Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Then when milking was over I left her right where she was in the barn, and she didn’t even look like she minded. I milked her first so she could lie down again, which she did right away. These past few weeks, though, she’d really started failing, and on this morning she wasn’t even at the gate with the other cows waiting for me, she was still lying down in the pasture, and I had to help her to stand up and everything, which is pretty hard because she weighs about a ton, and she was really limping going down to the barn, and her eyes were looking all tired. Our Joe was eleven years old, which is ancient for a cow, but she was such a good milker and calver we couldn’t help but keep her.

Right there next to “Happy Valley Buttercup” is “Schwenk Walter Payton,” because none of my grandpas or great-grandpas could ever come with up a name for our place better than boring old “Schwenk Farm.” Joe Namath was the only one left from the year Dad named the cows after Jets players, which I guess is kind of fitting in a way, seeing how important the real Joe Namath was and all. It’s pretty funny, actually, going to the 4-H fair, where they list the cows by farm and name. Dad names all his cows after football players. I’ll always remember the day it all started because Joe Namath was so sick. I know where your milk comes from, and your hamburgers.

I tried to explain how important a manure spreader is, but it only made him laugh harder, in this really obnoxious way he has sometimes, and besides, you’re probably laughing now too. Which would have been hilariously funny except that it wasn’t. The first time I said Manure Spreader he bent in half, he was laughing so hard. Some people laugh at that, like Brian did. This whole enormous deal wouldn’t have happened, none of it, if Dad hadn’t messed up his hip moving the manure spreader.

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock