Milk Maid Memories
From
outside, the milkhouse calls to me with its familiar song—the clanging and loud
whirring of a motor, the lowing of the cows as they await their evening chore,
and the Reds’ game that blares loudly from inside. The vivid memory flashes across my brain as
clearly as if it happened yesterday; I am suddenly five years old again, and it’s
milking time. Quickly, I jump up the
steps and open the door. I run past the
milk tank, wince past the deafening roar of the motor that powers the milking
machines, and open the door into the parlor.
The pungent smell of warm milk mixed with weathered cows hits my nose,
and I smile at my grandpa. Sitting
between two doors, the metal stepladder waits for me to take my post. Since my little five-year-old arms are not long
enough to reach up to the soft, pink udders, my grandpa lets me push the button
that opens the sliding door the cows enter through. I am so proud that my grandpa gives me such a
heavy responsibility, and I focus hard on him and await my cue.
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At
Grandpa’s signal, I push the old, crusty button; immediately the door shudders
and scrapes open. A pink nose peeks
around the corner, before the rest of her lumbers through the doorway. I count out three more black and white
beauties, and before I can shut the door, another cow tries to slip
through. When I squeal as the door clips
her nose, Grandpa assures me she’ll be okay.
The cows stop, evenly spaced, in a straight line, and immediately begin
crunching grain. They wait knowingly,
and carefully, my grandpa begins his dance.
He
slowly shuffles down the line; his heavy rubber boots pound on the cement in
short, clipped clomps. Slivery tufts of
hair peek out from underneath his wide-brimmed straw hat, and his big glasses
nearly hide the soft, gray eyes that love me.
His yellow apron, spattered with years of toil and manure stains, flaps
as he reaches for the milkers. He does
not even think; his cracked and dry hands grip the milkers automatically as he
deftly slips them on each of the four teats.
The milkers begin to bob up and down as they suction the milk out with
sharp hisses. Wary of the jumpy cows
that have caught his hand with a sharp hoof many times before, he checks the
pipes to make sure the milk is flowing properly, then crosses the parlor to finish
with the other cows. He gently lifts an
open-mouthed bottle filled with green, bubbly liquid to clean each teat, and
then opens the chute to allow the cows to exit the parlor. He moves down the line, back and forth, in a
stiff but beautiful dance with the animals that have been his livelihood for
over 60 years. He signals, and I push
the button once again, and four new cows enter, ready to be milked for the night.
As soon
as the milkers slip onto the next round of udders, the milk gushes through a
tube toward a large, oval jar. The milk
tumbles in, spurting as it is vacuumed from the cows and pumped to the top of
the jar, sloshing and frothing, as it shoots around the inside. I press my hands and face to the glass to
soak up the warmth of the foamy milk. I
run back and forth with glee between each cow’s jar to see which fills up first
and which cow has the most milk tonight.
One jar is full of crimson milk, and Grandpa says it’s because the cow
is sick, and her milk has to be thrown out.
When the cows finish, the jars quickly drain round and out the bottom;
the milk winds through more tubes and pipes—up, down, across, through, until
finally the main pipe disappears into another room where I know it will deliver
its goods to the giant cooling tank. It
is time for the next group, and Grandpa has to call my name; the waterfalls of milk
have distracted me, but I run to the door, startling a cow who then kicks off
her milkers, and quickly punch the button.
Four new cows saunter in, and I peek around the open door to see how
many are left in the holding pen.
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| Grandpa Gene |
Grandpa finishes with the final four cows; the Reds have
won, and Grandpa shuts the radio off.
The last cow leaves the milkhouse and wanders out into the starry night,
sleepily looking for the rest of her herd and a warm place to sleep. I unscrew the black rims of the milkers to
remove the dirty filters inside and throw them away into a cardboard box in the
other room. Grandpa starts to spray down
the platform, while I struggle to scrape the muck into a big pile he can scoop
out into the lot. The door opens and my
mom walks in. I’m not ready, but she
motion it is time to go. I quickly hug
my grandpa, avoiding the dirty mess on the front of his apron, and promise I’ll
be back another night. My innocent
childhood mind assumes he cannot possibly milk his cows without his little
partner.
It has
been many years since I stepped into that milkhouse with Grandpa and pushed the
button to open the door for his cows.
But every baseball game I hear on the radio sends me back, and I can
smell the cows, see the warm milk sloshing through the jars, and hear the
clangs and dings of the loud motor which call me to my beloved stool. Time has separated me from those happy moments,
but the poignant memories still come to me as clear as the country summer
nights I knew long ago.
