Saturday, January 4, 2014

Tales From an Accounting Book: Who Would Name a Cow Oscar?

      Well, my Dad would name a cow Oscar!

       In the accounting book my Mom and dad used for their farm was a place for inventory. Mom listed the cattle - by name.  So the names of six cows were listed. Small farmers with only a few cows gave the cows names.

      So how come a cow gets named Oscar? That's the story.

      My Dad started his farm in 1935. So most people know that this was in the depths of the depression. At the time many farmers were broke and had to sell and move somewhere else. There weren't big fancy moving vans. They had an auction sale and sold most of their belongings. These auction sales were not highly successful as very few people had any money to buy things.

     This is where my Dad stepped in. Things sold very cheaply on these sales. Dad would buy things on these sales. No two chairs in Dad's house were the same. He bought them on auction  sales for probably ten cents a chair! His dishes and pots and pans where the same. No set of dishes for him. Lots of cups and saucers but none of them matched.

    Now back to the cow. He bought the odd cow on a sale. He would name the cow after the person who had the auction sale. So Oscar was a cow that he bought on Oscar's sale. He also had a Neufy, Lowdy, Strong and Burr...and maybe a few I've forgotten about. 

    He also had a horse called Teddy and  a very ancient model T truck that he got by trading a cow?

    So there's a story I found by looking in Mom and Dad's farm account book. By the way, I don't remember the cow called Oscar.