Martha Cooney

My friend Pete and I were talking to a guy who worked in nuclear energy. Pete started talking about the industry and the guy asked if he also worked in nuclear energy. Pete said, “I dabble.”

 

If you’ve been paying attention – and I hope you have – you’ve probably figured out by now that I dabble in farm. Last week I went to a county fair to scratch the itch. 

 

The 4-H animal entries were in long barns; I went to the pigs first. They were all asleep in their pens, legs tangled up sweet with each other; a hoof on a partner’s face. A porcelain-pink swine named Gucci lay on her side with legs draped careless and artful while she dreamed. I could tell looking at those hooves that they had never worked a day in their life. Her neighbor rested his head half inside an empty feed container like a human who’d slurped just enough milk not to drown before he fell asleep into his mixing bowl of Froot Loops.

 

The pigs were clean and glowing but had nothing on the sheep zone, a day spa post-treatment recovery room filled with freshly shorn beauty-culture victims naked and vulnerable under ponchos, and you should know that the ponchos were not terry-cloth. The whole bachelorette party had been stripped, plucked, waxed, threaded, trimmed, buzzed, and balmed. Their legs were mummy-wrapped. I saw a sheep with a cotton face mask; then a pen full of them in matching hoods with cutouts for eyes, mouth, and nose. I felt unsafe. One pink-bellied guy in his birthday suit must have been at the end of the line when the ponchos ran out. He blinked at me and with my eyes I reminded him to just imagine everyone else without their underwear. 

 

The cows were in the game too. At the end of the dairy row a well-groomed man led by example for his well-groomed cow. He ran an electric clipper over the cow’s ripped six-pack and silently delivered to the animal the same success mantra he thought-yelled during his own five-step morning face care routine. An eyebrow-model woman arrived with the energy of an ER surgeon, positioned herself on a milking stool, grabbed another trimmer and jumped into action on the cow’s rear section. Two shiny twin Dutch braids hung down her back. Across from the power couple, a man held a bedpan under his cow. 

 

I fell in love with a dreamy doe-eyed brown cow peeled straight from the label on a silver-packaged soft cheese. Kids sat in the pens and used their cows for beanbags; a tween propped socked feet on hers like an ottoman and moved head and shoulders to her music. A family with five little kids camped in webbed folding chairs next to their cow and ate sandwiches from a bright-color tupperware box and dried mango from an economy-size Great Value bag. I ticked Practice Voicing Your Opinions off today’s list and decided the prettiest cow in the place was one named Toast, marbled brown and creamy white. To hit two birds with one stone and Take Time to Savor Everyday Joys I looked back for another view. She let out a stream of excrement. 

 

I’d never been to a goat show, so I lurked behind the bleachers while the kids lined up with the kids (HAHAHA. Get it?) The polished-young-adult judge, who looked like she’d just come from back-to-back meetings to vote on a township board recycling bin controversy and to organize her sister’s bridal shower, respectively, called for the leashed goats to enter the ring. Some – like so many of us – needed a tush push. The judge paraded a trio of contestants in a circle and then lined them in a row, where the human kids positioned the animals’ back legs to pose the goats like Christmas figurines. Then she massaged each goat’s belly, I guess to look for evidence of performance-enhancing drugs, and zinged one goat with an authoritative “Needs a little more finish.” 

 

In the second round there was a little ginger goat with a blown-out beard that was either hair extensions or sad proof that the goat paid more attention to deep-conditioning than I ever did. This goat had self-respect and a luxury regimen. “What? Can’t hear you! I’m in the sunken tub sprinkled with lavender! Can you actually bring me some alfalfa and a tin can for a palate cleanser? Make it substantial this time – not a tuna!” 

 

The goat’s beard silked and smirked around the ring and the judge called its owner (the goat, not the human) “confirmationally sound.” Next to Glowed-Up-Rasputin, a young teenage girl with a red braid tried to restrain a spotted goat doing the hokey pokey. The judge walked in a slow, dramatic circle around the lineup and Braid Girl’s goat tried to bolt. She and the goat fought for power and she dragged it back to their spot, death-gripped the leash, and gritted out a smile. I am living my nightmare but my game face is on. 

 

At this point I was buckled into an emotional sidecar for the rest of Braid Girl’s journey. Her goat pulled and she pulled back. He romped in a circle and she chased and restrained. She planted her feet and stood straight and tall, fake-beaming like a Broadway dancer whose costume is coming apart at the back. She looked like she was doing some frantic mind-to-mind arguing.  

 

BRAID GIRL: Stop it, Sprinkles! Do you realize how you’re making me look?

 

SPRINKLES strains northward. 

 

BRAID GIRL: We practiced this a million times!

 

SPRINKLES prances. 

 

BRAID GIRL: YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE!

 

SPRINKLES: RUMSPRINGAAAAAAAAAAA!

 

The judge called results and Braid Girl rushed her loser goat off stage and immediately yelled into the face of another teen. I couldn’t tell who she was blaming for Sprinkles’ unfocused performance but from her arm motions she was blaming somebody. Then she switched goats, put a determined face on and walked her next entry into the ring.

 

Her second goat pretended to be compliant and then as soon as the judge started pacing he started hopping. Braid Girl clenched her jaw. The judge reminded the crowd to remember that for this round “I’m looking at meat” because “They’re going to butcher.” The other goats stood passive. 

 

Braid Girl’s goat leapt and kicked in protest like a union organizer on a cafeteria table. They may take our lives, but they’ll never take OUR FREEDOMMMMMMM! The judge declared another guy Champion Meat Goat and Best in Show. Braid Girl didn’t fall in with the orderly exit line of patient goats; she picked hers up underbelly and carried it grimly out of the ring like a watermelon.

 

I hoped Braid Girl would direct the operation when the robots took over one day because at least she’d put up a fight. I walked off the adrenaline past a row of ribbon-winning chickens across from the chicken-dinner tent. 

 

I headed for the home goods competition barn full of petunia and pie entries. Regal alpacas along the way sat near a sign: “PLEASE NO DOGS NEAR THE ALPACAS.” The PLEASE was underlined, which made me think there’d been at least two previous incidents: one that resulted in the sign, then one that resulted in underlining the PLEASE. What next? An exclamation point? By the home goods barn a man polished the hoof of a confident horse. The horse munched hay like a classic multitasker. When I get a pedicure I spend the first half fiddling with the massage chair buttons and the second half slumped like the dead body in Weekend at Bernie’s. 

 

In the barn, I looked at shelves of baking powder biscuits, yeast rolls and zucchini bread. I wish I’d seen the winners announced: who was too flushed with excitement when they snagged best peanut butter fudge and went too quickly to the podium, revealing just how much self-esteem had been at stake; who raised eyebrows at a friend next to them when Debbie Grundy (third year in a row) (wife of the fair’s co-chair) (“I don’t share my recipes”) won the cinnamon roll division. On the “Jarred and Preserved” shelf, a handwritten comment card on a marmalade read in careless lowercase “too runny but tastes good” for the recipient to tape above their kitchen counter and stare at through the cold days of winter when they rose at 5 a.m. to tinker with their process. 

 

These judges lived the secret dream of every layman who gives a postgame breakdown analysis of the dryness level of a Thanksgiving turkey for thirty days until it’s time to cover the Christmas ham. I remembered earlier in the summer when I walked around a garden-clubs flower show at the Jersey shore; works of art running for best viola arrangement or Hawaiian-themed shadow box. In the Tea Tray division – dainty bouquet arrangements with accessories on a tray – cards written in brutal cursive picked on each entry: Lacks and needs and crowded and unnecessary. Then I saw the blue ribbon winner, a bowl of pink roses with a demure napkin. The card said: Oh Jackie, how elegant! 

 

My gut feeling is never wrong. The first name basis was suspicious. It smelled like familiarity. There was more going on than met the eye. 

 

At the fair there was no comment at all on an American flag cake, striped with canned cherries, blueberries and whipped cream and hacked and hawed at under plastic wrap: not a clean slice to showcase a layered interior but a messy line that screamed prankster sneaking bits after hours to slowly replicate the Belgium border.

 

I strolled the vegetable table: potted chili peppers, three-foot rhubarb, two eggplants in love on a plate. A basket of beautiful onions capped off the last row. Against the wall a table was set apart with a “Vegetable Freak” category: a double pumpkin that shared one stalk and some horned eggplants. 

 

Down the other end of the table, past a gap of empty space, was a sparse arrangement: a small paper plate of strawberries, an unidentified runt melon, and a single beet. 

 

The strawberry plate had an official typed “Vegetable” entry card attached. The handwritten judge’s comment on the card said, “not a vegetable.” 

 

The note on the beet’s card said, “nice but not too special see other beets.”

 

The note on the melon’s said, “not worthy.”

 

The entry cards had people’s names on them. Poor Cruthers, Amelia, who couldn’t read the fine print. Poor O’Malley, Francis and her once-proud beet. Most crushingly, poor Thompson, Margaret and her melon. (I’ve changed names here. They’ve been humiliated enough.) 

 

It was like in grade school when you got in trouble and had to stand against the cafeteria wall during recess. See what happens to those who misbehave! Let this be a warning to ye all! 

 

I identified with being called out in public for failure. Go onstage on a regular basis in front of a crowd waiting to be entertained by you and a single microphone and you start to take bombing like a calcium supplement (bone up, ladies!) 

 

When I started getting paid to go onstage I didn’t question if it was for summer camp tweens or on a barroom stage built from milk crates. A paycheck is a paycheck, am I right? At my first paid appearance the clipboard person sandwiched me between a ballet performance and an opera segment like room-temperature Miracle Whip soggying two slices of artisanal sourdough. The crowd was classy enough to tolerate it, which is worse than a heckle. If you want to make a comedian cry into their blowup mattress go up to them after a show with guidance-counselor eyes and say earnestly, “I could relate to the part about having a flat tire,” followed by an encouraging “Good for you for getting up there.” 

 

I got a gig once at an over-produced event at a private rooftop swim club in a neighborhood where you could buy a hundred-dollar candle and bring a small dog to its talk-therapy session all on the same block. For some reason the pool club – at nobody’s request – had booked, on a Saturday afternoon, some bring-culture-poolside entertainment with a DJ, solo musical artists, and me, to tell a story.

 

My work is best received by a minimally edgy slash NPR crowd after sunset. The twentysomething PR girls and aspiring realtors packed around the pool were there to pound liquor at 2 p.m, not to listen to five minutes of wordplay around a mildly humorous mishap. I took the mic and addressed my performance to the one woman who was swimming. The hundreds of others carried on with their lives. 

 

A girl in sunglasses and an open breezy long-sleeve over a bikini crossed right in front of me on a trip to the bar and sent a You signed up for the talent show? Gross look. I was halfway through my bit when she came back with her drink. As she passed she said, with the tone of We’ve had enough but the volume of Somebody call an ambulance, “SHUUUUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP.”

 

I finished and returned to my lounge chair station for my tote bag. Should I go over and give her an open-handed slap? (Somehow more insulting than a punch.) I chose the road less traveled. She’d spoken the truth, and I agreed with her: in the natural order, I should not be talking in this place, and I should shut up. Wish I could, girlfriend! It was the same as when I took too long to parallel park on Philly’s main thoroughfare and a guy called out “Dumbass” as he zipped around me. I nodded in agreement. It wasn’t an aggression or even a put-down. It was an observation, a neutral naming of facts, like “It’s raining.”

 

I grew six eggplants and some cherry tomatoes this year and I’m not going to show them to anybody because comedy is nothing compared to domestic-competition people who might write a salty takedown in ink and display it publicly. An honest criticism serves the greater good but their brand of things could send a person to a dark place. Besides, I already ate the eggplants. 

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