When early European explorers first
landed on the shores of what we now call America, they knelt
and gave thanks to the Lord for leading them to this amazing
Eden.
The clear streams and forestland seemed
to go on forever. A day’s walk was barely perceptible on
the colonial “stroll bars” that indicated
one’s progress through a new territory (similar to the
scroll bar on a computer today).
“It’s bigger than
Luxembourg,” they reported to the astonished folks at
home, but you know how folks are: it was necessary to establish
the actual square footage of this most generous gift. This was
a challenge, because pacing it off, even with frequent beer
breaks, quickly grew tiresome, and they had no immigrant labor
to put in the long hours.
So they devised an ingenious device for
traveling long distances. This was known as the railroad, a
system of steel tracks that accommodated a rolling, belching
contraption they called a locomotive. By loading themselves and
their possessions into cars that were towed by such a
locomotive (Latin for “crazy intentions”), they
could easily reach the farthest shores of the vast land, which
was populated (in a people sense) only by friendly and colorful
natives who met them at every stop, bearing little bags of
coupons and diapers and other materials to welcome them to the
neighborhood.
But there was one problem with their
exploration.
Cows.
These days it may be hard to imagine, but
in the 1500s, cows roamed the plains with such dominating force
that early settlers could not find an acre to call their own.
Native Americans had a pragmatic way of dealing with these
swaggering brutes: protection money. They offered small bright
beads, known as wampum, thereby fixing the cattle in a
provider-client relationship. Annoyingly, this meant pretending
that “the cow [as customer] is always right,” but
the cows soon had an unspoken dependency on the people. Thus
was peace achieved.
The European population had nothing so
alluring as wampum, or at least they lacked the marketing
skills to create the illusion thereof. So after repeated
railroad forays into the incipient nation’s heartland,
they determined that getting rid of the cows was the only way
to forge what they had already begun to think of as “our
country ’tis of thee.”
But how to get rid of the cows? They were
everywhere! The whole country was like Grand Central Station on
Thanksgiving, with severe flatulence. Many of us can sympathize
all too keenly.
These brave pilgrims did not lose heart.
Remembering that Galileo’s mind would soon spring from
European stock, they knew they were capable of outsmarting the
wicked beasts. What if they were somehow to trap the cows, to
lure them into pens and thus control them? Perhaps, with time,
even to breed a square cow for more convenient packing and
shipping?
A snap trap, as was used on squirrels and
anteaters, obviously would not do the job. Simon Pierce was
flogged for this stupid suggestion (still, several streets were
named after him in the cities of the new nation). Finally,
forging Yankee ingenuity as a byproduct, the industrious
invaders came up with the simple but marvelous contraption we
now see on every Sunday drive in the country.
It took only a narrow ramp, leading into
a pit of Fritos, to conquer the cow and bring into being the
United States of America. It was merely a matter of time before
the entire world was well under our control.
