My granddad Kirk kept a small spiral notebook in the pocket of the wool shirt that he wore regardless of the weather. A short, stubby pencil was shoved into the wire spiral.
Dad kept his tally book in the pocket of his pearlsnap shirt, the same pocket that housed his pack of Winstons.
My own tally book was a tad fancier. It was a Daytimer with a leather cover and a removable filler inside that I changed every month. It nestled in the left pocket of my pearlsnap, opposite my can of Copenhagen.
It came from the factory with a slim pen in a loop inside the spine, but I switched to a pencil when the ink froze in the pen the first winter.
These little notebooks contained the daily, weekly, monthly and annual heartbeats of the ranch. We wrote down dates, numbers and other stuff that we needed to remember.
A tally book was all the database and spreadsheet that a cowboy needed to run a big-ass ranch with logic and precision. There was room to make all the calculations and notations necessary to keep things sorted out in the Big Empty.
I never lost my tally book, and I don’t think Grandpa Kirk or Dad ever lost one either. They were that precious.
I imagine that losing a tally book back then would be akin to a high school kid losing his smartphone today. Sheer panic would set in and the orderly progression of life would cease until it was found.
I’ll confess that I did leave it in my shirt pocket one time, and the shirt made its way into the washing machine. But the thing dried out just fine – even the leather cover – and I could read what was written in the pages after a day or so.
Try that with a smartphone!
I like to imagine that Kirk and Dad had made the same mistake, and Grandma and Mom had handed them a soggy tally book, freshly laundered, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
If I close my eyes, I can almost see what I wrote in my tally book, say...in June of 1981...like it was yesterday.
“6/2 turned water from Hurt Creek into the Supply Ditch. Patched gopher holes in the ditch.”
“6/5 wormed and shod horses. Halter broke six colts.”
“6/9 Moved pairs from Seven Pines to Atlantic Pasture. Count 1121”
“6/11 Branded 161 steers, 147 heifers”
“6/12 Branded 181 steers, 174 heifers”
On and on the tally book goes, through branding, fencing, haying, shipping and turning out the herd for winter.
The numbers in a tally book need to be right on the money, because that’s where the money comes from. The numbers tallied in spring have to match the numbers tallied at shipping time in the fall.
Ranching really comes down to the numbers.
There are lots of ways to count cattle through a fence gate or out of a corral. But I was taught, when counting, to sit calmly on my horse, not moving my lips or hands, and simply count in my head as cattle swirled and jostled in a dusty cloud.
And I was taught that what I counted is what was there. The old saying was “Never let anyone talk you out of your count. Not a buyer, not a brand inspector, not a banker. They didn’t count ‘em, you did”
Count what you see, and stand by your count. Trust your numbers.
That lesson has stayed with me throughout my life out of the saddle. To trust what my own eyes tell me and not to be talked out of it. To write it down and stand by it.
It's a particularly useful skill as an opinion columnist.
Rod Miller can be reached at: rodsmillerwyo@yahoo.com
