David doesn’t know much about cows.

[David Kirkham]

Gentlemen:

Today is a beautiful day. Nice warm weather and we were all working outside…when a neighbor rode up on his bike—we all held our breath. We are pretty careful with the neighbors as we play with some very “nice” (loud) sounding vehicles—as do our employees. Ducati, slammed Focus, Kirkhams running around…you get the picture. Our shop is in a rural area of Provo which is now being developed and we can’t get away with nearly what we could in the past and we don’t want to irritate the neighbors. Farms are mixed in with new housing developments in our area now so we have a very wide cross-section of society here by us.

Anyway, the neighbor arrived just as I was pulling a new car off of the Polish shipping rack with a forklift. He was wearing knee-high boots for irrigation—or worse—and had obviously had a long, hard life as a farmer as evidenced by his deep sunburn, weathered arms, and tough-as-nails face. (Sunburned in April, mind you, in a state where it snows into May!)

He began asking questions about our cars as he said he had seen them driving by over the years. I told him all about our company in Poland and showed him around the shop. He was actually quite friendly and seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing.

The conversation turned to him and what he did—as I was doing my best to be a friendly neighbor. He told me he was a farmer and where he lived. I asked him what he raised and he told me “dairy cows and hay to feed em.” He told me about farming and how he hoped the milk prices would go up this year. He told me about “fresh” cows, (cows that just had their first calf) and “ornery” cows that don’t want to be milked any longer so they turn them into hamburger—me asking dumb questions all the time, mind you.) He told me that lately they have been taking the ovaries out of cows to make their meat taste better. I asked him if you could still milk a cow if the ovaries were removed and he sort of laughed and said if a cow doesn’t have a calf it won’t produce milk and they can’t have a calf if they don’t have ovaries. (I guess humans are the same way, but never thought about with cows.) Dumb me.

Thomas then fired up Jorgen Moller’s car with Southern Automotive’s big 500 CID stroker and the earth began shaking like a Los Angeles earthquake.

A big smile came across his face and he yelled, “I was hoping you’d do that…You know, you sure don’t know much about cows…but I do admire your horsepower!” He then got back on his bike with a big smile, waved and rode off.

David