Bessie the Ambassador

Waiting for a green light at the corner of Milton Avenue and Morse Street, I watched two women with cameras circle Bessie the Oasis cow, posing, and trying to find the best angles to take a picture. Instead of heading home, I took a detour into the old Del Taco parking lot and leaned out my window.
"I saw you taking pictures," I said. "Would you like one with both of you in it?"
"That would be wonderful!"

They told me how they'd driven up from Texas and had mused how, at the Welcome Center, there wasn't a cow there to signify they'd entered Wisconsin. "There should be a cow!"
Imagine their delight when they rolled in to Janesville where they'd made hotel reservations and happened to find Bessie the Oasis cow waiting for them.

"I collect cows," the woman with the southern accent explained.
She and her mother were on their way to The National Dairy Shrine Museum in Ft. Atkinson.
I tilted my head. "Really? I didn't know there was a dairy shrine in Ft. Atkinson."
"Oh, yes!"

They asked about Bessie' significance. With grand, arm-waving dramatics, I gave them the whole story of the Oasis Truck Stop, the first Oasis cow that had been a Holstein but had blown over in a wind storm and had been replaced with a Guernsey, the new property owners promising to save Bessie when the truck stop closed, the bullet hole discovered in Bessie's hindquarters while she was being painted and restored to her original glory, the man who created a giant milk bucket out of scrap metal and placed it under Bessie in the dead of night before sneaking away, and the milking stool which had appeared just as mysteriously only months ago.
The two of them listened with great interest, ooing and ahhing at the right moments. When they finally handed over their camera, they knew how they wanted to pose for their picture.

It was adorable... two grown women, mother and daughter, legs dangling as they sat on that giant stool.

The Texas tourists thought they were getting a simple picture of a cow for a collection. Thanks to good timing, what they got was the story about a cow named Bessie.