The Shepherdsville Times: Damn Computer!
...I like cows, always did. Even thought of becoming a dairy farmer. But they’re so doggone regular. Seven days a week. Morning and evening, they are out there looking patient and expectant and accusing. Damn cows....
Jerry Selby thinks that the "big damn dumb computer'' is like a cow, staring accusingly with its glass eye, making demands.
This big damn dumb computer reminds me of a cow. When I was a teenager, I worked for some people on a small farm. Got my room and board, work clothes, and $30 a month for doing the chores and such. Finished my last year of high school that way.
I like animals, and a large part of my job was taking care of the chickens, a couple of hogs, and milking. The chickens and pigs didn’t take much time or attention. But seven days a week, morning and evening, there were those damn cows. We usually had about four to milk, plus a couple of young heifers and a few calves. Every morning the milking and feeding had to be done. Then I could clean up, eat breakfast, and catch the school bus.
The old cows knew the routine. By 5:30 am or so, rain or shine, winter and summer, they’d gather in the barn lot. Sad eyed, patient, placid, but implacable. Waiting for you to extract what they have to offer.
They knew that sooner or later I would have to come pump water, put hay in the mangers, put feed in their boxes, call them in to the barn, brush and comb each miserable hide, wash each dirt-smeared udder, bring the pail and milking stool, lay my head against a warm flank, grab a pair of tits, and squeeze and pull until each cow was pleasantly empty of milk, full of food, and ready to pee and crap on the floor so I could clean up after it. Never occurred to them to wait until they got back outside.
If I was a little late, or slow, or out of temper, it didn’t matter much to them. They just stood around looking at me with those big eyes. Waiting. Accusing. Reminding me of my duty.
I like cows, always did. Even thought of becoming a dairy farmer. But they’re so doggone regular. Seven days a week. Morning and evening, they are out there looking patient and expectant and accusing. Damn cows.
It’s been forty years or more since I milked a cow. But now I have this damn computer. Full of almost unimaginable potential. It can produce poems, or novels, or pictures, or even songs. But first you have to groom it and feed it. And then you have to milk it. And then you have to shovel out the manure.
And if you don’t feel well, or you’re in a hurry, or out of sorts, it doesn’t care. It doesn’t lose its temper, or even get impatient. It just sits there, with that big eye of a CRT screen. Looking at you. Silently accusing.
'I'm full of nourishing stuff', it seems to say. 'But I don’t give it away. You have to work to get it.'
Sits there all day, inexorably patient, chewing its cud and waiting for me. So here I am, milking and feeding and shoveling manure again.
That's what it does, and that's what I do. It's my job, man. Somebody has to do it. I can’t just let it stand there forever. Looking at me confidently, patiently, stubbornly. Staring accusingly with its big glass eye. Just like a big old milk cow. Damn computer.
© Jerry Selby
