by Baxter Black
I’ve always had a fascination with marketing and admire the warped and neurotic minds of ad agencies’ geniuses. They cast their seeds to the winds hoping for a fertile field or at least a crack in the sidewalk in which their idea can take root. It is more an affliction than a profession.
CHICK-FIL-A
There is no doubt that the dairymen have had a runaway success with their “Got Milk?” and milk moustache advertising campaigns. But the latest promotion idea that’s caught my eye is Chick-fil-A.
It’s a fast-food chain specializing in chicken sandwiches. The pitchman . . . or woman . . . or bovine, actually, is a holstein cow. They feature eye-catching billboards with lifelike cows climbing the sign graffitiing it with messages like “Eat more chicken. All in favor say, ‘Moo!’ ”
I’ve always sort of enjoyed the internecine competition between edible species.
Beef, because it is the priciest and most distinguished of the products, is usually the object of the slings and arrows of the other, no less nutritious but less prestigious commodities. Beef’s advertising reflects the almost military approach to its promotion. Big, solid, no nonsense. Even the most remembered beef ad, Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”, was a little heavy-handed.
Pork has a lock on sausage, bacon, and barbecued ribs— fare produced by an industry that can laugh at itself a little because it has no serious competition. But then they tried to move in on chicken’s “Light and Lean” territory by claiming to be the “Other White Meat.” Unfortunately, they are saddled with a name that conjures up images of oversize linebackers gnawing ham hocks. Think how much easier it would be to sell pork had it been called swan or ocelot or dolphin. I can’t even think of a single vehicle named after pork to enhance its image. We’ve got Dodge Rams, but no Buick Boars, Pontiac Pigs, or Saturn Sows. So pork is stuck with its succulence as its best-selling feature.
Turkey, too, has got the same “name” problem. It should have been named something befitting its exalted position on our holiday tables: “I’m going to slice the Suava Royal. Who would like white meat?”
An unfortunate, difficult-to-market name has kept many other commodities from becoming regular American table fare: anteaters, for instance, chiggers, and Saint-John’s-wort.
But chicken started at the bottom and has pulled itself to top as the most consumed meat in the United States. The industry hasn’t depended on scintillating advertising. They don’t worry that the name of their product has synonyms like cowardly, scrawny, pimpled, or fowl. They just have a good, cheap, nutritious product that tastes like whatever you put on it.
And now they have enlisted cows to help sell Chick-fil-A. The ultimate indignity. Next thing you know, they’ll have celebrity cows with a mouthful of feathers and egg on their face, saying, “Got Chicken?”
CHICKEN HOUSE ATTACK
The competition between the beef and poultry industries has become a full-time marketing theme, but rarely has it become as personal as the “Whitefield Chicken House Attack,” aka the “Battle of the Bramer and the Broiler.”
It was a hot summer afternoon in Haskell County, Oklahoma. The foggers and cooling fans were going full blast in Jim’s twin five-hundred-foot-long chicken houses. “A wet chicken won’t die” is the motto of polloqueros down south.
Sniffin’ around the ten-foot-tall screen door at the south end of a chicken house was one of Jim’s seven-hundred-pound black Bramer-cross steers. Nibblin’ on the rice hull and litter, he pushed through the door, and it slapped shut behind him.
“Blackie” froze for an instant. He found himself in this high, long metal building filled with more suspended, humping, fizzing, spritzing, undulating, augering, grinding, whirring water pipes, feed lines, sprinkler heads, fans, braces, cables, hoses, and attending racket than the engine rooms of the Monitor and the Merrimac . . . not to mention the combined uproar of 25,000 startled chickens!
Blackie panicked, bore to the right, and headed down the east wall, leaping, smashing, and obliterating the watering and cooling system that hung below the three-foot level. Racing for the big door on the north end, he careened along, bending the galvanized automated five-hundred-foot-long feed line into a mangled horseshoe. Jim, astride his four-wheeler, had seen the steer enter. He was racing alongside the building watching the mayhem through the five-hundred-foot-long chicken wire–covered side window.
He screeched to a stop at the north door to open it and let Blackie escape . . . bad plan. Blackie saw him, turned back, and tried to jump out the side window. The long span of chicken wire allowed him to actually exit the building but sprang him back like a trampoline into the pipes and feeders on the west side. Down the wall he went, demolishing everything in his path until he stopped midbarn to consider.
Jim four-wheeled it back to the south side door, propped it open, and strode into the melee. Blackie pawed the ground. Feathers fluttered and litter flew. He charged. Jim, thinking quickly, reached down and armed himself with two stompedflat chicken carcasses. Grasping their feet, he wielded them like a sword and a mace. Much noise ensued as hair and feathers flew, but Jim prevailed and Blackie hightailed into a brush pile a hundred feet away.
Jim looked over his shoulder, back into the Titanic. There they were—24,998 chickens pecking through the wreckage as if nothing had happened. He looked back to the brush pile. Blackie glared, shook his head, and snorted fluff like a busted pillowcase. And though Blackie never came near the chicken house again, Jim said he could track him in the woods for days. He’d swallowed so many feathers that his cow pies nestled in the grass like big doilies on the back of Grandma’s lime-green sofa.
Machinery and cowboys . . . oil and water.
A CLOSE CALL
Talk about takin’ a beating . . .
I stood on the porch at Dale’s horse farm and soaked up the view. It was deep springtime in west Tennessee. The grass was so green, it hurt your eyes. The dogwoods were in bloom, and two sleek and shiny horses grazed in the picture. It looked like a cover off the Quarter Horse Journal.
“Nice fence,” I said, commenting on the pole fence circling Dale’s pasture.
“Thanks,” said Dale, “but we had a heckuva scare buildin’ it. See that post? . . .” I noted a stout post at the end of the driveway. The harrowing tale unfolded.
Dale had decided to build this fence last spring and finally got around to it in December. He enlisted the aid of two friends, Chuck and Phil. They all dressed warmly since it was twenty degrees the day they started.
At the particular post in question, the boys were havin’ trouble diggin’ the hole. It was close to the paved road, and the ground was hard.
Dale backed his tractor up to the future hole and poised the posthole auger over the designated spot like an ovipositing wasp. The auger spun on the surface of the frozen ground.
Chuck, who’s big as a skinned mule, pulled down on the gearbox. No luck, Chuck. So Phil stepped between the auger and the tractor and leaned his weight on the horizontal arm supporting the auger.
Now, Phil had come prepared to work in the cold. He had on his hat with Elmer Fudd earflaps, mud boots, socks, undies, long johns, jeans, undershirt, wool shirt, and Carhartts. Carhartts, for you tropical cowboys, are insulated coveralls made out of canvas and tough as a nylon tutu.
Phil gave Dale the go-ahead. Dale engaged the power takeoff. The auger clanked and started to turn. Suddenly Phil seemed to explode in front of Dale’s eyes!
Dale engaged the clutch immediately, and everything stopped. Phil stood before them naked.
I said naked. Not quite. He had on his boots and his belt, still snug through the belt loops. The jeans had been ripped off his body from the pockets down, leaving only a small piece containing the fly. It flapped like Geronimo’s loincloth.
Dale’s explanation for his friend’s near denuding was that Phil’s pant leg had brushed up against the extended arm of the PTO. In a split second, as fast as Superman could skin a grapefruit, the PTO had torn all the clothes o
ff Phil’s body. In less than three minutes, his body turned blue. Nothing was broken, but he was as bruised as the top avocado at the supermarket. Chuck commented later that he looked like he’d been run through a hay conditioner.
I figger he was the blazing example of that expression “He looked like he’d been drug through a knothole.”
NATURE’S LOGIC
I was marveling at my horses’ tails as they stood around in the shade. A perfect fly-shooing machine.
Then I wondered . . . if it’s so perfect, why doesn’t a cow have a tail like a horse? The answer was obvious. A cow pie is usually much looser, more liquid than a road apple. If a cow had a horse’s tail, it would always be a stiff and sticky mess, unless a cow could preen and lick itself like a cat, which of course it can’t.
It’s the same difference between people with moustaches and people without them. Evolution has predestined that the hair lip will be more prone to personal grooming. You may have noticed mustached cowboys constantly fondling and striking their facial hair. Just survival of the fittest.
This continuing analogy applies to women’s feet and frequency of marriages. Observation: In the last forty years, the size of the average woman’s foot has grown two sizes. Women’s fashions used to lean toward sleek, pointed footwear. A graceful extension of the curvaceous calf, delicate ankle, and dainty foot.
Then women’s feet began to grow. Attempts to gird a size 11, triple A, in a bullet-shaped shoe led observers to imagine giraffes in giant elf shoes or Admiral Peary cross-country skiing the Arctic wasteland.
And the number of marriages per person has increased considerably in conjunction with increase in foot size. Obviously a direct result of the female of the species being easier to track.
But back to the horse’s tail. Its simplicity of design and utility of function has inspired many copycats in nature. Teenage girls wear their hair back in a ponytail and coordinate their swishing with gum-popping.
Not to mention the German shepherd, kite flying, or the landing parachute on the tail of a Russian bomber.
And every spring we see the ultimate adaptation of that equine appendage. Millions of new graduates standing in robes facing their futures, eyes glazed, palms sweating, and yet virtually fly-free thanks to the tassel. Wave on, eohippus. We are forever indebted.
My youngest was born when I was forty-eight. I tell people having a child at this age just makes the time crawl by.
UNCLE BUCKER’S BABY
I saw Uncle Bucker the other day. He’s not really my uncle; that’s just what everybody calls him.
“So,” I said, “Uncle Bucker, I heard the news. Congratulations! A boy, huh!”
“Yes,” he said, “and at my advanced age, you can be assured that it wasn’t planned!”
“Bucker,” says I, “yer not much over fifty, are ya?”
“Naw, but it was sure a surprise. Miss Mattie suspected something, I guess. She went to the doctor, completely unbeknownst to me. When she came back, I was standin’ there in the livin’ room, mindin’ my own business.
“She marched in from the garage and stopped on the edge of the carpet. Close enough that I could see that look. You know the one. It’s the same one she uses on the dog when he messes on the carpet. She quickly explained that the rabbit had died. And I didn’t even know he was suffering!
“It was such a shock that I lapsed back into my ol’ livestock training and began to babble, ‘Well, yer, uh, bred . . . uh, you’ll begin to notice some changes in your body as the gestation progresses; your skin will get smoother and you might . . . bag up a little.’ ‘Wait,’ she says, ‘Doctor Hamstra told me that no matter what you say, it’s not like a cow!’
“So they shamed me into the breathing lessons. Let me tell you, son, you young pups may not realize it, but there was a time when expectant fathers engendered respect. There was a special room on the delivery floor for expectant fathers. It had Barcaloungers, ESPN, and a wet bar. When the nurse burst in with the good news, you’d stand up and pass out cigars to all your fellow new fathers. You can’t even light a cigar in the parking lot at the hospital today!
“Then you’d rush down the hall, duck in, and kiss the new mother and kiss the new baby and go directly . . . to the bar . . . where you could be with people who could appreciate your contribution. You weren’t just another face in the delivery room on the second row, trying to shoot the video over the crowd.
“So, like I said, they shamed me into the breathing lessons. I think they helped a little. My only real memory of the delivery room was the doctor looking up from the barrel of the cannon, so to speak, and asking, ‘Would you like to cut the cord?’
“I was doubled over a folding chair in the corner, practicing my breathing, when Miss Mattie, who had other things on her mind, said, ‘No he doesn’t!’
“But I’m doin’ better now that he’s a little older. I was worried for a while. Looked like he was gonna be a farmer.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yep. Till he was six months old, all he did was milk and scatter manure!”
Squabbling amongst Christian religions is the equivalent of sibling rivalry. Sometimes it gets bitter. It makes parents, even those on high, exasperated.
MORMON BOYS
That they would find each other would have been as unlikely to predict as the fall of communism or the good sheep market. She was old and a lifelong Southern Baptist. They were young and on a mission for the Mormon Church.
A requirement of good “Mormonism” for young men is to serve as missionaries for the church for two years. They are expected to go door to door wherever they are sent and spread the gospel of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), also called Mormons.
Now if you think that’s easy, put yourself in their place. You are nineteen years old, most likely from a rural background, have no car, and are in a strange place. You’re also wearing a dark suit and tie, riding a bicycle, and knocking on strangers’ doors. As you know, many who open those doors and find out you are “peddling religion” are not friendly.
They knocked on her door one day and explained their purpose. She said, “Well, I’m teachin’ our home Bible class.” They excused themselves and left. Later she said to her husband, “I’ll never turn those boys away again.”
Eventually they came back down her street, and she said what she says to everybody who’s ever knocked on her door: “Have ya eaten yet?” Well, for two boys a thousand miles from home and batchin’, nothin’ sounded sweeter.
For the next eight or ten years, the Mormon boys “stationed” in her little Oklahoma town beat a steady path to her door. They overlapped each other every few months, and each new missionary was taken to meet Uncle Leonard and Aunt Effie.
Many of these boys were country raised and homesick, I’m sure. They are not allowed to call home except on Mother’s Day. Effie and Leonard were retired farmers, both in their eighties, and sure knew how to cook for hungry boys. The boys played Skip Bo, ate fried chicken and peach cobbler, helped Effie with her garden when Leonard became unable, sang while she played on the piano, and found an oasis from the pressure.
Uncle Leonard passed away last fall, and Effie’s havin’ health problems. I visited her in the hospital recently, and she talked about her Mormon boys. Her face lit up. It was obvious how much they meant to her. Some still write, and the new ones still come by checkin’ on her.
I’m sure they discussed religion, but as Aunt Effie told ’em, “Yer out walkin’ the streets for your Jesus, He’s my Jesus, too, and that’s more than most religious folks do. I’m proud of you.”
She saw their need and filled it the only way she knew how. She offered them kindness. And if you ever questioned that passage “It is more blessed to give than receive,” you ought to see her face when she talks about her Mormon boys.
I don’t know if they’re better Mormons or she’s a better Baptist for their knowin’ one another. And I don’t know if the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and the E
lders of the church of the Latter Day Saints would approve. But I do know that the human race is a little better species because these two folks took the time to appreciate one another as people.
I received a letter written in Spencerian script from an older lady who chastised me for presenting subjects in my commentary she said were not discussed in proper mixed company. She had grown up on a ranch, and in her family it was not allowed. She concluded by scolding me and saying, “I guess things have changed.” I wrote back and respectfully said, “Yes ma’am, they have.”
TALKIN’ DIRTY
In my commentaries I have often mentioned scours, manure, abscesses, big tits, bad bags, cancer eyes, foot rot, slurry pits, afterbirth, retained placenta, castration, heat cycles, sheep pellets, and snotty noses.
Over the years, I have received the occasional letter castigating me for talkin’ dirty.
It is never my intention to offend the sensibilities of my readers. My poems and stories are always written with the idea that people who read them regularly are livestock people. In real life, I’m not comfortable cussing or telling blue stories in mixed company.
So, if I’m talkin’ to a cattlewoman, I assume she knows what bull semen is. That she has had scourin’ calves in her house and knows what it means when someone says it’s rainin’ like a cow peein’ on a flat rock. Those subjects are part of her lifestyle. I feel no need to ask her to leave if I’m doing a rectal exam on a cow.
Farm kids are the best example. They are what we have taught them and what they have experienced. Fifteen-year-olds who are learning to artificially inseminate learn the proper words for the anatomy involved. Uterus has never been a dirty word to them.
Children on a dairy farm learn to spot cows that are in heat. Washing the bag or tit dip does not send them into fits of teenage giggling.
Helping a newborn get his first meal is not a titillating experience. Mucking out the horse barn is hard work, but it’s not “ooky”!
