When I was growing up my grandfather, Guy Baker, used to call his corner of the world “Cowbell Corner.” Over the years I used the term myself, thinking the saying was quite quaint.
As the years went by, Mr. Baker bought his own home on the corner of Routes 105 and 106, not far from the home where he was born, thus making this “his corner.”
My paternal grandfather, Clyde Bosworth Sr. happened to have a dairy farm next door to “Grampa” Baker’s new home leaving one to wonder if perhaps in the early mornings he would hear the melodious tinkle as cows moved slowly from one grazing spot to another. Or maybe around sundown, when the herd was being brought home for milking.
Farmers of the world have been belling their cows for thousands of years. In America, except for a few remote spots, the old and time-honored tinkle of the cowbell is now mute and almost obscure. Today’s cows are mechanized and data-processed and the modern dairyman knows where every cow is at all times.
The traditionally prudent New England dairy farmer sometimes fashioned, with his frugal fingers, bells out of scraps of metal, which he then shaped with a hammer. History records the first commercial manufacturer of cowbells as being the Barton Bell Company, founded in 1793 in East Hampton, Connecticut.
Photo & Story Credit: Sue Basile
