The other day I met up with a bunch of the locals I've been working with for a lovely lunch at a charming outdoor cafe in a quaint part of town...
Oh who am I kidding - it was a chain restaurant at the prison-like mall. But the lunch was, in fact, lovely. Nice people. Good conversation. The only Bako-ish moment came when one of the women was recounting her recent trip to upstate New York:
"Everything was so lush and green everywhere it really became monotonous. I really couldn't take it anymore..."
Yeah, who would want that when you can be surrounded by endless miles of parched wasteland?
At any rate, the conversation soon turned to the subject of the air we breathe and I was relieved to hear that even the locals think this place smells like shit. And then the woman to my right piped up...
"And it's really bad on the days they burn the cows..."
???????
Exsqueeze me?? "Burn the cows?"
Yup. It turns out that twice a month, Kern County allows the locals farmers to burn all their deceased livestock. Deceased livestock that's been sitting around rotting for two weeks, as the case may be. Funny - they apparently left that part out of the "Happy California Cows" commercials that run on TV. To be honest, the thought of dead livestock never really crossed my mind. I guess I just assumed they all when to the Great Golden Arches in the Sky.
It certainly puts a grim pall over your day when you head out the door and get hit with the smell. Now instead of thinking it's just cow shit and fertilizer, I'll be thinking of Auschwitz.
