If you don’t get the title…well, obviously you didn’t have the same father I have. I’ll need about 30 minutes to tell you all about the 27 8×10 color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. We’ll start with the half a ton of garbage and some friends who live in the bell tower of an old church, talk quite a bit about the draft and we’ll finish up singing “You can get anything you want…” I mean…I mean…I meeeeen I’m sittin’ here on the bench…

…eating my lunch and creating a nuisance and playin’ with the pencils and fillin’ out the forms and it’s 62 degrees outside and it will be below freezing for the next…eternity and I’ve got spring fever so bad I can hardly stand it.

And my dad calls. “Looks like you’ve got a calf that’s about to die.”

Well. That’s great. Shoot. Never lost a calf before. First time for everything I guess.

Now what? Now it’s 67 degrees outside, I’m stuck sittin’ here on the group W bench creating a nuisance and playing with the pencils and fillin’ out the forms and my dad says I have a sick calf.

Then my wife calls and the water line guy is there to dig. Guess what I forgot?

So I call my dad and tell him about the Group W bench and the pencils and the forms and the sick calf and the water line guy and he stops me right there and says, “Kid…You got a lot of darned gall calling me up to tell me that. What is it you want me to do about it?”

So I continue to tell him the story about the Group W bench and the created nuisance and the pencils and the forms and the rapidly changing temperature and the sick calf and he stops me right there and says, “Kid…You’re my boy. I’ll take care of it.”

Well that’s about the time my wife (who has a rare day off from watching the kids) calls to say she gave the cows a fresh tank of water with a pint of ACV and she’s on her way to get a bale of good grass hay. I suspect the calf either has been eating too much alfalfa (fresh or baled) or something fast-moving is going through the herd. One of the jerseys was unexpectedly runny for a couple of days last week. But the white calf clearly isn’t feeling well. She gets up, she eats, her ears are up but she looks a little gaunt, has been laying in manure and her rump is covered. I’ll have to keep a close eye on her but hopefully the grass hay will be just what the doctor ordered.

But here I sit on the group W bench. Not a danged thing I can do. Sigh.

Now if you’re the kind of a reader who knows about the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement you know why I’m writing this. You might know somebody in a similar situation or you may be in a similar situation and if you’re in a situation like this there’s only one thing you can do. With feeling.

And if you have no idea what this post was about then come back tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have good news about the white calf.