Denis Lehane: Oppenheimer, the struggling cattle farmer
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The film , like scour in young calves, is rampant at the moment. It's everywhere you look.
Golden Globes, Oscars, red carpet, it's a film too smart to ignore. Too clever to lose.
And it was no surprise that Corkman Cillian Murphy got the part of playing Robert Oppenheimer in the first place.
After all, it takes a genius to act like one.
And sure Cork is full of geniuses. If you threw a stone down in the Mardyke, chances are you'd hit a genius. Cork people are as bright as we are modest.
It came as no surprise either to hear that Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank was a farmer.
For only a genius can make a living off the land. And that's a sad fact.
When I first started out here, I had only 20 cows to my name and I dare say even Einstein himself would have struggled to make a good income from 80 paps.
His old grey head would have been scratched on numerous occasions as he struggled to come to terms with a dwindling bank balance and uncontrollable mastitis outbreaks.
Einstein would be under pressure from the start, just as I was.
His theory of relatively wouldn't feed his hungry calves on a frosty morning, or start a misfiring tractor.
Quantum mechanics my backside, get your shoulder behind the wheel Einstein.
Stephen Hawking too would have suffered if he had chosen farming over studies of the universe.
He would have been a right disaster.
He might have been able to explain the origins of the galaxy, but he wouldn't have lasted two minutes in the pressured world of cattle dealing.
Fellows well versed in mart lingo, would run rings around him, regardless of how fancy he thought he was.
They would bamboozle the brain box with numbers too complex even for Stephen Hawking to contemplate.
He would have paid over the odds for cheap cattle. And sold them at a loss.
The 'For Sale' sign would be up quicker than the Lord made all the world and everything in it.
Hawking was never cut out for farming. He was lucky he stayed with the books.
Anyhow back to Frank. Frank Oppenheimer was a cattle farmer. He was a genius too, of course (like myself), but struggled for years with farming, just like I do.
It took him a long time to get a proper handle of the situation.
And remember this was in the days before we had all the red tape we now have to deal with.
Even in the good old days, when some since could be made of farming, Oppenheimer struggled.
It was said he would sometimes roar at his cattle in frustration.
And indeed, you don't have to be a genius to lose your temper with cattle, especially if one decides to land a hoof on your big toe, or catch your finger in a crush gate.
He could be heard for miles around. He was like the bomb really, only without the damage.
Anyhow, Frank eventually turned a bob and kept his farming hat on for many years.
A man so full of brains, that it almost hurt him, yet outright success in farming was forever a mystery to him.
