When I was a kid, our family kept cows. Well, never more than two or three at a time. Never enough to be called a herd.

Our cow was a holstein, a large, docile, relatively dull-witted black and white spotted thing. She looked exactly like what you pictured in your head when you read the word “cow.”

At one time or another we’d kept pretty much every animal on the farm See and Say – chickens, goats, sheep, a pony – so cows seemed a natural progression. We’d bought her fully grown for $150 from a dairy farm that was closing down. My dad milked her by hand twice a day for the first week and then went back to the farm and bought its automated milking machine for another $150.

Most people don’t know this about cows, but they aren’t perpetual milk producers. They are “fresh” for a few months after calving. If we wanted milk, that meant she had to be pregnant a lot. The purpose of the offspring was to eventually become dinner.²

My dad, being who he was, preferred to butcher the cow himself. This usually happened sometime in December or January for reasons related to cold weather providing natural refrigeration. To get ready, my dad had put a crossbeam about 20 feet up between to y-shaped trees and slung a cable over it. To those who didn’t know, it looked like we had a gallows in front of our house. In a way, there was.

Then there was the matter of – there’s simply no nice way to put this – killing the cow. My uncle was to be the trigger man.

Uncle Hap – Hubert Allen Putney – was my dad’s older brother by about a decade and a half. Even in middle age he was a grizzled character who was part Lawrence Tierney and part John Wayne. He’d lied about his age to join the Army in World War II. He’d gone ashore on D-Day at Omaha Beach¹ and still walked with a limp from several Nazi machine gun bullets he took in his legs on D-Day plus-4.

He was as tough as nails and had, on occasion, been known to beat the shit out of someone for this reason or another. Then again, he might just give you the shirt off his back.

He was also a man with guns. He seemed the natural choice to carry out the killing.

He’d brought his gun along in a box. Because of the situation – close range – he’d chosen a small caliber revolver – probably a .22 or .38. He also brought a selection of large knives because the animal had to be bled out immediately or the meat would be tainted.

The plan was simple: Put some bread on the ground and when the cow put its head down, shoot it. Then bleed it out and prep it to be dressed.

The first part of the plan went well.

My uncle went to the middle of the paddock, the cow bent its head down as expected and my uncle fired three times – crack crack crack – in quick succession at point blank range into the cow’s forehead. There was a pause, and then the cow looked up, shook its head and walked away.

My uncle was incensed. He stormed back from the pasture in his half-limping gait, cussing under his breath every obscenity my parents would normally not allow me to hear. He grabbed the biggest knife from the box and stalked back out toward the cow.

He met the creature within seconds. He reached up over its neck and wrapped his left arm all the way around the cow’s thick neck for leverage. The half-ton cow, having already been exasperated enough for one day, tried to toss my uncle loose. He held on as he reached down with his other hand and slit the cow’s neck, sending blood spraying all over him and the meadow.

And with that, the deed had been done.

I often tell people I come from a very different place than they do.

It’s a place where people don’t wear Dickies because they’re “authentic” or trucker hats because they are ironic. It’s a place where people own a lawn mower that costs as much as Mercedes C-class and a gun rack is a valid decorating choice.

True, I also went to a suburban high school in the go-go Reagan ’80s. I listened to Depeche Mode and loved to play with computers. Even now I’m an Apple Watch and hipster T-shirt wearing guy with a tech job.

But in many ways I’m actually from a different time. It’s just who I am.

1. In the landing craft before he went ashore, his sergeant had everyone in his platoon draw a card from a deck. My uncle got the ace of spades. When he died peacefully while reading the paper at 85, his family found the card in his wallet.
2. Some may be appalled at this notion, but what I’m describing here is called “farming,” which has been done since before recorded history.