"I'm producing more milk at less cost because of the '2 L's'," says this cow. (It could be a polled Hereford, but what do I know? I can hardly tell a heifer from a Guernsey.) The back of the card explains that the two L's -- lime and legumes -- are not only good for farmers' profits, they're good for the entire country, if not the world, because they build healthy babies that make better citizens. The card is vague on exactly how the lime is used. One is left to picture a large block of limestone set out in the field for the cows to nibble at (cows have only lower teeth, by the way, no uppers, I am assured by a person with long experience in both cows and teeth -- which may be the most important thing you learn from this page). Legumes, by the way, are plants that grow pods to house their seed, such as peas and, probably most important in this instance, soy beans. (The cow is not, however, sinking her teeth, however they are arranged, into visibly leguminous vegetation in the photograph. This can probably be explained by the fact that the card was printed by YorKolor at 285 Lafayette St. in New York City's Greenwich Village, two blocks east of Broadway between Houston and Grand -- an area whose inhabitants, if they think of "soy" at all, probably think of it as a thin, dark sauce kept in little cone-shaped bottles on the tables of the neighborhood's many Asian restaurants.) The exact location of the card's addressee was apparently similarly vague. It was sent from Salem on July 30 (pretty late for soybeans) of 1958, arrived in Scottsburg when it should have gone to Austin, and was sent on to Indianapolis -- where they at least know a little about both limestone and soybeans.

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