Big Stinky

"Up 't the lake," Austin said, "Lena used to have a Big Stinky*."

Austin deftly removed the plastic tubular hoses from the cow's udder. He moved to the next cow in line and hooked the nozzle on one end of the tube to the overhead pipeline. He attached the four valves on the other end to the teats and listened until his experienced ear told him that the milking machine was properly attached, then he turned his attention to me.

"She used it to catch flies. She'd put a dead fish in the jar, and the flies would be drawn to the fish smell. They'd dive into Big Stinky after the fish and would be trapped. They couldn't get out. It worked like a lobster trap."

I pictured a weather-beaten contraption with wooden slats and a funnel-type opening made out of pieces of rope and net. It was easy to see how a lobster couldn't get out of a trap without entangling its claws. But Big Stinky? Wouldn't the flies just fly out?

Austin looked at me and grinned. He moved down the double line of cows, alternately hooking four at a time to the milking tubes, squirting each teat with pink disinfectant, and wiping the udders with paper towels.

"The flies would dive in and get trapped. It was an amazing sight – and sound – all those flies zzzzzing around. Course, when the jar got filled, Lena'd have to clean it.

"Cousin Kendall and I knew it was time to clean out Big Stinky when Lena'd call out to us to go down to the lake for a Pungkin Seed."

"Why a Pumpkin Seed?"

Austin looked at me with what passed for tolerance, leaned in my direction, and said "Pungkin Seed," exaggerating the nasal sound. "Pungkin. It's a fish. Why these Pungkin Seeds would bite at anything. They had these sucker-shaped mouths; just drop a line in the water, they'd bite. We used to fish for them, catch them, and put 'em out on the rocks to dry."

"You didn't eat them?"

"Course not. They're full of bones. We'd be tryin' to fish for perch, but the perch wouldn't get a chance to bite unless you dropped the line right in front of 'em. The Sunfish would be right there..."

"Is a Sunfish a Pungkin Seed?" I interrupted, stressing the "ng."

"Mmhmm," Austin replied. "We were fishing for Pungkin Seed once when we ran out of bait. But Kendall had a sunburn. Kendall reached his right hand over his shoulder. He grasped a piece of skin and slowly, carefully, pulled off a long, narrow piece. The skin twisted as he held it in front of our faces."

Austin watched my face grimace at the details. He laughed in delight and continued, demonstrating as he talked. "With his thumbs and index fingers Kendall tore the skin in half, then said, 'Here's our bait.' It didn't take thirty seconds before the Pungkin Seeds were biting."

As he reached up to move the milk line once again, Austin gave me a sideways glance, then added, "It's true. We sat there all day tearing off pieces of skin and fishing."

I groaned as he unhooked the last tube from the pipeline and disappeared into the milk room. I had this image in my mind – of Kendall walking into the clear lake and rolling over to do the back float. Just under the surface of the water I could see strips of Kendall's sunburned skin dangling from his body. At the end of each piece of skin were little Pungkin Seeds hanging by their sucker-shaped mouths.

I followed Austin into the milk room, leaned against the cold, steel bulk tank, and spoke to him over the noise of the compressor and the sound of running water filling the set tub. "Austin, just what was this contraption Lena devised?"

"Oh, Lena didn't devise it. She bought it from the "Rawleigh" man. Came in a station wagon 'bout every three weeks. Took him forever to make all his rounds, though. He'd stop and chat with all the families on his route. All the kids loved to see him coming. He'd always have candy. Had a catalog with all his goods in it, too."

"Did he just have a catalog or did he carry things with him?" I asked.

"Oh, he had it right with him. Why, he had drawers the whole length of the station wagon. Even had sliding doors that he would move to get to stuff. Buttons and brooms. Why, he sold everything. Vanilla. And everything for pest control."

"Lena had this ongoing battle with flies. We think they're bad now, but, then, they were everywhere. They used to swarm all over the screen door. You couldn't open the door without letting them in. Lena had cotton batting stuck in the screen. She dowsed it with something..."

He stopped and stroked his bearded chin. "No, I don't remember what."

"... that would discourage the flies. It gave us an even chance to get in the house when we opened the door.

"Had flies all over the barn, too, so when the "Rawleigh" man came with Big Stinky, Lena bought one right away. And a Little Stinky, too. She kept Little Stinky at the house. Big Stinky, she kept on a stone wall near the barn -- to attract the flies away from the cows.

"Now, of course, we're cleaner in the barn, but, oh, back then, they really had a problem. When we milked by hand, the milk would foam at the top of the bucket. Why, those flies would cover the foam in no time. We had to put the milk through a strainer to strain out the flies. When the strainer got too full, we'd toss the liner out and start again. Then DDT came in and the flies disappeared. It was so effective that flies that were swarming around the cows outside would stop right at the barn door. The sprayed barns were free of flies for years. But, as they developed a tolerance, the flies gradually came back."

Austin pulled the last milking tube out of the hot, sudsy water, rinsed it, and hung it over a water pipe next to the others. I watched as he plunged one of the calf-feeding buckets into the water and scrubbed the insides and the oversized rubber nipple with a heavy brush. When he turned on the water again to rinse the bucket, he continued his story.

"Lena and Albert had a spring that supplied water to the house, then to the barnyard where it drained into a cistern with a building over it. In winter, Albert'd light a fire under one end to keep the water from freezing so the cows could drink. In summer the water was ice cold -- and always had algae in it. In summertime, campers came to the lake. Albert had poultry, too. When the hens quit laying, he'd sell them to the campers for meat. He'd go up to the hen house to get the ones not laying."

Austin set the rinsed buckets upside down to drain on the milk room floor, then he grabbed a push broom and headed back to the stalls.

"I don't know how Albert knew which ones weren't laying. But he'd bring them down, grab them by the hind legs..." He stopped sweeping, caught his misstatement, and laughed.

"He grabbed them by the legs. And hanged them by the feet. Then, Albert took a jack knife out of his pocket, opened it, and, very neatly, cut off their heads. It was all very efficient. They were already hanging so he was bleeding them at the same time.

"My job would be to go to the house to get hot water. I'd plunge the chickens in the water and pluck them. The hot water loosened the feathers. Albert kept the chickens cool by throwing' them in the water tub until the next day when the campers would come to pick them up.

"Course," Austin said as he went back to sweeping the matted bits of hay, the pink-stained paper towels, and cow droppings into the moving gutters, "we couldn't do that now, throw dead chickens in the water cows'll drink."

I asked Austin to take me out to Albert and Lena's but he didn't want to. It made him too sad, he said. So I went by myself.

I drove out of town, past picture-perfect rolling hills kept open by mowing and the grazing of black and white Holsteins and their smaller Jersey cousins. At the turn of the century over one hundred dairy farms were in town; now there were twelve. Most had succumbed to modern life: persuasion from aggressive lenders to take on more debt, build silos, buy equipment, acquire more land than could be managed; pressure from investors to partition and sell the land for house lots; decisions by children who wanted a different life. Some chose to stay, to hold on another year -- and then another, or to keep the land, but no longer farm. Others were victims of their own efficiency: too good at what they do, they were forced to grow bigger. On these now-corporate farms, once cows are attached to next-generation robotic milking machines, except for their gestation periods, they never see the outside.

The farms of the past, like Albert and Lena's were small family farms. They raised chickens, put up food for the family, sold eggs for pin money, sold milk for their living. Modern dairy farmers concentrate on milking. The twelve farms left in town ship more milk than one hundred farms did in 1900.

Albert and Lena's farm overlooking the lake is gone. Oh, the house is still there, looking like a ghost house, overgrown and unlived-in all these years. It's out of place in an area where everything is kept up, in an area that attracts so many summer people. There are no chickens, no cows. There's no sign of a barn. No sign of the stone wall where Lena'd set Big Stinky. I understood why Austin hadn't wanted to go back -- except in his story.

It was on my way home, though, that I remembered that laughing voice. I began to wonder if Austin wasn't grabbing me by the hind legs with his story. I began to doubt his tale of the flycatcher. So, I went to the library and found an old wire-service story about the "invention of the 'Big Stinky' fly trap which used a foul odor to lure flies by the quart." It was, simply, what Austin said it was: a jar, only, screwed onto the mouth, instead of a jar lid, was a funnel-like device wide at the top so flies could get in.

I checked the internet, too, to learn why the flies couldn't get out of Big Stinky. "The fly does not have sharp vision," the article said. But just as likely a reason the buzzing flies couldn't escape was because of the construction of their legs. For, the entry continued, "Flies must jump backward as they take off in order to fly away."

It took some doing but I finally found a Big Stinky and bought it for Austin. I was sure he'd have something to say about the modern Big Stinky being plastic, but I wasn't there when he opened it, and he never did say anything to me about it. I heard that he unwrapped it, baited it, and set it out by the barn. He hasn't called anyone, though, to go down to the lake for Pungkin Seeds.

*"Big Stinky" and "Little Stinky" are authorized products of Rawleigh.