CALF_News_June_July_2019

44 CALF News • June | July 2019 • www.calfnews.net  Tell us why you read CALF News ! Go to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/calfnews R ecollections BY BETTY JO GIGOT PUBLISHER REFLECTING ON THE MANY STORIES ABOUT LOUIE DINKLAGE , pioneer cattle feeder from Wisner, Neb., his never-ending support of area cattlemen stands out. One of my favorites was when, while at a livestock auction one day, he started visiting with a young man and his wife who were sitting next to him. The young man told Louie that he had a lot of cattle feed and needed some cattle that day. Unfortunately, the auction’s prices were out of his range, but the next day a load of cattle showed up at his place. They came from Louie. When the young man called Louie, he told him that he couldn’t afford the cattle. Louie’s reply was that he understood the young man had plenty of feed, and he wanted him to feed the cattle. The deal was that if the cattle lost money, they would be Louie’s. If they made money, Louie and the young man would split it. Louie was known for his work ethic, not only arriving at the office before dawn but physically working on his properties. Pete Horst, one of his best friends, remembered the time Louie dug a half-mile, six-foot-deep trench for water pipe. When cutting silage, Louie would go into the field and half of the bundles in the field would be his. “His work was his fun,” said Bob Feller, who worked closely with Louie. “He would be up at 4:30 a.m. and start the day. Many times he would call at 11:45 at night and say ‘so-and-so is coming in at 5:00 in the morning. Would you have time to stop down?’” According to Feller, Louie had done a lot of business by 6:00 or 7:00 a.m.“He forgot. He showed a wealth of kindness and concern for the people he helped through the years. He became a legend in the cattle feeding industry, not only in his area, but across the nation. Louie was posthumously inducted into the Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame in 2013. Probably most important to Louie was that he made sure the lives of the children of Wisner were much richer with scholarships, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a computer lab at the high school, among other things. Every person who ever knew him never forgot Louie Dinklage. Quite an accomplishment for a tall, talented, sometimes gruff man from Nebraska. I wish I could have known him. NEXT TIME: FRED JOHNSON, "A MAN WITH A PURPOSE."  never let go. It always had to be done now. If it came to his mind, it was done now.” As for the cattle market, Feller said that Louie always kept it simple, but he had a real sense of when to move. He always felt that hard times were the best times to step up. Bill Pullen of Bill’s Volume Sales out of Central City, Neb., recalled what it was like the sell a feed truck to Louie. “When it was time to trade feed trucks, Louie would call me. He’d say, ‘We’ll trade and I know that you will treat me right, so just give me a price.’ “I would lay awake for nights worry- ing about what was a fair price. It would have been easier if he had come in and pounded on the desk to negotiate a deal rather than the way he did it.” Louie’s great-nephew, Jeff Dinklage, remembers visiting the grain shed office as a small child.“I remember the old office with a scale in front. It was dark and rickety and full of feed sacks. When he built the new office, it was still low- key and modest. He led a very common- place life.” Jeff said. One of the things Jeff remembers is that Louie always had time to talk, and when kids went into the office, Louie always gave them quarters to buy two ice cream cones. One for them and one for Louie. Jeff also remembers that you never tried to put anything over on Louie.“He taught a lot of people that policy,” he said. All in all, Louie Dinklage taught a lot of people in his day and left a very rich legacy. He taught dozens of people a way of life and an ethic they never