Cover Boy

When my parents purchased my grandfather’s chicken ranch there came with it a Jersey milk cow named Shiny. Shiny had a crumpled horn that she knew how to use. On more than one occasion she boosted my brother and me over the fence with it.

At one time my father promised me that I could have the next calf from our small herd of milk cows. On Easter Sunday in 1947 Shiny gave birth to beautiful twin Jersey calves. Appropriately or not we named them Mary and Magdalene.

Somehow a reporter from Country Gentleman magazine heard about the birth of the twin calves. The reporter showed up with a photographer. Some months later, there on the cover of the magazine, was a picture of me in my knit cap (it was freezing cold) with the twin calves.

Maggie lived a short, tragic life, a bit too gruesome to relate here. Mary became a fine, productive milk cow.