Calves, Cash Money & Politics

by Eric Chaet

Maybe a dozen dairy farmers around here raise half-a-dozen to a couple of dozen calves, each, for Roy.

Roy was raised on a small beef cattle ranch—unusual around here—& for 10 years worked in one of the little cheese factories. (There are fewer & fewer little cheese factories all the time.)

Each calf lives in its own little plastic house, on a special formula that Roy provides the farmers with. Before they grow beyond being calves, Roy gathers & trucks them to slaughter. While the price of milk kept going down, the price of veal kept going up. Roy keeps putting on weight, & getting jollier.

He shaved off his swashbuckler's mustache not too long after his daughter was killed on her high school graduation night, along with several other drunk graduates, their car hit by a train at the crossing in New Holstein.

Roy is massive—but not fat. He is up before dawn tending to cattle, & seeing to it that everyone he has contracted with to raise calves has the specially fortified milk formula, & that the animals are thriving—or he's buying at the auction in Black Hawk, or selling. "While others are crying, I'm buying," he says, at the breakfast counter, at the Farmer's Friend. He wears grubby, disreputable clothes that need patching.

Roy also deals in land, & is a landlord—many housing units—for people as well as calves.

"I get paid weekly," he says, "very weakly. I'm doing okay, tho. This year I'm putting carpeting down in the outhouse."

He's also building a big house up north, & frequently takes a week off to go fishing or hunting—deer or turkeys.

"When I take time off," he says, "I have to hire 6 guys to take my place."

When I told little Emil Carrothers—another morning, at the Farmer's Friend—that Roy had said that, Emil (who, with his brother used to operate a feed mill, & these days wears a cap that says "RETIRED—DON'T ASK ME TO DO A D A M N THING") said, "You tell Roy I said that's to fix everything he's screwed up."

.

Another morning, Roy tells me he's doing the same old thing, but not making any money.

"Why not?"

"Well, the Canadians get to use chemicals we can't, & the Queen subsidizes it. They can sell for less. Brings the price down for everybody. The Department of Agriculture & everybody is working on it."

He also tells me that what he feeds the calves is all stuff that is approved for human consumption. And that the price of the feed has recently gone up.

"Price of milk is down, but whey protein is up."

"Everybody wants protein," I say.

Roy goes on to explain that his product, which is veal that has never been frozen (it's cryo-somethinged, instead), is a luxury product sold mainly in New York & near there. Which is why it has to be killed kosher, with a rabbi supervising.

Recently, Roy was in Goshen, Indiana, watching the kosher killing. They hang up the calf, alive, to bleed—it's the only process in which they're allowed to hang up a living animal to bleed to death. That particular rabbi was crooked, Roy maintains. Usually, they take only about 40% of the animals offered, as of sufficiently good quality. But this outfit took every animal, even those with, for instance, crooked legs. And instead of supervising the killing & bleeding, the rabbi was following Roy around.

Also, their check, for $53,000, bounced, 3 times. Roy says, "You call the district attorney of the county where the check is written. I went down there, the next time, in the truck, & flew back from South Bend. They paid."

He also says that you mustn't take post-dated checks. If you take one, it means you know the check is no good when it is written, & you have no legal complaint, if it bounces.

Roy says that his "cabin" up north cost $200,000. He didn't want it. His wife did, tho. He tells her he's "a working fool."

"She says I'm half-right," he chuckles.

He figures that when the Social Security kicks in—meaning when he's 62 or 65 or 67 or however the law is configured at the time—he'll take it easy.

"You can't live on Social Security, with the standard of living you're getting used to," I observe—catching myself, again, in spite of resolutions to the contrary, speaking before considering possible consequences—tho this time there seem to be no negative repercussions.

"Oh, I have other stuff that'll kick in, too," he says. And he inquires about my work.

"It's getting out around the world," I say, "but still no pay."

"No one'll care in 50 years," he says.

I don't bother to say that my main motivation is to get ideas that I think will improve humanity's situation into circulation.

What he means is, if you don't get paid while you're alive, it doesn't do you any good—& he can't imagine any other reason to act, than to do yourself good—meaning, to accumulate assets. (And it would certainly be convenient if I didn't have to keep interrupting my work to take all kinds of short-term jobs.)

"Some exposure in India, recently," I say.

"What language do they use there?" he asks.

"Oh, they have maybe 50 languages, but English is the one they print in, mainly. But I've had some work published in France & Belgium recently, in French."

"I can hardly read English. Can you read French?"

"With a dictionary."

"You get royalties?"

"Maybe some day while I can still use it. Royalties, common people. I'll take whatever anyone'll pay."

.

I don't get into my higher motivations—I think that's what they are rather than delusions I use to mask my unwillingness relentlessly to struggle for wealth & power, to seize on any advantageous opportunity, & to drop whatever shows no signs of paying off in the short run, & may not pay off at all while I am still alive. He wouldn't be interested in hearing me out, even if I had my reasoning clear & ready for presentation, sufficiently for me to convince him, I figure. And, besides, what would be the advantage? He's already friendly enough.

Even Eileen doesn't know much of what I think, & argues whenever I suggest something far from the norm.

The evening before, as I was barking back at the TV news, we got into it when she said that I should run for office, if I was so dissatisfied with the way things were, & I said, I would, but I didn't think I had any chance whatever of being elected, since I couldn't afford to get my ideas communicated to the public at large, &, even if I did, my ideas would be so different from those that the public in general took to be reasonable, that they would vote against me. For instance, I thought that it would be best if the schools were closed.

Eileen started to work herself up. How would anyone learn to read?

From someone who knew how.

How would that work?

You would realize that you would be better off if you knew how to read, rather than being forced to learn it at a certain age, & you would find someone who knew how to read, that you respected & thought you could approach, & ask that person to teach you.

"And would they?" Eileen asked, still more argumentative than really curious.

"Of course, they would, if they had any time at all—& you'd offer to do something for them in return, which would give them some time. It's a great compliment to have someone respectfully ask you to teach them. It's love. And it's not hard to teach someone something when they want to learn it. You'd sit the person down, & teach them for about half an hour, & send them off to practice what they'd just learned for about a week. If, when they came back, they hadn't practiced, you'd be done with them. But if they had practiced, you'd give them another lesson. Probably, it would take about 3 months to learn to read. You could improve at your own pace the rest of your life."

"But," Eileen said, "if there weren't schools for the kids to go to, some parents would take advantage of them—make them work all the time, say, on the farm."

"That's the problem if I were running for office," I say to Eileen. "People think that we have a pretty decent system now, & think that I'm suggesting a way to reach Utopia. But I think that what we have now is a disaster—kids being forced to spend 12 years learning what it would take just a few months to learn—to read; plus another few months, to write; plus, say, 6 months, to figure—& all the rest is like being in prison. And what did they do that they should have to serve 12-year sentences? And then they have to listen to all kinds of nonsense, & when they're done, almost none of them knows any geography or science or higher math—& the history they know conveniently leaves out the truth about business, finance, & government—& they waltz out into the world thinking that they're the freest & most prosperous people in the history of the world. All I'm saying is that they'd be better off having to face the world, knowing they don't know what they need to know, & making an alliance with someone who will teach them. When they're ready. All I'm saying is that that would be better, not that it would be perfect. Lots cheaper, too, of course—which would free up resources for other things. I'm sure that some people would continue to abuse other people."

"Kind of an apprentice system?" Eileen asks. The bad thing about Eileen is that she argues before she listens. (I do it, too, mind you—tho less & less as I grow older.) The good thing is that, once she realizes you really care about what you're saying, she's all attention—because she's full of caring. And she's not stupid.

Neither is Roy, but why bring up everything with him?

Neither is the public—but talking to one person at a time is like talking to a many-headed monster—they're so full of ideas, from so many different sources. And almost never realizing where the idea they are expressing came from.

And the politicians, who are legally stealing some people's money to give to others who already have more money & who keep dumping wastes into the air & water—for instance—keep telling the public that they are smart, & the freest people in the world, & the most prosperous, & that the way things are is excellent, tho it needs a little reforming, here & there, by themselves.

.

This morning, while I was eating oatmeal & reading news about the bombing in Afghanistan, Roy told me that he's expanding again. If I want, he'll arrange for me to keep and feed some calves for him.

"Cash money," he says, almost singing.

Copyright © Eric Chaet 2003