Our Milk Cow

At Christmas 1977 my dad Gilbert Cox told a story about the good times and hard times their family had when he was growing up in Ohio County, Kentucky.  He told this story about their new milk cow that his dad bought so they would have milk to drink and cook with.  My dad was about six years old at the time.  They were living on their little farm near Rosine…about 1914-1915.  I tape-recorded this tale.  

                                                                                                                  ~ Janice Brown

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Our Milk Cow

The Family of Jasper Newton and Eva Caroline Cox

– About 1914-1915 - Ohio County, Kentucky

“I know we got us a milk cow one time, and boy, we were tickled to death because we had us a milk cow and had fresh milk to drink.  My mother made hot biscuits and we had fresh butter, and everything, see. 

“And just about this time of the evening, but it was summertime.  And the train was coming.  And the banks were as high as this house here, or higher, on both sides.  All you could see was the smoke stack on the engine.  It was going through this cut, see.  And all at once we heard that train…toot, toot, toot…toot, toot, toot…toot. 

“Well it didn’t occur to us, you know, that it was our cow it was blowing at.  But that night, the cow didn’t come up.  And then Daddy thought about that train whistle blowing, so we went down there to see, and sure enough, there laid our cow, and she wasn’t even dead yet.  We went down there and looked at her. 

“I never have forgot that.  And we hadn’t had it long either!  Maybe a month, something like that.  And she was just laying down there, and when she saw us, she tried to get up, and we had to go back and tell mama that the cow was dead.

“It took a lot of money and hard work to get a good milk cow then.  That’s one incidence I remember when we had a sad time.  Other times, we would have good times.”

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