The seventy-five-pound dream

By Button, Kid Reporter, as told to Inkhorn

MOUNTAIN GROVE, Mo. — Elsie Barton is in Wright County 4-H. Her parents are Brandon and Brittany. Her goat, on the day the Missouri State Fair hung the banner, weighed seventy-five pounds.

That is not a large goat in the mythology of meat-goat barns. That is a precise goat.

Reserve Grand Champion went to Khaden Litton of Boonville FFA with an eighty-nine-pounder. Both kids were slated for the Sale of Champions on August 22, the afternoon when grand and reserve steers, barrows, lambs, meat goats, and pens of chickens and rabbits turn into scholarship money and a story you will tell at every reunion until you are Professor Gruff’s age.

Button’s entire reporting method is to ask the question adults dance around: Was it fun?

We were not in the ring with Elsie. We do not have her quote. So Button invented the only honest kid-reporter ending we would allow:

She washed him until her arms were tired. She set his feet until her back complained. She waited on a judge who had already looked at bigger goats. When they called her name it sounded like the barn had been holding its breath since weigh-in. Seventy-five pounds is enough if you did the work.

Mountain Grove sits in the Ozarks the way a good wether stands in a class: not the loudest town on the map, but square on its feet. Wright County 4-H keeps turning out kids who know the difference between a project and a pet and then love the project anyway.

Professor Gruff’s note in the margin: “Meat-goat glory is shorter than dairy-goat glory. The animal does not come home to a milking stand. That is why the banner matters more, not less. Print her name correctly.”

Elsie Barton. Mountain Grove. Seventy-five pounds. Grand Champion.

The Bleat Sheet salutes the kid, the goat, and the county that still thinks a fair week is a good way to spend a life.