Bill is a consummate expert in the field of bovine midwifery. He has to be a good cow midwife because every one of those newborn calves is money in the bank for an agrarian entrepreneur like Bill. Bill had this old Bossie-cow, she was about to drop a calf. He heard her lowing out in the upper forty--that's the mud hole behind the chopping block--sounded like she was in hard labor.
He got a piece of rope, ran out to help her, got around behind her, first thing he noticed, it was a complicated birth, because the calf had breached. He tried to turn the little fella around, and get it coming out head first into the world the way Mother Nature intended, but he had no success. He had no recourse then but to take hold of the calf's hind legs and start in to pulling. That cow's tied to the tree lowing, Bill's pulling on that calf's hind legs.
Now, the Interstate highway ran right behind the property at this point. Along comes this young woman with straight black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, driving a little MG, with New Jersey plates, smoking some non-domestic tobacco. Boogie, boogie, boogie, boogie, hmm. She looks down in the field and she sees Bill and the cow. She stops the car, she runs up there, she says "Sir, can I help you?" He says, "Yes ma'am, take hold of a leg and pull." They pulled, and they pulled, and that calf came out into the world healthy and capered away.
Bill said "Ma'am, I'm much obliged to you for helping me out in my time of need. Now is there any way in which I can recompense you for the services you have rendered her?" She said, "No sir, mister I wouldn't take a nickel for that. I just want to ask you one thing." He said, "What's that ma'am?" She said, "How fast was that little one going when it hit the big one?"
Well, I'm sure glad we've got some country people in here tonight. I told that story in New York City and I got a whole roomful of blank stares.
© Steady Arm Music.
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