Cows

Lo, these last 36 years I have long ruminated on the events of that morning, such a typical one in my idyllic childhood, which could only set the stage for the surreality that was to follow in ebbs and flows throughout my life.

(That my way of saying, "And one time, on the farm when I was little...")

BeerHound, The Boy, and I were ordered out of the house by my mother. Now, mom's always been crazy, but I like to believe that in the summer when she could order us out of the house in such a manner and get away with it, she was less crazy.

We decided to pass the time by pretending that our car was the beach. and off the car was the ocean.

We lay there on the windshield for quite a while, getting a tan. We lay there FOREVER, in kid terms--almost ten whole minutes. Part of this ritual was to be quiet while we lay there. I don't know why--maybe that's how we saw it in some tv show we'd seen recently. Let's just blame Hawaii 5-O.

"It's amazing what you imagine," said The Boy.

"Yeah," said the BeerHound. I didn't contribute to the conversation. Being the youngest, I learned long before that adding to a conversation in anything more than a "yes man" capacity often led to them questioning my intelligence, even when I was agreeing with them.

Meaning they'd say, "What do you know, you're just a little kid!"

Anyway, back to the beach. Um, car. Anyway.

"For instance, I just imagined that a cow just walked in front of the car."

It is important to note here that though it was a farm, it wasn't that kind of farm. We raised wheat, barley, and sometimes a third crop, but we hadn't had cows since 1969.

"Me too!" said BeerHound. "I imagined a cow walked right in front of the car!

I kept my mouth shut. Because though I, too, had imagined this specter, I wasn't going to 'fess up, in case later under interrogation by our parents, I would have been considered 'in on it.'

How we could get in trouble for imagining a cow, I don't know, but I wasn't taking chances.

We stood up. Our tans were good enough, anyway. Plus, we had this cow conspiracy to contend with.

So we climbed on the roof of the car. This was back in the day, when three kids could stand on the roof of a Chrysler Fury III 2-door and NOT cave the roof in. Hell, we didn't even scratch it.

We looked around the yard. To our astonishment, there wasn't just one cow, but several. Some were sampling the honeysuckle in my grandmother's garden, while others were heading into the long grass where the grove* started.

*Where I grew up, there were trees, but they weren't spread out. There would be a grove of 5 or 10 acres of trees at low-lying spots along intermittent stream beds. As land was settled, the homesteaders would build their homes near the trees. Therefore, EVERYONE had a "grove." They just did.

Meanwhile, still back at the beach, we were faced with a problem. We knew we should tell our mother, but we knew that 1) she wouldn't believe us; 2) we still didn't quite believe us; 3) if we did believe us, we were faced with the issue of jumping off the car and running to the house while there were killer cows on the loose. Don't think they were killers? Ask my grandma's honeysuckle. Oh, wait, you can't, because it was HEARTLESSLEY MUNCHED BY A RENEGADE BOVINE!

We finally faced our fear. My siblings and I managed this by them telling me to go and tell mom, which I refused to do in fear, upon which time they called me a baby and a scaredy-cat, at which time I said they were the scaredy-cats since they didn't dare do it either, at which time they proved me wrong by jumping off the car and running to the house, and I followed, because I was a scaredy-cat.

Hey, I never said I wasn't.

In the house, we accosted my mom.

"Mom, there's cows in the yard!"

"What cows? No. What kind of game are you playing?

"Well, we were pretending the car was a beach and..." I started.

"No really, there's cows in the yard!" BeerHound and The Boy glare"d at me. Didn't I understand the gravity of the situation?

"There aren't really cows in the yard," my mom said with some question in her voice.

"THERE'S COWS IN THE YARD!!!" Finally, the three of us were in unison.

Mom finally walked to the window and looked out.

"THERE'S COWS IN THE YARD!"

"We told you!"

She called the neighbor whose cows she was quite sure they were and yelled at him. Told him he'd better come and get them or we were having steak and roasts for supper for the next year. He came over and rounded them up.

But the problem was, we didn't dare go outside until they were gone, which BeerHound, The Boy, and I survived just fine, but I swear sometimes, my mom has flashbacks.