Friday, April 26, 2024
Sam Houston
FROM MY FRONT PORCH
Sam Houston is the publisher of the Hood County News. He is also an actor, author, playwright, performer and entertainment producer/promoter.
When I was in the horse business, I had a client who liked to come visit and examine our livestock, usually on Sunday. It was the customer’s day off from work, so he wanted to spend his leisure time doing what he enjoyed, which was looking at horses and being around “horse” people. It was the time of year where we were in the middle of foaling and breeding season, working 90 hours a week and up a great many nights with mares as they foaled out. The one day of the week we took off from work was Sunday, so spending the bulk of the day marketing our horses was not ‘the fun” for us it was for our customer.
When Sunday came, the customer arrived and spent the next couple of hours looking at every single horse on the place. Mind you, he and I both knew he had no intention of buying anything. He simply wanted to look at my stock and talk horse confirmation, bloodlines and the business in general. He lived in Dallas and was now out of the Metroplex and enjoying his day in the country seeing beautiful horses. I, on the other hand, was spending the one day I had off a week, walking all over the ranch and explaining the attributes of each animal and its pedigree. Yes, I was proud of the stock we had but enough was enough! I was bone tired from working the ranch and when the customer exclaimed, “You are so lucky to be with the horses all day every day! I am cooped up in an office and I would love to be out here with you, spending time with the horses every day.” I went off.
Perhaps I should have just nodded yes, and let the customer’s comments pass, but I was hot and tired and complete honesty poured out. “You might not find it so much fun when a mare has a tough time foaling and you are up all night trying to help her, and then when morning comes you have to work the whole day feeding and then cleaning the stalls only to have a horse break a waterer and flood the barn. You’ll have to spend the rest of the day cleaning up the mess before you are up all night with another mare foaling out.”
I went on to tell him there are some days I would be mighty happy to be in an office and go home at 5 p.m. and not have to worry about livestock getting out, or being sick, or foaling out. The client looked at me with a shocked look, and I immediately thought I had let my alligator mouth overload my britches and should have just kept my big trap shut. The customer looked at me after a short period of reflection and said, “You probably have a very good point. A lot of jobs look like fun and fairly easy until you actually have to do them.”
My client had a business that processed credit cards for retail businesses. He added, “Lots of people think all I have to do is set back and get a few customers and then the computers handle all the transactions and I get a big check. They do not see me up in the middle of the night or on a weekend when a retailer cannot process credit cards and is losing sales every minute the system is down. It is pressure packed and stressful! I bet handling all this livestock and getting them fed, watered and taken care of is no picnic at all, you just make it look easy.”
The truth is almost all jobs are stressful and hard work. Putting a roof on a house looks like an easy job, until you carry the shingles up a ladder to get them on the roof. Hauling hay is simple, just throw the bale up on the trailer. Try loading a couple hundred bales in 95 degree heat sometime and see how easy it is.
I do not know how many times I have heard people say, “teachers have it really good because they are off all summer and they get Christmas and spring break off.” These are the same people who have no understanding how many hours teachers work before and after school preparing lesson plans and grading papers. They also do not understand the stress associated with working with a bunch of young people throughout the day and motivating them to take their studies seriously, while also trying to shape their young minds into being productive, well-behaved and responsible citizens. Teachers have a big job, and I am not convinced the average citizen really appreciates and understands how big a job, because they have never had to perform it.
Thank goodness for teachers and the hard work they perform every day even though they are underpaid, overstressed, and underappreciated. Where would we be without them?
Thought for the day; “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them: for these only gave them life, those the art of living well”.
Until next time.
sam@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 260
