One of the age old questions of life is how in the world do children with the same mom and dad for parents turn out to be a different as night and day or as different as the Amazon jungle in South America is from the Sahara Desert in Africa.  Say in a family of 4 children, how does one of these young’uns have no temper at all while another one is a living, breathing fire ball waiting to explode? Maybe one of the others is a naturally sweet person while a brother or sister is meaner than a junk yard dog. Is it in the genes or is it in the raising?

Probably a little of both but I believe a whole lot of it is determined by the genes that decide to gather together for each individual and “poof’, out you come, wired with a personality all your own and with this comes your interests, your views on life, your way of interacting with others and many, many more traits.

Sort of what got me to thinking about and pondering on this subject is my brother and me and cows. Cows you might say? What in the world do cows have to do with the subject of people and their personalities? Well, let me take a stab at explaining.

There are three of us Lee children, all born to the same parents Quincy and Gertrude Lee. Janis, being the oldest and only girl has no part in this discussion other than to note that she definitely has her own personality and ways of viewing the world that are hers and hers alone. Yeah, we all have some similarities but also lots of differences. We all have been accused of being like both mom and dad at times with the most common theme among all of us being that we inherited a rather large dose of stubbornness and hardheadedness from our dad. That subject alone may be the topic for a future essay but not the focus tonight.

So, going back to the cows. One of the constants when we were growing up on the farm was we always had cattle. These herds were used to provide meat for the family and milk on a daily basis. Part of our chores as boys was to help with the tending of the cattle herd by feeding the cows, helping to bale and load hay, and milking the cows every morning before school.

My brother has always been a cowboy at heart and has always loved being around cows. It has even been reported that as a little boy, he would fall dead asleep while riding on his bouncy horse while chasing imaginary cattle across the range of the living room. He had such a love for being around cows that when he was a teenager, my dad told him one time (and I quote), “Boy, you are the only teenage boy I know who would rather smell cow sh** than perfume.”

He loved rodeo growing up, spent a lot of time in rodeos as a young man riding bulls and steer wrestling only quitting after a bull almost killed him one night in Pensacola. Even after his riding days and steer wrestling days were over, he continued fooling with the rodeo circuits in other ways  doing a little stock contracting by providing steers for some rodeos to use in the steer wrestling event. Today, he earns a large portion of his living as a cattle hauler, driving a semi-tractor and trailer all over the southeastern United States taking cows from one location to another for cattle buyers and sellers.

I have a view of cows that is slightly different than Silas. I don’t like working with cows. I don’t like fooling with cows. I don’t like to be around them or help to pen them up to take to a sale or to worm them. And, just to be clear, I dang sure would lots rather smell perfume than cow sh** any day.  The value that I see in cattle is I do love steak, hamburgers and milk and like a good rump roast with potatoes and carrots on occasion.  I also like to wear a nice pair of shoes made of quality leather, played a lot of baseball and softball using leather gloves and have had several nice leather coats over the years.

My thoughts when having to work a bunch of cows is they will make you curse in about nine different languages. When you are working around a bunch of cows, about the time you think everything is going good and they are doing what you want them to do, a crazy old lead cow or some young bull yearling will break out of the herd and just wreak havoc on the whole operation. Within just a couple of minutes the whole herd will be stirred up and running through gates, jumping fences, or breaking out of the holding pens.

Several years ago, while we were trying to separate a bunch of half-grown yearlings from the herd to take to a sale, we experienced one of these times. Those involved included Silas, my two nephews Brad and Chris, my son-in-law Dave, a cousin or two and me. About the time we were making a little progress, a muscled-up young bull decided to make things interesting. He broke out of a pen, ran through a gate one of us was holding, knocking the gate into the person and got back out into the main corral.

Once there, he decided to make his stand. He started pawing at the ground in classic bull style, daring one of us to come close to him. If we got within 30 or so feet, he would charge. During this standoff, he encouraged several of us to seek higher ground on a nearby fence, chased Brad around a pecan tree a time or two, chased Brad and me over a trough trying to get away from him before he caught us, and tore down some fencing. His last great act of defiance was catching Chris some distance from any type of protection (fence, trough or tree) and giving him a little unsolicited help scaling a fence by hitting him in the butt with his head just as Chris got to the fence and started to climb. He literally knocked Chris over the fence right before crashing into it headlong, snorting and bellowing.

All in all, it was a sight to see. Even as aggravating as it was at the time, it was pretty funny watching this bull play “Here Kitty, Kitty!” with all of us grown men trying to get him back into the pen. After a short while of the show, it was decided to just turn him back into the pasture and fight this battle another day. Final outcome – Bull Wins! Bull Wins! Bull Wins!

So, going back to the beginning, how do two boys with the same parents supplying the gene pool end up with totally different views and interest? How does one brother love everything about cows and cattle and the other one like them for only a couple of reasons – food and clothes.

I don’t know that I have the answer other than this. In God’s magnificent creation of us and the world, he made us all to be individuals with no two alike and with each of us having our own personalities, likes, dislikes, interests, strengths and weaknesses. By creating us in this manner, we can all use our individual talents to help the world be a better place.

Though I don’t like cows except for the reasons stated above, I am glad my brother loves to work with and around them. His talent helps me to enjoy a good steak or hamburger and to have some shoes to wear.

By the way, anyone up for taking a trip to the Conestoga Steak House in Dothan?  I hear they have some mighty fine ribeye steaks up there.