Have you ever done much traveling in a car?  I don’t mean driving back and forth to work every day, running errands all day, or driving a delivery car or truck for some company.  I talking about setting up on a job site, working 8, 10, or 12 hours, putting every thing back in your vehicle, driving 50, 60, 70 miles or more to do it all over again the next day.  You have to really like your job to do it for any length of time.

     Anyway, that was the circumstances that occurred when one night I was driving around the speed limit,  I won’t admit to going any faster, on a two lane highway in Oklahoma or Kansas, It was too long ago to remember exactly which.

     Anyway, it was one of those roads that goes up and down with the terrain and I think it was getting close to midnight comming up over a rise, there in the road ahead stood about 8 or 10 cows.  Needless to say, I slammed on brakes, and by the time I stopped skidding, I was about 15 or 20 feet away from them.  I think I must have left a lot of tread there.  The tires felt like they had a flat side for a month after that. 

     I was listening to my 8 track tape player,you can guess about how long ago that was, and if memory serves, the song that was playing was “Crossroads”.  Talk about irony.  Hum, another side track.  I guess that makes it a 9 track I was listening too’

      Back to my story.  Sitting there, looking at the cows, I blew my horn a couple of times.  All that accomplished was, the two cows closest to me raised their heads and glanced in my direction, lowered them again, and just stood there with the rest, like they were all asleep. 

     All the lights were out in the farm house, which could’t have been much more than a hundred yards away, and they never came on.  I could’t get anybody’s attention so I started easing my way through the bovine obstacle course wondering if I was going to make it through without one of them deciding to sit on my little Ford Pinto.  I’d really be in a fix if that happened.

     Well, I made it through with every one of them looking at me when I passed with a look that made me feel  like it wanted to stomp on me for disturbing them.

     After I got through, I blew the horn again, a few times, hoping someone in the farm house would hear me and come out to see what all the noise was about.  Nothing, no lights, no movement, no nothing.  I thought no one was at home, either that, or they were mighty sound sleepers, or dead.

     I drove on to the next town, which was close to two miles down the road.  I found a police officer on patrol and told him about it.  He said, I needed to go to the station and report it.  So, I did that, and when I finished, I went on my way with no further incidence.  A boring ending to a not so boring encounter.  I thanked GOD, because if my reflexes had been any slower, I would probably have wound up another oil slick on a back road in that state. 

                                                                               Harry