Beer From Cows

Friday and the mass exodus from Prague begins as everyone and his dog heads out to their chata or cabin for the weekend thanks to the graciousness of the government. After pretending to work all week, the workers pretend to need a three day weekend and the government pretends that this is a benefit. It has nothing to do with rewards for honest hard work as these three words refuse to seriously meld together into a proper sentence. But mother and father load up the car with our gear and order me and my sister Marketa into the Tatra family car. Who are we to argue? Besides, we get to see the cow that gives beer instead of milk.

It’s true! Grandpa told us all about it on our last weekend outing and he promised to take us and show us the magic cow; the answer to every working man’s prayer. Of course I consider Grandpa a reliable source. Yes there was the time he insisted he rode with Jan Hus himself in battle and made it back before the pub closed, and he related in very exacting detail about the time he declared war on Germany to get back at them for tearing up his clothes. The police dragged our grandfather, wearing only his long underwear at the time, from Wenceslas Square and told him to go home and sleep it off. But this was something Grandpa could never sleep off since he was always in his dreamland. Father wanted to lock him up for our safety, but mother insisted she would not send her own father to one of those Prague jails with all the political undesirables and he remained in our custody. But after all that my Grandpa insisted he never told a lie; he left that to the officials.

He had already gone ahead to the chata with his long time comrade Josef who was just as nutty as Grandpa, only his fantasies involved secret meetings with Beneš and people he could not tell us about. U Fleků was their home away from home and everyone tolerated their tales as a change of pace from the usual guarded conversation that was as bland as my mother’s dumplings; just don’t tell her that.

Marketa was too old and too sophisticated for these things so I was the only one interested in seeing the magical cow. All the way out into the Bohemian countryside, father drove and sang his favourite folk songs instead of the party songs he sang all week. By the time we arrived, Grandpa was pacing up and down waiting to show me this incredible gift from nature. I barley made it out of the car when he grabbed my hand and dragged me, literally because my short legs could not keep up with him, to the little barn down the street.

“Wait until you see this! They said it couldn't happen and it has!”

I saw. I saw that Grandpa was ready for the nuthouse. For not only was there no beer giving cow, there was no cow at all to be seen. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry so I did a little of both. I loved Grandpa and wondered why he was so bizarre compared to my friends whose grandpas always bounced them on their knees or brought them some candy. No, I was stuck with the man who rode with Jan Hus and talked of cows that gave beer.

Grandpa kept babbling away about this brown cow, the colour beer incidentally, and marveled at how he had access to such a treasure. I couldn’t hold back my tongue.

“Děde, I don’t see any cow. Are you sure there is one?”
“What are you waiting for, the officials to declare it so? Who are you going to listen to, your dear old Grandpa who has never lied to you, or those idiots who pretend to care about your father and he pretends to care about them? Tell me, who is more believable and whom do you place your trust in?”

I didn’t know it then, and I didn’t know it until November of 1989. I was older and wiser and still not convinced about Grandpa’s cow. Only after I heard the jangling of so many keys during the Velvet Revolution did I hear my long departed Grandpa’s voice echo throughout Wenceslas Square. I witnessed something he would never see but saw nonetheless long before the rest of us could. I think I caught a glimpse of some old guy in long underwear trying to climb up to meet Hável but I wasn’t sure.

One thing was for certain. I saw the cow that gave beer and to this day I milk her every November 17th and toast Grandpa and Jan Hus as they ride their horses along the street. And I suppose your grandfather gives you mere candy?