Whether it was the rings that kept us from being chosen for the state fair that year, I do not know. But it didn’t matter all that much. At the end of the year, I received the 4-H Bread Baking pin, the award I coveted and wore with a shameless amount of pride on the collar of my uniform.
Now we had another chance at the state fair trip. Ironing and folding a shirt. We practiced. Oh, how we practiced. And we had it nailed. We were certain we had it nailed.
The night before, we ironed our uniforms and hung them neatly on hangers to be donned just before we presented. We would be at the fair all day and could not risk ketchup drips or cotton candy smears. The morning of the demonstration, Jane and I raced through the barn chores. We checked the shirts we had sprinkled the night before and stored in the refrigerator. We gathered everything we needed: iron, ironing board, hangers (even though the shirt would be folded), and the shirts and put everything in the car. We were r-e-a-d-y.
We watched a few of the other demonstrations, decided we were every bit as good as they were, and took a walk until it was our turn. When we stepped on to the demonstration stage, we were calm. The presentation went just as we had practiced it. Neither of us missed a line. Neither of us made a mistake in the ironing. When we were finished folding the shirt, we presented it with pride at the judges’ table.
“Very nice,” one judge said with a warm smile as she took the shirt from Jane’s hands.
“Thank you,” Jane and I said in unison.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” the second judge nodded as she began to unfold the shirt. We beamed.
“Oh,” the second judge said. She glanced at the first judge.
Oh, what? Anxiety snaked through my calm confidence. I looked at Jane, who cocked an eyebrow in question.
“You see there’s a wrinkle in the fold,” the second judge explained, pointing to a small rumple in the fabric where the sleeve folded in at the elbow.
“A wrinkle in the fold . . .” I repeated, my voice trailing off as I saw the smallest of wrinkles. Such a small wrinkle. It could not be that important.
“But the rest of it is perfect,” Jane spoke to defend our work.
“Yes, it would have been perfect without this wrinkle,” the judge persisted. “I’m afraid we have to give you a red ribbon.”
A flush rose up Jane’s neck. I stared at the judges gape-mouthed. Not only not good enough for the state fair, but not good enough for even a first-place blue ribbon. Defeat must have been written across our faces in a red to match the offending second-place ribbon because the first judge, the infinitely kinder judge, added in a half-apology, “If you had just hung the shirt up instead of folding it, then it would have been a blue.”
As we accepted our now unfolded and deplorably wrinkled shirt out of the judges’ hands, we thought to mumble ‘thank you’ before we escaped backstage.
“There’s this one little wrinkle so we have to give you a red ribbon,” Jane parroted as she flung the offending shirt on a chair and fought back tears.
“We practiced so much. We did the best we could,” I whimpered, slumped on a chair, head in my hands.
“Let’s change and get out of here,” Jane said. “I can’t bear to hear any more.” I nodded.
We stripped out of our uniforms and jammed everything we’d brought into the trunk of the car in a huff, hurt giving way to anger as we continued to smart from the disappointment.
“We did a harder project,” I said, kicking a clod of dirt across the road. “Wouldn’t you think that would count for something?”
“I bet those girls from Maquoketa win again,” Jane speculated. “They always win.”
Back and forth we ranted until we worked through all our hurt, all our anger. Take the easy way out and get a first-place ribbon. Or do a harder task and be rewarded with a red ribbon. I thought about that for quite some time.
Looking back on those experiences, I realize that 4-H taught us many things and I have to say most of the lessons fell into the asset column. I used the presentation skills I learned throughout a long career in public relations. I still take pride in a freshly baked loaf of bread, and I don’t take off my wedding ring to knead the dough. I can iron a shirt perfectly to this day though I will occasionally find a wrinkle when unfolding one out of my suitcase. And I still think the judges were unfair with their judging. But then that’s a good lesson, too. Life isn’t always fair.
Another Cow Story
The screen door slammed and I was yanked out of the book I was reading by the sound of Dad’s heavy boots clomping across the kitchen linoleum. Though Mom was working at the sink, he said nothing to her. Instead, Dad walked directly to the phone, pulled out a chair and sat while he thumbed through the pages of the phone book.
The thick whir-click sound as Dad dialed each number on the heavy black desk phone echoed in the quiet air of the kitchen. Dad didn’t use the phone for casual purposes. When he left the house after breakfast, he might not come in again until dinner time at noon. The sound of his footsteps. The hum, click of the dial phone. I broke from reading and listened. Who was he calling? Why?
“Yeah. I got a cow down with milk fever,” Dad said without even saying hello to the person at the other end. “How soon can Doc get out here?”
Dad wasn’t joking with the person on the phone like he usually did, and the worry in his voice sent a chill up my back. If a cow came down with milk fever, it was usually within days after she calved. The cow lay down, her head turned unnaturally back across her stomach, and she didn’t get up. I didn’t know much about milk fever but I did know it could kill the cow if it wasn’t treated fast.
“Where is she?” Mom asked after Dad hung up. The concern in her voice raised goose bumps on my arms. Raised in town, Mom visited her uncles’ farms when she was growing up, but her first real experience with farming came when Dad got out of the Army and they moved to this farmstead. They’d milked cows from the beginning. The cows were our livelihood; the monthly milk check paid all the bills. When a cow was sick, Mom knew Dad would be more on edge, tense, curt. Try as she might to be supportive, Dad kept his worries to himself, believing perhaps that this was the man’s job, that a woman couldn’t understand, that a ‘town girl,’ even after all these years on the farm, wouldn’t be much use when it came to this.
“Down the lane,” Dad said as he headed out the door. “I’m going down to try to get her up. Send Doc down when he gets here.”
I bolted from the couch and raced after him. “Which cow is it?” I asked, taking two steps to every one of his. I couldn’t help but think about the cow and calf we brought up from the pasture that spring. “Is she going to be okay?”
“It’s 15,” he said, glancing down at me. “I don’t know if she’ll be okay. She didn’t eat all her feed when we milked last night. Then she didn’t come up to the yard this morning.”
Dad strode through the barn, across the barnyard, wasting no time with the calves or cats, moving with an uncharacteristic urgency that filled me with anxiety. The morning sun was already warm, burning the dew off the grass. It would be a hot day. As we left the barnyard, I spotted the cow lying in a gully at the bottom of the lane. Rutted with cow paths formed as the cows filed back and forth daily from barnyard to pasture and back again, the lane was dusty, the dust interrupted by an occasional weed that escaped the cows’ hooves. I placed my feet in the ruts worn by the cows as they walked single file, the lead cow taking the easiest route, the rest following. No doubt this cow lagged behind, already suffering from the onset of milk fever, then lying down when her legs gave out, unable to carry her farther.
Dad crouched by the cow’s head, ran his hand along her shoulder, looked into her listless eyes and said to me, “Let’s get her up. We have to get her to the barn.” When he stood and moved to her back quarters, the ache that had formed in my stomach unclenched a little. Doing something felt better than doing nothing.
“Get behind her shoulders and push when I do,” he said. Positioning h
is strong hands under the cow’s hip, Dad leaned all his weight into lifting. I braced my skinny legs against the rise of one of the cow paths and leaned against the uphill side of the cow’s shoulder. Together we pushed with all our might. Dad’s muscles rippled, sweat formed on his forehead and trickled down his neck. Sweat already soaked through his shirt. In response to all our effort, the cow groaned out a low bellow, but barely moved.
Dad grabbed the cow’s tail and twisted it. That should have made her move. But it didn’t. I felt a frightening urgency in my chest and leaned into the cow’s shoulder determined to be useful, to show Dad I could help. We pushed again, giving it everything we had. The cow heaved forward but fell back as soon as we let up, and a sigh escaped her that sounded like the moaning of wind through the pine trees back of our house in the night. We couldn’t move a cow that didn’t want to move. I don’t know why I was crying all of a sudden. I brushed away the tears with the back of my arm, pretending sweat was dripping on my face, so that Dad didn’t see.
Dad stepped back and surveyed the cow. “Damn it, I should have kept her in last night,” he rumbled as he pulled a blue handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped away the sweat streaming down his face and neck. I squinted into the sun, watching Dad’s face. I didn’t say anything. He seemed mad at the cow, mad at me, mad at himself.
“Stay here, Squirt,” he said. “I’m going to get the tractor. Maybe we can lift her with the loader.”
I watched him trudge back up the lane, resolve in the stiffness of his back and the speed with which he moved. He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. I knew how important this cow was, how important each cow was. I sat down, cross-legged in the dust by the cow’s head, my back to the sun. I studied the way her head drew oddly back against her side. Milk fever made them do that. I didn’t know why.
I stroked the cow’s neck, scratched behind her ears, talked to her. “You’ll be okay, girl. Dad will get you up. Don’t you worry.” I got up and pulled a couple of handfuls of grass from the fence row, thinking if she ate something maybe she’d feel like walking. “Here you go, girl, some nice grass,” I urged. “Try this, I bet you’ll like it.” The cow showed no interest in the fresh, green grass held right under her nose; she didn’t take even a nibble. I sat back down in the dust, helpless, stroking her neck, brushing away the flies that gathered around her eyes, smoothing the fine gray dust off her black-and-white sides.
In minutes, I heard the engine of the tractor cough and sputter into an even rhythm and saw Dad negotiate the Farmall M through the gate and down the lane. The tractor was already fitted with the loader because Dad had been hauling manure this week, clearing away the pile that grew by the day as we cleaned the barn after every milking. I saw the vet standing on the toolbar, gripping the seat with one hand and his bag with the other. He came whenever Dad called, because Dad didn’t call for the vet unless he needed him. Now. They climbed down from the tractor. Dad set a bucket of water he brought near the cow but she showed no more interest in the water than she had in my handful of grass.
A tall, slender man with square shoulders, strong arms, a thick thatch of unruly grey hair and legs so bowed he rocked when he walked, Doc didn’t waste time. He bent down by the cow, smoothing his hand over her stomach. “How long has she been down,” he asked.
“She didn’t come up to milk last night.”
“I tried to get her to eat some grass,” I offered, feeling a little bit important to have been left with the cow, to be here along with Dad, talking with the vet. “She wouldn’t take any.”
“No, I suppose not,” Doc smiled at me then turned to look in the cow’s eyes. He moved around and took the cow’s temperature by putting a thermometer in her butt. Embarrassed, I looked at my feet, scuffed my toe in the dust, until he finished.
“She’s been a good cow. Can we save her?” Dad asked.
“It’s a tough one,” Doc replied. “Once they go down, if we don’t treat them fast enough, there’s not much we can do.”
“What if we get her up?” Dad asked.
“Her legs just won’t hold her. Even if you could get her up the lane, she’d just go down in the yard.” Doc was patient, but realistic. “I can give her a shot and see if it helps, but I’m not optimistic.”
“Do it,” Dad said, his voice flat.
Doc got the syringe and a medicine bottle out of his bag, upended the bottle, inserted the needle, and drew the solution in until the syringe was full. He held the syringe up toward the sun, tapped it lightly with one finger and depressed the plunger until a few drops squirted out of the needle along with tiny air bubbles. “How many lactations?” he asked as he found a vein and emptied the syringe.
“Five. She’s a good producer. Had a heifer calf day before yesterday.”
Pride in this cow hung on Dad’s words but there was no smile on his face. He wasn’t joking with Doc; they weren’t talking about the crops or what was going on in town like they usually did. Five lactations meant the cow was about seven years old. Not young, but she could be a good producer for a few more years yet. In her prime. The clench came back in my stomach.
“We’ll see if this helps.” Doc knelt to close up his bag. “Call me if you see any change.”
“I’ll do that,” Dad said as he took off his cap and wiped his head again with the handkerchief. “Damn, it’s hot,” he said. He looked past the cow, out across the cornfields where heat shimmered visibly above the corn tassels. When he changed the subject, it was as though he was letting go of the cow in some meaningful way, balancing hope with reality, acknowledging that she might not be saved.
I looked up at Dad and swallowed hard, an aching hollowness in my chest.
“We’ll give you a ride back up to the yard, Doc,” Dad said, as he climbed onto the tractor seat. “C’mon Squirt. We can’t do anything else right now. She’s got water and grass. We’ll come back down after dinner.”
I crouched down beside the cow one last time and smoothed the hair on her forehead. Whispered to her, “We’ll be back.” Then I climbed up beside Dad and perched on the wheel guard, one hand on the guard, one hand on the bar holding the headlamps, hanging on tight for the bumpy ride back up the lane. Doc stood behind Dad on the toolbar.
The sun was high in the cloudless, blue sky. It was coming on noon and the light threw flat, harsh shadows. Dad and Doc exchanged few words over the noise of the tractor. I watched the cow as long as I could see her, and then she was gone.
Economics 101
“I don’t want to,” I whined, shifting from foot to foot and all but stamping the floor as I stood hunched over the sink.
“Those radishes are beautiful,” Mom exclaimed with a bright smile, ignoring my tone. Peering over my shoulder at the sink full of radishes I’d pulled from my garden plot that morning, she added, “It won’t be so bad, you’ll see.” Mom approached every chore as if there were nothing she’d rather be doing and she swept us along in her wake. Usually.
“I still don’t want to,” my whine turned to a pout.
“Well, you need to. It’s part of the project. So you may as well get it done.” Mom’s tone let me know she’d heard about all the whining she was going to. After planting a reassuring pat on my shoulder, she turned to rolling out pie crusts.
Slowly, methodically, I stuck each radish under the flood of cold water pouring out of the tap, determined that if I had to do this chore, at least I wasn’t going to do it fast. And I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
Earlier that spring all three of us decided to take on a 4-H garden project, so after Dad plowed up the 40– by 300–foot area that constituted the family garden, Mom helped us measure off plots for our projects.
From the time I was two, I’d helped plant potatoes, carrying my little pail of seed potato sections, walking next to Dad as he worked his way down the row. Each time he stepped firmly on the spade, slicing the ground, leaning forward on the shovel handle to pry the soil open a few inches, I bent down and slid a wrinkly section
of potato deep into the hole, the ‘eye’ pointing up as the ground closed around it. Back and forth we went, row after row, planting enough to yield bushels of potatoes, enough potatoes to fill the bin in the fruit cellar, enough to last a year.
Each year as we grew older, my sisters and I were entrusted with smaller and smaller seeds, progressing from individual potato pieces the size of our little fists, to dropping three sweet corn kernels in each hole, to spacing shriveled lima beans and peas three inches apart in a trench, to filtering the smallest carrot and radish seeds along a shallow furrow. Each day after we planted the garden, we knelt on the sofa looking out the living room picture window, watching for the first hint of rows to validate our efforts. Anxiety ran rampant when the skies turned black and torrential spring rains threatened to flood out the rows. Hope returned when the sun shone again and tender shoots poked up through the mud.
As the summer wore on, our enthusiasm was tempered by the heat of the sun and the constant challenge of weeds. At the least little sign we didn’t have something to do, Mom offered up, “Go hoe the garden.”
The enthusiasm I’d felt for my 4-H project ran just this course. Meticulously, I’d measured out the rows, dragged the hoe to create furrows, dropped in seeds and tamped the soil firmly over them. “Am I doing this right?” I asked Mom before and after each row. She coached me at each step—“That’s just right,” or “Plant those seeds two inches apart,” or “Just feather the dirt with your hand to cover those carrot seeds”—as I crawled on hands and knees back and forth between the rows. At the end of each row, I stabbed a twig upright so I could tell where I’d been. When the seed packet was empty, I stuck it on the twig, a colorful flag reminder of what was planted in the row. I devoted the 10 x 15-foot space of my garden to radishes, carrots, lettuce, onions, peas and green beans, leaving space-eating plants like tomatoes, potatoes and sweet corn to the big garden.
With a sense of importance akin to what I imagined Dad felt when he did the farm records, I spread open the fresh, unmarked pages of my 4-H record book on the kitchen table. In neat little rows marred only by my hopelessly sloppy handwriting, I recorded the cost of seed bought in bulk at the Feed & Grain in Maquoketa, the dates of planting, the dates it rained, the dates to germination, the dates of harvesting, transcribing each entry in pencil and later re-creating the record in ink to take to the county fair.
Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl Page 13
