Milk, Hamburger, and Ice Cream
Walker-Gordon Farm, Plainsboro, New Jersey. 1967.
"It's a cow merry-go-round!"
"No, it's the Rotolactor."
Noses pressed against the glass panel, my four-year-old sister and I stare down at the brown-and-white cows standing on a slowly revolving platform below. Behind us are my father and mother, my baby sister in her arms.
"What are they doing to them?" I ask, pointing at a man hooking up a machine a cow.
"They're milking them. See the milk comes out of the cow, through the tubes, and into that tank up there."
I shrug, not really believing her. I am five years old. I believe milk comes from the bottles we buy at the store, not from these huge animals.
Water sprays out of hoses above the cows; it streams off the cows'
backs, runs along grooves in the floor, and disappears through drainage holes. The cows stand motionless except for their chewing jaws and an occasional flick of their tails.
"The cows are getting a bath," I surmise.
As abruptly as it started, the spray of water ends. The cows continue revolving slowly below us, but I am getting bored with the sight, so I look around the observation room. The walls are lined with large, decorative porcelain tiles with pictures of cows on them. Opposite the observation window where we are standing is a dairy bar; other kids, lucky kids, are walking away with cups of ice cream.
My mother senses that my sister and I are losing interest in the Rotolactor and so attempts to interject some drama into the spectacle. "Look, down there! That cow isn't giving much milk. Maybe they'll have to turn her into hamburger."
My head snaps back to the window, and I gaze at the cow below in horrified fascination. "C'mon cow! You can do better than that," I urge her on, as the platform turns and she disappears from sight.
Finally it is time to go, but I don't want to leave until I am sure my cow is out of danger. I watch cow after cow hove into view as the Rotolactor slowly revolves...but which one is mine? They all look alike to me.
"There she is," my mother says. "Don't worry about her, honey. Look, there's a lot more milk in the tank now."
I squint through the glass at the cow my mother is pointing at. I still don't recognize the cow, but I want to believe my mother's reassurances.
I hadn't noticed that my father had disappeared, but now he has returned from the dairy bar with small paper cups of vanilla ice cream. He helps my sister and me peel the lid off the top. We eat our ice cream with flat, wooden spoons. It is the best part of our visit to Walker-Gordon, in my opinion.
Viewed by more than eight million visitors to the 1939 World's Fair, Walker-Gordon's Rotolactor was a hit at the Borden Company's exhibit. After the World's Fair, the Rotolactor was returned to Walker-Gordon, where it remained in operation until 1971. Suburban sprawl has claimed most of the farmland in Plainsboro, but the interested visitor can still visit the grave of the original Elsie the cow, the Borden mascot.