The Year I Interviewed the Scarecrow
A new lender asks to meet my business partner in person, and I walk him out to the hay field to meet the scarecrow with a straight face.
Years back, a new lender came to my Hico dairy and asked a question I had not planned for. He said the bank needed to meet all the principal owners of the operation in person. I told him it was just me and my wife, and he said that was fine, but he would need her signature in person too. My wife was in Waco that day at her sister's.
I should have just said so. Instead I said, 'Well, she is out in the hay field right now, I will take you to her.' I do not know why I said it. It was one of those moments where the mouth moves ahead of the mind. We walked out together across the stubble, and I was working hard on a better answer, when I saw the old scarecrow my wife had dressed in her gardening hat and a flannel shirt.
From a distance, in the late afternoon light, that scarecrow looked remarkably like a woman standing very still with her arms out. The lender squinted. He asked if she was all right. I said she was a woman of few words. He walked up, introduced himself, and handed her the loan papers, which stuck on the stick she was holding and flapped gently in the breeze.
I thought I might get away with it for a minute, but a crow landed on her hat and spoiled everything. The lender looked at the crow, looked at me, and burst out laughing. He laughed until he had to put his clipboard down and sit on a hay bale. When he stopped, he said that in thirty years of lending he had never been introduced to a more composed guarantor.
My wife signed the papers that Saturday, and the scarecrow still keeps her hat. We invite the lender out every spring now. If you ever have a surprise visit and need to look busy, the country music pages at farm.FM make a good soundtrack for the hay field.