M.E. Bell was roughly 16 years old when he went to work for the iconic rancher Charles Goodnight on Goodnight's J.A. Ranch in the early 1880s:>"I shall never forget the day I asked Colonel Goodnight for a job. He was in the office working on his books at the time I applied for a job. I walked into the office, but he did not look up. I spoke to him and told him that I wanted a job. He turned around in his chair and looked at me for a good bit before he said a word. I felt like he was staring a hole right through me. The first thing he said to me was, 'Well, son, you are rather small, do you think you can do a man's work?' I told him I believed I could. He then said, 'I don't believe I can afford to give you as much as I am giving the other boys.' I told him that was all right, what I wanted was a job. And it was the truth, too: I was just a kid, a long way from home, jobs were scarce, winter was coming on, and I wanted some place to stay during the winter months.He gave me a job all right. He had a grub patch near headquarters which he kept to try new hands to see if they really wanted to work. he put me to work on this grub patch. It was rather heavy work for me, but I worked like the dickens for three days on this job; then he put me on a horse. He gave me the same salary the other boys got, too."What's your excuse, /biz/?
What he got in return for rolling his sleeves up:>M.E. Bell worked for five years on the JA Ranch and later became owner of a substantial ranch 26 miles south of Clarendon. He fathered five sons, all of whom became ranchers and cattlemen. M.E. Bell was born in Mississippi in 1864 and died in Amarillo in 1958. He was 93 years old. Mr. Bell was buried in the Citizens Cemetery in Clarendon, Texas.
