Reading Is My Super Power

I Live in Nowheresville, USA...

If I go anywhere, I get asked, "Where are you from?" (Sort of with the look of "what planet are you from?" or "what state of mind are you from?" not "what place in the U.S. are you from?") And I always have to explain it.In fact it is like a passion of mine to make clear where I am from. (And yes, ending sentences with prepositions is a prerequisite language requirement for fitting in.)

"Well, have you heard of Garfield the Cat and James Dean, or The Gaithers or Sandi Patty or Zippy? Yeah, well, I am from the same place they are from,only I'm out in the cornfields, not the towns."

Technically, I live in a woods along the river. I have a lot of squirrels (but don't control them. They're squirrelly, after all.) Our biggest traffic problem is deer who get hit by cars (my son just hit one. Sigh) and farm equipment as big as houses on the roads trying to get to their fields.

Recently, I found out that James Dean's star on the Hollywood walk is the second most visited star of all. Now, how do they keep track of that? Do they have some sort of counter on the star that flips every time someone visits it? How does something like this happen that a movie star who has been dead for 50 years is more famous now than he was in real life? It makes you wonder. Still, people talk about him here like it was yesterday that Jimmy was reading comic books and not buying them in the dime store. Then, they get this look of the deer in the headlights when someone asks if James Dean was acting out on the streets when he was ten. (More like, he was feeding the cows who would be his dinner.)

We live quiet little lives with the biggest happening being during the Museum Days festival the last weekend in September, or when the cows escape from the butcher's holding pen (before the delicious execution--yeah, I like my steaks, roasts and hamburgers--what of it?) This happened a while back and no one could catch those cows. They were hiding in the unharvested corn, eating their way into our town's history books and newspaper reporting.

What happened was (and I have no idea how this happens, but I blame James Dean) some Right to Life for Cows organization in New York state decided to put their nose into our business. How they found out about the runaway cows is anyone's guess, so I'll guess and say that they're part of the world who gets our little hometown newspaper because of James Dean (which I get for free in my mail) and saw it in the weekly news. Yeah, sometimes we have real excitement. Why just this week we had an angry and tearful lady who was mad that for four years in a row her pumpkins got smashed on Halloween. I would like to start an advice column in this newspaper. My suggestion would be to bring her pumpkins inside on Halloween for safe-keeping. One of my friends finds this tradition of kids smashing pumpkins (or stealing) to be great as she never has to dispose of her pumpkins after Halloween. She lets the neighborhood thug-kids of mischief take care of them.

But I've taken a rabbit trail here. Back to the cow story.

Anyway, these NY guys who disdain meat not breathing, come to our town with a trailer. They are in our town to rescue the cows who have obviously gone feral. The cows on the lam are now being fought over between these guys who want to rescue them from their culinary fate, and the ones who would like to make these troublemakers into their dinner (the troublemakers being the cows here, not the animal rights rescue team.) The butcher is disgusted that no one can capture the fence-jumpers, so he tells these guys if they can catch 'em, they can take them back to Sunny Side Up Farm where cows are allowed to live their lives free from fear of being captured and eaten at a local Chat 'n' Chew diner.

Well, these cows were rather crafty, but didn't know they had been reprieved. They avoided all attempts at capture with legged-diligence for over a week. Finally, one day they broke through the corn and onto the road. Since they were full of corn and had picked up a little weight, they weren't as agile as they were when they went on their wild hare prison break. A certain brown package delivery truck hit one. He(the driver of the truck) was knocked coo-coo, and not very happy about the situation, but was ok. The Sunny Side guys show up to see if they can perform CPR on the cow, but the cow dies. I don't think I ever heard of what they did with the dead cow, but I'm thinking the truck guy got to claim it. The other cow, now sadly standing over his friend who took a jump over the fence with him, mourned by chewing a cud leftover from the now wrecked cornfield.

After a big lecture from the animal rights people about our heathen ways, they go back to New York because even though they worship James Dean, they cannot understand these people who born and raised him. While most of our community consists of gentle farmers and Quaker-mentality (except for the pumpkin-smashers once a year,) we don't like outsiders messing with our tenderloins and burgers. (And yes, we have non-combatant vegetarians, too.)

So, now you know about where I'm from. I Fear the Feral Cows. It disturbs our usual peaceful existence (except for that last weekend in September.)