Epilogue: have it your way

W ORLDS AWAY from The Ranch, Dale Lasater stands in a corral full of huge bulls, feeding them treats from his hand. Behind him on this warm spring day, the Rockies are still white with snow. Lasater is in his early fifties, with a handlebar mustache and wire‑rimmed glasses. He wears worn‑out jeans and boots, and a well‑ironed, button‑down shirt, looking part‑cowboy, part‑Ivy Leaguer. The bulls that crowd around him seem almost sweet, acting more like a bunch of Ferdinands than like fierce symbols of machismo. They were bred to be gentle, never dehorned, and never roped. The Lasater Ranch occupies about 30,000 acres of shortgrass prairie near the town of Matheson, Colorado. It is a profitable, working ranch that for half a century has not used pesticides, herbicides, poisons, or commercial fertilizers on the land, has not killed local predators such as coyotes, has not administered growth hormones, anabolic steroids, or antibiotics to the cattle. The Lasaters are by no means typical, but have worked hard to change how American beef is produced. Their philosophy of cattle ranching is based upon a simple tenet: “Nature is smart as hell.”

Dale Lasater’s iconoclasm seems bred in the bone. One of his grandfathers headed a Texas cattleman’s association during the early 1900s and led the fight against the Beef Trust, testifying before Congress and calling for strict enforcement of the antitrust laws. In retaliation, the Beef Trust refused for years to buy Lasater cattle. Dale Lasater’s father, Tom, dropped out of Princeton after the Wall Street crash of 1929 to become a full‑time rancher. Hard times forced him to seek ways of raising cattle inexpensively. He decided to let nature do most of the work. He bred cattle to be gentle, fertile, and strong, not caring in the least how they looked. He combined Herefords, Shorthorns, and Brahmans to make a whole new breed, only the second new breed of cattle registered in the United States. And he gave the breed an appropriately American name: the Beefmaster. In 1948, Tom Lasater moved his family from Texas to eastern Colorado. Despite the anger and disbelief of his neighbors, he refused to kill predators or to allow hunting on his land, permitting animals that other ranchers exterminated – rattlesnakes, coyotes, badgers, ground squirrels, gophers, and prairie dogs – to flourish. He thought cattle benefited more from the challenges of a natural ecosystem than from any human efforts to control the environment.

Tom Lasater is ninety years old now, and his memory is failing, but he still has the aura of a strong patriarch. As Dale bounces an old cream‑colored Suburban Custom Deluxe along one of the ranch’s dirt roads, his father sits in the back seat, wearing a cowboy hat, a bolo tie, and thick black glasses, silently staring at the Beefmasters scattered across the prairie. He scrutinizes them, and every so often asks Dale about a particular animal. The cattle roam a landscape that appears vast and unspoiled. The Lasater Ranch is a wildlife sanctuary. The native grasses are thriving, tall cottonwoods grow along the stream banks, and herds of antelope graze alongside the cattle. Dale parks the truck, and I walk a short distance to a rocky outcropping. The Suburban now seems like a small, insignificant speck compared to what surrounds it. Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain rise to the west, and in every other direction the prairie extends to the horizon, the shortgrass moving in waves, blown by a steady wind.

Beyond the Lasater property line, the land is not faring so well. Smaller farms and ranches in the area have been disappearing for years. A population loss that began in the 1950s has recently slowed, but too late. Many small towns have become virtual ghost towns. In the little commercial district of Matheson, along a dirt road named Broadway, the feed store, the general store, and a repair shop have all been abandoned. The whitewashed buildings have quaint, fading signs, and stand empty. The large, brick elementary school that Dale Lasater attended – built at the turn of the century, its architecture full of American optimism – is now used by a local rancher to store grain.

Before taking over the family ranch, Dale Lasater spent a year in Argentina as a Fulbright scholar, ran a feedlot company in Kansas, and managed cattle ranches in Texas, Florida, and New Mexico. He has come to believe that our industrialized system of cattle production cannot be sustained. Rising grain prices may someday hit ranchers and feedlots hard. More importantly, Lasater finds it hard to justify feeding millions of tons of precious grain to American cattle while elsewhere in the world millions of people starve. He respects the decision to become a vegetarian, but has little tolerance for the air of moral superiority that often accompanies it. Growing up on the prairie gave him a view of Mother Nature that is somewhat different from the Disney version. Cattle that are not eaten by people, that are simply allowed to grow old and weak, still get eaten – by coyotes and turkey buzzards, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Dale Lasater recently set up a company to sell organic, free‑range, grass‑fed beef. None of the cattle used in Lasater Grasslands Beef spent any time at a feedlot. The meat is much lower in fat than grain‑fed beef, and has a much stronger, more distinctive flavor. Lasater says that most Americans have forgotten what real beef tastes like. Argentine beef is considered a gourmet item, served at expensive restaurants, and almost all of the cattle in Argentina are grass‑fed. Recent findings that grass‑fed cattle may be less likely to spread E. coli 0157:H7 have strengthened Lasater’s determination to follow a different path. Along with a number of other innovative ranchers in Colorado, he is trying to raise cattle in a way that does not harm consumers or the land. Hank was a dear friend of his, in many ways a kindred spirit. Lasater doesn’t think that his little company will revolutionize the American beef industry; but it’s a start.

Sixty miles away, on South Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs, Rich Conway helps run a family business that’s also bucking the tide. Conway’s Red Top Restaurant occupies a modest brick building on a street full of old western motels, the kind with animated neon Indian chiefs on their signs, the kind where the U in the 4‑U Motel is a golden horseshoe. Rich Conway’s been through a lot. He’s had a motorcycle accident and a bad car accident, later slipped on some ice and broke his back. Now in his early fifties, Conway walks slowly with a cane, but has a handsome, weathered face, a Zen‑like calm and a tough, independent streak that keeps him going, against the odds. He’s a survivor. When I asked why the Conway family provides health insurance to all the full‑time workers at the restaurant, he smiled politely, as though the answer was pretty obvious, and said, “We want to have healthy employees.”

Rich Conway’s parents started working at the Red Top not long after it opened in 1944 and bought the restaurant in 1961. He grew up working there, along with his nine brothers and sisters. Conway’s Red Top – with a little spinning top on its yellow sign – became a local favorite, thanks to its large, oval hamburgers, homemade fries, and friendly atmosphere. The restaurant continued to thrive in the 1970s, despite an invasion by national fast food chains that landed up and down South Nevada. But Conway’s almost closed in the early 1980s, after the death of Rich’s father. The restaurant’s local suppliers helped keep it afloat until new financing could be arranged, a story whose details bring to mind It’s a Wonderful Life . Conway’s Red Top now has four locations in Colorado Springs. Rich Conway was president of the family business until 1999; his younger brother Jim now has that job. Their brother Dan is the finance director, their sister Mary Kaye is the marketing director; another brother, Mike, is the operations manager; another sister, Patty Jo, is an assistant manager – and many of the thirty‑seven Conways in the next generation work at various Red Top restaurants. The family has an intense, personal commitment to their work, and it shows. According to food critics Jane and Michael Stern, Conway’s Red Top sells some of the best hamburgers in the United States.

At the Conway’s on South Nevada, hamburger patties are still formed every day by hand, using fresh, not frozen, ground beef. The meat is obtained from GNC Packing, a small, independent processor in Colorado Springs. The buns come from a bakery in Pueblo. Two hundred pounds of potatoes are peeled every morning in the kitchen and then sliced with an old crank‑operated contraption. The burgers and fries are made to order by cooks who earn $10 an hour. They wear baseball caps that say “Conway’s Red Top: One’s a Meal.” The workers are not told what to do by fancy computer software, there’s take‑out but no drive‑through, and the food is only slightly more expensive than what’s served in the half‑empty Wendy’s across the street. One day I met a customer at Conway’s who has regularly been having lunch there for fifty years.

The Conway family is now debating how to expand the business without compromising the values responsible for its success. Opening new restaurants could provide financial opportunities for the dozens of Conway offspring, but could also involve a good deal of risk. The timing may be right, however, for a few more Red Tops to open. As the rest of Colorado grows more bland and homogenous, Colorado Springs seems to be getting more independent and open‑minded. The quirkiness of the downtown may indeed overcome the uniformity of the outlying sprawl.

In the 1999 Colorado Springs mayoral race, Mary Lou Makepeace – a single mother with a fine surname for consensus‑building – was elected to a second term, soundly defeating a right‑wing candidate backed by Focus on the Family. Mayor Makepeace had helped persuade the voters of Colorado Springs, perhaps the nation’s most Republican city, to vote for a tax increase. The additional revenue was used to protect open land from development. She has also spearheaded new investment in public parks. And she has helped launch the redevelopment of fifty‑eight acres of land near the downtown business district, an area that was once a thriving neighborhood but has been largely abandoned for years. The project embraces the goals of the “new urbanism,” a movement opposed to mindless sprawl, combining residential buildings with commercial and retail space in a way that encourages walking and discourages driving. The aim of the Lowell Neighborhood is not to get rid of cars, says architect Morey Bean, but to put them in their proper place: preferably out of sight in underground parking lots.

It may be tempting to dismiss Conway’s Red Top as a holdover from an earlier era, a business whose low‑tech methods are quaint but obsolete. And yet one of America’s most profitable fast food chains operates much like Conway’s. In 1948, the year that the McDonald brothers introduced the Speedee Service System, Harry and Esther Snyder opened their first In‑N‑Out Burger restaurant on the road between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. It was the nation’s first drive‑through hamburger stand. Today there are about 150 In‑N‑Outs in California and Nevada, generating more than $150 million in annual revenues. Harry Snyder died in 1976 – but at the age of eighty, Esther still serves as president of the family‑owned company. The Snyders have declined countless offers to sell the chain, refuse to franchise it, and have succeeded by rejecting just about everything the rest of the fast food industry has done.

In‑N‑Out has followed its own path: there are verses from the Bible on the bottom of its soda cups. More importantly, the chain pays the highest wages in the fast food industry. The starting wage of a part‑time worker at In‑N‑Out is $8 an hour. Full‑time workers get a benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, and life insurance. The typical salary of an In‑N‑Out restaurant manager is more than $80,000 a year. The managers have, on average, been with the chain for more than thirteen years. The high wages at In‑N‑Out have not led to higher prices or lower‑quality food. The most expensive item on the menu costs $2.45. There are no microwaves, heat lamps, or freezers in the kitchens at In‑N‑Out restaurants. The ground beef is fresh, potatoes are peeled every day to make the fries, and the milk shakes are made from ice cream, not syrup.

In March of 2000, the annual Restaurants and Institutions Choice in Chains survey found that among the nation’s fast food hamburger chains, In‑N‑Out ranked first in food quality, value, service, atmosphere, and cleanliness. In‑N‑Out has ranked highest in food quality every year that the chain has been included in the survey. According to the consumers polled by Restaurants and Institutions in 2000, the lowest‑quality food of any major hamburger chain was served at McDonald’s.