How the Cow Ate the Cabbage

Rick Smith/Columnist

Grace’s roots were in northwestern Louisiana. 

“I’ll die here,” she said, words firmly planted in her headroom. And it was there, a short drive from her birthplace, she crossed the great divide, having ventured only a couple times to the other Cotton States.

I coaxed her to fly to Houston once. This was her first and only plane ride. I booked her a window seat on the last flight of the day. It was a dismal day. 

I picked her up from the airport. She was busting at the seams to tell me about her flight.

“I saw a blinking light out the window. I looked at it for the longest time, wondering why we were circling it. So, I asked the lady sitting beside me, ‘Why do we keep circling that light out there?’ That sweet lady said, ‘Honey, that’s the light on the tip of the plane’s wing.’” She paused, “Bless her heart.” 

We both burst out laughing.

I told her that I had a quart of Bulgarian buttermilk in the fridge – her favorite – and would make a pone of cornbread as soon as we got to the house. Buttermilk and cornbread – Southern manna. 

Cornbread was a very controversial topic with her, about as controversial as religion and politics. The big debate was whether or not sugar belonged in cornbread. In a region that takes cornbread as seriously as it does plain-featured babies, the sugar matter was a biggie. 

“Can you believe Betty Jean puts a quarter cup of sugar in her cornbread?” she announced. “Sugar doesn’t belong in cornbread, well, not that much anyway. I told her exactly how the cow ate the cabbage.”

“How the cow ate the cabbage” was a phrase she used often when she meant to tell a person the unvarnished truth, even if the person would rather not hear it. It’s a phrase mainly heard in the southern United States, and probably dates back to at least the 1940s. 

Here’s the story behind the phrase.

A while back, a circus came to a small rural town. While the cirkies were putting up the big top, a baby elephant escaped and found his way to a little old lady’s garden up the road. That little old lady was none other than Beulah Mae Buchanan.

Spinster Buchanan was very near-sighted. For years she had refused to entertain the idea she even needed eyeglasses. 

She was quite alarmed when she saw the animal in her garden – alarmed enough to call the police and report, “There’s a cow in my cabbage patch pulling up my cabbages with its tail!” 

The policeman on the other end of the line listened patiently, “A cow is eating your cabbage, ma’am? We’ll send someone right out.”

“I never said he was eatin’ ‘em,” Miss Beulah emphasized with annoyance.

“No?” The policeman replied. “Then what is the cow doing?”

Beulah Mae blushed, hesitated, and then exclaimed. “Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”

And that, dear readers, is how the cow ate the cabbage.

Rick Smith is a Jeffersonian and can be reached at theriquemeister@gmail.com.