Davy Sprocket, the President of the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas, and Lily, the genius, Gods-blessed inventor of not only the Lilyburger, but fast food and franchising as well, drew up some contracts for beef exports for her chains of restaurants, wherever they were.
From now on, they’d have plenty of beef!
And the prices would be affordable, once the Texans got their beef production started up again!
While they were doing that, Sally taught the butler and Annie Elmly how to make Freedom Fries, and Mr. Cat graded their performance!
The butler got an A!
Annie Elmly overcooked the fries…
“This is way harder than sharpshooting!” she protested.
“Mrow! It’s so easy teens on their first job can do it!”
Sally merely put a hand on her cheek and sighed.
She said a quick prayer for her husband, and then, thinking twice, said a prayer for her daughter as well.
Lily looked like she was having a blast.
The time of her life, even!
She was smiling, and laughing, and signing business contracts…
But this talk of strike-busting…
Sally didn’t like it!
But, she was waiting to see how things actually played out.
Lily was still growing up!
Sally had to let her daughter make mistakes now and then, and learn from them.
Although when Sally had been growing up, her mistakes were things like not doing her chores, and sneaking out to meet with Bill…
It hadn’t been anything like traveling to a foreign country to interfere in their internal politics…
Was that just how kids were these days?
Were the times changing?
Was Sally…
Old and out of touch?
Mr. Cat put a paw on her arm, and she melted instantly.
Cat paws have a really strong soothing affect!
“Don’t worry, meow,” he said. “Lily’s special!”
Reassured by her daughter’s talking semi-pet cat, Sally decided she was going to say extra prayers from now on…
The next day, there was a big parade for Lily and Annie and the posse that rescued all the cattle!
Connie and Blyde were ceremonially driven through the main street in a cage on a wagon, and everyone booed them!
Mr. Cat sat in his own wagon, looking mighty unrepentant, wearing a sign that said ‘I tried to snatch guns!’
They went from the capitol building, around town, and then ended up back near the capitol building, at the Dustin City Prison!
There, Connie and Blyde would serve out their sentence, and reflect on their crimes!
At the very end of the parade, after Connie and Blyde were locked up for good, the President and most of the representatives came out and presented Lily with her Medal of Freedom, the highest award in the entire Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas!
It was only some of the representatives, because several of them were debating the proper way to cook a steak, and there was no getting in the middle of that!
It was about high noon when everything wrapped up, and Lily and her gang got back in the car with Dale.
“Bye Annie! Come visit Three Creeks sometime! I’ll show you how to play golf!” Lily yelled, waving.
“Bye Lily! I’ll definitely come visit!”
The President was there to see them off as well, attended by his faithful butler.
They were going to be busy setting up a Lilyburgers test location.
Lily had written down everything they needed to know, and it was a pretty simple operation!
They would be fine.
At least, once the problem in Wisconsin was fixed!
So, flush with cash from her super chores, and her first franchise payment of four thousand, five hundred dollars from the President, Lily turned her sights to the North!
She looked out, and saw…
Nothing but dusty Western prairies!
Dale started the engine and they got driving.
“Uh, Dale, how far away is Wisconsin?” Lily asked.
“About two hundred miles, give or take,” he responded with a bit of a drawl.
He’d been hanging out with the Texans and picked up a bit of an accent!
They had shown him a horse race, and now he had some ideas about racing… with cars!
Lily did some quick maths.
“If it took us a day to get to the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas, and that was one hundred miles, and it’s two hundred miles to get to Wisconsin from here… Does that mean the drive will take two days?”
“Good math, Lily!” Lily’s Mama praised her, and patted her on the head, and Lily giggled happily.
“You’d think that, but nope! This is all flat land. We don’t have to go up and down the big Appal mountains to get to Wisconsin. We can go a lot faster! We should get there this evening.”
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Dale was going to drive fast!
Safely, of course.
It was mostly a straight line, too, unlike the windy, steep mountain roads.
And Mayor Henry’s car was top-of-the-line!
Vroom vrooooooom!
The miles flew by!
Miles and miles…
Of the same scenery…
Lily and Mr. Cat fell asleep, and Sally found her gaze turned inside the car, looking at her precious daughter all tuckered out.
It had been a busy three days!
Leaving Appalashia for the first time…
Buying her cowgirl outfit and then catching the cattle-rustlers on the same day…
A late night of business negotiations, and then a parade and now back on the road…
Lily needed her rest!
Mr. Cat was tuckered out, too.
If only there was some way to capture this moment forever…
Sally merely smiled and did her best to commit to memory, storing it in her heart…
Eventually, the scenery further out west changed to endless fields of golden grain, swaying in the wind.
Wheat!
The outer reaches of the Glorious Sun Kingdom of France!
But there were no farmers out tending the fields.
The wheat was on its own, for now…
And, to the north…
More and more wild grass was growing, and it was turning greener and greener, and there were more and more clouds in the deep blue sky.
Wisconsin!
The air was cooler, the hills were gentle, and a multitude of rivers and creeks fed into the Big Lakes!
Rumor was, even standing on one side of the Big Lakes, you couldn’t see the other shore…
And somewhere up there was a really big waterfall!
Lily woke up, and Sally spent the rest of the drive telling Lily all the stories she’d heard about the Big Lakes.
And, suddenly, the hours had flown by, and Sally found them arriving in the capital of the Friendly Commonwealth of Wisconsin, Bessie’s Landing!
The legend was, the first dairy farmers, and their beloved dairy cow Bessie, had settled here in what would eventually become the Friendly Commonwealth of Wisconsin!
There was a big circular roundabout in the middle of the city, and in the center was a giant statue of those two dairy farmers, husband and wife standing next to Bessie, their dairy cow, and Lassie, their beloved dog!
Dale drove around the roundabout once, letting Lily see the statues from all sides as she ooh’d and aah’d, and then drove them to a cozy bed and breakfast inn, built in a remodeled old ranch-style home.
“Welcome to the Gentle Acres,” a kindly old granny said!
She had silver-white hair, and kindly eyes behind spectacles, and was wearing a baking apron!
“My name is Granny Pomum. How long would you like to stay?” she asked.
Dale and Sally turned to look at Lily.
Lily drew herself up big and tall, and smiled.
“My name is Lily! I came to solve the Dairy Cow strike, so I don’t know how long we’ll need to stay!”
“Oh my,” Granny Pomum said. She put a hand on her cheek and frowned slightly.
“Can we stay for a couple nights, and then extend as we need?”
“Ya sure can, lil sweetie.”
“Thanks Granny!”
It was late, but Granny whipped up some dinner for everyone.
Cheese curds! Bratwurst! Apple pie, and apple juice!
“I wish I could offer you some mac and cheese, but…” Granny Apple sighed.
“Is it because of the Dairy Cow Strike?” Lily asked.
“Yes, indeed. We barely have enough cheese for our beloved cheese curds, these days. We’re having to make up for it with more bratwurst, and apples, which is great for me, but I do so miss having enough cheese…”
“Apples?” Lily asked.
“Yes, my family has run the apple orchard here for generations, and we’ve seen the dairy farms grow and grow…”
A third party perspective!
What a find!
Lily’s business negotiation instincts activated!
“So, what’s the deal with the Strike anyway?”
So Granny Pomum told the story.
For a long time, the dairy cows and dairy farmers had lived in harmony, and spread throughout the land.
But, eventually, the dairy farms had filled up all the land in Bessie's Landing, and the cows had moved from big, open pastures to more cramped dairy farms.
At first this was fine, since the farmers brought yummy alfalfa and hay and grass to the dairy cows!
But the farms had gotten bigger and bigger…
The cows were more and more cramped…
New milking machines were installed…
And the farmers had to start importing hay from the Glorious Sun Kingdom of France…
Eventually, the Dairy Cows were fed up!
“But, nobody’s sure exactly why the Dairy Cows are upset,” Granny Pomum explained. “The Dairy Cows don’t talk, you see.”
“Mrow,” said Mr. Cat.
Lily nodded knowingly.
Everyone knows cows don’t talk!
They say “moo!”
The cow goes moo!
Lily had learned this at a very young age.
It was common knowledge!
“And the dairy farmers are really upset about it. They want the dairy cows to be happy, but they don’t know what they can do. There’s just not enough land for them to go back to the old way…” Granny Pomum sighed sadly.
“Hmmm…” Lily sipped her yummy apple juice while she thought about it.
She wanted the dairy cows to be happy, too!
She wanted everybody to be happy, as much as possible!
But she was also a businesslady!
And, she was currently still wearing her cowgirl outfit.
“Are you from Texas?” Granny Pomum asked.
“No, I’m not from the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas,” Lily replied.
Granny Pomum narrowed her eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m from Three Creeks Village, in Appalashia! But we did visit the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas, to help the ranchers!”
“Come to think of it, they hadn’t brought the herd up here in a while… Last time they did, the dairy cows were too sad to pair up with the ranch cattle…”
“They had a pair of cattle-rustlin’ varmints!” Lily said, and she excitedly told the story of how she caught them.
“Oh my,” Granny Pomum said.
That, naturally, led to Lily explaining her Lilyburgers restaurants, and her ultimate goal of paying for her parents’ retirement.
“Well aren’t you a good daughter! I bet your Mama’s mighty proud of you.”
“I sure am,” Sally said.
Granny Pomum sighed.
“My own granddaughter is like you, Lily. She wants to take our apple orchard ‘to the next level,’ as she puts it, but…”
She trailed off.
Then, seeing that everyone had finished their pie, she clapped her hands.
“Well, I’m certain you’re all tired from your long drive.” She started clearing all the dishes.
“Is there anyone I can talk to about the Dairy Cow Strike?” Lily asked.
“Oh yes, the Chamber of Commerce is meeting tomorrow morning. They can tell you all about it.”
“Yay!” Lily cheered.
Their room at the bed and breakfast was super comfy!
The weather was cooler up in these parts, so the beds had quilted blankets on them, and the walls were covered in knick-knack decorations, and cute art of happy dairy cows!
Sally and Lily went to bed, with Mr. Cat curled up next to Lily, until…
At the crack of dawn, they were woken up by the sound of a hustler!
“Buy some apples! Buy some apples!”
