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Spending summers at my grandfather and uncle's pedigreed Shorthorn cattle farm in the Hiawatha River Valley of southeastern Minnesota was a marked contrast from where I lived on Victory Memorial Drive in Northwest Minneapolis. Contrasting, too, for a city kid, was hauling the showiest of these red, white, and roan Durhams from the Hiawatha slopes to the livestock edifices of the fairgrounds in Falcon Heights. Nevertheless, the fairgrounds were not just a simulacrum of contrasts; they also sparked a symmetry, which enabled my divergent past of urban and rural life to coalesce and interpret one another. For me, the fairgrounds were a hermeneutic reserve for meditation and reverie. Shorthorns usually bed in one of three locations at the fairgrounds: the Judging Arena, the Cattle Annex, or the redoubtable Cattle Barn, or "the Barn," as we called it, where multitudes of Minnesotans have bunked on warm August nights either in the upstairs dorm or within the first floor allies between the cattle. My preferred stay was the Barn. Here reposes a palazzo for cattle. In this preponderant structure, thousands - breeders and curious fairgoers alike - file their way past aisles of Ayrshires, Red Polls, Jerseys, Guernseys, Charolais, Angus, Simmentals, Milking Shorthorns, Brown Swiss, and Holsteins, scanning the Barn's floor to traverse only the white sawdust. When he was not grooming the herd, my cousin and I loved descrying this perpetual parade of people. Strollers, lovers, crying kids, teens, gangs, families, bored, singles, cranky, wheelchairs, athletes, and winsome, all ambled their way from Stevens Street, between the Swine and Cattle Barns, through the Barn to Uggett Street, between the Barn and Hippodrome. Wave after wave, the spectacle did not arrest till nightfall. Then, the Barn lulled, and the only sounds were the murmur of blowing fans and an occasional cavernous bellow. In its nightly quietude, the Barn transformed into an imposing and haunting mausoleum. On Show Day, we fought our way through the Barn's center walkway with spit-shined bulls and heifers haltered behind us. We crossed the breezy, fenced off Uggett Street and entered the western tunnel of the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome's russet organic floor and eerie pneumatic fans above insured the vault's monastic silence, broken only by the lowing of bovine, the echoing public address, or the eruption for a Grand Champion. When it is finished, we are exhausted. Lager is about to flow like the Saint Croix. Tensions are easing and mistakes forgotten. The day's war stories await the evening. Soon, after Show Day, it is time to send the Shorthorns back to their storied pastures along the bluffs of Winona County. The semi rolls in, and, under my breath, I bid adieu to those who have depended on me for water, forage, and herdsmanship. As I make my way back to Victory.
This page was last updated on January 18, 2005
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