Keep Manhattan, I’d Rather Be a Taos Cow

By Carol Mell, 8-12-07

	Caption: This is the only cow I found in Manhattan, down on Wall Street where they worship the dollar. Judging from the polish on those two brass babies, our nation's financiers rub bull testicles for luck.

Seasons have themes; leaves in the fall, flowers in the spring, but since late summer mine was cows. It started with my search for Taos Cow Ice Cream in which I learned we have local ice cream but not local milkers. Taos once had dairy cows, old timers tell me, but now we have only a few beef cows grazing among the real estate signs. Milking the land pays more than a few udders these days. 

I admire the cow. She lives in her own long time, chewing her cud, meditating on nothing, crowding around the solitary tree with her friends when it rains. Abandoned cattle chutes found way out nowhere make me nostalgic for the days when cowboys worked hard to move their stock to market, then sat before a fire, whittling all winter.

Dairy cows suggest maternal ease. If I forget about diapers, I recall my own milk-giving days as slow and rewarding. Even God esteems the noble cow. In the Book of Genesis, while creating beasts of all kinds, only cattle are mentioned by breed which means, I guess, if you have some cows standing around you live a little closer to Paradise.

Where have all the milk cows gone, long time passing? The question pursued me as I took my twin daughters to college, first in Santa Fe then New York.

The College of Santa Fe sits in an oasis of dead grass among asphalt fields. No self-respecting cow could fatten on that parched water-restricted sward.

On our way to New York, we felt like herded beasts. In airports they use the equivalent of cattle chutes now. They drive you in, make you take off your shoes on cold linoleum, examine your tampons and lipstick, wave wands under your armpits, confiscate your nail file and admonish you never to make jokes before they send you down a ramp to be loaded on a plane. Branding might be less painful.

I went to college in New York and remember it as dark, grubby and mean. People seemed friendlier as we entered the newly refurbished Grand Central Station. Since cleaning the astrological ceiling in the main concourse, it’s the only place in the city where you can see stars. We wandered through huge double doors to gaze at a golden marble hall with globular chandeliers fit for kings. We felt grand ourselves until a man emerged from a small doorway announcing that we were about to be arrested for being in a restricted area.

All of Manhattan is a restricted area. To see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, workers prod tourists like us into endless man-in-the-maze labyrinths where we stand in zigzag lines until our feet hurt.

I think they got special milking machines that hook right up to your bank account. I had to pay to use the bathroom after waiting outside until my feet hurt. Cows are smart. Except for a few coin-operated bucking broncos, a decent cow wouldn’t be caught dead wandering around Manhattan where the only grass that grows is over Alexander Hamilton’s grave.

You not only have to pass through a toll chute to cross bridges out of New York you have to wait in line until your tires hurt to pay to drive on their highways, called expressways. I didn’t find anything expressive about stalled traffic.

Bronxville had nice, green grass but they don’t teach stock raising at Sarah Lawrence anymore.

In one of life’s great mysteries, our grown-up, city slicker daughter married a Marine in Arizona who took her to live on a dairy farm in Vermont. This is the same girl who used to wear patent leather pumps, costume jewelry and mini skirts to walk through sleet, snow and muck on her way to school on the Navajo Reservation. 

I’d forgotten bovines produce more than milk. The farm is surrounded by rolling hills of fragrant by-product.

“Just wait until they spread it on the fields,” my son-in-law said, whistling and rolling back his eyes. “Whooee.”

Calves start their lives in restriction, put in small pens as soon as they are born, bawling every afternoon for their bottles. I guess breast-feeding is no longer fashionable among the Vermont Jersey set. There in a kind of bovine-in-the-maze labyrinth of chutes, pens and milking stalls, nameless cows with enormous, profitable udders live out their short, hectic existence.

One gentle-eyed cow whispered that she was thinking of retiring in Taos. (Few people know I’m a certified cow whisperer.) She’d heard that we had groovy spiritual energy and good vibes grass.

I suggested she bring friends to start a counter-cultural cow commune paradise. I warned her to save money because the price of land was jumping over the moon. I said I’d wait — until the Taos Cows come home.