Chapter Thirteen
RUMINATIONS
Cats and Cow Dogs, Cud Chewing, Milking, Trouble Makers
Great-Grandfather Goulette was sent to Australia as a young man to purchase breeding sheep for his employer in Weybridge, Vermont. Other than that I recall only three things about him: his big moustache, his impatience with small boys and his Civil War sword which eventually found its was into our farmhouse attic.
My review of his life following the Civil War discovered to me an astonishing fact: at that time the fields where I trod, worked and played were sheep country. Though inconceivable to me now -- and doubly so as a boy -- there was a period in local history where there were six to ten times more sheep than cows cropping our fields and pastures -- and my great-grandfather helped bring them there.
During all my years away from New Haven, and sometimes in far countries, I have reminisced about a farm and community that were fully cow-flavored. I see now that my choice of limiting my personal memoir to a few selected school years was a fortunate one. I'll have no need to contemplate their sight or sound, their wooly backs or nasal bleats in the panorama of my remembered youth.
I have chosen that it never happened. When I explore in the recesses of my pastoral memory I shall disallow any remnants of sheep apparitions.
My better memory recalls that early boast: "We have more dairy cows per capita in Vermont than any other state." I never had reason to doubt it. Traveling in any direction from "The Street," one passed successive dairy farms and cows in barnyards awaiting feeding or milking. In other pastures were cows grazing, all characteristically heading in the same direction, and some lying at rest.
It was impossible to look upon the fields and pastures of our local farms and see them as other than supportive of dairy cows. In every instance large fenced areas were visibly committed to pasture, and in all reasonably level fields or cleared side hills that would permit the exercise of horse and plow, were growing crops of hay, grain and corn.
In Chapter Eight of this book, brother Richard described the circumstances and physical work of farm life through the four seasons. Reading his account brought to mind the saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," and both he and I could testify to that.
As I recall, we milked between twelve and fifteen cows. There was a bull and frequent calves which when weaned became a daily feeding chore for the boys.
I was the youngest and given peripheral chores while my brothers helped Dad with the milking. Since there were no girls in the family I was frequently assigned jobs as "Mother's Helper" and was thereafter called "Dishrag" by older brother Richard when he was in a teasing mood.
(As noted in Chapter Ten on the Model T, I have since discovered redeeming qualities in "Chich" and have permitted him to make contributions to this memoir.)
As we grew older I found that my brothers and I shared ambivalent feelings about the cows. We recognized that survival of the farm depended on them but, unlike some of the neighbors who had named each cow and would talk affectionately of "Bess" or "Sally" and of their individual virtues, we boys, with few exceptions, knew our cows only as a herd and a day-in day-out workload.
The exceptions were the trouble makers. One observing a cow in the field, standing foursquare, looking at nothing, drooling while mechanically chewing her cud, could not conceive of the leadership qualities she would demonstrate in creating mischief. In the worst possible combination of bovine qualities, stupid and obstinate, one such cow could lead the herd through a series of deep mudholes which mud-coated the teats, although a few feet away a well-defined path was clearly available.
It was one such as these which would seek the weakest point in a fence, force her way through and lead the herd into a cornfield, or a loner who would stray from the grazers in the far pasture and lose herself in the woods to be retrieved at dusk with the help of the dogs. Cows of such ilk could hold up orderly entry into the barn by deliberately going into the wrong stall and thereby setting up a confused milling of the rest.
On the whole, it must be said, they were docile and obedient and, except for the occasional tendency to flip a manure-saturated tail around into your face while milking, or impetuously lifting a hoof to step on your barefoot toes or into your pail of milk, they responded reasonably well to your commands, though sometimes requiring a determined shoulder to the hind quarters or other physical encouragement.
In good weather I enjoyed the chore of getting the cows for evening milking. The dogs would lead the way. Rover, our mixed breed collie, was a real help in finding strays and bringing them into the herd. He was proud of his role.
The other dog, called Dumbo, was a stray mongrel found at our door one morning and mistakenly fed. He was the stupidest, most servile and useless animal we'd ever seen but we kept him on for our amusement. The poor beast was subject to our frequent derision when we would say, "Dumbo, you're the stupidest animal on the face of the earth," and he would seem to know he'd been insulted and put his tail between his legs, his head to the ground and emit a mournful whine. When we were kind to him he could not contain himself and became a smothering nuisance.
In the pasture Dumbo kept well away from the cows who held him in contempt and would rush and kick at him if he came near. He contented himself chasing butterflies at the edges of activity.
There were redeeming times with the cows. While milking on cold winter nights the heat of the cows' bodies lessened the chill in the barn and it was comforting to lean into the cow's warm flank and daydream of individual pursuits to the monotonous pull-squirt, pull-squirt of one's hands pressing the milk from the cow's ready supply.
The barn cats would always emerge at milking time. Most farmers had both house cats and barn cats. In both instances they were useful in catching mice and other rodents.
The cats would position themselves behind a boy milker so that a squirt of milk from a cow's teat would hit their open mouths. They would shut their eyes and open their mouths knowing that despite the best intentions of the boy more milk would land on their face and coat than in their mouths. After absorbing as much as they could tolerate they would walk a few feet away and lick the milk from their bodies and sometimes from each other's faces.
The imagery I shall retain from my boyhood on the farm will always include the silhouettes of cows grazing or ambling up the lane to the barn. Poor beasts did not save the farm, but their images remain in my memory as does the pasture in which they grazed and the mountains that framed it.
It didn't strike me until two-thirds of the way through this memoir that the ruminations I had described in the Introduction, the laborious process of organizing one's thoughts and memories before writing them, was not dissimilar to the digestive system of the ruminant cow, which having a four-channeled stomach could taste, chew and swallow the coarsest roughage and then regurgitate, re-chew and reswallow while placidly chewing her cud and producing something digestible and nourishing.
How like the struggling writer grasping with a bite or two of memory, gazing off into space -- or half asleep -- as the juices of his somnambulant mind work at connecting fragmentary images of the past and organizing them into rational expression.
Of course, the simile breaks down in that the cow's system distinguishes between nutritional and waste, whereas the human brain frequently does not.
As a belated apologia to the much-maligned cow, I offer this rhyme from antiquity:
A gum-chewing girl
And a cud-chewing cow,
Are so much alike
Yet different somehow:
The intelligent look on the face
of the cow.