The Co-op Meeting That Adjourned Itself
A Panhandle windstorm slammed the door during our co-op meeting, and we voted to adjourn on the spot with no discussion.
Our dairy co-op meets on the fourth Thursday of the month in a metal building out past the edge of Hereford, and we run it by the rules, which means a secretary, a gavel, and a rotating supply of lukewarm coffee. One night in March the wind got up around six o'clock and kept getting up. By the time the president called the meeting to order the whole building was humming like a tuning fork, and the agenda sheet was sliding off the table on its own.
We got through the minutes and the treasurer's report, shouting a little. Then the building did something I have never seen a building do. A gust caught the big rolling door, and it banged shut with a clap so loud it sounded like a gavel the size of a hay bale. Everyone stopped. The president, a careful man named Ellis, looked at the door, looked at the room, and said, for the record, that he considered that a motion to adjourn.
Somebody seconded it from the back. The vote was unanimous, and for the first time in thirty years the whole room agreed on something in under four seconds. The secretary wrote it into the official minutes exactly as it happened, with the phrase MOTION BY DOOR. I know this because I later found the minutes quoted in a post on farm.FM, and the author had added the date and a small hand-drawn weathervane.
Ellis keeps the page framed in his office now. Every spring somebody asks if we plan to repeat it. We do not. A meeting adjourned by a door is a gift you receive once and spend the rest of your life explaining. We did, however, move the next meeting to the fifth Thursday, which is the only time the wind in March has ever helped us. The wind has never shown up for a vote since, but I keep farm radio on in case it wants to.
Next: The Day I Read the Milk Price to the Herd · All 10 tall tales