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“You Have Been Shit On — So many times, That’s how you get! ” (Plenty to eat— is my observation.) I grew up on a farm. Our family razed Black Agnes beef cattle. The most distinguished bull we had was named Victor. His lineage descended from United States Senator Estes Kefauver’s farm, near Madisonville, in East Tennessee. Unlike Al Gore Jr. of Carthage, Tenn., Kefauver was a genuine farmer, who could A cow died one year, after her calf was born. The orphan calf is a paradigm of prospering by enduring the plopping of alimentary production. We could immediately recognize the orphan by the distinctive augmentation to its head and neck. Each mother cow routinely sniffed the calf which attempted to suckle, to verify that it is hers. The wrong calf was kicked, or she walked away to preserve food for her own offspring. But this calf was smart enough to avoid starving, and apparently, did not miss any meals after learning the back-door technique. The calf entered Parnassus between the hind legs, avoided scrutiny of the gatekeeper, and got second and third helpings unavailable to other calves, when mother’s milk was gone. I can only imagine that ignorance is bliss, and the cow masticated and ruminated about green pastures while the calf “got milk! ” A song by Harold Arlen is quite cheerful and encouraging: “Sing For Your Supper”— and you’ll get breakfast. Songbirds never starve! But the orphan calf remained mute— likely because his mouth was full, and he attended to business instead of bawling about his ignominious plight. And starving. But the most exciting experience for me, was my attempt to emulate my grandmother who milked her cow. She would not allow me to try this, afraid the cow would be unsettled by unfamiliar hands underneath her. One day, my parents were attending to pastoral chores in the barn (likely— pacifying young steer calves). There was a young calf there. I quickly calculated that a child-sized animal would be easier to milk than a big cow. My father had a sense of humor, and indulged my fantasy. He lassoed the calf and tied it to a post for me to milk. Naieve at that age, I sat on some hay beside the calf and reached under the calf’s hind legs, to begin squeezing what was available. The calf reacted violently and kicked the fire out of me! It was a bull calf, and my father burst out laughing !! !! ! My father used to remark about the ability of the human mind to resent the intrusion of knowledge. That calf kicked down my barriers! Former Memphis mayor Ed Crump had dominated Tennessee politics for decades. Estes Kefauver successfully challenged the powerful Crump organization by winning election to his first term in the United States Senate in 1948. It was during the Democratic primary campaign in 1948 that Crump attempted to identify Kefauver in the minds of Tennessee voters as a fellow-traveler with communists and liberals by characterizing him as an instrument of unsavory “pinkos and communists” who worked on their behalf like the stealthy, nocturnal raccoon. Kefauver responded in a speech delivered in Crump's stronghold of Memphis. Pulling on a coonskin cap, Kefauver retorted, “I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump’s pet coon.” Kefauver won; and the trademark of the coonskin cap stuck with “the Keef” for the remainder of his political career as a symbol of the independent, progressive, nonconformist type of political leadership that he represented. In what was perhaps the most courageous stand of his career, he was the only member of the Senate to vote against a measure in 1954: to make it a crime to belong to the Communist Party. IPSEITY.US Return to: Isonomia.US |