Books I am reading:  River of Doubt by Candace Millard and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Music I am writing to:  Wait (Chromeo Remix/Audio) by Maroon 5

Something about visiting an establishment dedicated to the wonder and beauty of the cow teat.

I have never seen a place like the Tillamook Creamery.  I did visit a dairy as a child. A no nonsense dairy filled with cows, all in their stalls. Steel suction cups attached to their teats.  Visible evidence of animal, and the earthy shitty smell of it too.

At Tillamook there was none of that.  No stalls and no hay.    It was a place filled only with milk and honey, or rather milk and cheese, and salami, and ice cream.  A place filled with merchandise all dutifully lined up on a thoroughly scrubbed cement floor.  A place of yellow and black and wood.  A place of delightful clean.

Huge murals lined the walls of hard working farmers.  Proud granddaughters holding shiny milk buckets, fathers and sons dressed in overalls and boots, residing in the fields.  The epitome of the heartland farmer.  An easily embraceable down home life.

A life up at 5am, a life of gathering cows.  A life of small farmhouses and aproned wives at well scrubbed kitchen counters.  A life of frying chicken and berry pies.  Biscuits made at dawn, left in warm places to rise.

The creamery felt this way, even when you looked down and saw numerous factory workers packaging huge blocks of cheese off  shiny steel tracks.  It was felt in the long picnic style benches at the restaurants.  The gleam of organic soda machines and quality coffee decanters.

Thousands of folks filled these dairy halls.  All reading huge words on walls, peeking in display windows, and little children peering into cleverly hidden peepholes that only they could access.  Walk up the stairs and see cow footprints.  Stand in lines for grilled cheese sandwiches and vanilla ice cream.  Walk in the store and see the marvel of widespread refrigerated cheese and deli meats.  Huge coffee mugs branded with the Tillamook logo, even a farm style mug of that blue and speckled design.  Tshirts, bags, water bottles, and books.

A memorable place, and not a live cow in sight.