Dr. John Arnold was a veterinarian graduating from Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1941. Most of his veterinary career as a faculty member of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine.
In this interview, Dr. John Arnold gives background of his times on the farm in Elwood, MN— from automobiles, to laundry and bathing, to his pre-vet education. In a second interview, Dr. John Arnold shares his personal recollections of the founding and transitions of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, the turmoil of the the late 1960's on students, graduate student lack of recognition, budgetary issues facing the dean, and changing the college's constitution to allow for a formal procedures that paved the way for more women in academia.
Oral History Interview completed on June 16th, 1987 by Paul Cox.
Full interview and transcript available upon request.
Oral Interview Clip: "A High Class Dairy Job":
Well John, all this time you've been working pretty hard, but there must've been some desire that was building up in you to go on to further education?
Well, I seen, I was getting no place just being a hired hand. Then I started to think about taking something in college. I originally I wanted to take poultry husbandry, because I had experience with turkeys. Then my brother and I used to raise show chickens. He got our pin money - our spending money by taking prizes in poultry shows. So then I got a chance to get a job in Alexandria as a milkman on a small dairy. Had seven cows and a hired girl. The hired girl and I milked the seven cows by hand and then we bottled the milk and I delivered it with an old broken down race horse. The only way I could make her move was to get the line underneath their tail - that made her run. Or there was a North American Creameries in Alexandria, and they had white trucks. Apparently one had crowded her at one time because if she saw one of them coming up behind her, she would take off.
Now you probably would cringe at our milk bottling. The milk was milked by hand, run through a strainer and into quart milk bottles. And then by hand, we put on a cap paper— paper soaked with wax. The cap was put on the bottle and then it was put in the cart and delivered. They had a dairy inspector, Dr. Fleming. He came out and checked the cows for mastitis by palpation. There were several farms delivering, he would stop them on the route and pick up a bottle of milk and look at it. He would see if there was any sediment in it. There used to be one old fellow, he sent home every time he caught him with his milk because there was sediment in it. Then the fellow would come around and buy milk for me to finish out his route. Well, after a year of that...
Excuse me. John, let me ask you a question about this milk. You didn't cool the milk at all?
Well, we'd cool the night's milk. Morning was cooled a bit, but not very much.
How did you cool it?
In the basement, the coolness of the basement.
You bottled it and then cooled it. Let's go back to this veterinarian that came out and checked the cows for mastitis. Did he check to see if you washed the udders or any other things of that sort?
No. The udders weren't washed either.
And they weren't washed either.
That wasn't the practice.
That wasn't the practice. You strained the milk though?
Oh yes.
Was there a strainer pad in the neck of the strainer and then also like perhaps a towel or something that
took out the big pieces?
No, just the strainer pad.
Just the strainer pad. And when that got kind of plugged up, it just sorta blocked the strainer.
No, we didn't have to do that.
You didn't have to do that?
We were regarded as a high class dairy.
[Both laugh]
Where you considered at grade A or grade B?
There were no grades.
No grades at that time at all?
Not in that town.