From the declassified field notes of J. Carl Mooman, Senior Dairy Operative, Project Pasteur
January 3, 1956
New assignment. Fort Stockton, Texas. Codename: Butterfield. Truck in place—1955 Divco Model 11, registered to Mountain Gold Dairy. Modified under cover of darkness at Fort Bliss: false floor, butter tub compartments, butter churn antenna wired to CB. My cover? “Carl the Milkman.”
I don’t look like much, and that’s the point. Nobody suspects a man with a milk mustache and orthopedic shoes. They’ve given me a small leather-bound ledger to keep field notes. Told me to be observant but inconspicuous. My knees already hate me, but I love my country.
February 14, 1956
Valentine’s Day. Delivered a dozen pints of buttermilk to the Piggly Wiggly. Inside one: microfilm roll containing intercepted Soviet telegram. Coded in lemon juice between pages of the Fort Stockton Telegram-Dispatch. Target: Bluebonnet Loan & Trust.
Noticed the bank president, Whitford Brewster Jr., received an unusually large shipment of typewriter ribbon. Suspicious. No man makes that many mistakes.
April 9, 1957
Observed strange after-hours activity behind Rex Hall Drug. Three men, two crates, and a smell like a wet squirrel in a bottle of gin. I delivered a half-gallon of homogenized and two pounds of cottage cheese, tucked in a leaflet about “communist infiltration of rural pharmacies.”
One of the men called me “Milkman Dan.” I did not correct him.
August 17, 1959
Installed a directional antenna inside the butter churn. Used it to pick up scrambled chatter near the old airfield. Turns out it was just Hairless B29 trying to seduce the night nurse at the VA clinic with his shortwave love poems. I passed it along anyway. Codebreaker called it “troubling but patriotic.”
October 22, 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis. Escalation protocol initiated. I switched to emergency route: Grounds for Divorce diner, Scuttlebutt Gentlemen’s Club, and the back alley behind the Lucky Lady Lounge.
Delivered cheese wedges to Mayor J.T. Goodman with instructions tucked inside: “The only safe milk is evaporated. Keep eyes on the jukebox.” He winked, but I don’t think he read it.
June 1, 1967
Unclear if Fort Stockton is still on the map. I requested reinforcements after spotting three strangers dressed in all denim taking Polaroids of my truck. They turned out to be college kids from El Paso. Left behind an anti-war flyer tucked in my windshield wiper: “Make Butter, Not Bombs.”
Burned it.
December 25, 1971
Christmas Day. Engine wouldn’t turn over. Buried the last of the microfilm in a thermos of eggnog behind the Almost United Methodist Church. If you’re reading this and the nog is still there: refrigerate immediately. Also, decode via ultraviolet.
Project Pasteur has gone dark. I am now off-grid. Code phrase: “Moo moo alpha out.”
Found Notes from the Personal Files of Kenneth “Kenny” Byers, Sophomore at Jim Bowie High School, 1994
March 5, 1994
Found the Divco in a field behind Rusty Hammer’s storage barn. No engine. No wheels. Steering wheel wrapped in duct tape like it had something to hide. Inside: several old milk crates, two pairs of prescription bifocals, a rusted can opener, and a small leather journal labeled: “DO NOT DRINK.”
Challenge accepted.
March 12, 1994
Read the whole thing. This guy—J. Carl Mooman—was either a genius or completely nuts. Or both. I checked old records. There was a Carl Mooman who delivered milk, but he vanished around 1975. Town said he moved to Marfa to make cheese sculptures. Sounds like a cover story.
I’m taking it upon myself to restart Project Pasteur. Rebranding: Project Moo Two.
March 14, 1994
Added fake cow horns to the Divco. Stuck an old butter churn on top from the flea market. Wired it to Dad’s old CB radio. Now I scan local chatter nightly.
First transmission picked up: “Breaker one-nine, I need more Ding Dongs.”
Might be code. Might be diabetes.
April 1, 1994
Followed a suspicious woman from the Klip-N-Dye salon who was holding a bouquet of artificial sunflowers and humming something that sounded Russian. She went into the Scuttlebutt, ordered a Miller Lite, and left. Her license plate read: “CRMDIVA.”
Conclusion: She might be the sleeper agent Carl warned about.
April 11, 1994
Broke into Bluebonnet Loan & Trust after hours using a borrowed janitor badge from a friend who owed me for the stink bomb incident. In the back office, found an old typewriter with Cyrillic markings under the ribbon.
Called the FBI hotline. They asked if I was prank calling. I said, “Sir, this is Project Moo Two.”
They hung up.
May 2, 1994
Lucinda at Grounds for Divorce says I’m “one cow short of a herd.” But then she gave me a slice of lemon chess pie “for your efforts.” I think she knows something.
I’ve begun documenting all local milk consumption and any unexplainable digestive events. Also tracking which locals use powdered creamer. Highly suspicious.
June 6, 1994
Painted the Divco’s side panel: “MOUNTAIN GOLD MILK: Purity with a Purpose.”
Someone added graffiti under it: “And Paranoia with a Plotline.”
I’m keeping it.
October 14, 1994
Last night the churn antenna picked up a signal again. Short burst. Morse code. I decoded it: “Good work, Moo Two. Keep churning.”
Then silence.
Either someone’s playing with me, or Project Pasteur never really ended.
Either way, I’m not stopping now.
Epilogue: Found Etched Into the Butter Churn Antenna, 2024
“PASTEUR LIVES.”
8 responses to “CREAMLINE CONFIDENTIAL”
Periodically, particularly during the physically taxing sweltering summer months in west Texas, the Captain’s timing belt will slip a few cogs which means it’s time for him to visit the PTSTD desk over at the Ft. Stockton Memorial Hospital and Animal Testing Facility. In addition to providing him the compassionate attention his special needs require, his visits there are always great opportunities for him to recharge his creative batteries, so to speak, by gathering through face-to-face interactions with other inma… — I mean, patrons of the facility — the received wisdom and shared oral history of the distinctively quirky Pecos County populace whose lives he chronicles in these pages. Safe to say, this scenario recently played out in textbook fashion and we are all the richer for having now learned of the idiosyncratic exploits of J. Carl Mooman and his accidental acolyte, Kenny Byers.
I’ve long had a fascination for vintage DIVCO milk delivery vehicles, ever since my older brother and I spent a summer back in the late 1950’s with our Uncle, Rex Phleming, owner and general manager of Fort Stockton’s historic Westward Ho dairy. Uncle Rex had just interjected an exclamation point into the ice cream delivery business in town by launching a fleet of Cushman Package Karts to roam the neighborhoods around town hawking frozen sweet treats to overheated customers of all ages. You can read about it here:
FINDING THE SWEET SPOT – Captain My Captain
Anyway, my big brother was old enough to snag a summer job as a routeman back then, an experience he fondly recalled for years until his untimely passing three years ago. Fortunately, although too young to operate one of the ice cream karts on city streets, I was able to drive a miniature DIVCO scale model milk truck around the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly as a promotional scheme (powered by a little two-stroke lawnmower engine). Since this was the dairy industry, all workers had to be unionized, Teamsters, IIRC, so even at age 13 I had to join up and get a Union card. The good news was that I got an hourly wage of $9.50 — pretty damn good for a kid back in the ‘50s. The bad news was that after various deductions I didn’t quite fully understand, my effective wage turned out to be closer to 75 cents an hour. There were union dues, of course, and one deduction listed as the J.T. Goodman charitable trust. I asked Uncle Rex about it and he simply replied “Don’t ask too many questions, kid.”
Here’s that link . . .
https://captainmycaptain.blog/2023/09/28/finding-the-sweet-spot/
Weird, Wired, Wonderful – an Expose’ of Behind-the-Headlines surveillance, looking for a communist under ever rock (or sagebrush?) – Senator McCarthy would be proud .
Love the cattle horns on the Divco –
Maybe I should find a pair of Longhorns for the hood of my 1954 Caddy convertible-
and add a musical electronic horn to play “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You “!
(Otherwise known as “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”).
Good work. Anyone else would have soured on the assignment by now…
The cream always comes to the top.
Nothing says, “Incowgnito” like a DIVCO with horns, eh?
When a guy with a moniker like “Cornfield” issues a pun like that, you know it’s no accident he’s a regular reader of the Captain’s blog . . .
Valid point HB. While not an Apostle of the Absurd, I do ride my own Tangential Thought Train. And, what does a farm boy do when he encounters a horned milk truck standing on his tracks?
a: Checks for truck nuts.;
b: Pokes pun.;
c: Milks it.; or,
d;)