Member-only story
A Quest for Milk
I reach into the dairy case at Safeway and grab my one-half gallon of Vitamin D whole milk. A five-year-old little boy with big brown eyes and curly black hair sits in the grocery cart. His dad reaches in and pulls out a half-gallon of 2% milk. “Where does milk come from?” asks the little boy. His father answers, “From cows.”
I don’t know if this little boy has ever come into contact with cows. I never did until I was about eight years old. My cousins lived on a farm in Nebraska, and we went to visit them every year in the summer. My cousin, Joe, decided that this city chick needed to know how to milk a cow. He took me out to the barn and led me to the cows. His daily chore was to milk a dozen cows before he went to school or played with his friends. The barn smelled like cow poop, and I held my nose as we walked in. The cows were mooing and munching on their cud, and I thought they were filthy. They needed baths. I felt there was no way I was going to touch their tits.
Joe reached up to the second shelf in the barn and brought down a tin bucket and led me to the first cow we were going to milk. He showed me how to gently pinch the tit of the cow to get the milk to come out. He held the nipple in his hand and squeezed. Milk came out and streamed into the pail. Now, it was my turn. I pressed the tit, and nothing came out. He laughed. “Not so hard, he said.” I squeezed with less gusto, and…
