THE TRADE

My cousin, Grady was much older than I and he was still living at home with his father the morning my Father and I found him in the barn lot feeding the livestock. Grady and my Father were the best of friends and both were avid fox hunters. They spent many nights together listening to their dogs chase foxes over the ridges and through the hollows in and around our Blue Ridge mountain home.

We were on our way to the store and had stopped to chat for a few minutes when my Father noticed this pretty young heifer in the stall and ambled over to take a closer look. My Father was the best trader and judge of good cow flesh you could find anywhere!

"How much do you want for this young heifer?" he yelled while patting the young cow on the rump.

"One hundred dollars." Grady replied.

Right then and there I knew that my Father would buy that animal for a song!

They haggled around for awhile and finally came to the agreed price of seventy-five dollars. I had watched my Father do a lot of trading and figured he had something up his sleeve since he really hadn’t pushed Grady very hard in the bargaining. He was always slick as greased lightening when it came to buying or trading on anything.

"Now, let’s see here Grady, you owe me twenty-five dollars for that fine fox hound you got from me last winter. I’ll tell you what, let’s deduct that from the price of the heifer and I’ll send you the balance the minute we get back home!" My Father stated.

Grady hemmed and hawed for a few minutes but they finally shook hands on the deal. The old dog had run off somewhere and Grady never could find him. He kept claiming that the dog was too lazy and wouldn’t chase a fox more than a few minutes anyway. Grady sure hated to pay for that dog, you could tell!

We started on to the store and Grady went back to his father’s house. We hadn’t much more that got started when we saw Mack Sellers truck coming up the road. My Father flagged him down and said, "Mach, I’ve got the prettiest little heifer you ever laid eyes on right up here in Grady’s barn. Want to get out and take a look at her?"

My Father sold that heifer to Mack for one hundred and twenty-five dollars! Mack was counting out the cash when Grady walked back down from the house to see what was going on. My Father handed Grady fifty dollars, folded the rest of the cash and stuffed it in the bib pocket of his overalls and said. "Grady, how about helping us load this young cow onto Mack’s truck?"

That was too much for Grady. He went back up the hill and yelled "Load the damned cow yourself!" It was over a year before he would speak to my Father again. It was the first and probably the last time he said a bad word.

About a year went by and my Mother knowing how much my Father and Grady liked to fox hunt with each other told my Father, "Take those worthless hounds, get your butt out of here and go up there and for once and all settle this thing with Grady?"

I went with my Father and he told me to stay at the house while he and Grady went down to the woodshed.

They went fox hunting with each other that night and many other nights throughout their entire lives.

You don’t shake unless you feel
You have made a real good deal.
And both of you have agreed
To honor it with word and deed.
I think that is what my Father said,
To Grady
In that old woodshed!