CALF_News_October_November_2020

50 CALF News • October | November 2020 • www.calfnews.net R ecollections BY BETTY JO GIGOT PUBLISHER ANEBRASKA LEGEND S pending several days with Leo Timmerman the summer of 1993 is, without a doubt, a treasured memory. Tim- merman, one of the well-known cattle feeding pioneers from eastern Nebraska, was a true man of his times – strong, forceful and proud. His story, written for the family, chronicled the vagrancies of a career carved out of a tough business in an even tougher environment. The youngest of 10 children, Timmer- man’s parents emigrated from Germany as teenagers and met and married in Cumming County, Neb. One of his first memories was the Spanish flu epidemic of 1917 in which several of his brothers died. The family were farmers, but Tim- merman realized as a youngster that his passion was the cattle business. By the time he was 14, he had a little oak trailer to take “cheap” cattle home to feed. “I fed the cattle with a bushel basket, finished them out and then took them to the Omaha market,” Timmerman said in an August 1993 CALF News story. Married at 23 to Irene Meister, a grade school classmate, Timmerman farmed for a living but hated it.“Farming is the loneliest life I’ve ever had,” he recalled. “The only thing I wondered was what was I accomplishing?” In 1945, Timmerman bought a feedlot on the outskirts of Omaha and moved the family to town. He bought the whole thing but had to admit it was “a piece of junk” where you could barely keep the cattle in the pens, but it did have water. “I started feeding cattle commercially. I fed for me and for other people,” he said.“In those days, we didn’t have scales or anything. You counted scoops of hay, scoops of corn, and then you mixed it and fed the cattle. Our customers were people from the stockyards. “Actually, I was one of the first com- mercial feedlots in the Omaha area. I didn’t know if it would work, but you’ve got to make a living somehow. I hired help and fired help. I had one man I hired years ago for a dollar a day; he stayed with me for many years. “Life wasn’t easy. In those days what we went through …At night after Irene and I had gotten the kids to bed, I hauled and baled hay. I loaded the bales out of the field onto my truck and hauled them back to the feedyard. Today, who would haul baled hay at night? It’s really changed. I didn’t think it would.” Timmerman’s wife, Irene, was a partner in the business and a great help through the years.“I had a good w ife. If I’d leave to go buy cattle, she’d ta ke very good care of the kids and tak e care of the business. She’d keep everyt hing rolling. When I called home, she k new everything that was going on. She was involved in the business. Murphy, who used to be the banker in Omaha, s aid, ‘By God Leo, nobody could cheat your wife!’ “At night, after Irene had gotten the kids to bed, we’d sit in our little of fice and she’d say, ‘Now, let’s figure out what we’ve done today.’” Timmerman kept the records o f the day’s feeding in a little book, a nd they would add up the day’s sales. He remembered the day he brought h ome an adding machine and Irene dou bted they could run it, but they both le arned and, six months later, he brought home an electric one. They were not to be deterred. “At first, we settled up with the cus- tomers for feed at the end, when we sold the cattle. Later on, we sent them a feed bill every two weeks, showing how much the feed costs were.” As time went on, the number of scoops of feed were put on a big b lack- board in the elevator on 84 th Stree t in Omaha. “We understood that it [the rati on] needed to be balanced and put tog ether a certain way.” NEXT ISSUE: BRANCHING OUT 