If you think retired school teacher and 1957 Elks Rodeo Queen Laura Lee Tognazzini Dias will easily give away the inspiration for the name of her new book, The Purple Cow: A Dairy Daughter’s Heritage, think again. The author and dairy daughter, clad all in purple for a recent meeting with the Sun, guards the secret carefully.
“I don’t answer that question,” she said. “If you read the whole book, eventually you will come to the story that explains the purple cow.”
The book, released by the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society through Janaway Publishing, gives away a clue about the violet bovine in the introduction, with a poem that reads: “I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one, But I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one.”
“As a former teacher, every student in my classes knew that poem,” she said. “That was a very popular poem when I was much younger.”
Tognazzini Dias still remembers when the Santa Maria Valley and surrounding area produced large amounts of dairy, from small family farms, to medium-sized operations like her father’s, to large dairy houses like Knudsens’.
Though she wrote much of the book, including accounts of her family’s dairy farm, Tognazzini Dias called on the help of other local dairy families to contribute as well.
“The dairy industry was probably one of the earliest forms of agriculture out here,” she said. “You just never know where the stories are going to lead you, who was involved, until you start reading about it.”
Santa Maria Valley Historical Society’s director Shirley Contreras penned one section that details the history of Knudsens’ Creamery in the Santa Maria Valley. The Knudsens’ Creamery is also the subject of the Valley Speaks speaker series happening at the Santa Maria Public Library right before the book signing event on June 13.
The book highlights the good times for local dairymen, as well as some of the tribulations faced by the various farms. It also includes press clippings originally collected by Tognazzini Dias’ father, Arthur Romolo Tognazzini, detailing everything from a barn burning down to the results of the Dairy Princess contest.
“I had a long time on the dairy, and I saw many, many changes,” she said. “In the beginning they used milk cans, but eventually, the milk was pumped straight out of the cow, into the cooling tanks, and onto a truck to LA or somewhere up north.”
Tognazzini Dias saw the dairy industry’s technological boom, which transformed the way local dairymen did business, and consequently put a number of small family outfits out of business. The book also details the final demise of several local dairies in the 1970s, as more and more families—including her own—moved toward farming and ranching.
The diversity of producers, the intertwined families, and organized abundance found during the early years of the industry are well documented in The Purple Cow. The book also includes plenty of images, from black and white photos of dairymen on the job, to maps of the valley that offer a keen insight into a forgotten aspect of local agriculture. The volume is certainly a fascinating read for anyone interested in local agricultural history or the culture surrounding it.
“You’ll learn all kinds of things in this book; it’s not just the daily workings of a dairy,” Tognazzini Dias said. “I think it’s important to reflect on a way of life that existed here, and for me, I knew a lot of these people; this was all just a part of our life.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is ready for some fresh cheese. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 11-18, 2015.
