Essay 34
OLD BRINDLE
When I was a boy we had a brindle-colored cow named, aptly, Old Brindle. I detested that ornery old cow.
Old Brindle had a talent for getting out! She would go into the barn and, refusing to go into her stall* the first time, she always forced the north barn door. Someone then had to chase her to the garage and drive her back to the barn. After this escapade, Old Brindle would go directly into her stall without further fuss.
On one occasion I arranged just outside the north barn door a wobbly structure, containing “a ton” of debris, such as concrete blocks and the like, so that, when Old Brindle made her escape through the barn door, the sky would fall on her. It did, and I enjoyed the ensuing spectacle a lot, but there was no discernible change in Old Brindle’s behavior. Shucks!
One day Uncle Mason, who had mounted a horn taken from a Greyhound bus on his Model A Ford, was driving north on the Zenith road when he encountered Old Brindle standing in the road. Because she was facing into the wind, away from his Model A, it is likely that Old Brindle was unaware of his presence. He drove up immediately behind her, and, expecting a surprise blast of that big bus horn would fun to watch, he honked the horn. Without otherwise moving, Old Brindle promptly kicked out one of his headlights! And stood there!
This event confirmed my belief that old cows had nervous systems that transmitted signals directly from their sensors to their muscles, by-passing brains. However, I suspect that Uncle Mason found some way to attract her attention before he went on home. One lesson learned was that people and vehicles may scatter when they heard that horn, but Old Brindle did not.
This historical event ultimately triggered a whole series of events, detailed in the following essay.
* Each cow had her own stall, and almost never attempted to go into another cow’s stall.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Essay 35 What Hath Old Brindle Wrought?
Essay 35 What Hath Old Brindle Wrought?
(Pictures for this post are yet to be added.)
WHAT HATH OLD BRINDLE WROUGHT?
In May, 1963 a brief Associated Press article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It reported that the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps, of Hornchurch, England, had been practicing in farmer Reed’s pasture, and when the drums crashed and the trumpets blared starting the march “Semper Fidelis” six cows belonging to farmer Reed dropped dead.
This was a blurb made to order for our bulletin board at the lab, and it triggered comments.
I claimed the article to be patently false, believing it impossible to scare a cow to death with mere noise. Had I not seen it tried?
Paul Mutschlecner was unimpressed with this argument, saying the cows had just died of “coronaries”. I knew better, but there was work to do, and we discussed it no more.
Time passed—a lot of time passed, and another item appeared in the Albuquerque Journal reporting a difficulty experienced with a Pershing Missile.
I immediately made the argument that scattering cows made sense, and none of them died. Paul’s argument was that this only demonstrated that the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps was more deadly than one of our Pershing Missiles.
The argument once having waned, waxed. We compromised by deciding to write two letters, one to the Director of the Corps, and one to Mr. Reed. We believed that if the event in question happened in a pasture, Hornchurch must be a small town, and the letters might be deliverable.
We never had a response from Mr. Reed, but we did hear quite promptly from Mrs. Keeler, the wife of the Director. By purest chance, one week before our letter arrived the Keelers had discovered that Mr. Reed had “concocted” the story so that the Corps would not practice in the camp adjacent to his field. Brian Keeler had taken our letter to the Editor of the Hornchurch Recorder and a nice article was published.
Quite an informative article! We were pleased to be described “a farmer in Mexico”, and the missile to a lorry. We were exceptionally pleased with the words of their Ministry of Agriculture that if the cows were in a rather weak state it might be possible to frighten them to death. Weak State indeed!
I felt that I had won the argument, but there were complications. Specifically, we had a number of British Colleagues at the lab preparing for a British nuclear test. They were quite intrigued by these events, and when they returned to England they went to Hornchurch to learn more about the Corps, and Hornchurch. When they returned they gave us the “Official Guide” to Hornchurch and discovered that it is now a suburb of London.
The population was more than 150,000 and growing, and the place was anything but the sleepy village we had imagined. Indeed, the fact that our letter was delivered was pretty surprising.
Mrs. Keeler included in her letter the thought that we might be able to see the boys some day. She reported that they had a cows head on the arm patch of their uniforms, and that crowds mooed at them when they appeared in public—they were the “cow killers”. That was why Mr. Keeler had tried to set the record straight. We had responded to her letter with the information that we were going to be going to England in the near future, and would like to hear the Corps.
We also dreamed up the idea of writing to His Royal Highness, Prince Phillip, who was a patron of such activities as the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps. Paul drafted a wonderful letter, asking for an aide to come to their defense. From my perspective it was how Paul closed the letter that made it truly historic. The last paragraph is shown below:
Ultimately we had a very nice response from Buckingham Palace, from Squadron Leader David Checketts.
On August 9th we met Mr. Keeler at the front of Westminster Abbey, and he took us to his home for a splendid English lunch. It was toward the end of the meal that Mr. Keeler said “We’ll have to be moving along, for the BBC will be here to interview you at Two, and then there is the parade at Three”.
To our amazement, The BBC guy who arrived did the morning show on BBC that was entirely comparable to our “good morning America” show. The interview went pretty well until suddenly, out of the blue, came the question “Now, why don’t we just be honest here, and you admit that you are really Pershing missile experts, here to learn whatever you can about the dangers of the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps?”
I almost fainted away because in fact I was on committee that was evaluating Pershing Missiles from the point of view of safety, and on the way from Los Alamos to London I had attended a classified meeting in Washington about Pershings and their troubles. My response was a classic fumbling, bumbling kind of mindless “harrumphing”, and it demonstrated how unprepared I was to be interviewed.
For the parade we rode with the Mayor and his wife in their official car that greatly resembled cars used by the Royals. On the way around the track Paul kept holding his hand up with the classic V signal of Winston Churchill (who was still alive on this occasion) and Addie Leah and I tried to copy those peculiar hand waves that the Royal family keep making.
The families and friends of the band members were in the stands, and in front of us the entire band played, opened ranks, and we were invited into the group to inspect, and were each given instruments with which we could play along.
During this entire affair, representatives of eight London newspapers were present taking lots of pictures. This could have been just a bit intimidating for Mexican farmers, and it was certainly so for us also.
Here we see one of hosts, a mother, the Mayor’s wife and the Mayor, Paul, me, and Addie Leah.
A close-up of a close-up inspection is fun to see, as is a careful look at the Mayor’s wife. As seen through eyes nearly forty-four years older, she is the spittin’ image of Mrs. Bucket from the British comedy program “Keeping Up Appearances”.
Our more formal picture gives one a much better feeling for the importance and formality of the day.
We made the next morning’s papers without difficulty.
Once again Hornchurch made the international press!
It was the Las Vegas paper’s account that gave us the most difficulty, for now our colleagues discovered we were “rocket scientists”, and that was mighty hard to live down. Amazingly enough, our names were spelled correctly, and that also did not do us any good.
Hornchurch will live long in our memories.
But surely, Old Brindle could not have been responsible for ALL of this!
We visited Hornchurch again in 2003, and continue to admire the Church.
(pictures for this post are yet to be added.)
(Pictures for this post are yet to be added.)
WHAT HATH OLD BRINDLE WROUGHT?
In May, 1963 a brief Associated Press article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It reported that the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps, of Hornchurch, England, had been practicing in farmer Reed’s pasture, and when the drums crashed and the trumpets blared starting the march “Semper Fidelis” six cows belonging to farmer Reed dropped dead.
This was a blurb made to order for our bulletin board at the lab, and it triggered comments.
I claimed the article to be patently false, believing it impossible to scare a cow to death with mere noise. Had I not seen it tried?
Paul Mutschlecner was unimpressed with this argument, saying the cows had just died of “coronaries”. I knew better, but there was work to do, and we discussed it no more.
Time passed—a lot of time passed, and another item appeared in the Albuquerque Journal reporting a difficulty experienced with a Pershing Missile.
I immediately made the argument that scattering cows made sense, and none of them died. Paul’s argument was that this only demonstrated that the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps was more deadly than one of our Pershing Missiles.
The argument once having waned, waxed. We compromised by deciding to write two letters, one to the Director of the Corps, and one to Mr. Reed. We believed that if the event in question happened in a pasture, Hornchurch must be a small town, and the letters might be deliverable.
We never had a response from Mr. Reed, but we did hear quite promptly from Mrs. Keeler, the wife of the Director. By purest chance, one week before our letter arrived the Keelers had discovered that Mr. Reed had “concocted” the story so that the Corps would not practice in the camp adjacent to his field. Brian Keeler had taken our letter to the Editor of the Hornchurch Recorder and a nice article was published.
Quite an informative article! We were pleased to be described “a farmer in Mexico”, and the missile to a lorry. We were exceptionally pleased with the words of their Ministry of Agriculture that if the cows were in a rather weak state it might be possible to frighten them to death. Weak State indeed!
I felt that I had won the argument, but there were complications. Specifically, we had a number of British Colleagues at the lab preparing for a British nuclear test. They were quite intrigued by these events, and when they returned to England they went to Hornchurch to learn more about the Corps, and Hornchurch. When they returned they gave us the “Official Guide” to Hornchurch and discovered that it is now a suburb of London.
The population was more than 150,000 and growing, and the place was anything but the sleepy village we had imagined. Indeed, the fact that our letter was delivered was pretty surprising.
Mrs. Keeler included in her letter the thought that we might be able to see the boys some day. She reported that they had a cows head on the arm patch of their uniforms, and that crowds mooed at them when they appeared in public—they were the “cow killers”. That was why Mr. Keeler had tried to set the record straight. We had responded to her letter with the information that we were going to be going to England in the near future, and would like to hear the Corps.
We also dreamed up the idea of writing to His Royal Highness, Prince Phillip, who was a patron of such activities as the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps. Paul drafted a wonderful letter, asking for an aide to come to their defense. From my perspective it was how Paul closed the letter that made it truly historic. The last paragraph is shown below:
Ultimately we had a very nice response from Buckingham Palace, from Squadron Leader David Checketts.
On August 9th we met Mr. Keeler at the front of Westminster Abbey, and he took us to his home for a splendid English lunch. It was toward the end of the meal that Mr. Keeler said “We’ll have to be moving along, for the BBC will be here to interview you at Two, and then there is the parade at Three”.
To our amazement, The BBC guy who arrived did the morning show on BBC that was entirely comparable to our “good morning America” show. The interview went pretty well until suddenly, out of the blue, came the question “Now, why don’t we just be honest here, and you admit that you are really Pershing missile experts, here to learn whatever you can about the dangers of the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet Corps?”
I almost fainted away because in fact I was on committee that was evaluating Pershing Missiles from the point of view of safety, and on the way from Los Alamos to London I had attended a classified meeting in Washington about Pershings and their troubles. My response was a classic fumbling, bumbling kind of mindless “harrumphing”, and it demonstrated how unprepared I was to be interviewed.
For the parade we rode with the Mayor and his wife in their official car that greatly resembled cars used by the Royals. On the way around the track Paul kept holding his hand up with the classic V signal of Winston Churchill (who was still alive on this occasion) and Addie Leah and I tried to copy those peculiar hand waves that the Royal family keep making.
The families and friends of the band members were in the stands, and in front of us the entire band played, opened ranks, and we were invited into the group to inspect, and were each given instruments with which we could play along.
During this entire affair, representatives of eight London newspapers were present taking lots of pictures. This could have been just a bit intimidating for Mexican farmers, and it was certainly so for us also.
Here we see one of hosts, a mother, the Mayor’s wife and the Mayor, Paul, me, and Addie Leah.
A close-up of a close-up inspection is fun to see, as is a careful look at the Mayor’s wife. As seen through eyes nearly forty-four years older, she is the spittin’ image of Mrs. Bucket from the British comedy program “Keeping Up Appearances”.
Our more formal picture gives one a much better feeling for the importance and formality of the day.
We made the next morning’s papers without difficulty.
Once again Hornchurch made the international press!
It was the Las Vegas paper’s account that gave us the most difficulty, for now our colleagues discovered we were “rocket scientists”, and that was mighty hard to live down. Amazingly enough, our names were spelled correctly, and that also did not do us any good.
Hornchurch will live long in our memories.
But surely, Old Brindle could not have been responsible for ALL of this!
We visited Hornchurch again in 2003, and continue to admire the Church.
(pictures for this post are yet to be added.)
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