CALF_News_August_September_2019

48 CALF News • August | September 2019 • www.calfnews.net  CALF HUMOR On the Edge of Common Sense With Baxter Black Talkin' Dirty Why Do You Read CALF News ? Steve Niemeyer University of Nebraska Beef Systems Educator Burwell, Neb. "I read CALF News because it keeps me up to date on beef industry issues. It covers Nebraska thoroughly and is well written. I really enjoy the good quality photographs." IN THIS COLUMN I HAVE OFTEN MEN- TIONED scours, abscesses, big tits, bad bags, cancer eyes, foot rot, slurry pits, afterbirth, retained placenta, castration, heat cycles, sheep pellets and snotty noses. Over the years I have received the occasional letter castigating me for talkin’ dirty. It is never my intention to offend my readers’ sensibilities. My poems and stories are always written with the idea that people who read them regularly are livestock people. In real life I’m not com- fortable cussing or telling blue stories in mixed company and I’m no different writin’ this column. So, if I’m talkin’ to a cattlewoman, I assume she knows what bull semen is. That she has had scourin’ calves in her house and knows what it means when someone says it’s rainin’ like a cow peein’ on a flat rock. Those subjects are part of her lifestyle. I feel no need to ask her to leave if I’m doing a rectal exam on a cow. Farm kids are the best example. They are what we have taught them and what they have experienced. Fifteen-year-olds who are learning to artificially insemi- nate learn the proper words for the anatomy involved. Uterus had never been a dirty word to them. Children on a dairy farm learn to spot cows in heat. Washing the bag or tit dip does send them into fits of teenage giggling. Helping a newborn get his first meal is not a titillating experience. Mucking out the horse barn is hard work but it’s not ‘ooky’! All of us who spend our lives tending livestock are aware that our daily working vocabulary is not always proper among people from outside the real world (gentiles, I call them). When the new preacher, who hails from Chicago, is introduced to us, we don’t immediately invite him to the oyster fry next Tuesday. I would guess the people who are most conscious of this “cowboy vocabu- lary” are new spouses marrying into a livestock-raising family. I’ll bet they could write a book! So, to those of you sensitive folks who read my column with some reservations, or have neighbors who sit at your dinner table and talk about how to get cow manure stains out of a good shirt, I beg your indulgence. It’s not dirty to us, it’s just grass and water. 