The Longhorns

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The Longhorns

The Longhorns live in a field just a stone’s throw from my home, a large meadow tucked in the middle of Midwest suburbia. Over the years I’ve watched them in all seasons. Right now they are shaggy and the snow sticks to their coarse coats as they huddle against the wind. In the spring the grass is a riot of green and calves bounce around the field. Summer mornings the light streams across the herd, catching their horns with gold. Autumn brings rusty colors to the field, and they are almost invisible.

I’ve never quite figured out why a herd of Longhorn cattle live in my neighborhood. There is a tiny farm tucked back in there, off a main road, and evidently the farmer likes cattle. Longhorns seem like an anachronism, a whisper of days long gone past. Today’s cattle usually have their horns docked early, but these old beasts carry the full rack and use them to prod each other around the field. Ugly, ungainly, wild, and beautiful.

In almost 30 years, I’ve passed them again and again, often several times in a day. I feel like they are friends. Not close friends, but at least good neighbors.

I’m going to miss the Longhorns.

Today as I drove by, there was a “for sale” sign posted at the road edge of the field. I see it as a sign of the end. End of an era, end of a way of life, end of the little rural patch of life stuck in the middle of suburbia. Forty years ago this entire part of the Midwest was farmland. Even thirty years ago, when we moved here, only one fourth of the township was settled. Now there are no working farms left. Subdivisions cover the landscape.

But the Longhorns have held on, or the man who owns them has held on to his meadow. Maybe he can’t hold on to it any longer. Times are tough and land is gold. But the economy stinks and who is going to buy that meadow right now?

I’m hoping that no one wants it but the Longhorns.