Dave Wood

To scoop—A news item revealed in one newspaper before all other—Webster’s College Dictionary

Who’d a’thunk? I recently received my Sunday Minnesota Star Tribune, which now calls itself “The Voice of Minnesota” and was shocked to discover that I, this octogenarian scribbler had SCOOPED that juggernaut of the upper Midwest’s newspaper world.

That’s right, the modest column you’ve seen before you for several years actually beat the metropolitan daily, which employs hundreds of seasoned journalists, to the punch in this important election year when immigration is one of the voters’ biggest concerns.

The only problem, I must admit, is that I did it two years too soon! Oh, well, the Pulitzer Prize isn’t that big a deal, anyway. Readers may recall that two years ago on this page I reviewed a book out of Madison called “Milking,” an unlikely topic to some, but not to me and probably also to several Journal readers with rural backgrounds who have pulled their share of teats. The book reported that a Wisconsin dairy farmer was taking flack from his conservative dairymen neighbors because he was employing Mexicans to milk his 600 cows, suggesting that only a parlor liberal would do such a thing. “Liberal? Hell. I was just trying to save my ass,” the plain-spoken dairyman replied to the author. 

The guy who saved his own butt was John Rosenow, a Buffalo County farmer who owns the sizeable milking operation; he explained that when he expanded his herd, he hired locals, but some came drunk, several never came at all and his butt needed saving, so he opted for hiring Mexicans and found them to be “hard workers and fast workers.”

I published the story and waited for the Strib to either review the book in its Arts or Business sections, but they never did. Too rural, I figured, or not relevant to the younger set of whom they are desperate to have subscribe. But then--but then-- last month as the election neared, my Sunday Strib arrived and what to my wondering eyes should appear? But a huge spread on John Rosenow’s Rosenholm Farm with splashy photos of a tutor teaching a young Mexican lad to read English, Rosenow himself striding between two long lanes of Holsteins.

Why all this attention to such a rustic scene? Because Rosenow and his 13 Mexican milkers worry that he will lose his butt and the Mexicans will be sent back home, depending on how the election turns out. Seems the milkers like the free housing Rosenow provides, the average yearly salaries they earn, the money they send home and the Cochrane golf course where their Mexican foreman plays golf with Rosenow every Men’s Day. So-called “Woke“ readers may wonder about all that manure. Don’t worry; it’s sent to Minnesota where it’s processed into high-grade garden manure.

Remember, subscribers, you read it first in the Pierce County Journal, the county where I just found out the plain-spoken Rosenow attended UW-River Falls, known to smart-ass Twin Cities sports writers as “Moo U.”