Robert Kirby is traveling on assignment. This is a reprint of an earlier column.

There are about 100 different kinds of cows, including Holstein, Guernsey, Jersey, Angus, Texas Longhorn and Pasture Monster. I'm most familiar with the latter breed of cow, although my personal favorite is New York Strip. A prize-winning Pasture Monster named Clara Belle used to keep me from taking the shortcut home from Garfield Elementary. If I wanted to get there in time to watch cartoons, I had to cross Clara Belle's turf.

Clara Belle hated my guts. It was partly because cows naturally dislike kids, but also because I was in the habit of bouncing marbles off her with a slingshot. Nobody carries a grudge like a cow. One afternoon she stomped my Huckleberry Hound lunch box as flat as a license plate.

More than 40 years later, I had a reckoning with cows. I went to the Utah State Fair and milked one. It was a first for me personally and cows in general. No cow has ever been so inexpertly off-loaded.

It was not my idea. My editor, who was raised on a ranch, thought it up. Then she came up with the idea of sending videographer Kim McDaniel along as a way of ratcheting up the embarrassment level.

Kim and I hooked up with Delwin Westergard in the cow barn at the fair. Delwin was asleep when we found him. Having seen every episode of "Rawhide" as a kid, I know what with lightning and wolves and rustlers, that tending cows is a tiring business.

According to my editor, Delwin had kindly agreed to let a moron milk one of his cows.

He raises Jersey cows, according to him, one of the most attractive and gentle breeds of cow.

Delwin picks a particularly vicious-looking one named Flo and puts her head in a large metal clamp.

"Just let her know you're there," he told me, running his hand down her fender. "She'll be OK."

Then without so much as a hello, Delwin grips Flo's udder and gives it a tug. A needle-fine spray of milk comes out. I stare at my wet shoe and try to remember that this is where Hagen-Dazs begins.

Flo seems perfectly fine with the cursory treatment, but I'm not fooled. Maybe she and Delwin have some kind of understanding. But she and I have only just met.

I stoop down under her bumper and get a grip. Flo senses the change in partners and whacks me across the face with her tail. She also nervously shifts her back feet, forcing a sudden, frightening comparison between my skull and a lunch box.

She settles down and I get busy. A cow's teat is a tough article. It takes a couple of minutes, but I finally manage to coax out some milk. I even manage to direct some of it onto Kim and the camera.

You can learn a lot of stuff at the Utah State Fair. I learned that I'm going to try really hard to forget where Rocky Road comes from.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com.