Farm boys got their early sex education by observing animals in heat. The mechanics of animal
sex was loosely transferable to human sex through our imaginations, although the positioning didn’t quite match. While the sexual urges of animals occurred intensely maybe once or twice a year, this intermittent desire was not transferable in our imaginations to humans. In fact, during the teen age years our attraction to the opposite sex seemed to grow with every passing day.
Parents were very reluctant to talk about sex with their children then. I think they still are today, hoping the school or television will do it for them. Alas, television pictures a lot of sex without any sense of context or commitment between two people. I recall vividly one of my first experiences with sex education farm style.
Ours was a mini-farm of five acres set like a lonely island in a sea of larger farms. It had a house, barn, out-buildings and a pasture large enough to support a Jersey cow we named Sookjerz.
It was customary for farmers to call the cows to the barn for milking by calling out loudly, sook-cow, sook-cow. The cows had been conditioned by this call to come to the barn where they would get grain feed in their stalls while being milked. It was my chore to do the milking. We brought our cow to the barn by calling sook-jerz, sook-jerz. .
One morning I was awakened by Sookjerz bellowing repeatedly as though something were bothering her. After breakfast Dad asked me to come to the barn with him before I milked Sookjerz. He fashioned a rope halter and told me to help him take Sookjerz to the bull at our neighbors.
Our usually docile Sookjerz was agitated and bellowing. She behaved like a penned dog let out on a leash. Dad and I both held on the rope to keep her in check from running on ahead of us.
Our neighbor was ready when we arrived and opened the gate to the barnyard. Sookjerz soon found neighbor bull and they had several encounters of what appeared to be joyous, energetic sex in diminishing interludes. Sookjerz finally seemed ready to go home to be milked.
Dad pulled out his wallet to pay our neighbor, but he put up his hand to stop Dad from paying. “No charge” he said. “I rather like to watch them getting it on.” Some farmers get their kicks in strange ways.
Sookjerz’s walk back to the barn was just the opposite of the trip to the bull. She had to be prodded occasionally when she stopped to look lingeringly back. The bellowing had ceased entirely.
I put the grain in the stall bin and flipped the stanchion lever to keep her in place. Sookjerz had a dreamy contented look in her huge charcoal eyes as though she had encountered a bovine epiphany that only one of her kind could understand.
I set the milking stool, put the pail between my knees, placed my head against her warm side and began to pull. I don’t ever recall the milk flowing so easily. I got a full pail of contented 100% hormone-fortified milk without a switch of her tail in my face or any attempt to put her foot in the bucket. Good ole Sookjerz. Bless her teats. She kept us well supplied with milk and cream during the lean years of the Great Depression. Some may think this a tall tale. To the contrary, it is a true story of one lonely cow and a lot of bull.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
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