Milk Man

      My name's Harold Trent, but most people just call me Milk Man. My parents used to say that when I was born the doctor picked me up by the heels, slapped my bottom, and I mooed. Maybe it's true, I don't know. All that I know is I've loved milk since before I could say the word. To me, milk is more than a delicious, white liquid; it's the basis of all that's good and wholesome in this world. Everyone knows that milk builds strong bones and strong teeth in kids, but the power of milk goes way beyond its calcium benefit. Look at it this way: Milk is a natural substance, as natural as you can get, and because it's natural it helps us keep connected to the natural world in a way that we all need. There's so much synthetic crap in this world that the human race will drown in it one day. But drowning in a sea of milk? Hey, there are a lot worse ways to go.
      I remember being real confused by the kids at school who hated milk. I never understood them! Before my parents ran off, I used to ask them how other kids could feel that way, but they never gave me an answer that made sense. Hate milk? You might as well say that you hate breathing.
      And the food fights in the cafeteria at school—I guess I hated those worse than anything. Kids actually spitting milk at each other! What a waste! Throwing away milk like that is a sin, and I'm certain that those kids and everybody else who has ever wasted milk will pay for it someday.

      OK, milk comes from cows, right? Give that a little thought, especially if you're like most people and just take cows for granted. Where would we be without the cows? No cows, no milk, no life worth living! The humble cow is the Mother of All Things Good.
      Physically and spiritually, cows are the most beautiful of God's creations. Cows are never mean-spirited, selfish, greedy, vain, or lazy. They love and cherish their young. Cows live only to give their precious creation, milk, so that others might live life to the fullest. How many humans do you know like that?
      Before all my friends moved away, I used to tell them about the wonderful cow every chance that I got. I don't know that any of them understood. Sometimes I would hear tales at school about some boys going "cow tipping," but no one I asked would ever talk about it. How could people be cruel to such a wonderful animal?
      I was fifteen when I bought my first cow. I named her Elizabeth, after my mother, mainly because Elizabeth's big brown eyes reminded me of Momma. Of course there were a lot of differences, too. Elizabeth never yelled at me, never hit me, never got upset, and she never ran off. When she died three years ago, I bought the best marble headstone for her grave that I could afford. In the evenings, I would visit her, and I cried for months, just like the day she passed away.

Whole milk. Pasteurized milk. Homogenized milk. Skim milk. Buttermilk. Milk and honey. Chocolate milk. Evaporated milk. Condensed milk. Powdered milk. The milk of human kindness. Milking it for all it's worth. Milky Way. Spilled milk. Milkmaid. Milk Man.

      I don't remember when I first realized that I would build my life around milk. Maybe there was never any choice for me, but I don't regret one thing. Starting with my first cow, dear Elizabeth, I slowly built my herd. I set as my goal having as many cows as my age by the time I reached thirty. I doubled it! On my thirtieth birthday I counted sixty-two beautiful dairy cows in my herd, each and every one producing the sweetest, purest milk that anyone could desire.
      For several years I sold my milk to some of the big local dairies, and they processed and packaged my milk under their names. With my milk sales and odd jobs, I got by, but I wanted more from life. You might think that a man with sixty-two beautiful cows couldn't ask for more, but I was looking for a way to get more involved with milk, right up to the grocer's shelf if I could manage it.
      One day it came to me: I'd start my own milk store! I had to sit down for a minute when the idea first came. There I was, leading my herd into the barns for the night, and I got so dizzy thinking about that store that I plopped right down in the barnyard. I'll never forget the way Elizabeth looked at me. She must have thought I'd gone loco.
      I tried every bank in the county with no luck. I tried looking up some of the people I knew from school, thinking maybe I'd take on a partner if I couldn't make it any other way, but the ones that hadn't moved never were at home when I came calling. Blessed as I was with my cows and their wholesome milk, I was getting discouraged. Then a miracle happened! One day about noon I was just coming up to the house to fix my lunch when a fellow drove up in a new Lincoln. He got out carrying a briefcase.
      "Are you Harold Trent?" he asked.
      I allowed that I was.
      "Can I see some identification, Mr. Trent?"
      "What for? Are you some kind of policeman?"
      He must have thought that was funny because he started laughing.
      "Did I say something funny, mister?"
      "No, no. I'm sorry. But I have something for you and I have to make sure that you are who you say you are."
      Well, I told him that I'd never claimed to be anyone else but me, but he said he'd have to see some identification anyway. So I went in the house and brought back my driver's license. He looked it over, then looked me over again. Then he opened his briefcase, took out an envelope, handed it over and walked back to his car.
      "Wait a minute," I said. "What is this?"
      "Just open it, Mr. Trent. It's all explained inside." And he drove off.
      I said a miracle happened, and that's what was inside the envelope. It was a check for $363,012.74. I nearly passed out when I saw it! Behind the check was a letter, and the letter said that the money was from the estate of my late mother. I hadn't heard from either of my folks in over twenty years, and it seems that during that spell Momma had divorced Daddy, married some well-to-do man, and then they had both been killed in a car wreck.
      I cried over Momma a little bit, then I thought how proud she'd be if she could see what I was going to do with the money, and that cheered me up. I looked at that check again, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming, then I ran back out to the pasture, whooping all the way. My dream was coming true!

      I did real well with my store for quite a while, then it seemed that all my customers must have moved away. It was a small place, but I kept it clean as a whistle, and it sat right on the main highway where it could draw the most traffic. I called it "Trent's Milk and Necessities," because all that I sold was milk, bread, eggs, butter and cheese. The milk, butter and cheese were all produced from my own beautiful cows, and I'd been able to buy my own cartons and labels. Every carton or package read "Trent's Finest" in big red letters. I was proud.
      I guess some of my trouble in the store started when this uppity woman came in one afternoon. She looked around, checked out all the dairy cases, then asked me where cartons were for folks like her who were "lactose intolerant." I didn't know what she was talking about, and I told her so. So she said she couldn't drink plain milk, but had to have it treated in some way because she was, again, "lactose intolerant."
      I guess I lost my temper. Couldn't drink milk? That was crazy talk coming from a grown woman, and I wasn't going to stand for it! I ran her out of the store and told her not to come back! About an hour later some fellow pulls up in a big Cadillac and comes flying into the store saying that I'd insulted his wife and that he was going to make me answer for it. So I brought out the shotgun that I kept under the counter. I pulled back the hammer and told him that if he had come looking for trouble he had found it. He turned white as milk and left in a hurry. I didn't see him or his wife anymore, but business started slowing down after that, and it got hard for me to hold on to my dream.
      Later, I read up on that "lactose intolerance" business. The way I figured it, it must have been a Communist plot. The Reds put something in the water at the same time that the government started adding fluoride to it, and that was the cause of some folks becoming "lactose intolerant." Maybe I was too hard on the woman. She probably couldn't help herself.

      By the time I met old Bob Fry I was just barely hanging on in the store. Old Bob started coming in every day about lunchtime to buy a carton of milk. He seemed to like listening to me talk about how wonderful milk was and how cows were the greatest gift that mankind ever received. Then one day he asked me a funny question.
      "You know, Harold, what with you being so up on cows and milk and all that, seems like you'd be selling hamburger and steaks and such."
      "Selling what?"
      "Hamburger. Steaks. Beef."
      "I never heard of them."
      He looked at me like I'd told him cows could fly.
      "Come on, Harold. Quit kidding."
      "I'm not kidding, Bob. What is 'hamburger?' What's 'steak?'"
      "You mean to tell me that you've never eaten meat?"
      "Meat? No, I figure if greens are good enough for my cows, then greens and milk, along with some good old cheese and eggs every now and again is good enough for me. So what's 'hamburger?'"
      Bob told me, and it's a miracle that I didn't fall over in a dead faint on the spot. He went through the whole process, telling me about slaughterhouses, and how they murdered and butchered the cows. I kept feeling sicker, but I couldn't tell him to stop. When he finished, I asked him if there were any of these slaughterhouses in the county.
      "Why, hell, Harold. There's one just about five miles north of here and about a mile off the main highway."
      I couldn't believe it! Right in my own county! I suppose that I've led a pretty sheltered life, never straying very far from the farm. I've never owned a television, and I don't read newspapers, just a book from the county library now and then. But my ignorance was a blessing, I suppose, because I'd have been a lot unhappier if I had known about such evil before.
      I guess Bob saw that I was upset, because he left right after that. That afternoon I closed up early.

      Milk is like blood: We need it to survive. If you murder the source of milk, the precious cow, then you might as well murder people, because in the long run that's what you're doing.
      That's what I was thinking as I drove back to the farm that afternoon. These slaughterhouses were an abomination, and I knew that something had to be done. From what old Bob had told me, I had a pretty clear picture of those poor cows being driven to their death. It was more than I could bear.
      At the house, I stuffed my pockets full of double-ought shotgun shells. I pulled my double-barreled twelve-gauge from the hall closet and carried it out to the truck, then I headed back to the main highway and turned north. It was nearly dark when I came to the road Bob had told me about, and I took my time wanting to make sure that I didn't miss the slaughterhouse.
      God! I shouldn't have worried. I picked up the stench of the place a quarter of a mile away! In a few more seconds I had driven right up to it, and when I turned off the truck's engine I could hear the terrified moos of cows fearing for their life.
      I found out later that if I had arrived three hours earlier I could have gotten more of the murderers. It seems the slaughterhouse ran a smaller shift at night. I got eleven of the butchers, anyway, and no amount of pleading and screaming saved any of them. What they did, what they were doing, was the worst crime ever committed on this earth.
      I only regret that I can't get out of here to see my cows. I hope that they're being looked after. Milk is our most precious resource, and it's our duty to protect the producers of that resource. In here, of course, they call me "Milk Man," laughing like it was real funny. But I'm not laughing. I'm proud.