SMALL-FARM EPITAPH
(A comedic musical tragedy)
[Readers Note. In 2014, our daughter was in a school musical, The Whiz. It occurred to me that a cultural musical focusing on Vermont’s declining farms would be a good forum for humor blended with the serious subject of declining farms. I wrote this musical as a result, and it has never been published until now, here at Substack. I offer Act One, Scene One for free, hoping to lure subscribers to become paid supporters to read subsequent segments. I do hope you enjoy my effort at poetry and humor. Vermont’s Rusty Dewees read the script and strongly approved of the dialogue. The script includes numerous quotes (in quotation marks) from the writings of Wendel Berry. Thanks, as always, for reading my Substack!]
Dramatis Personae
Animals: Humans:
Euvgeni Timov, a Russian cat Wendell Berry, an aging Vermont dairy farmer
Three boar pigs: Tanya Berry, his wife and cheesemaker
Einstein, smart and nerdy Shannon Berry, their mid-thirties daughter
Zebulon, big brutish bully Joe Boomer, neighbor and machine operator
Chatum Tanning, handsome Rusty DeWees Parker, Country Store owner
Three sow pigs: Barack Brown, neighbor employed by ANTO
Paris, thinks she’s French Michelle Brown, wife and “gardener”
Tuna, (short for Petunia) Rodger Pion, logger neighbor
Gia, not very bright Two flatlanders: a man and a woman
Four sheep:
Chas, a ram
Three ewes
A Chorus of chickens
[All songs are indented, with titles in parentheses.]
Act One: Spring
Scene 1
(In darkness, before the curtain opens, a rooster crows in the distance. The curtain slowly opens to a dimly lit stage, on which several chickens (chorus members) are pecking around. A cow lows. The scene is of the interior of a barn, with sheep in stalls on the right (snoozing), and a pile of pigs on the left (snoring). There is a stair at back going up to a loft. To far left, extending onto the stage, is the hind end of a Jersey or Guernsey cow: the hind legs and udder are visible, and the tail swings like an ominous pendulum. There are stanchions (open stalls) visible, hayracks, some farm paraphernalia about -- pitchforks, cans of farm chemicals, bluecote, some old signs (bag balm?), etc. The light begins to rise, and with another rooster crow, the chorus chickens scurry into position, joining the full chorus.)
(Chicken Chorus)
(At the end of the song, a (fake) mouse is drawn across the stage, then pounced upon and dramatically killed by the cat, who leaps from behind some hay bales. After killing the mouse and biting its neck viciously, the cat moves to the huge cow udder, and takes a drink of milk, which due to its heavy cream and because he is drinking right from the udder, covers his heavily-bearded cat face. He steps from under the cow, confidently addresses the audience, and proclaims in his heavy Russian accent…)
Cat: I love the smell of Bag Balm in the morning!
(After a slight pause, the orchestra begins to play.)
(KGB Cat)
Each dawn promises something new
In my Russian homeland this was true
There’s nothing like warm milk and juicy rat
To make your day bright if you’re a cat
But here in this land of milk & honey
My comrades and I chuckle, for it is funny
Vermonters think they are so very bold
But in Soviet Union, we have special kind of cold
I rarely grow sick for tundra of home
‘Cause this farm in Vermont is where I belong
I have plenty to eat, and the rent is free
I kill rats and mice (I’m former KGB!)
True, capitalist pigs abound
And stupid sheeple, they mill around
Americans waste food, pollute, and borrow
While their aquifers shrink, their farmland goes fallow
In Russia any feline would give his right arm
For the chance you have here to sink roots and farm
But times for farmers are grown very scary
And I’ve grown very fond of this farmer Berry
He’s kind to his animals, treats them proper
Not like some capitalist industrial hopper
That reduces all men and animals to things
(I’ve lived in Russia, I know what that brings!).
The bourgeois always take and take
And when we starve, say “Let them eat cake!”
Vermonters now import most of their food
And to local farmers, that’s downright rude!
So I stay and support this declining dairy
Of an old Vermont farmer named Wendell Berry
Flatlanders move in, flatlanders move out
Wendell’s resolve remains always stout.
There is one thing that I lack, that is love
And so I pray to that great leopard above:
With lady-cats I have been an unlucky guy
May today be the day that one drops from the sky
I dream of cat-wife to help kill mice and moles
To slash at rats, intruders, and proles
And so I wish upon a distant star
An irresponsible human, will drop her from their car.
(During the song, the other animals slowly rouse. First the sheep, who stretch and look around with apprehensive interest; then the lazy pigs, who rise like they are hung over. Occasionally, the cow swishes her tail.)
A pig: I’m hungry. Snort.
Cat: You there -- lazy swine -- what do you think life is for, gluttony and filth? All you do is stuff your guts and store fat, then lay around indolently while others work. Capitalists!
Einstein: Yeah, maybe we should all go to your mighty USSR and slave away in factories for dictators. Rampant corruption and graft, pollution from smokestacks, a controlled economy failing under bureaucrats. That would be a step up…. I bet all the comrade pigs in Russia are skinny and gaunt, like you were when you crawled in here begging for food! It is capitalism that fills your feline belly with warm milk, little kitty-cat -- if you don’t like it maybe you should return to your chilly tundra!
Chas: Baaaah. Why do you always have to argue like this? The humans take care of us, and we all have plenty to eat. Who cares how our food gets here? Baaaaah.
Cat: Stupid American sheeple! You think what you have falls like Manna, unearned. This is why you are weak and your country is in decline: your country’s past glories were the creation of people with values, vision and purpose. You are like the children of successful business tycoons, who squander their heritage because they were spoiled and lack the character of their fathers: good values are learned, not genetically inherited. What would you do without the humans, slave sheeple? You would blaaaah blaaah blaaaaah all over in despair, and then you would starve: you are hardly even alive.
Ewes, grumbling: Why is he always so mean? Why can’t we just get along? What is he talking about -- the humans aren’t going anywhere, are they?
Chas: We have the Department of Homelamb Serenity to protect us!
Cat: Bah! You are blind slaves to industrialism! DHS would just as soon feed you to their Border Patrol Collies, and let them gnaw your ignorant carcasses!
Zeb: I’m hungry -- where’s slop?
Cat: Shut up, stupid capitalist pig! Can’t you see a smart cat is talking? You weak materialists rail against communism, but you know nothing… I am not sure about everything that goes on in human world, but I have seen changes here in Vermont as I do recon at local farms (aside: looking for my bride!). There is something wrong lately -- new humans arrive with lots of wealth to build big empty houses with no barns or animals; local farms they get poorer, and have animals not so many -- the LaGrange farm is down to just thirty-five cows. You Americans crow on and on against communism, but I do not see what communism has to do with the failures of your wonderful God of capitalism. From what I see -- and I’m just an illegal immigrant cat, mind you -- this country is confronting the failures of its own capitalism, and any effort to help those who receive short end of stick is called communist bogeyman. “Oooh don’t feed poor people or give them medicines -- it will bankrupt country!” From what I see, as just cat, America is collapsing and is morally bankrupt. It did not need any help from my country.
Pigs: Love it or leave it, commie!
Cat: See, that is exactly problem: I love my country I want to make it better. Bad people control my country, so I leave. Now bad people control this country, and I am told to leave. Where will souls go who wish for freedom if there is no place left to make better, because they love themselves “right or wrong”? This is silliness to me, yet I am just cat. It is clear to me that if factories improve productivity, and use robots and computers, that human jobs are eliminated. I have seen this on many farms that grow industrial big -- more machines, fewer humans. This is not communism, but what you idolize as “progress”. This progress, she is killing you, not Karl Marx or Lenin. In fact, as Marx observed in his Communist Manifesto,….
Chatum: (leaps from behind the pile of pigs and the stanchions, with a pinwheel in his hand, and starts running around the stage, making the pinwheel turn), squeeling: “Wheeeeeee. Wheee, whee, wheeeeeee.”
Cat: You see? This just what I say: little bourgeois piglet has no insight whatsoever into forces which enslaving him. This country now country of such bourgeois piglets!
(The pigs, having heard the cat’s droll previously, root around in their feedpan, scratch against the stall walls, stretch. Grunt. The sheep pick at their hayrack, sniff at the water tub, stretch. They are always a bit jittery and insecure, as opposed to the pigs, who are always curious, brash, overconfident, and tough-hided.)
Zeb: Not much to eat yet this mornin’, wonder what we’ll get….
Einstein: Already with the food… Really?
Zeb: Shut yer snout-hole, brainiac, or I’ll flip the pan when I’m done and roll in what’s left! Snort!
Einstein: You probably will anyway…always do.
Zeb (walking up and intimidating): Don’t you have a book to read or something, geek-piggy?
Chatum: Ahh, you guys…..
Paris: Ah you are so brutish, you boars! Too much testosterone!
Zeb: But Paris, you know I am just competing to win your favor -- if I am the biggest hog, surely Farmer Berry will keep me back to breed - I mean date - you and your lovely sow-sisters. (Waves to sows.) So I am eating for you, Paris. I must eat more than those weaklings, so you and I can be together.
Paris: Well if I could speak to the humans I would advise universal castration -- too much testosterone! You’d probably be quite tolerable, eunuched….
Zeb: Oh darling, I know you jest!
Tuna: “Jest” you keep thinkin’ that…
Paris: And as if I would want to share my beau with les autre femmes…
Tuna: Oh knock it off Paris, you were farrowed in Vermont like the rest of us -- quit pretendin’ you’re French. Like if you were a French pig your excrement would smell like rosewater or something!
Paris: But I must still improve ma Francais. Someday I will go to Paris, to L’Arc de Triumph, and celebrate my liberte from this bickering litter! I will send you a postcard from le Louvre!
Einstein: The only way you will ever travel to Paris is in a tube. And I don’t mean “Le Metro,” I mean “Le Pate”.
Paris: I will get there by any means necessaire, and I intend to parler in fluent francais upon my arrival at my destination.
Einstein: I think you might get as far as Calais, maybe as a sausage…. (Snickers.) Calais, Vermont, I mean. Snort.
Paris: Yes, castration would indeed improve the mood around here. Sooner the better I say… right, girls?
Tuna and Gia: Snip um’! An improvement surely!
(The ewes baa in agreement)
Cat: Proles, all of you! You grovel and backbite, and take everything for granted, while life whizzes by like very fast and dangerous automobile on street. You think you can have your big cake and eat it. You are food -- you are all food. Only I and my pretty cow-rade are not destined for the human bellies! You are fools too -- fools! Foods and fools: all of you! Splah (spits), in my country in KGB you know how many terrible things I must do for my motherland?…
Chas: Oh, He-e-e-e-r-e we go-o-o, violence and blood and go-o-o-re again. Sometimes I think the sows are right about castra-a-a-ation and testo-o-osterone.
Cat: What, you brave sheeple all of sudden? You get up wrong side haystack? You suggest end to Russian cat’s yarbles, you had better be careful you don’t wake up shorn of more than itchy fleece, know what I mean, suddenly-brave sheeple creature? (menaces sheep with his claws)
Chas: A-h-h-h-h sorry comrade… I was referring to that big fat pig over there.
Zeb: Hey watch it Chas -- I can do a whole different number on your pretty fleece, so don’t mess with this swine -- I may not pull none a’ that secret KGB James Bond stuff on ya’, but not even a skunk will want to sleep with you if I foul you up -- remember, I’m uni-gastric!
Cat: I too am uni-gastric, you know.
Chas: So inefficient! Half of what you eat goes through undigested, like humans! Yuck. (shudders). Ruminants have it made. We love our cud -- to you it would just be bile. I don’t know what designer would create something with only one stomach when it could be properly four-chambered, like a heart or a carburetor. Cow would agree!
All sheep: “Four stomachs good! One stomach ba-a-a-a-d!” Cow lows in concurrence.
Einstein: Yeah, but our grain-to-meat conversion rate is every bit as competitive as you grass-grinding cud-munchers! You’re just mad because you don’t have upper teeth!
Chas: We don’t need upper teeth! Look how silly they look! (Other sheep baaah in agreement. The pigs and cat all look at the audience, pause a moment, and give an exaggerated, big smile; the sheep turn at the same time, but with their lower teeth jutted out and their upper lip obscuring their upper gums).
Zeb: We pigs can eat anything! Ha ha! Grass-munch! And I will win my harem of gorgeous-hided babes by scarfing down diverse delights that would cause you to cholic and die!
In fact…. (steps forward to sing0
(Porcine Stud) (beat-box to rap)
Slow down and get the low-down
On the show-down in our hometown
As you can dig, I’m a pig, and my gig ain’t no mo-town
So let me rap it out, with my homey snout
And you’ll all find out, what this rout is all about
In the tale of the Three Little Pigs, that yarn was rigged
‘Cause them piglets got to keep their jiggley-jigs
But this farm is life on the street, we all just meat,
One boar stays intact -- the rest they shoot and eat
The farmer wants the fittest, not the brightest or the wittiest
Surely not the prettiest, which makes me the biggiest!
It is really quite a spectacle when a boar yields up his testicles
Once done it’s not correctable, the procedure’s quite inflexible
Indeed I am outspoken -- my scrotum shall remain unbroken!
Get in line, you other swine, it’s castration time.
If I have correctly orated, this audience has been berated:
“Happy as a pig” is overrated -- no one wants to be castrated
CHORUS:
So I’ll eat more, than any boar
Outdine any swine
The farmer’ll settle up the score
At castration time
Then I’ll breed like a swiney steed
Provide those three with all they need
Won’t crimp my style, if I’m pimp for awhile
And create a new pile, of piglets with my smile ☺
That’s what I’m talkin’ about, with my snout yeah
That’s what I’m talkin’ about, with my snout.
Chatum: We’ll see about that! Biggest isn’t always best you know…. (pause, as sows giggle).
Paris (flirtatiously): Well, Chatum, if a sow were to want a noisy, unkempt litter of sharp-toothed piglets -- and obviously no sensible young sow voudrais de desiree such a foolish thing -- I certainement can see why they would prefere your tres bon genes. At least you and Einstein are gentlemen.
Zeb: I don’t need to be gentlemanly -- it is up to fate; to Farmer Berry. I hardly think manners care to him….. I am just gifted with large hams. Wouldn’t you want your babies to have the same “edge”? (displays his outstanding hams!). And just look at these bacons!
Tuna: Yucky! That’s yucky!
Gia: You said it, Tuna!
Zeb: Who you callin’ yucky? You gals aren’t such Oscar Meyer blue-bloods, you know. You look like a Tamworth cross or somethin’. And with a name like Tuna… well, that kind of sums it up.
Tuna (indignant): It’s short for “Petunia.” (exaggerated enunciation: Pe-tu-nia)
Zeb: What, you were someone’s pet tuna? You’re a pig, not a fish -- accept it.
Gia (fatuously): She’s not a fish! What are you, dumb? Can’t you see she’s a swine? She’s a “petunia,” like the flower.
Paris: Oh, he knows what she is, Gia. He’s just being a pig, as usual.
Zeb: I think everyone on this farm knows that she smells more like old tuna than pet-tunia! Ha ha. Snort….
Paris: Don’t you listen, Tuna! I think you smell just lovely! (Sniff sniff).
Tuna: But to think we might all be bred by that, and have no say in it, and then be hounded and nibbled at by a dozen Minnie-Zebs. Oh it chills my marrow. I’ll commit pigleticide, I swear!
Einstein: Actually, once you mature and your hormones kick in, you’ll grunt at anything that will scratch your special itch. You’ll think Zeb there is the cat’s meow…
Cat: What! What is this thing you say about cat? You got something to say to cat? Say it to face! Yes that is so, let me see!
Einstein: Calm down tiger-paw. It’s just an expression. Like smooth, or enjoyable -- you know, the cat’s meow!
Cat: No I do not know what this thing means this meow. I think maybe you insult cat.
Paris: No, Euvgeni. It’s an old saying, like “Cat’s got your tongue.”
Cat, exclaiming: What is this now about cats eating tongues?! Now we gang up on cat like at gulag, huh? You think you can just beat up on old Russian cat, huh?
Zeb: Ha ha! You can take it, Mr. KGB. You know, cats have nine lives! Ha ha!
Cat: What is this, now meowing cat eat nine tongues?! Scandal against felines of all nations! Scandal!
Chas: Careful, porkies, you might get “Cat scratch fever” if KGB kitty goes postal… Ba-a-a-a-ha-ha.
Ewes, together: How clever, darling! Oh you are a smart rammy!
Chas (pleased with himself, and on a roll): Oh, look, what’s that? (pointing to side stage) -- is that what the cat dragged in? Snort.. Ba-a-a-a-a. Ha -ha -ha.
Ewes: Ba-ha-ha. Ba-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-a-a-a.
Chas: Don’t worry, Vladimir, when you pass away we will consider different ways to dispose of your remains -- you know, there is more than one way to skin a cat! Ba-ha-ha-aaa.
Cat, pulling out nun-chucks: Let’s see how thick is skull of smart-alec sheepy, start new saying about cat…. “Clunk sheep skull like psycho KGB cat!” Maybe that be new saying, make cat not look like eat old tongue and bring bad luck and things bad like dat. Whole new image for my kind….
Einstein: No one said anything about bad luck…
Cat: Yes, but I hear this one before -- black cats, cats under ladders, cat in hat, curious as cat, being “fat cat,” things like this which are prejudiced against cats, especially black cats. There I say it -- it is out in room like swollen pink elephant to look at in middle of room, really big. You are all prejudice against cats. I know -- I was member Black Panthers in crazy youth… before I was comedian.
Chatum: Wait -- you were a comedian?
Cat: Nyet. Not just a comedian -- I was best cat act in all USSR, even in gulags. Cats come from all over to be made happy by my most excellent funniness. I am funniest cat ever, but in America no one get my funny because all are stupid capitalist pigs with decayed bourgeois brains of MSG and aspartame.
Gia: You were a Black Panther? Sounds exciting….
Einstein: Now, we aren’t against cats here in Vermont, Vladimir. We are welcoming to all who work hard and don’t put on airs. (They all look at Paris). Well, there are always exceptions…. But mostly we don’t put on pretentious airs, and we like cats up here. All kinds of cats. We even have “Catamounts.”
Cat: Really? You mean to say you have mountain named in great honor of mighty cat?
Zeb: I thought that was a beer -- I’ve seen the bottles. It’s an ale I think…. I’m hungry.
Cat: Always he’s mocking me and my kind and my countrymen! Someday you get it good, pig Zeb. Mark my garbled Russian words, you get yours!
Paris: I wish there wasn’t so much conflict in the world. Why can’t we all get along?
Zeb (knowingly, nodding towards others and winking): Because some of us are stupid….
Paris: Not very helpful an answer, Zebulon, nor very hopeful. Once again, I cannot possibly imagine us…(shudders)…ensemble…. Sometimes I wish I could just escape all the turmoil and travailer, maybe be an actress. Yes, if I were an actress my roles would always be happy and joyous, and when I was on stage I would actually live in that world, a world where things made sense and nothing suffered…..
Einstein: Snap out of the glass menagerie, Zsa Zsa. You live in a real world.
Paris: Why are you always such a realist, Einstein? -- just ‘cause you are so tres intelligent, you have to spoil life for everyone else. Why don’t you use your nerdy gift to get us out of here, or discover the meaning of existence?
Einstein: It’s funny you mention that, ma Cherie Paris. It just so happens I’ve been working nights, doing exactly that.
Chas and other sheep: Wha-a-a-at? Wha-a-a-a-at have you done this time?
Einstein: Well, I was looking up at the sky one lazy day -- under that apple tree over by the barbed wire coils and scrap metal. And what should fall from the sky and hit me on the head but….
Chatum: An apple!
Einstein: Nope… a bird turd!
Chas: A bi-i-rd tur-r-r-rd?
Einstein: Sure enough! And the thought like splatted right against my forehead -- hey, there must be laws for stuff like this. There must be forces at play that we cannot readily see, but which influence all the world around us. But there must be clues -- trails.
Chas: Trails?
Einstein: Yeah, trails. Evidence. Proof. Hypotheses.
Chas: So what did you do?
Einstein: Well, of course I started studying.
Chas: What? Studying what?
Einstein: The trails -- where they came from.
Zeb: Where what came from?
Einstein: Why, the poops of course. They didn’t just magically fall from the sky. Something had to create them.
Zeb: Snort! Duh! Like, a bird!
Einstein: Well, that is the simple answer. But let us look deeper. Which came first do you think, the bird, or its egg? -- and if the egg was first, it had to have been laid, by an animal that also had an aperture for feces. So clearly what this means is that the feces came first: or at least, as early as the egg. If not earlier…if only by seconds.
Zeb: So?
Einstein: Well, don’t you see -- in order to understand the history of the world and of life, one must study poop.
Zeb: Poop?
Einstein: Manure then.
Chas: Man-u-u-ure?
Einstein: Yes: in order to properly understand the world -- the forest for the trees, if you will -- one must fully delve into the vast and riveting mysteries of… the origin of the feces!
All: The origin of the feces?
Einstein: Indubitably! (clears throat to sing)
(On the Origin of the Feces)
I have always pondered, how really nice is dirt
From a scientific view then, it really couldn’t hurt
To seek for the connection, instead of between species --
To search for the solution to the origin of the feces
For you see in every acre are tons of micro-life
And spraying them with chemicals causes them much strife
So you may like to think that your food is really pure
But that carrot wouldn’t be orange if it weren’t for our manure
The question then arises: if we kill the life in soil
Our stomachs will not function (though our food will never spoil)
Thus humans are quite ignorant to analyze the species --
Like chicken and egg, the true answer lies, in the origin of the feces
As a scientific pig, devoted to the cause
Of sifting through manure, questing for new laws
I reflect that for humans it is very much a pity
That a job I love so much they would regard as ______!
So we dig through fecal piles with dust-brush and trowels
Examining the trail left behind by animal bowels.
And though the riddle of the origin has not yet been solved
I am deeply immersed in that from which we have evolved
Compost piles are not always what you’d think
Combing through each morsel to unearth the missing link!
How can we learn from whence we were destined
If we have not fully delved the mystery of the intestine?
Life-teaming diarrhea is like a soup or potion:
Life did not simply crawl out from the coldness of the ocean!
CHORUS:
Scientists are hung, about the origin
Perhaps it was dung, that poured its porridge in
After they realize, that Darwin was a flop
Perhaps they’ll scrutinize, the evidence of the plop
So I understand that you might think me kinda’ loopy
To invest so much intellect uncovering ancient poopy
But if you stoop and focus, I am sure that you can see,
the resemblance of this stool to that of the chimpanzee! (holds up pig stool)
And still there are those doubters who will scream and call me nuts,
For scouring through these scours, tracing strains of guts
But when it comes to thinking; there is here no more pollution
Than the nutty, dubious claims of modern evolution!
(At song’s end, a roaring noise is heard, of a tractor. All the animals are agitated as the sound moves past.)
Cat: Industrialist pigs! Smoke and noise from ugly machines is making green country gray and giving neurosis to poor farm creatures!
Chas: B-a-a-a-a-a! That nasty Monster ANTO comes closer every year! B-a-a-a-a!
Paris: Farmer Berry’s horses were so much nicer than that obnoxious machine! Don’t humans care what their land looks like or where their food comes from? Such contraptions are putting nice farmers like Wendell out of business, and destroying all the human communities. Pigs and cows are being raised in factories like prisons. Don’t the humans in the cities know that not just animal but human lives are being destroyed?
Einstein: “The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, will be treated as garbage.” You know what they say: Can’t stand in the way of progress! Or you’ll get plowed under by a two-hundred-horsepower tractor….
Cat: “The world today believes in progress, [because] the only possible alternative to the belief in progress would be total despair.” The city humans do not know where their food comes from, and they don‘t care because they don’t think they need to know. They take little-guy farmer man for granted.
Zeb: Well, Monster ANTO is gone now. Let’s eat!
Einstein: You’d better eat while you can, bacon-boy -- Monster ANTO wants to chew up this whole farm, with you on it! You are fat and confident today, but you are completely dependent on Farmer Berry. And in case you haven’t looked around between gullet-stuffings, this farm is not exactly thriving….
(Copyright 2014, John Klar)