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Killer Cows: And Other (Partially) True Stories From the Blue Ridge Mountains
A laugh-out-loud memoir of growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, back when the nearest adult was a mile away and the cows had it in for you.
We should have died. Every boy who grew up in the mountains in the late '70s and '80s should have died, several times over, and the only reason we didn't is that nobody was paying close enough attention to notice we were trying.
Killer Cows is a collection of true-enough tall tales from a childhood spent mostly unsupervised. There's the herd of cattle that stalked us across a pasture with murder in their eyes. The blue tarp we were certain would work as a sail. The frozen hot dogs we were certain would thaw. The shortcuts that ended in tow trucks, the fast-food jobs that ended in grease fires, and the garage band that put at least one cymbal in a pond. Along for all of brothers, sidekicks, and neighbors who never once learned their lesson, and the state of Virginia, which always found a way to make the weather worse.
Inside you'll find Blue Ridge Baptism, Boy Scouts Without the Merit Badges, Tom Foolery, I Can't Drive 55, Working for the Man, Rock and Roll, Parties, and Other Disasters, and finally Lessons from the Blue Ridge, which is short, because we didn't learn many.
For readers of Patrick McManus, Jean Shepherd, and Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. If you grew up anywhere rural before cell phones, you'll recognize a few of these stories as your own. If you didn't, this is what you missed.
We should have died. Every boy who grew up in the mountains in the late '70s and '80s should have died, several times over, and the only reason we didn't is that nobody was paying close enough attention to notice we were trying.
Killer Cows is a collection of true-enough tall tales from a childhood spent mostly unsupervised. There's the herd of cattle that stalked us across a pasture with murder in their eyes. The blue tarp we were certain would work as a sail. The frozen hot dogs we were certain would thaw. The shortcuts that ended in tow trucks, the fast-food jobs that ended in grease fires, and the garage band that put at least one cymbal in a pond. Along for all of brothers, sidekicks, and neighbors who never once learned their lesson, and the state of Virginia, which always found a way to make the weather worse.
Inside you'll find Blue Ridge Baptism, Boy Scouts Without the Merit Badges, Tom Foolery, I Can't Drive 55, Working for the Man, Rock and Roll, Parties, and Other Disasters, and finally Lessons from the Blue Ridge, which is short, because we didn't learn many.
For readers of Patrick McManus, Jean Shepherd, and Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. If you grew up anywhere rural before cell phones, you'll recognize a few of these stories as your own. If you didn't, this is what you missed.
239 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 4, 2025
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