Idiom question

[Joseph Carson]

Like Bob Haas, I was raised on the "bleeding edge" of a suburban development in the
Midwest literally next door (across the asphalt street) from corn fields and
single-family beef ranches/farms that raised perhaps 60 head each, and we always
called the herds of animals bred there "cows" (even when our relatives worked at
the Wilson Meats slaughterhouse nearby, and corrected us citybillies ceaselessly,
but to no avail ... our stubborn refusal to differentiate was a badge of
proto-civic pride.)  The developments pushed the ranching families out, along with
market trends, I suppose, and it wasn't long before the stands of corn and soy were
paved over (with concrete) too.  This may be more than we want to go into on this
list, but even the staunchest metropolitan among us would distinguish between the
"head of cattle" bred for slaughter and the "herd of cows" bred for dairy.  The
fact that Holsteins and Frisians predominated on the milk-producing farms and
Jerseys (?) were raised on the ranches, and were as different to look at as say,
labs versus bulldogs, made it and easy matter for we "city folk" to tell which was
which in spite of ourselves.  Does this turn any other dialecticians crank, still?
However the spirit moo-ves you, RSVP. - Joseph Carson

Bob Haas wrote: While I didn't grow up on a farm, I grew up in a farming area near
my granddad's farm, and we all just said cows to refer to the group.  It was a
collective term,  BUT almost always that group was made up only of cows and
calves.  No bull.  A-hem, that is, the bulls were almost always segregated, except
for those very beautiful and special times. But we all still talked about the whole
caboodle as cows.