Ever have one of those early mornings when the dawn is just sneaking up on you and your mind starts wandering down one of the old roads in the memory map of your youth?
I did the other day. My road was the south end of the main street that bisected our little town north to south.
In the middle of my high school years some enterprising entrepreneur — George Bush once said the French should have a word for “enterpreneur” — decided our town should have another little drive-in restaurant.
He built the little place with no indoor seating. You parked and picked up your order at the window. I do recall a couple of picnic tables.
He staffed it with pretty high school girls (although not as pretty as at the rival Dairy Queen) and set out to make a buck or two.
I don’t know if he was a literary man but he took its name from a poem by Gelett Burgess (as I later discovered). He named it “The Purple Cow.”
Possessed with my high school sense of humor and penchant for word play, I immediately dubbed it “The Heliotrope Heifer.” Some of my friends were amused; others just said “what?”
The little establishment served up malts, shakes, burgers and I suppose one of its namesakes, a Purple Cow. I never ordered one; I preferred their floats or the DQ’s upside-down chocolate-cherry malts with a foot-long hot dog, chili and relish please.
On the south side of 140 pounds at 6 feet tall I could eat that and still sleep soundly — today I am on the north side of that weight and wouldn’t sleep a moment without the assistance of a bottle of Tums.
No matter. The Purple Cows they made were a concoction of vanilla ice cream and grape juice and probably tasted like that.
Back to Gelett (who probably never envisioned his poem inspiring a soft drink), in 1895, he published a poem in a little five-cent mag called The Lark. He wrote, “I never saw a purple cow,/ I hope to never see one;/ But I can tell you, anyhow,/ I rather see than be one.”
Gelett became exasperated with the success of his little rhyme; far too many people brought it to his attention.
He retaliated two years later with: “Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background That I Rue.” His revenge went: “Ah yes, I wrote ‘The Purple Cow’ — / I’m sorry now I wrote it;/ But I can tell you anyhow/ I’ll kill you if you quote it.”
We can only assume he was just kidding but the admonition apparently worked. No serial killers named Burgess were ever apprehended.
His was not the last word as no good deed goes unpunished (or ignored). The Purple Cow is the mascot for Williams College and for one of the four classes at Russell Sage College.
Moving on, in a significant improvement, Purple Cow became an ice cream flavor created by tossing chunks of white and milk chocolate into black raspberry ice cream — on the menu at Lickety Split ice cream emporiums (wherever they are).
HappyCow, the world’s largest vegan/vegetarian/vegetarian friendly restaurant and health food store has used a Purple Cow logo for more than 20 years. I wouldn’t know; those menu choices hold no appeal for me.
They also have a purple cow mascot — I’ve never seen one and would not clean one.
And, a California sculptor actually designed a purple cow family in the 1950s. There was a bull, a cow and a calf with the poem included on the cow. The pieces became collectors’ item.
The Heliotrope Heifer has long since gone out to pasture. I think a fancy supper club replaced it, but I can still locate it on a “dream street.”
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June 14, 2020 at 04:10AM
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Jim Willard: Purple Cow still inspires ice cream and dreams - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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