The High Cow Story

Happy meal, anyone?

I grew up in a tiny town where everyone knows everyone. Well, more correctly, everyone was related to everyone in some way. And when your mother's a school teacher, and the town is divided between not one, not two, but three different school districts, you can't get away with jack over diddly. Everyone's a gossip.

I took this lesson to heart early, since my dad was the town hellion for his generation. I heard stories of him getting drunk as a kid and playing in the illegal snooker hall during prohibition and sneaking snakes into his mother's bed. He only survived to produce me because the snake had a well-developed sense of preservation and took off slithering for its life as soon as Dad's back was turned. My grandmother passed it on the street - she was walking home on the sidewalk, it was swimming past in the gutter. She knew my father was involved, but couldn't punish him for it. That time.

I grew up quite naive and unwilling to play nasty practical jokes. And very innocent in the ways of the world. My parents were a bit helicopter-y decades before the term came into being, but mostly because our town lived in a time warp that put it a decade or two behind the actual Gregorian calendar date. Lots of trouble to get into, Heaven knows Dad knew most of it. Couldn't get away with anything, even if I wanted to.

Drugs were very much part of the innocence.

I have a very active imagination. I dream in color, full audio, full immersion. I fly in dreams about once every other week. Seeing some of the older kids getting high when they could afford it only made me ask myself, "Why on earth would I ever want to act that stupid?" Besides, I know myself - get me high, and I'd believe my dreams were real, and they'd be pulling me off the barn roof before I could take that ultimate swan dive. If I was lucky. Only later did we realize just how many medical pharma concoctions I'm deathly allergic to, so I dodged a whole case of bullets on that one.

Enter the R brothers.

I'd use their real names, but I am back again living in that little town, and some of them read my stories...

Old Man R was not well known for having much in the smarts department, and his two sons were worse. Lazy, shiftless, and stupid as far as the "good farmer folk" were concerned. Like my grandfather and uncle. Old Man R had some land. Not much, but they didn't do anything to develop it. Still a forest plot to this day. Now, if you have a manufacturing job, who cares? Well, the farmers did, and that's what we had here at the time. A tiny hamlet, completely surrounded by farms.

So the R boys were considered the lowest of the low. The boys didn't have jobs, and I'm pretty sure Old Man R only had a part-time under the table gig going on. As was said above my young head, "Too dumb to work and feed his family."

He wasn't shunned, but he wasn't anyone you'd want to invite around to Sunday dinner. And whatever you do, do not ever drink anything he offered to you! He was so poor that he could only make dandelion wine. Now, I've heard that the stuff can be delicious, but around here, it's rotgut. But cheap, because the ingredients are free.

And unfortunately, his boys were fair bidding to be just like him at the time.

You'd see them in town sometimes. They would cozy up to some of the other boys their age, looking to be friends and hang out, only to get an extra joint or two from the crowd. But this is a small town. No one has a lot of money, and certainly not enough to give allowances to their kids. You want money? You work for it. Like their parents did. You want a car? Buy an old beater, and keep it running with spit and baling wire and the dregs of the lawnmower fuel. No freebies to be had, sorry.

No extra money for joints, and certainly no extra time or gas to run to the "big city" (um, Reading, Pennsylvania) to buy some.

When they did, it was a once-a-year trip, and mostly seeds and stems. They made it last as long as they could, passing these things around the fire at the back of R's property like it was precious elixir in the tiniest of bottles. And they'd complain about the quality, and the lack of income, and lack of freedom to get more.

Get jobs? Perish the thought. Plenty of jobs to be had, but do actual work?? What kind of monster are you?

Then, one of them Had An Idea.

For as high as they were, this was actually kind of brilliant. All those seeds in the joint! They're surrounded by fields, aren't they? Snobby judgey farmers! Why not plant some, see what happens?

Now, of course they couldn't use their own land. Dad would notice if they chopped down a tree or ten, and that would be a hiding. But all those fields surrounding them?

They also decided to pick a different farmer's field each time, to maintain secrecy. They'd be messing with someone else's field, and around here at the time, that could be a justifiable shooting. You don't mess with another's livelihood; they've got mouths to feed.

So the first year, they picked a field halfway up town. And a corn field; trust me, this is important.

And they harvested! Awesome! Many a high night was celebrated throughout the year.

The second year, they picked one a little closer, not as much walking or possibility of being caught. Also corn. Again, a harvest! Much high-fiving and partying ensued.

The third year, they must have smoked a little too much of their own success.

My grandfather's fields butted up to the back of their woods. Even less walking! So they planted.

In alfalfa.

Now, for those who don't understand esoteric crop growth: corn grows about six to eight feet tall.

Their cannabis plants grew to about sevenish feet tall.

Alfalfa? Three, tops, if you force feed it.

So, there's my uncle, who is an observing type of guy, and who also walks the fields to check on the crop. Alfalfa and cannabis also look nothing alike. Coming across a row of darker, taller, and leafier than they should be clued him into the fact that his field was The Chosen One this year. He paused, then moved on.

From the cut between the two properties, he heard giggling. They thought he didn't notice!

So my uncle harvested two weeks early.

Picture the scene: my uncle, grinning like a freaking maniac, chugging around the field on a old-fashioned put-put-put tractor with baler and wagon attachment. Grandfather in wagon, stacking the bales as they were launched from baler into wagon. Two boys sitting on a log at the edge of the field, flinching and crying every time the blades took their precious commodity away. Uncle grinning wider and wider every time they flinched.

Then, apparently proximity to the fumes made my uncle lose his ever-loving mind.

He fed it to the cows.

Now, cows have four stomachs. They're used to breaking down cellular walls quite thoroughly.

Enter little ol' me.

I was allowed to bike alone up to my grandparents' house at the tender age of six on my brand new dirt bike. Freedom! Wind 'neath my wheelz! All grown up and stuff and I can do this on my own!!

Just as I pass the farm house, I screech to a halt.

This is what I see:

One cow is splayed out on the grass, hugging the ground like she's afraid she's going to float away into the sky. She's blowing bubbles. She stares at the sky, and says "MMmmMMmmMMmmOOooOOoOOOoOooEEEEeeeeUUuuuuhhhhhhhh." She stares to the side, says "MMMmmMM?mmOOOoooUUUUUUuuuEEEEEnnnnnnHHHHHHhhhh." She stares at the ground, and says "MMmmmMMmmmOOOooooNNNNnhhhhEHEHennnnhhhh."

Another cow is stumbling sideways.

Another cow is swinging her head in circles.

All of them are cross-eyed, which is quite disturbing when their eyes are on opposite sides of their head.

I break speed records getting into the driveway, bike is dropped somewhere along the way. I burst into the house. "Grenny! Grenny! Grennygrennygrenny!!! Something's wrong with the cows!"

She bolts out of the house in a panic. I point, just as the one walking sideways falls over. She's still walking. "MMmmMmMmmmmEEEeeeeUUUUUGGggghghghghghgh," she agrees with the ground-hugger.

Grenny was a champion panicker, but honestly, this is a cattle farmer's worst nightmare. A disease or some toxic weed in the meadow, whole herd's infected, and they lose hundreds, or thousands, of dollars. In seventies money. That shuts you down reeeeal quick.

Grenny gallops back inside, where my uncle is getting ready to go back into the fields. Pop is already out there. "Son, son! There's something wrong with the cows!"

He sprints outside..... only to skid to a stop on the lawn. He takes one look, and starts howling with laughter.

We slam into his back. He doesn't notice.

Grenny is, of course, quite displeased. "Son, this isn't funny! Get up! We need to do something!" She bends over and starts shoving at his shoulder, like that'll help. Uncle is rolling in the yard, which is a bit unfortunate, since I didn't yank up the thistles yet.

He finally gasps out what he's realized. Grenny... is Not Pleased. Not because Uncle fed ganja to their cows, that's a very thrifty thing to do in a Penna Dutch household, very commendable! But because Nefarious Drugs were thiiiis close to her darling granddaughter, how dare he expose tiny precious me to such a thing?!?

Yeah, Grenny. Think for a minute. That exposure made it certain in my head that I would never, ever want to do that to myself, thanks all the same. But I didn't say that, because she was so busy scolding her boy-child that I learned some really good swear words that day. She didn't notice, thank goodness.

She made him sell that herd the very next Wednesday at the local auction, and we joked about happy meals for years.

When it was on the news years later that some nimrod was arrested at the drive through window for selling "extra lettuce" in the bag, we howled for a good ten minutes. Well, Grenny didn't.

This is also the same uncle who learned how to artificially inseminate in order to breed his own, and save the money he'd have to spend buying calves at market in the spring. Again, thrifty, no? We happened to be visiting the night he went out with his trusty implement. And he didn't come back. Well, we finally left, in the dark...

He passed us on the path. His shirt glistened brown and wet in the porch light.

"Um, Uncle.."

"Shut up."

"But, Uncle..."

"Not. A. Word."

He stomped into the house. Mom, Dad, and I stared after him. And I hollered, "But your shirt was red plaid when you left!"

Remember when Poo Pets became a thing? I got one for my uncle for Christmas, a tiny cow. He had moved off the farm by then. He loved it, plopped it in the middle of his wife's front garden. His wife was Not Pleased. Farm humor only comes in three types: incredibly sarcastic, scatalogical, and outright dumb.

Hopefully I've used all three in this story. Any insults you've read, and there are quite a few, read them in a highly sarcastic tone of voice. Or, instead, just say "MMmmmmMmMMoooOOOoOoOOOEEEeuuuugghhghghg." It's about the same.