Cow knows*

I have been remiss on the ‘Memory A Day’ – now there’s a surprise, me being remiss on something – anyway, this deserves an explanation, and it’s a fun memory.
The company I drove truck for mostly ran a partner operation. That’s two people per truck and one is sleeping while the other is driving so the truck rarely stops for more than enough time to fuel, eat and take a shower, at least in between pick up and delivery points. Time allowed to make that distance, that’s a whole ‘nother story, not this one.
Since I did not have a ready-made partner (friend or ‘significant other’), I got who the company decided might work. Some did and some – not so much. Have I got stories about some of them!
This story, however, involves Winston McTeague. He had been a truck driver since ‘the old days’, and was entrenched in the thinking of another era of the business. He’d had his own truck at one time, but didn’t when I met him, which was in the mid 1990’s. Bill Clinton was the reason he didn’t have his own truck any more, but I never did find out why, except I’m pretty sure Clinton didn’t come into his yard in Maine and drive it away. He was not as obnoxious as some they had paired me with, and we did about four trips together.
He would come out of the blue with some comments, questions and ideas that made me go ‘Huh?’ a fair amount of the time. The truck broke down and we had to lay over in Cheyenne, Wyoming one trip to get it repaired, and Winston decided to do his laundry. The dryer didn’t work well, and when I woke up in the morning the hotel room was draped end to end with his drying clothes, outer and under wear. Hey, living with someone for a couple of weeks at a time in a space smaller than some people’s clothes closets will drop a lot of barriers in a hurry.
Anyway, *Cow knows. We were stopped for breakfast at the Flying J that’s a bit west of Rawlins, Wyoming. In truck stops, you get talking to people around you, to break the boredom of only talking to one person for so many miles, to see what’s going on in someone else’s world and just to be friendly. The guys at the next table were in a discussion about God, and how some people don’t believe in God. Winston joined in with much spirit. As we finished and got up to leave, he said: “These people who don’t believe in God, you just ask them ‘what about cows’”. I think one of the other guys said what I was thinking: ‘Cows? What about cows?’ Winston said, “Cows. Cows were put on earth to serve man and that proves there’s a God.” And having finished the discussion he just walked off, never said another word about it. So there you are. Cows prove there’s a God.
With no intention of being irreverent, I have used the phrases ‘Hand to Cow’ and ‘Cow knows’ since then. After all, we do get a lot from cows.