CryptoDad

Chapter 4Scanning the Horizon

If you make the mistake of looking back too much, You aren't focused enough on the road in front of you.

—Brad Paisley (singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso) Country AirCheck, June 2015

Nighttime Driving

When I recount my travels as a public official, I often mention a 2016 trip to Ellis County, Texas, about an hour south of Dallas. In the tiny railroad depot town of Bardwell (population 649), I met an older farmer who grew corn, cotton, sunflowers, and winter wheat on a thousand-acre family farm. It was a bright, gentle, spring afternoon with wheat being harvested and corn stalks and sunflowers in mid-growth. I was there to understand the production of cotton, the basis of an important CFTC regulated commodity future product that set the global price.

I climbed into the farmer's truck and we drove to look at his fields and operations. Many years before, he explained, he had met his wife at church. One of her uncles invited him to farm family land. The farmer had then built it up over many decades. When he first started, he never imagined that it would become his life's work. But it had, and he was proud of what he'd created. He was now gradually handing over responsibilities to his son.

The farmer took me to see the county cooperative cotton gin. It was a large, two-story mechanical contraption occupying a giant tin-sided barn off the county road. The gin operated only at cotton harvesting time each autumn. Nevertheless, it was serviced ...