Good bras make for good neighbors

Forget borrowing a cup of sugar; when “country” neighbors come over, they bring a cup of trouble.

Even in my sleepy little corner of Small Town America we still get our fair share of scandalous excitement every now and then, like the time my brother’s mail was accidentally delivered to the neighbor lady’s mailbox and he had to explain the subscriptions to both Playboy and Sheep & Goat magazines.

Or the time my father’s mangy, mongrel tramp-dog with religious objections to birth control got caught on a home security camera as he knocked up a registered-with-papers lady dog down the street, and then ate a few of the neighbor’s prized, thoroughbred chickens before he skipped town.

And every so often, you get to catch a glimpse of one of your neighbors naked.

The phone rang early that morning, and it was a bovine-related complaint.

“Y’all missing some cows?” said the nice neighbor lady. “Because I got a few extra in my rose bushes.”

Sure enough, there’s the whole herd right in her front yard. The heifers are ripping off rose buds and trampling tulips and that testy old bull is munching on the gladiolas.

In situations like this, when the hogs or cows escape the family farm and get into trespassing trouble, my birth mother considers herself a bit of a livestock whisperer. (I call her my birth mother because I’m still hoping a new mother will adopt me after the humiliating incident that followed.)

According to my mother, there is only one proper way to round up a bunch of rogue rose-bush-eating cows. The technique involves Momma sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, dressed only in a flimsy nightgown, her legs unshaven and bristly, hair curlers atop her head, holding a bucket of shelled corn and using her special cow-calling technique that not only attracts cows but the laughter and stares of the neighbors.

Based on previous history, in times like this Momma may or may not be wearing a bra; if she is wearing a bra, it ain’t the good one she wears to church – this one appears to have lost its structural integrity.

I’m driving the Ford because Dad is at work and Momma said she’d whip me if I didn’t. Soon, nosy heads are poking out of doors at every house along the dirt road. I hunker down in the driver’s seat, embarrassed.

“Come on, baby, come on!” (That’s how Momma calls a cow in our ‘hood, even if their name isn’t Baby.) More calling, accompanied by rhythmic shaking of corn and beating on the side of the corn bucket, nightgown flapping in the breeze, with something unmentionable shaking beneath the gown all cattywampus like. (Momma got a “lift job” done on one of her boobs a while back, the left one, and plans to get the other done when she gets enough egg money saved up.)

Flap, shake, flap, shake. Something bounces out of the nightgown – yep, it’s old Leftie. Now it’s official: Momma is definitely not wearing a bra. I break the rear-view mirror trying to turn it far enough away that my eyes will stop burning. One retina may already be permanently damaged.

“Baby, baby, come on! Come home, my babies, come on!” Flap, shake, flap. Bounce, bounce. Left and right and something is doing the hokey pokey in that nightgown, but I ain’t looking back lest I turn to stone like Lot’s wife in the Old Testament.

The cows start plodding along behind us, a country caravan of trouble, mooing loudly in tune with the calling and the shaking and the bouncing and the retching of the driver. I sink down a little deeper behind the steering wheel so I can’t see Momma and the neighbors can’t see anything but my blood-red, embarrassed forehead, until we can return all of the strays back to our green pastures and I can pack my bags to run away from home in shame and trauma.

Thankfully, Momma’s cow-wrangling career ended after this incident. Cousin Willie (no relation) had just climbed from his shower and realized that all his clean clothes were hanging outdoors on the backyard clothesline. As we often do in the country when we have a reasonable expectation of privacy, he dashed out wearing nothing more than a washcloth to snatch what laundry he needed and scoot back inside.

About that time, Willie noticed three things: an ugly bull with rose petals on his chin staring at his naked hide; a plume of dust drawing closer, coming from a pickup traveling down the dirt road; and he had somehow locked himself out of his mobile home.

We rounded the corner just in time to see the naked south end of Willie hanging from a window on the north end of the trailer, legs kicking madly and buttocks shining a gleaming white in the afternoon sun, and he appeared to be stuck in the window hole like an overfed puppy in a doggie door.

I whipped the truck around so suddenly I slung Momma out, along with bucket, the spare tire, and $450 dollars’ worth of Dad’s tools, and sped off in a whirlwind of dust. The National Weather Service later reported a small tornado sighting near Speed Limit Road, but it was just a false alarm.

There is a quaint, country expression: “until the cows come home.” If there is a moral to this story, it’s that cows will come home when they get good and ready.

And good bras, like good cow fences, make for good neighbors.

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