Mr. Miller Wins The Lottery

While I was working my South Texas territory in the mid 90's, people at two different feed stores in San Antonio won the Texas Lottery. Damn my bad luck!!!!

The didn't know the first guy personally, but he worked at a feed mill I called on in San Antonio. He worked delivering feed to various farm stores in south and central Texas. Never really heard much about him or how things turned out for him, although he ended up settling in or around Seguin, Texas, which was where Susie and I lived after we were first married.  I hear he plays a lot of golf. Poor guy...

The second person was the father of Windy Miller, one of my feed store customers. Windy and his business partner Dale, were two San Antonio policemen that owned a feed store called Vet Services, which was near down town San Antonio. It was a stones throw from the San Antonio Stockyards and at one time was probably a good account with all the cattle that were traded in San Antonio. But times changed and the stockyards closed in the mid 90's. The livestock products they sold soon turned to dog food, mouse bait and fire ant killer.

If you were a bad guy, you probably didn't want to cross Windy and Dale. Don't get me wrong, they were two of the most honest and fair guys I ever called on, but they had been cops for a few years and I think the feed store was an outlet for them to de-compress. Seems like they served in just about every facet of police work from patrol duty to SWAT. I think Dale told me once he had been shot during an altercation while on duty.

One day I walked in the store and an older man was behind the counter. I asked for Windy and he said that he was making a delivery and would be back shortly. We visited for a bit and eventually I figured out he was Windy's dad. I think he had retired from the power company in San Antonio and he was helping Windy out to have a little extra income. He was a great guy and was a real pleasure to visit with when I made my sales calls. A real down to earth person who also happened to be a rooster fighter. Kind of weird when I  found out that was what he did in his spare time, especially since I had never met someone that dabbled in that kind of entertainment. More on that later....

When the Texas Lottery was first introduced to Texas, I think I bought one ticket, didn't get a single number, and immediately started looking for other ways to get rich quick.. A few of the stores I called on sold scratch off tickets and even the pick 6 type of tickets, but I never paid much attention to it. One day while I was working in San Antonio, a customer told me that the recent lottery winner was someone in San Antonio. In one ear and out the other. When I got home that evening, I started coding and pricing my orders at the kitchen table like I always do. The 6 o'clock news came on and they were interviewing the man that won the lottery. Still, I paid little attention to it until I heard the winner speak. The voice sounded very familiar and I poked my head around the corner and looked at the television. Holy crap!! The lottery winner being interviewed was Mr. Miller.

It took about 2 or 3 weeks for me to finally run into Mr Miller at the store. I visited with Windy a bit while his dad visited with a customer. Windy grinned and said to me, "Look at what's in dad's pocket". I looked over at Mr. Miller and saw a checkbook poking up out of his shirt pocket and I said to Windy, "A checkbook. Whats the big deal?". Windy laughed and said, "Dad's never carried anything but cash his whole life and that never amounted to more than 10 or 20 dollars!" After Mr Miller was through visiting with the customer he walked over with a big smile on his face and said "What's new Tim?" I laughed and asked him, "I know you've been asked this a million times since you won, but what are you going to do with all that money?". He got real serious-like and told me, "You know that me and the boys like to fight roosters, right? Well, I got to thinkin' that every time we go to out of town to the cock fights we have to spend a bunch of money on motel rooms and eaten' out for dinner. I think I'm going to go buy me a motor home. That way, we can all stay in the motor home and not have to spend all that money on motel rooms and food. The whole crew will eat and sleep in the motor home. It'll save us a fortune" This coming from a guy who had just won 15 million dollars, but wanted to save a few hundred.  I kind of stared dumbfounded at him and told him that I thought that was a good idea. I knew right then that money was not going to change Mr Miller.

Windy kept the store for a few more years and Mr Miller left pretty soon after he won the lottery. Windy and I were talking one day and he told me how the money had changed his dad. Mr Miller got into the cow business and when he tried to do some cow trading or buy a tractor or even buy medicine for his cattle, most people's eyes got real big and saw a big payday coming. He couldn't even buy a good deal and literally had to go to the next county to buy anything. Retailers, tractor salesmen or cow traders knew who he was and tried at every chance to hang it in him and break it off. I think what happened was Mr. Miller didn't change, but everyone around him did. Windy told me that his dad had offered to pay for his grandson's college at Texas A&M, but he turned him down. I asked Windy if he had been drinkin' when he told his dad no, but Windy said something like, "I don't need my dad taking care of me. I'm a grown man." Pretty ballsy statement, but I respected Windy for it.

I haven't seen Mr. Miller in 10 or 12 years and I don't know how he's doing, good or bad. I saw Windy a few years ago at a feed store in Central Texas. He had retired from the police force and was selling feed for a local mill.  I asked him how his dad was doing and he said he was doing fine. Mr Miller had received quite an education in finance and accounting over the years, but was finally settling in. He could actually buy a pickup at the Ford dealer like everyone else nowadays. We were about to part ways and head out to our next accounts and I stopped and hollered over at Windy, "Hey Windy! Did you ever change your mind and let your dad pay for your son's college?" Windy looked down at the ground, kicked the dust and said,"Hell yeah I did. What do you think I am? Crazy?"

The Great Ones Part 2

My new job in California has me taking over a territory that was once run by Dean Lane. Dean was one of the most respected animal health reps in the country. Can you say pressure.....

I first met Dean in the late 90's at the first Walco National Sales Meeting. I seem to remember he was representing Manna Pro, among others, at his booth. Ken Caffey gathered all the SunWest Desoto reps and told us we needed to hear what Dean had to say. We brought the line in and never looked back.
Since Dean was already living in California, I only saw him from time to time for the next several years. When I went into marketing with Walco in Jan 2002, I started having more contact with him and started to get to know him better. Dean was probably the most easy going, calm person I have ever known. If you pushed back on a product or line he was showing you, he never got flustered or grew impatient with you. He just looked for another angle to present the product to you. And he normally walked out with an order in his pocket.

When I moved to California in 2004, I started dealing with Dean quite a bit. He was living in Stockton at the time and when he made a trip to southern California, he always made sure to call or come by the warehouse in Fresno. I always looked forward to his visits because you could always learn something from him. I asked for a few above and beyond the call of duty favors from Dean and he always came through for us. He never held that over your head or made you feel like you needed to repay him. But you did so anyway....

When I was going through my moment of despair (pretty lame when I think of what Dean went through), Dean helped me find a job at VSI. He would never admit to it, but a friend of mine that worked for Dean, told me he said, "Tim is good for this industry and we need to keep him in it." That is about as good as it gets. After a tradeshow while I was at VSI, Dean took a few of us to eat dinner. Before dinner, we were all talking over a few drinks and Dean said that he was having marital problems. He could have easily blamed everything on his wife and we would have never known any different, but he never said a cross word about her. Dean was a classy dude.

When I heard Dean was having health issues, I thought, "No big deal, Dean will get through this." Later on when I heard how bad it was, I was stunned. How could this happen to him? Why would this happen to such a decent and good person? About 6 or 8 months before Dean passed, I ran into my future boss, Bo Brown, at a tradeshow in Sheridan, Wyoming. I could tell by talking to Bo that it did not look good for Dean. Bo's wife Ruth gave me Dean's contact information and she said he would love to hear from me.

For whatever stupid ass, dumb reason, I never called Dean. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep it together when we talked and I didn't want to embarrass myself. Pretty lame excuse. I did post a few messages on the CaringBridge website that was set up for him, but I wish I had called. Take note kind reader, don't make the same mistake I did. Pick up the damn phone. I just know in my heart that Dean wanted to talk to as many people as he could in those last months. A lot of co-workers and friends did call Dean, but I didn't. I sure wish I could get a do-over.

When I first interviewed with Bo, for whatever reason, I didn't correlate the fact that I was taking over a territory that Dean used to run. At our first meeting after I was hired, Dean's name kept coming up again and again. A sales report I was given showed him as the rep for the same territory as I was in. Same stores. Same distributors. Same people. The magnitude of it all hit me finally. I made up my mind that I was going to make Dean proud. I have put this weight on my own shoulders; no one is pouring it to me.

I hope that some day, when I'm old and lame, people will smile when my name is mentioned. Kind of like they do now when Dean's name comes up.