Kids these days are a lot smarter than we were. Take show animals, for example. It didn’t take them long to figure out that raising show hogs was a lot easier, cheaper and more profitable for the hours invested than raising a show steer. And hogs don’t kick, lambs don’t hurt if they step on your toes and you don’t have to worry about a hog’s hair being mussed up. That’s why at our county fair you might have 800 hogs, 600 sheep and 40 show steers at the junior livestock auction.

The problem is there are simply too many animals to sell in one day so they run two rings, one entirely for swine and the other for the lambs and the steers. At our fair they run the two sales simultaneously and under the same roof so it can sound like two hogs fighting under a metal shed while it’s hailing outside. As a parent you really have to pay attention or you might think you heard your child’s hog sell for $12 per pound when actually that was for the grand champion steer in the other sale ring. I used to occasionally work ring at these sales and if it was hard for a professional ring man to keep everything straight you can imagine how hard it is for a buyer who only goes to one auction a year.

We had a similar problem at the video sales I used to announce. Once every summer we’d have our huge four day sale and take up the entire basement of one of the largest casinos in Reno. We needed every square inch of their meeting space to accommodate all our buyers and sellers. But in December when we went back for a one day sale at the same casino we only required a quarter of the space. So they chopped up their convention center into four rooms by moving the walls around. In one room there was a wild Christmas party for a medical group of doctors and nurses, there was a very somber confab of professors and academicians and in the room next door to us there was an end-of-the year awards program for a multi-level marketing group. Then there was us, a livestock video auction with several world champion livestock auctioneers. And they didn’t get that way by being soft-spoken!

One advantage to this arrangement was we were able to cut costs by NOT providing donuts and coffee for our guests as we funneled them all over in the direction of the doctors who accidentally provided donuts, coffee and tea for all four groups in the common lobby area.

You can imagine our horror when we first discovered that there was no cell phone service in the basement of the hotel and this was a BIG problem for the order buyers who made their living on the phone. Although the problem was fixed for all subsequent sales, for the one each group had to make make-do with announcements for various people to return calls.

I was taking a rare short break from my announcing duties and was standing in the common lobby, eyeing the donuts, when the following announcement was made: “Hey, Bubby this is your girlfriend. My water broke, I took an Uber to the hospital and you better be there when I get there.” (Or words to that effect.)

To this day I don’t know from which room came the announcement. All I know is men from all four rooms barged into the lobby and grabbed a donut as they were hot-footin’ and high-tailing it up the escalators faster than you can say, “Accidents cause people.”

For me personally the biggest loss was the suspects decimated the donut selection so that by the time I got within grabbing distance the only donuts left were the ones with sprinkles all over, which I detest.

I don’t know how many men showed up at the hospital or how many leaked into the landscape looking for some high tules to hide in. I do know that a friend of mine was sitting around a table with other couples when his wife said, “You make one move towards that door Bubby, tomorrow I’m hiring the meanest, nastiest divorce attorney your money can buy.”

As a child I wanted to grow up and be just like Davy Crockett. Many a day was spent with my trusty BB gun and coon skin cap hunting for “bar” in the backyard. When he was alive I used to go out of my way to stay at a hotel owned by Fess Parker simply because he was the “King of the Wild Frontier.” (Although I never pictured Davy in the hospitality trade).

So you can imagine my disappointment when I read the in the book, “Davy Crockett’s Own Story,” that Davy’s hat was not made of coon skin but of fox. And heaven forbid, Davy spent just as much time being a politician as he did hunting for bear. I know these are facts because the book was written by Davy himself and he would never lie to me. What Davy Crockett was really good at was story telling and after reading some of his tall tales I aspire to be like him now more than ever. After getting to know Davy Crockett I like the man even more than the myth.

We tend to think Davy ate nothing but bear grease and wild turkey but he liked eating beef and he often shot for them. No, he didn’t shoot other people’s cattle… .he contested for their beef.

“In the latter part of summer, recalled Davy, “when their cattle got very fat some of the folks desirous of raising money on one of their fatted beeves would advertise that on a particular day, a first rate beef would be shot for.”

Each shooter would buy chances at the beef. Each chance cost a quarter and entitled you to one shot at a target. The owner of the beef would sell enough chances to pay for the beef. Two non-shooting woodsmen were selected as judges but as Davy remarked, “Many a judge was like a handle on a jug… all on one side.”

Every shooter took how ever many shots he’d paid for. The person who was fifth closest to the “X” on their target received a front quarter of beef as did the fourth place finisher. The third and second closest to the mark each took a hindquarter. Guess what the Grand Prize was? “The shot that drives the center or comes closest to it,” explained Davy, “got the hide and tallow which is considered first choice.” The sixth closest to the mark got the booby prize; “The lead in the tree against which we shot.”

Davy was a good shot but perhaps not as great as his reputation. When the citizens of Philadelphia made a present to Davy of his beloved rifle, “Betsy,” they asked him to display his marksmanship in a shooting match with Philadelphia’s finest. In the first go-round Davy won as expected. But in the next round a local marksman put his lead right through the center of the target and Davy afterwards missed the target entirely. The crowd was aghast but Davy employed a little trick he probably learned in politics. He went to the target and sneakily shoved a piece of lead into the bullseye while he was pretending to examine the target. Then he explained to the crowd, “I think if you will examine the target you will find two lead balls in that hole.” Sure enough when the officials dug out the bulls eye they found two pieces of lead and the legend of Davy Crockett was preserved.

Davy was a decent fellow who had to work hard to catch up to his growing reputation. He likened fame to what a fellow named Pat said as he fell from a tall church steeple. “This would be mighty pleasant now,” said Pat during his free fall, “if only it would last.”