Jim and Vernon were brothers-in-law living side-by-side on their recently-acquired farmsteads in New Mexico.  One ran a nuts and bolts business, and the other was an attorney.  Both were wanna-be farmers.  They were sharp in their own areas of expertise, but were lacking in farming skills and knowledge.  This lack was made evident in many ways, but no more dramatically than when they took their milk cow to a neighboring farm to be bred.  She calved there that very night.

They had some grass that needed to be utilized.  “What we need to do,” they decided, “is to raise some beef by buying a steer to graze the grass.”

They answered an ad by a man who had a steer for sale, and a deal was made by phone.  The man agreed to deliver the steer to their place; but in attempting to do so, was unable to follow their directions on how to get there.

He called Jim and Vernon for instructions.

“Where are you?” they asked.

“Out on the highway.  I’m in a pickup pulling a stock trailer.”

“Just sit right there, and we’ll come pick the steer up.”

Jim and Vernon hooked up their trailer, and headed for the highway.  They quickly located a pickup and trailer parked in front of “The Country Palace.”  The man was apparently inside having a drink.  No problem.  The steer was inside the trailer.  All they’d have to do is back their trailer up to the other, open the doors, and the steer would quietly make the transfer from one trailer to the other.

The plan was put into action.  The steer, however, saw the chance for freedom, and took it.  Jim and Vernon thus spent the next two hours chasing the runaway steer up and down the freeway.  Vernon was somewhat hampered by the fact that he had his three-year old son along.  Jim was unhampered in that regard, but made quite a sight in his cutoff baby blue jogging outfit as he loped along after the steer.

To their credit, they somehow eventually managed to corral the steer, load him, and take him home.

To their discredit, another pickup and trailer, with another steer aboard, shortly pulled into their driveway.  Jim and Vernon had rustled someone else’s steer, and that someone was no longer at “The Country Palace.”  No one there knew who he was.

What was to be done?  The steer had no brand.  They advertised, but no one came forward to claim the rustled steer.  Perhaps its owner had been so inebriated that he wasn’t sure what he’d done with the steer that he’d thought he had in his trailer.

The steer wasn’t theirs, and they weren’t able to return it to its rightful owner, so they donated it to the church bar-b-que.

The sheriff, who was also a member of the church, couldn’t stop laughing when he heard the story of how he came to be eating rustled beef at a church social.