||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||
From old movies, we all know about the milkman with his cart and horse who delivered milk in glass bottles around the city. He left the milk on the back steps of the house. Or sometimes he put the bottles through a swinging door (sort of like a cat door) directly into the kitchen. Of course there was a little woman at home to quickly put the milk into the fridge, or even earlier, into the ice box, which was cooled by a block of ice delivered by another horse drawn wagon to those same houses. And yes, I am talking about middle class white families, early in the previous century when white people were almost the only ones in the movies, except for the occasional servant. But today’s story is about Mr. Holland, the first and only milkman I ever knew personally.
If you look at my bio on this column, you will see that my earliest memories are of the tiny village of Cape Fear on the shore of the Cape Fear River in southeastern North Carolina. When I lived in the village, there was a cinder-covered circle of road, with houses (I don’t know how many) around the road.. Cinders are what is left after partially burning coal, and are too painful to walk on barefoot and most children, including me, who lived near such a road, had a few permanent black spots in our knees and/or chins as a result of an unfortunate intersection of said body parts with the road’s rough surface. In fact, I don’t remember any other children in that village except my older siblings when they visited.
I don’t remember much about my life there. For example, I don’t recall the room where I slept or any particular meal, though I do remember riding my tricycle and roller skating in the ballroom of the house where we lived. It had been a small country club taken over during WWII to house my father and me while he ran an electricity plant powered by the currents of the Cape Fear River.
My father explained it differently. He told me that the electricity that lit our house was made by the Power Plant Elves who worked at night after my father came home. That’s why I could never see the elves in the few occasions I visited the plant.
Now when I drive by the power station on my way to and from Obstruction Pass here on Orcas, I think about those elves and how much the power they produce now costs. Never mind that it probably is not a power plant, but rather a transfer station— whatever that is. When I look carefully in the dark of night, I can almost see the elves in their red and green outfits and their pointed hats and slippers. And whoever the man is who runs the operation during the day, he is at home at night reading the paper in a rocking chair, with his four year old daughter sitting in his lap learning to read, searching for words in the paper that match those her father chooses for her.
And I remember Mr. Holland, who delivered the milk to the village. He didn’t have a horse and wagon. Mr. Holland delivered the milk with his cow. The two of them walked around the circle that was the entire tiny village. The cow had a sort of pannier with big pockets which carried the fresh milk in quart canning jars, going door to door, dropping off the jars of milk and picking up empty jars for the next delivery. I don’t remember anything about the delivery schedule, but sometimes Winston Churchill and I accompanied Mr. Holland on his delivery route.
One day, Mr. Holland asked if I would like to ride the cow and I said I would, assuming I would sit on the pannier on the cow’s back. I knew about riding on a saddle because we had a tiny Shetland pony. The cow must have been a large cow, or what I am telling here couldn’t have happened.
On that day, I was probably not four years old and small for my age. Though I had agreed to riding the cow, I was surprised when Mr. Holland lifted me and seated me not on the back of the cow, but on her head. He instructed me to be careful not to put my heels near the cow’s eyes as I sat on her head and held on to her horns while we delivered the milk around the village circle. While there is no one still alive who could verify my story, I think I remember the feel of the solid warmth of the cow’s horns in my small hands, and the way her head (and I) bobbed as she walked. BTW, I later verified that cow horns can be warm from the blood that circulates through their horns as well as the hot sun of the South. I haven’t seen a cow with horns in many years. I think they are bred to be hornless, and in the early days, when it was determined that people were safer with hornless cows, the horn buds were cut out of the babies heads. I think it was called polling.
In case the history of polled cattle interests you, here is a link to pursue.
https://americanredpolls.com/
Nevertheless, I can’t imagine riding on the head of a hornless cow could be easy or much fun. Holding on to her ears would be awkward and unreliable. I haven’t been to a fair for a long time, so I really have no idea whether horns are still in fashion among the beautiful cow ladies. I imagine rodeo bulls still have horns, although I’ll never know for sure as I am politically opposed to rodeos, even though I lived in Ellensburg, Washington for four long years decades ago. You can still attend a rodeo there each fall if they have resumed after the pandemic.
I don’t know the breed of Mr. Holland’s cow, but her horns were upright and curved, just right for holding on. That is, if memory serves, which it so rarely does of late.
In any case, I don’t remember another ride on Mr. Holland’s cow’s head, holding onto those warm horns, after that one lovely trip around the circle with Mr. Holland in the tiny village of Cape Fear.
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what WONDER FULL memories !
Jackie, your memory serves us all very well. Thank you.