Neil Dudley: Welcome to the Cowboy Perspective, y’all. We have a special treat to open this episode, a poem titled The Cowboy Perspective, written and read by Kenneth Harvick.
Kenneth Harvick: I had three geldings in my string. My [favorite] was ol’ Red. He had four white socks and a blaze, and he made sure every day I made it back home to bed. One day he broke his leg, and that day I have to admit, I shed a tear. And while he never mended to where I could ride him, it didn’t matter because he wasn’t going anywhere. Now, then old [Denny], number two, he’s getting all the wet blankets, and what I didn’t know that he was ready on alone. He just needed a chance to show it. You know, a lot of it’s about timing. In business, you see it over and again, but in one’s life, time is precious. Don’t waste it on a race you can’t win. Give it to your family or make it up when you can, and give it to God all that you owe him, or he’ll be the judge of you, the man.
Neil Dudley: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Cowboy Perspective. I’ve got a really fun episode. It is our second installment of Cowboy Mentors, and really, I just kind of thank God that I’ve had these people in my life. I’m looking forward to having them on here, telling you their story, shedding light on a lot of things. I hear in marketing circles or sales guru circles that you got to be really focused when you’re doing something to ever have success with it. And I got to say the Cowboy Perspective podcast is not really the most focused podcast out there. I don’t have a specific thing I’m after in every scenario. I’m in this to offer value that I find in people in my life and really about anything. So that’s what we’re going to be doing today and talking to Kenneth and Vickie Harvick. Well, let’s do it.
Well, here we go. So I’m curious, I guess I want to call you Mama and Poppy because that’s what I call you all the time, but hey, everybody, I’ve got Kenneth and Vickie Harvick here, this my father-in-law and mother-in-law, coming onto the podcast to talk about, well, their careers and how Kenneth has really displayed or been a cowboy mentor of mine since I was just a little kid and a lot of those characteristics that I hope to display in my life and that I’ve learned from him, even just kind of watching, I’m not, don’t even know, we’ll talk about it a little bit, he may know he was doing it, he may not even know, it might just be part of who he is. And that’s kind of maybe where we start. Kenneth, Poppy, tell us a little bit about your family and just tell the listener where you came from.
Kenneth Harvick: Okay. Good morning, Neil. I grew up in the dairy business in a little small community of Gustine, Texas and population of 450 people. So grew up on a dairy farm, and I lived about 12 miles from Comanche, where I met my future wife, Vickie, Mama, and just so happened that her family was in the dairy business as well. So, we started dating then in high school when we were juniors and dated for a couple of years, and then right out of high school, we both attended Tarleton State University and decided to get married in 1970. And I joined her family venture, family farm if you will, at that time, and took out on a career path that’s lasted all these years. So, between getting a real education and what it took to grow a family and business venture that we look back on today and say, man, what an education we got, we’re just happy to be here and share whatever we can.
Neil Dudley: So from small town, you’d been on a dairy farm at the level of say your mom and dad were running and operating, come over and get involved into the Gore’s dairy business, which at one time was one of the largest in the Southwest, if maybe the largest. Paint a little bit of a picture of how big the dairy got.
Kenneth Harvick: Okay. And when I joined it in 1970, or when Vickie and I got married, we were Gores Incorporated, which was the name of the family venture. They were milking about 1300 dairy cows, and they had a feed business going at the time, along with a hog operation. They were a very successful family venture at that time. It started out with two brothers and their dad, and their dad didn’t stay involved in the business for a long time. The two boys was pushing that machine all along. So, when I came, I came in at a time when the wheels were turning for it to grow all along. So, from the time of 1970 to about 1985, between that time period, we grew to about 5,000 head of dairy cows. And the hog operation and the feed mill, all of it grew along with it. Eventually we got out of the hog business, but we were in it for a good bit of time too. So that’s kind of where-
Neil Dudley: Well, and that occurs to me, or I kind of want to paint that picture because in this series, my cowboy mentors in life, I’m trying to get an interview with men. And it turns out the first one was dad, second one was you, the guys I kind of am around a lot today that have influenced me in life. And one of those things you did early on or when I was young, just in high school and had no idea that we were going to have this son-in-law father-in-law relationship, it was just kind of I’m a little kid in town and you’re a businessman, and you needed some heifers checked. Well, you hired me to go ride through the heifers, and as a little kid whose whole identity was tied up in being this cowboy, that was kind of a – what do you call it? – validating in my mind, like, wow, Kenneth thinks I’m good enough to go ride through his heifers. Now, looking back, you’re probably just like, meh, I mean, this kid needs a dollar or two, and my dad could have even said, “Hey Kenneth, would you let Neil right through your heifers?” How that all played out, but it’s so valuable to anybody listening I think to think about that little bit of a hand you reach out to a youngster or even anybody, somebody older than you, to show them you believe in them a little bit and give them a little responsibility, that plays in their lives for a long time in a lot of ways.
Kenneth Harvick: I hear what you’re saying there, Neil, because I think in reflecting back, I remember a lot of young kids, I call them now and then too, that worked for us while they were in high school and just needed pick up a few extra dollars, but in reflecting back, how many of them would call me today or tell me today how much they appreciated it and how much it helped shape some of their lives. And we didn’t do anything more than other folks would do, but I think those are very important years to the young people and the off starts they get to be successful in life.
Neil Dudley: Was that conscious in your mind, or was that just kind of a natural thing that it just comes out of you?
Kenneth Harvick: I think I would have to say it was some of both, because partly we needed, we were always looking for good help. But at the same time, I knew that it was a good way to, because we were visiting with the ag teachers and all finding was there a way we could participate and taking kids and helping, especially certain kids, along the path of just growing them and mentoring them. So, while it was all conscious, I couldn’t say that that was, but there was definitely a part of that was.
Neil Dudley: I think back also to playing pickup basketball games with you and that, and how that as a young kid affected me. Not to throw Dad under the bus, but Dad wasn’t much of a basketball player in all honesty. I mean, he probably could have been, but he never focused on it. He was kind of more into football and as he being my number one hero, I kind of thought, well, I’m not going to play basketball. Mom was a basketball player. She kind of made me do it. And turns out, basketball was my most, the sport I enjoyed the most and probably was the best at. So, we would play pickup games, just trying to get some skills built. And you guys – and I say you guys because you, Juan, Vince – a lot of guys that I think were in the dairy business actually would come play pickup. What were you doing that for?
Kenneth Harvick: I think you can reflect back and look across rural America, and it’s amazing how many times you’d see that type of thing happening with what does people do with their time if they want some activity? And you learn something as kids. Like I say, I grew up in a small town and there was an impression made upon me early in life. Because I can remember even in the fourth grade, well in a small school, the coaches would come and take me out of class middle of the day to go play with the junior high kids. And it made an impression on me that that was just something that always stayed with me. And I guess it kind of duplicated, if you will, this competing nature in me. And at times to a fault, I’ve been known to be too competitive. So, I think we just were looking then as young adults, we were looking for ways to get some physical activities in, and there’s no better sport in my mind than basketball to do that. We kind of all played football. It’s easy to get hurt playing football, and I loved football, but basketball was that sport where you could pick up the physical activity and get great exercise and have a good time doing it.
Neil Dudley: So, and this kind of picture of your life we’re talking about, we’re going to parlay into talking about Pure Milk and that brand, and how looking back, Stacy and I’d say all the time, that’s such a brilliant brand and such a really cool time in the history of that business. It’s probably a decent little stress reliever, too, to go out and get some activity, get some of that competition out, take a little high school kid, give him an elbow in the ribs, and let him know, hey, you can’t get in there and mix it up with me, I’m still a man. I yearn for that a little bit. I’m getting a little bit of that out teaching those girls, coaching these girls in basketball. I mean, the blood gets pumping, the competitive juices flow. It’s something I think everybody, if you’re not able to find that release, I encourage you to get into something and what it might be – I think a lot of guys use hunting for that. They’ll go sit in those deer blinds or get that rush of excitement of tracking that big buck. Anyways, I really looked back and that was a time that I saw in you another thing that affects me still today is you’re in there, you’re helping, you’re part of- you weren’t like mean – you were competitive, but you weren’t mean, and you were a guy that if I hadn’t had my dad, I could have been looking up to. It was like, oh, wow, that’s a guy that I really respect and want to model my life after. So, I want to be that for other people. I think anybody listening could consider how they could play that in their lives as well. I didn’t know if I’d ever get this worked into this podcast, but you go by a lot of names, and one of them is Mayor. Tell us a little bit about where Mayor comes from.
Kenneth Harvick: Well, Mayor actually fell into my lap on the golf course of all places. We have kind of a three-town community there that kind of went together back in the early sixties and put together a golf course out in our part of the world called Par Country Club. And it between De Leon, Texas, Comanche and Dublin. And so, needless to say, we have friends from all those towns. And so, I would meet young guys out there, just like what we’re talking about here, through basketball or whatever. And there was a couple of guys from De Leon, Texas, that for some reason or another stamped me with the name Mayor. They just thought- now why, I honestly can’t tell you that. But they thought that-
Neil Dudley: That was cute.
Kenneth Harvick: That just needed to be my name. So, when they did, it just automatically it stuck. And you’d be surprised how many times since then people’s always call me Mayor and I’d have folks come into town that would know me, but not know me by that name and say well he must be the mayor. And if they maybe got a parking ticket or something, they’d want to know cause they’d say is there any way you could help me out with that ticket? So anyway, that’s the way that came about, simple enough.
Neil Dudley: Well, it’s fun. I think it displays or illustrates how just getting out there and being with people parlays into connection. That Mayor moniker is a connection you have with that group of people, and I think it’s really, really cool. Let’s move a little bit more over into talking about business or that Pure Milk side of things and as you guys have built a dairy, and maybe talk about Joe a little bit. How was it? What was it like working for your father-in-law? I’m not in that position so I’d be curious, there’s probably other people out there.
Kenneth Harvick: Really, it was it was a great opportunity for me. The business was big enough at the time that they needed help, and they needed help from young people that could still work and was aggressive. So, when I come along, I spent a lot of time initially just in so-called hospital pens. We were freshening a lot of cows every day. So, I spent my time there. A cow would have a calf, we’d tend to the calf, get that cow ready and send them on their way to a dairy to be in the milking string then for that next nine to twelve months. So, Joe allowed me to fit that role and to really grow as a young person and learn the industry, the milking industry from the ground up as it pertained to Gore’s Inc. And he was a good mentor to me. He was tied up a lot in those days, I guess if you will, he had the help that allowed him to go do some other things. He was involved with a cooperative effort in ANPI. so he was gone some time and putting together a trucking operation and that type of thing. So, it worked out well that there was plenty of room for me to grow and roam and not crossing paths every thirty minutes or an hour. And I think in family relationships, I think it’s very important that while working side-by-side, there’s lots to be said for that, you need time alone that you can find your own way, especially as young person. Mentoring is one thing, but you need to find your own way and let it be known that you’re capable of doing that. So, I think that’s the type of a relationship that we had and I enjoyed.
Neil Dudley: I think it’s really paramount that, at least in my experience, growing, building Peterson’s, that kind of thing, we had a lot of room to fail, and we got really good because we were allowed that. I think in sometimes in family businesses or even businesses that are just really young, they don’t have cash, it’s tough, you can’t really- you’re scared of a failure, it could hurt financially. So, a lot of those reins are pulled up pretty tight, and I think it hinders what somebody, well, at least I perceive, as an opportunity for me to become somebody that’s valuable to the company, even valuable to the economy, period, the whole country and generating business and making this capitalist thing flow. So, I’d just say, if you can find a way, I think don’t work right side-by-side, allow for some mistakes and failures. In my life for sure, the failures have been the things I’ve learned the most from. So, doing the dairy thing, you had a feed business, a feed mill. Now did the feed mill come prior to going into the retail milk production?
Kenneth Harvick: Yeah, the feed business was already let’s say going. The two brothers, Joe, my father-in-law, and his brother Bill, Bill was working with the feed division and the hog operation. And Joe was more working on the dairy side of things and growing that dairy. And at that time that I come along, the dairy was the one that was really growing more at that time and taking the lion’s share of needing help, I would say. So again, I think if I came there in 1970, and I think I mentioned, we grew the dairy herd to about 5,000 cows, then about 1995, those were what I would call was great dairy times. There was some money to be made in the dairy business. And even though had it had been through some ups and downs across time, they had a base situation put in place to where you couldn’t overproduce so much milk, and that’s not particularly known in this day and time to be the capitalistic way – take the lid off and just supply demand, go see what you can make happen. But by the middle, the early eighties, along in there, the last of the base was sold off, kind of encouraged through the industry. And then, so everybody did a good job of going out and producing milk. And as an industry, we got very good at it. The genetics got good. We had dairy cows come along, and when I was a kid, you was doing good to have a 35-40 pound average herd, milking pounds of milk per day, per cow. And well, by the middle eighties, that had grown to a 65-pound average, and you had cows’ milking 120 or 130 pounds of milk. And that’s where genetics had come to. And we’d gotten really involved with embryo transfer and trying to continue to escalate those genetics.
Neil Dudley: Let me butt in real quick. So, to get a cow up to milking that many pounds a day, was that all based on feed, supplements, any hormones, that kind of stuff, or what was y’all’s philosophy there?
Kenneth Harvick: At that time there, it was no hormones given to the dairy cows. It was strictly through genetics and nutrition that we were able to attain that.
Neil Dudley: Which I think is pretty cool that you guys took that stance on it, at least in the business I’m in today, and really, what I think about when I think about feeding my kids and my family. I like that philosophy.
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What got you guys considering or thinking about buying a mild brand?
Kenneth Harvick: Okay. Well, it came fairly natural in fact that when base went away and we took the [governors] off, then it became all about volume in the dairy industry. And while I would have say we were as a company pretty good at it because a typical dairy farm even at that time was still around 150-200 head cows, and we had already grown our dairy herd to 5,000 head. But as a nation, we had gotten to a point where we were over producing milk. And in 1986, ’87, we had produced enough, more milk than was needed for consumption that the government come in and bought up nine and a half million dairy cows to take out of the market just to get the supply back in check. We kept looking for ways to say, well, okay, how do we set ourselves apart from just the also ran-?
Neil Dudley: Now I got to go back to this. Why did the government have to come in and regulate that? Why do you feel like the farmers weren’t already doing that?
Kenneth Harvick: The farmers were doing it, but it’s typical, I think through our political system. At that time, we had a pretty big voice through our cooperative efforts and across the US, the way milk was marketed was you belong to a cooperative. And because there was – I can’t recite today how many dairies there were throughout the US, but it politically it mounted to a lot of numbers that had a big voice. And so those cooperatives were able to take that and kind of demand it through our political system – hey, something needs to be done here because you got, while supply and demand does work, it’s painful. And those dairymen that were peeling off of the bottom end, that wasn’t [pre-sized] at that time. So, I think that’s the reason they did it.
Neil Dudley: Okay. Alright, so now you’re about to tell us about how you moved on to Pure Milk.
Kenneth Harvick: Well, we decided that what we had really hoped to do, as we sat down and tried to plot out our future, was that we wanted to become, if we could indeed, a totally vertically integrated company, and that would grow our own cow, grow our own feed, produce our own milk and manage that milk. So, the only thing lacking for us was that we needed a bottling plant to get it to the customer. And so, Pure Milk company became available to us in 1987. And it was an old established bottling plant in Waco, Texas, that already had a good bit of distribution. They’d been in business for 40 or 50 years. So, we purchased that to put that last, what we thought was the last piece in place for us as a company and started that in 1987. I think that was another complete learning venture for us.
Neil Dudley: Well, and then I’m just sitting here thinking, wow, you were talking about just a second ago working in the sick pen, and now you’re talking about major philosophy of the company. So how did you manage to get yourself up into that decision-making process? And that kind of thing was, I don’t perceive it being because you were married to Joe’s daughter. I think you earned your stripes to get in there, into those conversations and building that philosophy. How would somebody do that if they wanted to do that? How would you say, well, this is how you do that? Cause I think people want to be- I know there are people out there today that are doing the grunt work, let’s call it, in companies, and want to be a part of those bigger decisions and picture thought processes. Do you got any insight there?
Kenneth Harvick: Yeah. I think there is some insight there because it really helped me that I knew the dairy cow side of it. Because like I said, I was there when I was a kid. And then, but then to be able to learn the numbers side of it, numbers as in growing dairy numbers, that helped me when I was 19, 20 years old to figure out how to work that end too. But then how do you take that next step? And it mainly just takes desire. Within every industry, everything that you do, you can be smart, you can be all of the things, but where do you desire to take yourself or your company? And so, I think that with having learned it from the ground up, that really helped me to be able to insert myself and said, okay, how do we take that next step? And what do we need to make happen so that we’re not just a volume oriented, me too kind of situation? And I’d have to say that’s, you have to be motivated to do it. It has to come from within, but you have to be given that opportunity too.
Neil Dudley: Alright. So, how did Pure Milk go for you?
Kenneth Harvick: Well, for the first two or three years, I would have to say that we were busy learning that industry. It was very exciting for us because we could see the opportunity with it. We went from a company that shipped their milk to a co-op. And when you do that, then you commingle your milk with every other producer that’s in your area, and it’s gone through a bottling plant and shipped to the grocery stores. So, the milk on those grocery shelves, for the most part, are co-mingled with other producers. So, we had the opportunity then to be in total control of our milk. And when we started out, we were what they call a producer handler, and we were in total control of our, if you will, our class one sales, and thereby, you could somewhat regulate what you got paid for your milk. Now I will have to say that we ruffled some feathers with the state when we did that, and they really didn’t want us to be a producer handler. They said that’s not really what the intent was. But, and in fact, we went to court over that, and we won that cause because we could prove that we were in total control of our milk, and we regulated that. But that was an extremely competitive thing, because we couldn’t go buy- if we needed more milk for the next week to go to certain schools or certain grocery stores or whatever that was putting on sales, sometimes all of a sudden, we couldn’t go buy outside milk. We were limited; we had to be our milk. So, we found that as well to be extremely difficult. And so, we had to make adjustments along the way with that. We learned along the way that we thought it was our milk and we could label it the way that we wanted to, that there were certain things that you could and could not do with that label back at that time. And this was the early nineties. And so, we’d get ourselves in trouble here and there about way we were labeling milk.
Neil Dudley: Well, you were pushing the boundaries a little bit. It’s an evolution in every industry, I think. And it’s kind of this ying and yang of the guy that just wants to tell the consumer everything, and hey, this is exactly how our business is. And then the other guy that says, well, I might not want to do that. And how do you accomplish that at those two kinds of diametrical positions? So yeah, you end up in the courtrooms and that kind of thing.
Kenneth Harvick: Well yeah, because that, we were in competition basically with our fellow dairymen, and we’re trying to tell our story, our Pure Milk story, that again, we’re vertically integrated and we control this milk. And at that time, there wasn’t this big groundswell of that housewife demanding that they want to know where does my food come from, but it was starting to percolate. And we were getting a few phone calls saying, well, okay, they would hear certain things about being in the product, and we’d get phone calls saying, okay, I want to know is this in y’all’s milk? And well, we wanted to be able to say on the label that no, it’s not in this milk. We have no cows that are receiving this drug or hormone or whatever it would be. So, but anyway, we quickly found out, got taken to task about that, and found out at that time, you couldn’t really say that. So, we had to make adjustments, and I will have to say that that somewhat hurt our legacy at Pure Milk when we couldn’t do that. Because we needed that to be able to tell the Pure Milk story to get to the housewife that could in turn, turn around and demand it from her grocer that she wanted our product.
Neil Dudley: Well, and it could give you that ability to garner or demand or ask for a little better price, and that would sustain your costs of being vertically integrated, because there’s a cost to that. It is a really fun story, it’s nice, but to make it happen, it’s a challenge.
Kenneth Harvick: When we couldn’t take that and parlay it with, for an individual dairy farm, we were pretty good-sized dairy. So, we had a little volume, we had the milk plant, but we needed to be able to tell the quality story in order to be able to go along with that and make sales happen. And because that milk plant was on the other side, and it needed volume to make it efficient. Our dairy could, well, it could make it be good. Then we had the plant to worry about and we had to tie it all together. So, across time, and I’m talking about time being as in a ten-year period, we found it very difficult back in the early nineties to juggle those balls and still be competitive in a very competitive bottling industry. And so, probably in the, I think we [hollered] calf rope, if you will, with Pure Milk Company in 1997 and exited that business because we just couldn’t compete from a pure volume standpoint and timing wise, it just wasn’t quite right.
Neil Dudley: Well, yeah, I kind of want to cry when I think about it, because the way the world is today, you guys were doing the thing that is required today. I hear, I mean, I’m always listening to books and podcasts and that kind of thing, and some of these marketing gurus, sales gurus kind of will say something like, if you think you’re going to beat everybody on quality or something, some piece of product that you feel like you can- actually, in all reality, everybody has that. Everybody can kind of say this is safe, healthy milk or bacon or whatever. Your edge comes when you can build something for them that they’re looking for that nobody else has realized or cares to deliver on.
Kenneth Harvick: As I marvel today where the industry has come from, even what you guys ran into, y’all are there where everybody’s trying to do that. At that time, there wasn’t anybody trying to do it that much. We were there, but the rest of the system wasn’t quite there yet.
Neil Dudley: It turned out into really what might become or look like a failure or hey this business just didn’t- you were just early. We’ve been there. We’ve put out products that were four years too early. I think to the listener, if you know the demand’s there, if it’s really what you believe in, what you want, I think if you hang on long enough, you can find a way. Now as the story evolves for you guys, I think it is really cool because you still had other businesses to think about and to put effort into. So, it wasn’t like, oh, now you’re out of business, start from zero. Tell us a little bit, so like when you exited out of Pure Milk, that wasn’t the end of the world, what happens from that point?
Kenneth Harvick: Well, to kind of reflect back, Neil, I guess at this point to say as a father-in-law, son-in-law, you and I’ve been able to do some things together just that ties the old cowboy back to this side. When I was growing up as a kid, I always had a horse on the farm, me and my brother, and I always had a love for the horse. Never was able to get away from that. And I know that you’re the same way, that you just got that in your blood a little bit and sometimes it doesn’t make sense, but it does make sense. It just it’s you want it part of your life and your culture, if you will. And so, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to reflect it back in a cowboy perspective. And I know that’s kind of what you do a lot of the times, but I’m just going to read you something, if y’all can figure out a way to listen to it. I had three geldings in my string. My [favorite] was Ol’ Red. He had four white socks and a blaze, and he made sure every day I made it back home to bed. One day he broke his leg and that day I have to admit I shed a tear. And while he never mended to where I could ride him, it didn’t matter cause he wasn’t going anywhere. Now, then old Denny, number two, he’s getting all the wet blankets. And what I didn’t know, that he was ready all along. He just needed a chance to show it. When Pure Milk didn’t work out, that hurt our pride a lot. But we took the next couple of weeks and never looked back, and we put that effort and concentrated it on our feed business. And within 10 years, we built the volume up in that feed business that we had people knocking on our door to buy it, and we sold it for more money than I ever thought was capable. A lot of it’s about timing, and in business, you see it over and again. But in one’s life, time is precious. Don’t waste it on a race you can’t win. Give it to your family or make it up when you can, and give it to God all that you owe him, or he’ll be the judge of you, the man. And I think for me personally, Neil, that reflects back and just to the old soul of me, and you can’t take the old cowboy perspective out of it. And just when you peel back all the layers and you fight that journey and you look back, it really doesn’t amount to more than how do you want to live your life? And as you said, if you’re fortunate enough to have, as you’re building this business, try to have different avenues of where you can go so if one of them does stumble, and occasionally they do, that you can pick up that other horse and ride him.
Neil Dudley: And don’t take, I think, please don’t take a stumble or a failure as this is the end of it. It’s sometimes just leading you to the- It’s like God’s in control of a lot of things, and sometimes the best path is just one you don’t see, and you kind of need to fall over onto it a lot of times to realize that it’s even there.
Kenneth Harvick: For sure.
Neil Dudley: Yup. Hey Mama, on lean up to the mic and just say, hi, y’all.
Vickie Harvick: Hi, y’all.
Neil Dudley: I wanted to get her on tape just a little bit, because she’s lived right through every bit of this with Kenneth and raising- part of the thing we have in common, not only we both love Stacy a lot, but we’re both kind of, you made it all the way through raising three daughters. I’m in the midst of it or starting, which I don’t know, you might never get done raising them. But that’s a piece of the puzzle that I leverage a lot is just advice on, hey, as the father of three girls, how does that work? And what’s the trick? There is probably no trick because everybody’s got so many different personalities and the world’s different today. But you, Mama and Poppy, display and represent something that’s really special to me and I know Stacy too and our kids and that’s a marriage of going to be 50 years this year. And that’s a piece of cowboy and cowgirl perspective that I think is really valuable to everybody out there. So, Mama, how did y’all make it 50 years in marriage?
Vickie Harvick: I don’t know. I was thinking earlier cause Kenneth said he lived in Gustine, and I lived in Comanche, and I guess the first time we ever saw each other was at a livestock show. And we used to have a little local movie theater in town, and it was a very simple little movie theater. And we were kind of up at the little simple concession stand, and he’s got his little orange leather jacket on. He walks up to me, and he says, “How did Linda do on her calf?” And I’m thinking, well, actually, what I said was, “I think you’re going to have to ask Linda.” I didn’t know who he was interested in, me or Linda.
Kenneth Harvick: I just about lost her before I ever-
Neil Dudley: That’s right. That’s a story that happens so many times. Even my mom and dad will tell their kind of story of getting together, which they were kind of high school sweethearts and Dad would never even have asked her out a date if somebody hadn’t shamed him into it, and then now they’re married and lived together, raised a family. That simple start. I encourage kids, people, if you have an interest in somebody, that’s the spark that starts what could be a 50-year growing together, building businesses, families, spiritually being there and growing that piece of your life together.
Vickie Harvick: I always, and I told my girls, that you really need to go- when you go to say, like if Stacy was to go to your home, you need to watch how the mom and dad relate to each other, because that’s the norm. That’s going to be the norm for-
Neil Dudley: What your partner may perceive as reality.
Vickie Harvick: That’s going to be probably, to me, the norm. And I was very fortunate because I’m married into a really good, a good family. Kenneth had a brother and two sisters and his mom and dad, of course, Kenneth grew up on that dairy farm milking cows with his mother.
Kenneth Harvick: She always knew where I was at, Neil, and then when I’d call her sometimes to see if she wanted to go on a date, she could hear the milking machines going in the background.
Vickie Harvick: Yeah. And they make a unique sound and I knew what that sound was because- And then when I married Kenneth, the first thing his mother told me, because I didn’t have to milk, was, “Don’t you ever let him get you in that dairy barn. You won’t ever get out.” Because his mother, she lived it. And it wasn’t an easy life, standing on those flat barns on the concrete, and in the winter, those rags that you have to dry the utters with freezing in your pockets. And I always admired his mother because she milked those cows and then she went home and took care of four kids, and she cooked big meals and had a garden, and she was a very good role model for him. And his dad was too, but it just happened his brother went with the dad to do the farming side of it, and he milked the cows with his mom. So, he had a good background when he married into my family. And he knew how to learn because one of the first things that I guess my dad did do was send him to a cattlemen’s school in Kansas. Wasn’t it in Kansas? And he was always willing to learn, learned to speak Spanish.
Neil Dudley: Oh yeah, made a pilot too, that’s-
Vickie Harvick: I wanted to say one more thing. Kenneth started at the bottom when he came to work for my family, and of course, he learned to speak Spanish and he was the relief milker. And I don’t know how many times somebody came to our door and said, “No, leche dia,” which means they’re not going to be able to milk tonight. And he was the relief milker, and then people won’t know what this means, but he was also the person that went out and checked on the bulling cows.
Neil Dudley: A really cool thing that just happens to be happening, I don’t mind letting people know, you guys put together a little family reunion, and since I’ve been in the family, I can only think of maybe one or two times where really your whole – what do you want to call them – little group of offspring, from children to grandchildren to great-grandchildren are all together. And we got to go eat breakfast together and go watch the Globe Trotters and do some of that stuff. And I appreciate you guys doing that because it builds a relationship for my girls with the family. And I think families get away from that. You turn out and you look up and you’ve never had or had a chance to even build a relationship with these other people that are in your family. And I appreciate you guys putting that together. And doing this podcast and just talking about stuff that I just feel like if it’s valuable to one person out there who’s trying to build a business or a family, or just get through a bit of a stormy time in life, hey, here’s some insight that could be a nugget of help.
Vickie Harvick: Sometimes, we have little conversations and I’ll say you never know, is it because we’ve been together for 50 years, but we’re just, we’re on the same page.
Neil Dudley: There’s, I promise, you guys can communicate without even trying. You guys are making a lot of steps day in, day out, or even with what you want to do, as you choose to get into whatever other venture you choose to do. I mean, getting into some real estate stuff, whatever, you guys are always into something. You’re not sitting still, which is another example of something I look up to. You guys have built a big business, sold that big business, and then just went right back to building something else.
Kenneth Harvick: Well, I want to make one reflection there because we’d been around long enough, Vickie and I now, that you see whether it’s your friends or family or whatever, it means so much. We mentioned 50 years of marriage, but in order for you to reach certain goals, personal goals or whatever, there’s no way you can do it through 50 years of marriage unless you are both on the same page. And if one of you is pulling against the other one a little bit, and looking around at the divorce and all that happened today, that’s the reason that they happen is because they can’t find that happiness with working together for those common goals in my mind. And I think that we have been successful in making that happened anyway.
Neil Dudley: Thanks for being on the Cowboy Perspective and Cowgirl Perspective, there is no cowboy – I can’t say it quite that emphatically – most of every cowboy I know that has mentored me has had a great mother, a mother that influenced them in a big way. So, to all you cowgirl mentors out there, keep on keeping on. We need you.
Well, there you go. A couple of things we didn’t get to talk about with Kenneth is he’s a musician. I think you might’ve seen a little bit of that in the Cowboy Perspective insight he provided. And that’s another thing I really enjoy, I’m glad my kids get to see that. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone to their house, and he’s just played the guitar and sang with them, which was a thing I didn’t get as a kid. Just, as it turns out, I didn’t grow up in a musically inclined family, so I really love that. And him providing that and doing that kind of stuff with the kids is so fun for me. So, I hope you guys and gals and everybody listening, if you don’t mind, if you’ve enjoyed, I really haven’t spent much time asking people to tell others about my podcast because I kind of feel like- a limiter in my life is if I do it, in about the first or second try, I’m going to be as good as anybody else. And I don’t even need to tell anybody to help me because I’m that good. Well, that’s not the truth. It’s not reality. I’m learning that’s a problem because I see a little bit of that personality in my daughters, and I don’t want them to have it. So, I’ve got to work on that a little bit. So, help me. If you’ve enjoyed this, share it, tell others about it. We’d love to grow this reach. And especially if it was valuable, we can share it with somebody else and it could be valuable to them. So, if you liked this, leave me a review or tell somebody about it. Until next time, I hope you really enjoyed this time in the studio. I’m always trying to think of something clever. What I should just say is love you guys, we’ll see you later. Nope, we won’t see you later. See, I do it every time. I got to start recording these things more often. I won’t be seeing you later, I’ll be talking to you later. Hasta luego.