Ten-Finger Exercises

the Rotolactor

Friday's local paper featured a story about a 91 yr old man from our town who was one of the original "Borden Boys."

Chester Steen, who graduated with a degree in dairy husbandry from Washington State University in 1939, was one of sixty young men who cared for 150 purebred cattle in Borden's "Dairy World of Tomorrow" at the New York World's Fair. He worked an eight hour shift, grooming, cleaning, and working in the glass enclosed revolving platform where the cows were washed, dried and milked mechanically. It was called the Rotolactor.

The company icon Elsie had existed since the early 30's as a cartoon character, but during the fair, a cow was chosen to "be" Elsie. Steen said that the first two picks, a Holstein and an Ayrshire, didn't have what it took-- no charisma. The little Jersey who became Elsie was like no other. "She had a way about her, and she looked at people," he said. Chester's main duties became taking care of Elsie and the Rotolactor.

I bet you all didn't have headlines like that in your paper Friday, and that wasn't the little local paper with gossip columns that all have puns in the titles. That was the big paper. Kind of fun though, isn't it?

We just got home, having headed for the airport directly from church. We had a well stocked coffee hour to honor our church secretary who is leaving after fifteen years.
Church secretaries are under-appreciated and underpaid; she will be difficult to replace.

Despite the 98 degree weather, we hopped in the plane again today. Bill's boss called early this morning to say he'd bought a motorcycle in Spokane and needed to go get it, and were we by any chance flying there today? Well, we hadn't planned to, but I'm always happy to go see my daughter and her family; and since they were available to pick us up at the airport and let us take them out to lunch-- in their car-- how could we say no?

I didn't give up my front right seat in the plane this time though. The back seat is quite roomy, and Bill remembered there is a screen that can be pulled up to block the hot sun coming in the back window. The boss hadn't flown in a small plane before, and he was excited to see the wonderful view. He tried his hand at following our route on the chart, and discovered it wasn't as easy as he'd thought. He did well though, spotting grain elevators and power lines to show him where we were. I'm still bad at sighting landing strips and amazed when Bill sees them right away.