Live Stock Show

Clarence Goecke, 12, raised and owned, until last week, the best steer in the U. S. Clarence called the steer Dick. When Dick was calved (July 27, 1927), Clarence paid his father, Fred Goecke of State Centre, Marshall County, Iowa, $55 for the gangling Hereford bull. Thereafter, every day Clarence fed Dick ground corn, cooked barley, oil meal, bran, molasses feed, clover hay. Clarence groomed Dick himself, made Dick's hair curly with a special comb, helped make him a steer.

Dick followed Clarence about. But Clarence would not let Dick follow him to his eighth grade class in a Marshall County rural school. Dick stayed at home and grew big and fat. Poll came out on his flat, white head; little knobs grew into shiny, short, down-curving horns.

Last summer Clarence led Dick to the Marshall County Fair; Dick won the grand champion steer prize. Then Clarence led Dick to the Iowa State Fair at Des Moines; Dick won third prize. Both prizes brought Clarence $148 cash. Someone offered Clarence $1 a pound for Dick on the hoof. Clarence's father said sell; Clarence said no, he wanted to exhibit Dick at the International Live Stock Show at Chicago. And to Chicago last week he led Dick.

Cold winds blew Chicago's packing house stenches over the Union Stock Yard. But the trainloads of farmers, breeders, fitters, butchers, hay & grain raisers there with their families minded the fetid air not at all. They were in Chicago for their year's biggest holiday.

Hundreds of animals--cattle, swine, sheep, horses--were led into the crowded stockyard amphitheatre. Dick won the junior feeding contest, the prize for the best Hereford yearling, the grand prize for the best yearling, and $800 prize money for Clarence. Clarence was satisfied and wanted to go home to State Centre. But W. L. Blizzard of Stillwater, Okla., who awarded one of the prizes, told Clarence to enter Dick for the grand champion prize. Clarence consented, but would not lead Dick before Walter Biggar, who traveled from Dalbeattie, Scotland, to do the judging. Emma Goecke, 17, his big sister, took Dick to judgment. Clarence was sick to his stomach. If Dick won the grand champion steer prize, that would be Dick's end. He would be sold at auction (as is the live stock show's custom), killed and eaten at some rich Christmas carouse.

And Dick did win. James Cash Penney, chain store owner and raiser of Guernsey, paid $7 a pound for Dick--$8,050 all told. The highest previous price was $3.60 a pound, two years ago. Mr. Penney intended to ship Dick to Manhattan, exhibit him to the urbanites, then eat him for Christmas dinner. But gourmanderie was not Mr. Penney's prime reason for buying Dick, nor advertising. He has stores in small towns throughout the country and he wished to encourage boy & girl stockbreeders, his customers.

When Dick was so fatally sold, Clarence was nowhere about. His father imagined him, now a rich boy, kidnapped. A scared posse found the stripling all a-blubber, trying to warm his back against the outside of a stockyard store. Reporters nagged him. Muttered he: "Dick's so gentle he wouldn't hurt anybody. But he knew me best, and every time I went near him he tried to lick my face. . . ."

Another Marshall County boy, Keith Collins, 15, won the other best coveted prize of the live stock show, the carcass contest. The McCaulley Market of Mt. Kisco, N. Y., paid him $6.75 a pound ($4,873.50) for his yearling steer Benny, killed and dressed.

Live stock breeders have a conceit which thoughtless urbanites find quaint: if it is worthwhile to raise good, chunky stock, it is worthwhile to raise good, chunky boys and girls. Hence at each live stock show judges pick the country's healthiest adolescent. Prizewinners last week were strong Thelma Svarstad, 17, of Brown County, S. Dak., and husky William Tobias, 15, of Saginaw County, Mich. Thelma weighs 122 lbs., stands 5 ft. 2 in., William weighs 130 lbs., stands 5 ft. 6 in.