Richard L. Holt

I have been fascinated by cattle since I was a child.  When I took the job with NASA in Houston in 1962, I leased a 66 acre piece of land with a house, barn and outbuildings from a grand old lady of Houston, whose husband had worked this little piece of land for many years.  The house was a very old cottage that once housed the base commander, a building moved from Ellington Air Force Base about three miles away to this piece and it was pretty basic in its design.  Mr. Saunders, who had passed away several years before I met Mrs. Saunders, had done a beautiful job of building a wonderful barn, feed sheds, and tool shed on the property which was right next to the Gulf Freeway that goes between Houston and Galveston.  That land, by the way, is now full of huge apartment complexes.  Sad, but this is what is happening all over the country.

I was so busy with my NASA job that people were amazed that I took on the job of raising cattle.  But I did and it went very very well.  A neighboring rancher, Bobby McGehee was an ex-Texas Ranger, a tough, direct man, who immediately became my friend.  He taught me a lot about cattle, about people.  When he was going to do anything with his many animals, he always invited me to be there and to learn.  He made me get into the middle of castrating, branding, giving shots, etc.  He took me everywhere with him when I had the time.  We went to cattle auctions where he showed me how brands were altered on stolen cattle.  He carried the biggest pistol I had ever seen.  Typical, he said of Texas Rangers, who used the pistol as a club when necessary.  He also sold me my first set of cattle, six mother cows who had already been bred by his beautiful bull, two heifers, and a young bull, Mr. Speck.  Then he spent a lot of time with me teaching me the way of cattle, how to care for them etc.

Mr. Saunders, the man that built this 66 acre ranchette did a beautiful job with barns and shed and pastures on the place.  He had built a barn with a large corral, with half the barn sheltered for feeding the cattle out of the rain or other inclement weather, and the other half for storing the hay and other feed products.  I could stand on one side and throw the hay over the feed rack and stay away from the cattle at the same time.  It was also a beautiful place to be when it was pouring rain like it does in the Houston area at times.

My little herd grew over the years.  I successfully raised three generations of calves and they all survived.  I kept the females and sold the bull calves.  I used to get a lot of help from my fellow workers at NASA who thought it was a ball to come out to my place and help me with castrating the calves or giving them shots.  They even bought some of my yearlings for their own beef and I gave them the job of fattening them up for their tables at home.  Nearby there was a slaughter house that did the dressing for them. 

I had my ranch in Houston for six years until I moved back to California to work at the Cal Tech Jet Propulsion Labs.  I sold my small herd back to Mr. McGehee from whom I had bought them.