There are cows in Los Angeles. Lots of them. In the suburban town of Chino, some 40 miles due east of downtown LA, there exists large dairy farms that butt up against the tract homes and strip malls. These days, the farms are being rapidly chipped away by development, but in the mid 1980s, when I was in high school, there were acres and acres of them.

The cows don't all live in Southern California. Many of them live farther north, in the state's large Central Valley. Big semi trucks ship these animals back and forth every day in long metal trailers. The ride from north to south places the cows in a certain amount of intestinal stress, and after the six-hour trip the trailers are more than a little messy. I, as a 16-year-old high school student desperate for cash, had the unique job of climbing into the back of these trucks wearing rubber boots and wielding a large pressure hose. For long summer days I would do my best to remove the remnants of the preceding journey, and wonder just what my future life had in store.