Breakfast Burgers and Bulls
The Source
My 4-H leader died last week and I was asked to do his eulogy. Most of my early life is a blur and my youth is receding at a rate just slightly faster than my memory, but it did give me occasion to recall a few things about county fairs, cattle stalls, and eating hamburgers for breakfast. For me, that was the best part of 4-H. You could eat hamburgers for breakfast. When a young 4-H-er prepares his first Angus heifer for the fair, one of the requirements is that he stays all night on an army cot near his animal. In spite of the noises that my brother Keith used to make while he slept, I’d not had much experience sleeping next to animals. I found that the secret was to not sleep too close to the cow. Cows move. Cows’ bowels move. If you’re smart, you’ll move before they do. Of course it’s a sure formula for mayhem when you allow two dozen unsupervised teenagers to camp out at a county fair. That part of my memory is completely gone, but I do remember something about buckets of water, firecrackers, and large quantities of Pepsi…and hamburgers for breakfast. The typical Illinois county fair is not set up for the breakfast crowd. The fairgrounds are pretty much empty, the carnies are still sleeping, and the 4-H kids won’t be getting up until their fathers arrive to rouse them out of their water-soaked cots. The only food available was the American Legion hamburger stand and the old military cooks weren’t much into omelets and English muffins at 6 a.m. They would, however, slap a frozen hamburger onto he grill for you. The ketchup-slathered greasy meat was a delight after a short lifetime of cornflakes and Pop Tarts. Heaven. And all washed down with a Pepsi. Mom never served Pepsi for breakfast at home. We sat there in this sawdust garden of forbidden delights as the fair began to awaken, wondering if God hadn’t perhaps been a 4-H member and had designed this morning just for us. And even though we were fresh-faced, white bread farm boys, parochialism could rear its ugly head. We felt that 4-H had a class system. At the top of the heap were the beef cattle kids. We had the biggest and heaviest animals at the fair and therefore we were the top dogs. Directly below us were the 4-H-ers in the dairy barn. Dairy cows take much more labor. I didn’t have to milk my Angus twice a day. Next in the pecking order came the pig people, and then the sheep show-ers. They’d always put the sheep barn on the far end of the fairground and we’d heard many wild tales of what went on there. I was Presbyterian and ignored most of them. Then way, way, way below all the “big stock” 4-H-er’s came the chicken tenders. We regarded them as a separate breed of kid. Word had it that they actually read books. Of course all these stereotypes were wrong, and each group invented lurid tales about the others. Rumors were rampant, dirty tricks were played nightly, and none of us really knew much about the other. It prepared us for adulthood. Show day was the culmination of our efforts of the summer, and since my efforts were usually pretty weak, it showed on show day. My dad had warned me about the dangers of putting things off…things like teaching your animal to walk beside you. I’d always felt that instead of a prolonged two-month period of going out to the pasture every night to work until dark with my cow, that I’d just have a little chat with her on the way to the fair. The result? While all the other little snotty-nosed kids led their well-behaved Angus into the ring, my heifer led me. No, she carried me…she dragged me…very fast. The preferred procedure is to calmly walk your animal around in circles in front of the judge while he calmly determines the winner. When my heifer-from-hell and I hit the show ring, the judge had best be prepared to look fast because we weren’t going to be there very long. I’d heard that when “Ken and Cow” was scheduled to perform, even the carnies shut down their rides to come see the rodeo. I have no idea what ribbons and trophies I received. My reward was getting out alive. Much is said about 4-H and its ability to teach good, strong values to kids. Our pledge says that we dedicate ourselves to the four H’s of head, heart, hands, and health. To that I’d simply add….Hamburger.