Singing the Cows Home - 1 and 2
Comparing a 50-word memoir and a 400-word version - A FOUR-MINUTE READ
For the sake of comparison, I am posting two versions of a brief memoir today. The first one is a 50-word version. The second one is about 400 words and is reposted from April 2023.
Do you think the 50-word example tells a complete story? Which version do you prefer? Why? I would love your comments.
Singing the Cows Home, 1935
As the sun slips down the wide Dakota sky, Katy stands in the pasture playing her guitar, singing to the cows — her first audience, in a clear, sweet voice.
They follow her siren song back to the barn. She’s their reluctant Lorelei, but her dreams and her future lie elsewhere.
Singing the Cows Home
It is 1935, just one year before Katy finds her freedom. She is sitting in the grass reading Ranch Romances magazine, a hand-me-down from her neighbor. She sighs over the picture of the handsome dark-eyed Montana cowboy, thrills to the adventures of the rodeo rascals of Wyoming. She is aware of the hot sun on her back, the prickly grass under her thighs, a meadow lark singing somewhere behind her. She reads through all the little advertisements in the back of the magazine, looking at things she wishes she could buy — plastic combs with real artificial pearls for her hair, Mum deodorant in a little red-lidded white glass jar, Pond’s face cream, stockings. She is just 15.
These are the warm, dreamy days away from her family, the safe and quiet days, with nothing to worry about but the cows. All nine Holsteins stay close together today, no one goes astray.
As the sun slowly slips across the North Dakota sky, Katy stands and brushes the stickers off of her skirt. She needs to gather up the girls and head back to the barn. She picks up her guitar and begins to sing in a clear, sweet voice.
I’ll wait for you, while you’re away dear.
I’ll have your love to see me through.
Though we’re apart, I won’t be lonely,
My one and only, I’ll wait for you.
Three cows lumber slowly over toward the cottonwood tree where Katy is singing. She is their Lorelei, their siren. She sings You Are My Sunshine and Will The Circle Be Unbroken. The other six cows begin slowly moving closer, and soon all are standing in a half-circle around her, chewing the grass, drooling, listening to her voice. She sings Only a Hobo and yodels out T For Texas, T for Tennessee to her bovine fans. In a few years she’ll be known as Montana Kay, and she’ll have a lot of listeners who are not cows.
The sun lowers and the wide prairie sky is now streaked with pale violet. She ties a lead to the collar of the boss cow and starts off home, where she will deal, first, with the milking, then with the tumult of her male-dominated household, and after that, with whatever mischief or mayhem arises.
*Thank you to
for the new writing prompt “musical instrument”. See the fine 50-word stories resulting from this prompt at Fifties by the Fire Along the Hudson .
Both are beautifully written and serve their own purpose.
The 50 worder is delightful prose, a brief encounter that leaves the reader with a feeling and a few blanks to fill in.
The longer version supplies more information and introduces some conflicts that seem to be unresolved, perhaps the start of a longer story.
I love them both. I guess as a stand alone, I would go with the fabulous 50.
Thanks for this today, my friend.
Hi Sharron. I really liked this! I didn't see this one before I sent my note about Love Rise. I see your process here. Thank you.
I like the 50-word version better, but both are fantastic snippets into the life of someone ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. I think you clear away the "fluff," so wonderfully appointed in the longer version, with precision, and I am struck with a sense of longing and hope in the Fifty version, that is not so assured in the longer one. I rave about both - well, well done, but I'll remember the Fifty with more clarity. Thank you so much.