The Butter Cow Takes the Afternoon Off
Our county fair butter cow in Stephenville melts into a pleasant golden puddle during a heat wave, and the crowd decides it is modern art.
One summer the Stephenville dairy committee decided to build a life-size butter cow for the county fair. It took eleven volunteers, two hundred pounds of butter, and a rented cooler the size of a garden shed. When it was finished, it looked so lifelike that a Jersey in the next pen refused to make eye contact with it.
The forecast that Saturday said ninety-four degrees. I know now I should have checked it more carefully. The National Weather Service had posted the heat advisory two days earlier, and I had read it the way you read the fine print on a toaster. We wheeled the butter cow out of the cooler at ten in the morning, parked it under a tent, and told the public to enjoy it.
By noon, the cow had begun to lean. By one o'clock, her ears had slid down to her shoulders in an expression of deep resignation. By two, she had settled into a gentle shape that reminded several people of a sleeping bulldog. A man from Granbury stopped in front of it and asked if that was supposed to be abstract. I said it was a work in progress, and he nodded as if I had said something profound.
By three o'clock, the whole thing had melted into a golden puddle with two small horns sticking out at the front. A line formed. People wanted to be photographed with it. A woman asked if it was titled 'Cow, Reclining.' I said it was titled 'The Afternoon Off,' and a reporter from the county paper wrote that down. We sold forty dollars of lemonade to the visitors and a lot of rolls with the surplus butter.
The committee voted that night to make the butter cow a permanent feature of the fair, and to schedule the melt for two in the afternoon every year. It has become our most popular attraction, and children ask for it by name. If you ever plan an outdoor event, the small farm planning guides are a handy start, and I would put the butter in the shade. More county fair mishaps are collected at farm.FM.
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