The Old Timers and the
Cow’s Tail! By Norris Chambers
Cal Hawkins
and his wife lived in the outskirts of a small town. They had a nice
little
cottage and two or three acres of rugged land in the rear. They had a
smoke
house, two storage buildings, a shed that had at one time housed a
buggy but
now protected a well groomed Model T, a windmill with a tank on a tower
and a
beautiful Mr. Hawkins was a nice man but he didn’t care for kids. When we passed his house on our journey to the school he glared at us and caused us to feel very uncomfortable. Some of the other boys at school said that he called them bad names and accused them of things they didn’t do. He even threatened to skin them alive or tan their hides. Two of the meaner boys had broken a window in the house with a slingshot. Someone else had hung a sign on the front yard fence that read “OLD MAN GROUCH”. Mr. Hawkins’ milk cow wore a large bell hanging from for neck. This probably wasn’t necessary since she stayed with the town cow herd and they never strayed very far from town. There had probably been a time when the bell was helpful in locating her and he just hadn’t thought about it now being unnecessary.
When he came back with the string
I had removed the bell and
buckled the strap back around the cow’s neck. We tied the bell to
the tail with
the strong fishing cord. Most of the town thought it was funny but Mrs. Brady was upset because the stampede took a shortcut through her back yard and devastated a line full of freshly washed clothes. We heard that Mr. Hawkins didn’t think it was funny for a milk cow to have a bell attached to her tail. He reattached it to her neck.
I don’t
know if someone told him that “It was quite amusing,” he said. “It might have been funny if last night when I began milking old Daisy she had swished her tail and the bell had hit my left ear!” He laughed heartily and continued, “I heard that the cows ran through Mrs. Brady’s yard and knocked her freshly washed clothes off of the line.”
“Don’t
worry about it. She’ll soon forget it or see the humor in it,
like I did!”
We followed
his instructions closely and didn’t open the package until it was
dark .We
retired to the smoke house and closed the door to make it darker. I
held a
flashlight to shine on it when
Suddenly
The next
time we passed Mr. Hawkins house he was leaning on the fence staring at
us. He
was grinning like a pleased ‘possum. I grinned back at him.
|