell you it was the most efficient reading of an agenda I ever saw.
Then came the motion to approve the Hargrove feed line of credit. Every head turned to the front. Josephine, who had been dozing, lifted her tail at exactly that moment and flicked a fly off the card table. The secretary wrote 'seconded.' The vice president said 'all in favor' and the barn cats, who had come to see what the fuss was, all meowed at once. Motion carried.
We got through eleven items in forty minutes, a record that stands to this day. The committee asked to hold every meeting in my barn after that. I told them the barn had one rule, which was that the chair had to be a cow, and they have honored it faithfully. If you want to see more of my yarns, I keep a few over at farm.FM, though none are as well attended as this one.
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