Milk Cows

A milk cow was a family necessity back in the day. Here are three little stories featuring a milk cow.

One of my great-grandmothers grew up in the late 1800's in a hilly wooded area of southeast Missouri. The nearest neighbor with children her age lived over the hill. When she was a young girl the livestock ranged freely. In the mornings, after milking the cow, her father turned it out to graze on whatever it could find to eat. In the late afternoon it moseyed back to the barn because it wanted to be milked again. Other families' livestock often mixed with theirs. She and her girlfriend over the hill would leave notes to one another tied to the cow's horns. Telephone. Telegraph. Tell-a-cow.

There was nothing great about the Great Depression. Just ask anyone who lived through it. My mother's uncle tells about his widowed mother raising six kids during the Depression. Everyone had a few chickens and grew large gardens to survive. In their small town, only one family remained who maintained a milk cow. Much like the above scenario, the cow was milked in the morning then released to graze at the edge of town. On the west side of this little burg was a deep gully. In the afternoon it was the prefect spot to take a pail and lead the cow out of sight to be milked. My great-uncle said half the town stole milk from that cow, but not so much that she wouldn't give any milk at all when she went back to the owner's barn for the evening milking.

I once interviewed an elderly lady whose family homesteaded near me. She and her brothers were mere youngsters when the family pulled up stakes back east and trekked to central Kansas in the early 1880's. By that time the buffalo herds had been wiped out and the wind-swept prairie was littered with their bones. One of the jobs given to the children was to collect the sun-bleached bones and pile them in the buckboard wagon. When the wagon was full, her father would make the two day round trip to the nearest railhead at Larned to sell them. From there they were loaded on rail cars and shipped to eastern states to be ground into fertilizer. 
While father was away, the bored, or perhaps liberated, children devised their own entertainment. Finding an unused board, the boys thought it was about the right size to slide around on if only they had some way to pull it. Using their imagination and the few resources available, they tied a length of wire around the middle of the board and the other end to the cow's tail. One must assume they made certain the wire was long enough to keep the cow from kicking them in the head.
After solemnly promising her brothers she wouldn't tell their father, or mother, the fun commenced. She said they were having a pretty good time taking turns sitting on the board, taking a cow-powered ride around the farmstead. Until...  The front of the board snagged on something in the ground. Her brother rolled off at the sudden stop but was unharmed. However...  The sudden stop produced an opposite and equal reaction when their milk cow kept going. The end of her tail was jerked off.
No amount of threats or coercion could keep this disaster hidden from their father. The punishment? Follow the cow around all summer and keep the flies away.