Published: June 27, 2008 06:53 am            

Oh where, oh where, is our Mystery Moo?

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Mystery Moo, where are you?

Apparently, the famous mystery personality is missing. Or at least it seems so. Nobody we’ve talked to knows where he (or she) is.

You remember the familiar phrase: “June is National Dairy Month, are you Mystery Moo No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 or No. 4? The contest usually started the first week in June with No. 1. When No. 1 was identified, it was No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and etc.

Have you been asked if you are Mystery Moo? We don’t think so, and we can’t find anyone who has this summer; or last summer for that matter.

No one has said Mystery Moo is no more. Matter of fact, this story is based more on what we DON’T know more than what we do.

There has been no official announcement of the demise of early summer’s mystery persons. Obviously we’re violating the cardinal rule of journalism: Don’t assume anything.

But something isn’t right. Normally, during June a person slightly resembling the mystery person is stopped on every corner with a cheery June is National Dairy Month, are you Mystery Moo? It’s tradition. It’s a birthright. You ain’t got no cause to shoo Mystery Moo. (Don’t chastise us for bad grammar. This whole thing is upsetting).

Anybody who is anything socially has been Mystery Moo at one time or the other. There are more former Mystery Moos than Carter had oats that wet year.

Don’t be a smart-aleck. Don’t ask who Carter is. We don’t have a clue. Folklore has it that Carter had a big crop of oats the year the rains came. And dairy cows love oats; that’s as close as we can get.

To be Mystery Moo made one proud as punch. It was a red-letter week in your otherwise humdrum existence. Mystery Moo walked around town like he had corn for sale.

For the past several years, Jim Brown, former manager and part owner of WTLO, was the unofficial coordinator of the Mystery Moo contest. The clues originated at WTLO and Brown disseminated the information to other news outlets.

Brown is retired now (he says every day is like Saturday) and the current program director at WTLO said he has not been contacted about Mystery Moo. A spokeswoman at First Radio indicated she was not aware of Mystery Moo’s location, and folks in the newsroom of the Commonwealth Journal don’t think we’ve published the clues for the past couple of years. We don’t know why.

Carol Tucker, manager of Somerset Mall, said the world’s biggest banana split, a June Dairy Month tradition, has not been scheduled at the mall. That was always a big event.

June National Dairy Month has not gone entirely unnoticed, however. Tucker said Southern Belle Dairy and Pulaski County Farm Bureau served Lake Cumberland’s Largest Ice Cream Sundae on June 6 at the mall.

“It was a fun thing ... a family event. About 500 people attended,” Tucker said.

Tucker is among many who misses Mystery Moo. “My sister and I used to look at the clues in the paper and try to figure out who it was,” she said. “It’s part of our heritage,” she added.

The person identifying one of the Mystery Moos won several dairy related prizes from Southern Belle Dairy. The celebration promoted the local dairy industry flush with product from the green, green grass of June. You know, brown cows eat green grass, give white milk and make yellow butter. Mother Nature says so. It happens in the face of global warming. Take that, Al Gore!

The Mystery Moo contest was part of one of the biggest celebrations of June is National Dairy Month in the nation. Cow Day in downtown Somerset drew a crowd around Fountain Square that would make a politician envious.

Somerset’s business district was all downtown in those days. Merchants around the square offered special bargains, there were ice-cream eating contests, music and live radio broadcasts. Highlight of the day was giving away a heifer calf, symbolic of Pulaski County’s thriving dairy industry, and a grand prize to be coveted.

How times have changed! Most people wouldn’t stand on the sidewalk in the hot sun all day to see an ant eat a bale of hay. A heifer calf would still be a grand prize for a dairy farmer, but most city folks don’t know how to milk. They think milk comes in a carton.

Now, a bit of reflection. If this article is off base, please forgive. If Mystery Moo is offended by diminishing his presence, let us to be the first to say we’re sorry. If he (or she) is really out there, please slip us a clue.

Most of us in the newsroom would enjoy a long, cool drink of milk. That’s a prize worth having!

This story contains observations of the writer.

        

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