Up To No Good

When I was a wee tyke in elementary school I would go out into the barn and say goodbye to my dad and grandfather before the bus would come and pick me up. Our farm was at the end of the line for our bus route and it would come down our long driveway and turn around in our barnyard. It was like playing a game of hide and seek every morning. Well at least it was a game of seek for me.

Usually my grandfather would be tending the calves in the morning so it was pretty easy to find him. If he wasn’t in there he was probably helping my dad milk the cows so I could kill two birds with one stone. But some mornings dad and Pager (my grandfather’s nickname not to pronounced like the beeper thing worn on your belt. Pa like as in ‘papa’.) would mix things up and my game of seek would get interesting. For example: one morning I found Pager milking the cows and no sign of dad. I was told he was “around here somewheres.” So I went exploring which was difficult because I was really trying not to get poop on my shoes. I didn’t want to be the smelly kid in school. But something tells me I might have been regardless. Oh well.

I finally found dad in one of the holding cells with a cow in stanchions. Yep there he was, two legs, two arms, a head, torso, no…wait, I only see one arm? What happened to the other one? I couldn’t see the other one because dad was shoulder deep in the rear end of the cow. Funny thing was that this was no big deal to me, just another day on the farm. I wasn’t shocked or disgusted or thrown into a state of projectile vomiting. I probably thought the cow did something bad and was being punished and deserved it, but now that I look back on it he was probably artificially inseminating the cow since we didn’t have any bulls on the farm.

In case anyone is wondering: Yes, he wore a glove.