Gas Pains

Who is Going to Milk the Cows?

Posted by Tom Gaertner on Jan. 28, 2016

Culture, Politics, Racism, How to Lose an Election

One of the benefits of living in or visiting rural America is the small town grocery.  Not so big to be most things to all people but small enough to meet most of a community’s basic needs and specialize in local tastes.   

I know of a grocery in a very small town that has been owned by the same family for several generations.  There is a bakery, tiny produce department, four isles, a couple of checkout lanes and a magnificent butcher counter.  You know – the kind with a glass case – where you can pick out your own steak, chop or roast.  And where you might also find all sorts of homemade sausages and their signature smoked bacon sliced to order.  It is the sort of joint where you are on a first name basis with familiar faces and names behind the counter, in the bakery, the cutting room floor or stocking shelves.  Custom slaughter is perfect for a farming community or if you need a pig to roast for your family reunion.  Just ask my friends - when they visit they generally return home with a couple of porketta roasts, several pounds of bacon, brats, cube steaks, Belgian trippe and sometimes an entire pork belly.

I visit at every opportunity and am looking forward to reducing a couple of humongous smoked pork hocks into navy bean soup this winter.

In any event I came calling recently and found myself at the checkout behind a Hispanic family consisting of mom, dad and four children.  Nobody was speaking a lick of English and aside from a handful of sundry items the family’s major purchase was a large box of what I would describe as frozen pig parts.  Namely ears, snouts, feet and loin trimmings.  These are rather unfamiliar fare for me and probably most of my readers so perhaps this is an ethnic group’s preferred pork delicacies or maybe a family on a budget.

You’re probably wondering what the heck a family of Hispanic origin is doing in northeast Wisconsin.  And my response to you would be that individuals from south of the border are commonly employed in dairy operations.  Milking cows three times a day is dirty, difficult and dangerous work.  And the labor pool to fill this job is quite small among the indigenous population.  Frankly, a small number of native locals succeed in running large dairy operations, a much larger number succeed in the supply chain but very few are interested in doing the grunt work at the very bottom of the labor pyramid.

What is not secret – but is rarely spoken aloud – is if you removed the immigrant labor the dairy industry would be hard-pressed to replace it.

So as I was observing the family of non-English speaking, brown skinned individuals leave with their big box of pork parts the thought crossed my mind – might the adults be documented or undocumented workers?

And I immediately concluded - I don't think anybody really gives a rip.  They’re milking the cows and it’s not like a bunch of us white guys want anything to do with that sort of work.  Everyone in the county already knows they’re not taking a job that the locals are lining-up to perform.

So here we are.  We are witness to a presidential primary campaign channeling fears, racial, cultural and class insecurities into anger and demagoguery.  Using the inflammatory rhetoric of rounding-up millions upon millions of brown-skinned, Hispanic individuals, holding them in internment camps pending their mass deportation a thoroughly unsavory personality has whipped-up a strident following.

I have a question.

If this comes to pass has anybody given any thought to who is going to milk the cows?