Walking Around Money

By Lee Pitts

            I never have liked money. Don’t get me wrong, I love having a big balance at the bank and all the nice things that money can buy – it’s the actual physical thing I hate. 

            Paper money is filthy and coins just weigh me down. That’s why my wife handles all cash transactions and why I only carry one $20 bill in my wallet as “carrying around money” for emergencies. 

            It’s the same $20 I’ve had for decades now and I think if I took it out of my pocket Andrew Jackson would squint in the sunlight and the brittle paper would crumble into a thousand tiny pieces.

            I’ve never felt comfortable carrying a lot of cash around and always thought if one had money in their pocket they’d spend it. And spending money has always been against my religion. 

            I’m sure everyone has seen big shots with huge round wads of paper money that would choke a horse from which they peel off $100 bills. Mobsters called such wads of cash “flash rolls” because if they wanted to impress someone, they’d flash it around. 

            Whenever I see someone reveal their flash roll, I’ve always wondered if their entire net worth wasn’t tied up in the roll. It’s been my experience the more money someone carries around the less money they actually have. 

            For example, England’s royals never carry cash and have lesser minions follow them around to pay for things. 

            It’s a good thing I don’t like money because every job I’ve ever had working for other people didn’t pay much of it. I was the richest kid in my high school thanks to Grand Champion steers, but I spent the steer money and the good money I made working in the oilfields in the summers all on a college education. 

            I paid every dime of it without help from anyone and when I graduated in three years I was flat broke. I was one traffic ticket away from personal bankruptcy.           I took a job the day after I graduated from college working as a cowboy on a registered Angus outfit working seven days a week and I got paid less than I was making in the oilfields. At the end of the month the owner would peel off six $100 bills off his flash roll, my pay for the month.

            On the first job I got all kinds of perks like a mattress on the floor to sleep on and a bunch of mice to keep me company. In describing it to me in his sales pitch, the owner described the place I’d live as a “nice little house.” It turned out to be a lean-to shed. 

            Tractors had better accommodations than I did. There was no TV, but I didn’t need one because the owner worked me 14 hours a day and the minute I slumped off my saddle I went straight to my mattress. 

            Half the time I didn’t even eat, but it was okay because I didn’t have any money to buy much food. In addition to my salary, the owner promised me a half a beef but a sick cow hadn’t died yet on my watch and I never did get any beef.

            One of the skills I brought to the job was I could pregnancy check. One day I pregged about 60 two-year-old Angus heifers and thought I’d done a good job but Mr. Big Shot didn’t believe a 21-year-old kid could know anything, so one day while I was out in the boonies fixing fence he had a veterinarian preg them again because he didn’t trust me. 

            The vet and I agreed on the pregnancy status of every heifer except one. He called her safe and I said she was open.

            Later, I found a job which paid $800 a month as a livestock field editor so I wasn’t around to find out if the heifer had a calf or was open, as I said she was. Years later I ran into my former boss and I asked if he remembered that heifer. He certainly did.

            “Did she have a calf or not?” I asked.

            “She sure did,” Mr. Big Shot replied, trying to humiliate me and prove me wrong. “Two years later she gave birth to a nice bull calf.”