El Maldito “Ghost Cow”

“Te lo juro mijo” my dad would say repeatedly after telling one of his favorite stories. A quarter full bottle of Corona swirling in his hand and pointing at us emphatically, as if punctuating both his words and emotions. This is one of his favorite stories because it involves some of his favorite things in his life: my mom and cruising around in his car with my mom. But it’s also about one of his least favorite things in his life: cows that are ghosts.

The story starts in a small little mountain town nestled in the mountains of Michoacán. Coeneo, with a then population of just 1,000, means “the place of hummingbirds” in our native Purhépechan language. Both sides of my family has a long history of being in this town. My parents grew up down the street from each other, but their combined 22 total siblings never seemed to get along. That wasn’t the case for my parents though, they were basically the Mexican Romeo & Juliet.

My paternal grandpa started the first and only taxi in a 40-mile radius after years of doing Bracero work migrating to and from the U.S. As soon as he was old enough to reach the gas pedal, my dad was driving cars and helping my grandpa take their neighbors to nearby towns. This was actually perfect for my mom and dad. They were able to sneak away and go cruising, away from their always-judgmental brothers and sisters, and go on “dates”. One of their first “dates” was easily their most memorable.

On a cloudless and chilly night driving back from a trip to the capital city, Morelia, my dad decided to take the backroads to spend more time with my mom. They were chatting, laughing, talking about the chisme in the town when suddenly; a cow comes running into the middle of the badly paved road. Without having time to brake, my dad swerved but ultimately collided with the poor animal. They cautiously got out, afraid to confirm their fears of having killed this pobre cow. Off the road to the side of them laid an obviously dead cow.

After a flurry of his favorite choice curse words, my parents assessed the damage to the car was unfixable now and they decided to drive home, hoping to return to the cow the next day and find out if it was tagged or clipped to pay the owner for the loss. The car’s headlight was busted, there was blood on the front, and the fender was detached. My dad was already rehearsing the story he would tell my grandpa.

In the morning, my dad raced out to the side yard to attempt to clean any of the blood off the car and prayed my grandpa hadn’t seen the car yet. But the car was gone. He knew that meant that my grandpa had taken it out for a job. Nervous and unsure what to do, he picked my mom up and took another car back to find the cow with the hopes that he could at least make this right. But when they reached the road where they hit the cow…they couldn’t find the cow. Panicked, they concluded that the rancher must have found the cow and taken it back to their rancho. They drove the rest of the way home in near silence.

When he dropped my mom back off, and pulled onto the street in front of the house, my dad saw my grandpa coming out the front door. Immediately my dad launched into his speech, frantically attempting to cover all his bases, blaming the potholes, the government for not fixing the potholes, the government for not installing more lights on that road. Halfway through his speech my grandpa raised a single finger, which we all knew to the day of his death a few years ago meant to shut up and let him talk. “¿Mijo, de que estas hablando?”

Confused, my dad went into the side lot and saw the car sitting in it’s usual spot. Except it didn’t have a dented fender. Or a busted headlight. Or blood anywhere. No cow, no proof of an accident. They had hit a “ghost cow”.