Go Retire Psychiatrist

It’s the last day of Cow Week and Mike Waters is doing his wake-up call this morning. And he announced that today is National Donut Day! I had no idea. He’s wondering whether there are any bakeries in Eastern Iowa that could get a shout-out for it. I had to look this up on the web, because I have visited Hurts Donut at 1301 E. Fifth St in Coralville, Iowa. What are they doing today?

According to the Iowa Press Citizen, to which I don’t have a paid subscription so I can access it just this once for the day), Hurts Donut is baking a lot of donuts today. They will be donating a portion of today’s profits to me, no, no, no, I’m just pulling your leg! Actually, they’ll donate part of their profits to “10 different charities that benefit current and former military members.” OK, so they’re not exactly “local.” They got started in the Midwest in Springfield, Missouri.

So, Mike talked about the Little Chocolate Donuts fake commercial sketch with John Belushi—which I’ve never seen or maybe I just don’t remember it. I looked it up on a Facebook page that didn’t block me, and it first aired in 1977. I think I may be excused for just learning about this today because in 1977, the high point of my life was getting married to Sena. We’ve been married over 48 years and it’s been more interesting than donuts, to say the least!

But there is a poster in the Coralville, Iowa Hurts Donut which has John Belushi on it! They make great donuts. I got a box of donuts for the residents and medical students years ago when I was still running all over the University of Iowa Health Care hospital as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist.

We also got another warning from Mike that cows can be dangerous. That’s true, but whenever I think about my encounter with cows back when I wore a younger man’s clothes working for Wallace, Holland, Kastle, & Schmitz (WHKS & Co.), a consulting engineer firm with offices in a lot of places including Mason City, Iowa, I have a comical memory. I worked outside a lot with the survey crew and we had fairly frequent meetings with cows out in agriculture-intensive areas.

We’d have our equipment set up out in some farmer’s field, locating section corners and whatnot. We used instruments and tools that measured angles and distances. An instrument called a theodolite (measures angles) had to be set up on a tripod. A theodolite is a very expensive and delicate piece of surveying equipment. Once you set it up, you want to be very careful with it and make sure it doesn’t get knocked over.

After we got the theodolite set up, it wouldn’t take long for the cows to wander over to us. Technically, farmers usually would keep the cows out of the field while we out there. Cows are curious animals. And while they can be dangerous as Mike points out, we had to somehow keep them from lumbering too close to the instrument.

So, we slapped them. I don’t know whether they thought the tripod, which was painted yellow and red, and the theodolite, which was green, was something good to eat or what. They would edge toward us and stretch out their necks like they were getting ready to take a bite out of crime. And then we would slap them. They would flinch and get wide-eyed while backing off. But it got to be a routine: cows lean in, surveyors slap. I guess we were really lucky they didn’t stampede us.

Well, the cow wormhole vortex jump into the antique dairy filmstrips and Arnold Schwarzenegger guest star thing did not happen. Oh, well, maybe next year. And now for the encore of Sena’s Dairy Dance! That’s a wrap.