Our Life On the Pond: August 2010

My father and I have breakfast out together every Sunday for almost 20 years now. After a good meal we take a ride and have seen many places, people and things tooling around southern Rhode Island. We especially like Beavertail on Jamestown as you never know how the Atlantic will be from week to week. From as calm as a mill pond to a raging, churning ocean each week we are visitors to a view well worth returning to...

We leave the mainland via the Jamestown Bridge and take the quiet roads to the lighthouse past the windmill, past Dutra and Windmist Farms on the left and Watson and Hodgkiss Farms on the right, whiz by the bait shop on the flats where the owner sits sipping a mug of coffee and proceed to the village. After stopping at the four way stop we pass The Secret Garden and several more shops to the corner and bear right to the causeway at Mackerel Cove....then past Fort Getty and onto Beavertail.

This week as we passed the garden shop...we saw a beautiful wooden two wheeled garden style cart with a young lady sitting atop this pony drawn cart....hit the brakes that was not a pony we passed by but a COW....a cow pulling a wagon...did we devour too many eggs...had that single slice of bacon clogged our cerebral arteries...were our optic nerves pinched....NO that cart was being pulled by a cow!!!!!

As we drove along Beavertail Road all we could talk about was what we just viewed....unbelievable...couldn't be...never saw this before...who would think a cow would do such a thing...why was this cow "trotting" down a public road pulling a wagon masquerading as a pony?

We did our usual sightseeing at the point and proceeded back over the same route. As we approached Fort Getty...there was that cow again pulling that young lady up Fort Getty Road to the farm.

I had my camera and Dad and I had a very strong desire to get up close and personal to this sight. Left blinker on and we proceeded just by the cart as it rolled along...put the van in park and out I jumped...sure enough this was a cow.

I was greeted by the most charming girl I have met in a very long time. I asked if I could take a picture and she not only agreed but stopped her cow and posed. She was so personable and chatty. Any question I asked she answered and was very patient in explaining. I asked her her cow's name and she told me Daisy..which made me smile but then said "So, I'm driving Miss Daisy"...now I laughed...I like this kid! I asked where she was returning from and she had been to breakfast in town at of course a little restaurant called "A Slice of Heaven". I explained to her that my niece Emily belongs to 4-H and has a cow she shows at fairs. She told me she does not show cows but raises dairy cows for milking. She wanted me to tell Emily, that cows are very easy to train but most important - "Anything a horse can do...a cow can do better"

So there you have it....when you think you have seen it all...a charming young lady and her cow show up to prove you wrong!!!!!

Driving Miss Daisy on a beautiful August Sunday morning....