In the first part of July, Martin and I had at the opportunity to travel to San Diego, California to attend the NCBA Summer Business Meeting on behalf of NCA. It was a business trip loaded with meetings and not much else. To be honest I’m always a little hum-buggish about going to California for anything. I love the actual state but there are way too many people, liberal views and bad politics for me.
I wasn’t very enthused about going but duty calls.
When we got there, I was pleasantly surprised. San Diego was nothing like I thought it would be. Great weather, clean and safe, neat atmosphere, and very few people around.
Petco Park was just across the street from our motel and the old Downtown was a short walk. If you need a little vacation, I would actually recommend going to San Diego, which is something I never thought I would say. The meetings were important but basically business as usual. The policy that guides NCBA is developed by those who go to the meetings and vote, so we do our best to represent NCA and the needs of its members. Nevada is small (with the vote count) but we are mighty.
We went to the old Downtown a few nights for dinner. To my amazement and satisfaction, there are a bunch of really nice, clean restaurants there, including steakhouses! There were a lot of things like that which surprised me about San Diego, but two related to our industry are of important note.
The first one was dry aged steaks. EVERYWHERE we went had dry aged steaks. They love it in San Diego, and they even have glass aging stations showcasing the process. It seemed to be a localized, cultural fad but I was into it! The image in my mind of a huge city in California is homeless camps, liberal tree huggers, and granola tofu eating vegans. Not the case where we were at; bring on a 24-ounce rare dry aged steak!
The second thing was the people there were very friendly and inquisitive. Isolated in the vast expanses of the west, we don’t understand or appreciate the value of our culture to society as a whole. The one culture that is truly American is the Cowboy. Images and folklore of the American west are mythical and I would say magical to most Americans. Wearing a cowboy hat here at home is normal. If you showed up at the Elko Fair in anything but a well-shaped cowboy hat, you would be laughed out of town. Thats our culture and we don’t even know it, but if you show up in a place like San Diego with a cowboy hat on, they know it!
People stare at you in awe, ask you if you’re a real cowboy, want to know where you are from, want to know about ranching. “Do you still ride horses? Do you still rope and brand cattle?”
Even people who raise livestock in more populated states want to know how we still do the work we do.
As ranchers, we often don’t do a very good job of telling “our story” and believe it or not, we still have a pretty good story to tell! With all the negative publicity we get from environmental groups or animal rights groups, we had better take advantage of any opportunity we get to tell that story!
So that’s My President’s Perspective for this issue: Wear the hat and tell the story. And always remember: People still love Cowboys!
That’s enough writing for now, I have a hat to shape.
Hanes Holman
President, NCA