"Corky" Bryan - Hawaii Cattlemens Council

More documents

Recommendations

Info

CB: Robert… Robert was kind of the foreman and Miki was kind of… see, Miki was kind of all around. Hecould build anything and all that kind of stuff. And Casey DeSilva. He was there. He was the mechanic.Isaac Kala was there. He was the machine operator. But he also could cowboy. Let’s see… oh there was a…there’s kind of two bunches. There was a cowboy gang and there was the construction gang. ‘Cause Newellloved to fiddle around so he ended up actually hiring this other guy next… airplane pilot guy. Air Force guy torun the construction part. Where we rented the D-9’s or the D-7’s. You know that road down to Weliweli. Webuilt that road. Pono called me up. He got tired of… that’s a whole ‘nother story. We built the road down toPono’s place at Welewele. We just did it. Walked the machine down from Pu’u Wa’awa’a ‘cause we’re rightabove there, right. And all that land used to be all Pu’u Wa’awa’a. It was all part of Pu’u Wa’awa’a’s leaseso… you know, we were just putting a road in on our lease, right?LW:That was just a big, huge lease?CB:Yeah.LW:How much land was there.CB:A hundred and one thousand acres.LW:Wow. That is big.CB:Ten miles wide, ten miles long. Something like that.LW: And how… can I ask… I know it’s a delicate question and you don’t have to answer. How many headwere there then?CB:When I first got there, there were about twelve hundred cows. When I left it was almost two thousand.LW:Wow.CB: When I first got there, there were fourteen employees. When I left there was just me, Miki, JohnBalucan and that was it. And then Chris Hunt came in part-time to help us.LW:Is that?
CB:Yeah. I made my kids bust their ass in the summer time, too.LW: But do you consider that part of what you value as a cattleman? As being able to work a large herdwith the few people or…?CB: Yeah, I think… it’s not one large herd ‘cause we had them all split up into small pieces and I think thatyou have to do it that way. You just cannot… Labor is one of our largest costs outside of… I mean… and all ofthat kind stuff, but labor’s huge and it ‘s not just the labor. It’s all the other ancillary stuff and it’s not bad orgood. You have to do it. You have to take care of the people today. And here at this place, you have atremendous benefit package and it’s just really it’s unbelievable. And especially when Richard was alive, itwas even bigger. But now we have beneficiaries we have to kind of keep that in mind and we do it, huh. Butany way… you learn how to run that same ranch with one-third the… one-quarter of the people. Of course, wedidn’t have all the machines and we didn’t have all that stuff either and so you know… I find in my life thatthose things are great, but they create geometric stuff. In other words you have a D-7, well you can’t just leaveit sitting. You got to drive it around, right? So you have got to have a guy that knows how to drive it around.You have to have a guy that knows how to fix it. Or you have to call up Caterpillar to come and fix it so maybethat machine only costs five thousand dollars a year in depreciation. But that’s the start. It’s a multiple of that,you know. Just to keep. When I got here, at Parker Ranch we had two D-7’s that were working all the time.Now we have one that works whenever we need it. So… it’s just that mentality that I’d rather work a little… alot smarter, and maybe sometimes a little harder, but we can still get the same thing done. I mean I don’t haveto do everything today. I can set it up so I can do it in two days and I’m only paying three guys for two daysinstead of ten guys for one day. Sometimes that’s the kind of thought process I go through any way.LW:Sure. And some of that you kind of learned at Pu’u Wa’awa’a.CB: Yeah. That was a tremendous learning experience for me. Oh, the place is just gorgeous, of courseand all that, but it’s rough. I mean it’s probably like McCandless… and Kapapala. But see, we didn’t have therubbish that Kapapala has. And we were a lot more open but the same kind of a’a lava… big lava tubes, youknow. The water system was pretty complex. Lots of pumping and that sort of thing. Learned a lot about thatpart of it. Hydraulics and all of that stuff that you have to learn. It was really fun.LW:So when you say rough you mean… a lot of exposed rock… or what do you mean by that?CB: All that whole place is nothing but rock. Grass growing over rock. And there’s a few small kipukas ofdirt here and there but very few. And so you carry horse shoes and nails and hammer with you every placeyou go. That’s the only way I could… and I couldn’t shoe a horse to save my ass but I sure could stick one onand get me home.
Page 4 and 5: vacation I’d do his job. So I did
Page 6 and 7: LW:Two different times.CB:Yeah. And
Page 8 and 9: CB: So that’s what Jack was like.
Page 10 and 11: CB: ‘Cause they were there. Well
Page 12 and 13: CB: Mostly there’s four grades of
Page 14 and 15: CB: I went… let’s see… Kauai
Page 16 and 17: LW:Yeah.CB: And all the school kids
Page 18 and 19: CB: I’m just a cowboy, you know,
Page 22 and 23: LW: Yeah that’s one of the things
Page 25 and 26: CB:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Or to what
Page 27 and 28: CB: Yeah, yeah. Well you know Rober
Page 29 and 30: cows out of the deal. Didn’t need
Page 31 and 32: CB: No… yeah, he had cattle. But
Page 33 and 34: CB: Any way Bax and I are good frie
Page 35 and 36: CB: The rest of it stayed in Honolu
Page 37 and 38: CB:No, no.LW:Yeah.CB:They thought w
Page 39 and 40: CB: Old Baxter… he’s another bu
Page 41 and 42: CB:Actually that was way before.LW:
Page 43 and 44: LW:But he could do that because he
Page 45 and 46: CB:It was a dog eat dog deal, man.L
Page 47 and 48: LW:Oh, I see.CB: Then in the meanti
Page 49 and 50: CB: Yeah. Thank God. Yeah, they dec
Page 51 and 52: LW:I mean… you have trouble out h

"Corky" Bryan - Hawaii Cattlemens Council

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?