Lee Pitts

Henry Ford once said that you could have any color of car you wanted as long as it was black. Fast forward to today and it seems like the automotive industry is saying you can...

People have been making up their own bucket lists ever since the movie of the same name came out starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. You may recall it was about two old geezers who made a list of the things they wanted to do before they “kicked-the-bucket.” My own bucket list is empty as I’ve already done most of the things people seem to want to do. So, what I’ve done is create my own “empty-bucket” list of the top 10 places I wouldn’t want to be caught dead.

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.” Colette I think I’m growing allergic to people. I never answer the door when the nice folks from Jehova’s Witness come around, I hardly ever pick up...

I suppose you heard that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a commitment to give $30 million over a five year period to North Carolina State for research into manufacturing fake meat. For Bezos the $30...

Well, the weather changed again today. Today we reached 68 degrees while yesterday it was 65. That’s global warming for you. (Had the temperature gone down that would have been climate change too.) Based on...

America has gone to the dogs. 28% of the people in this country don’t like cats. Only 4% don’t like dogs. I don’t like cats for the following reasons: (1) They rub up against your...

“The weather is almost always something other than normal.” Andy Rooney I guess I’m what the looney left calls a “climate denier” as I don’t believe in man-made climate change. As such I’m always looking...

Similar genetics don’t mean I continue to be amazed by the differences in people and animals that are closely related. For example, one of my good friends was at one time one of the top Hereford breeders in America and over his fireplace is a row of Grand Championship trophies he won at Denver. I’ll never forget the day I was at his place when two bulls were delivered that my friend had purchased at the Cooper-Holden sale, which in those days was a combined event. The bulls were Line Ones and were both very closely related and yet they could not have been more different. I don’t think my friend would take offense when I call one of the bulls downright ugly. If he’d have been a scarecrow he’d have kept the crows out of a quarter section of corn. The bull looked like he’d been put together by a committee of sheepherders. He was long, tall and moderately muscled and in all the years I was acquainted with the bull I never did get a decent photograph of him. Clearly the bull had a superior intellect and enjoyed toying with me. If the Hereford Association wanted a bull to represent the breed they couldn’t have found a better specimen than the other bull. He was heavily muscled, structurally correct, easy on the eyes and was phenotypically perfect. So, guess which bull went on to sire sons and grandsons that won numerous Denver Championships? You’d say the second bull, right? WRONG! Which just goes to show, you can’t tell by looking. In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring was safe. I thought there’d be a rush to clone livestock but it didn’t happen, probably due to the cost associated with cloning but also because even though the animals had exactly the same genotype, in most cases they never lived up to the animal that was cloned. Plus, the clones turned out different. One wet day in judging class at college our coach had us judge a class by looking at still photos from the rear and side of four bulls. It was an easy class to judge and there were a lot of differences to talk about in our reasons. Only afterward did he tell us they were clones. At bull sales quite often, we see full brothers sell and one of them will bring $50,000 while its identical sibling will fetch $5,000. For EXACTLY the same genes. I’ve seen firsthand how genetics continues to toy with us. Take my brother... please. Though we supposedly have the same genetic makeup, we could not be more different. My brother is logical, a genius at math, fastidious about his appearance, would rather golf than do hard physical work, retired at 55, wears shorts all the time, graduated no. 3 in his class at West Point, went on to get his MBA at MIT and places a lot of emphasis on good breeding. While I think that’s fun too, I hate math, am an extremely hard worker, don’t golf or own a single pair of shorts and I’ve always been more entrepreneurial and will never retire. My brother likes liver, lima beans, corned beef and cabbage and moved to the East Coast as soon as he could while I’m a dyed-in-the-wool westerner and you’d have to tie me down and force feed me to eat liver, lima beans, corned beef and cabbage. From the first time he met me my niece’s husband just looks at me, shakes his head and says, “You simply CAN’T be the brother of John Pitts.” I don’t know if he means that as a compliment or a criticism. I was talking about genetics with a cattlemen buddy who has three siblings, two sisters and one brother. Like me and my brother, he and his brother could not be more different. My friend is quiet, extremely hard working and if he says something you can take it to the bank. His brother is exactly the opposite. His father used to say of him, “If BS was music, he’d be a brass band.”

I continue to be amazed by the differences in people and animals that are closely related. For example, one of my good friends was at one time one of the top Hereford breeders in America...

Our heater in the house is on the fritz so I checked with a heating and air conditioning firm we’ve done business with in the past and was informed that I could get a new heater for – are you ready for this – ONLY $5,000!