Randy

The names and locations in this story have been changed.

My boss at the raw milk dairy farm, Randy, was small and crass, and a member of a cult that followed the word of a 35,000-year-old Lemurian warrior named Ramtha. After we did the morning milking, he always invited me to stay for breakfast and watch Larry the Cable Guy with him, and I usually said yes. He would make us eggs and sausage and we would talk about cows, and Larry, and sometimes he would show me his special ritual objects: heavy candle sticks and long gray hooded robes, and mystifying self-published new age texts that he would pore over in his little basement apartment with his wife, Inanna.

The farm was owned by a brash, blonde country woman named Sandra who I met exactly twice in the many months I spent there. She had three or four loyal, gigantic white Pyrenean Mountain dogs who loped around all day guarding the cows and scaring me with their watchful stares. She didn’t seem to be involved in the farm’s operations at all. When I walked into her house on my first day to get oriented, I immediately locked eyes with those of JZ Knight, the leader of the cult and famed Ramtha-channeler, whose portrait was hanging proudly above the mantle. I nearly laughed out loud. “So, this is what’s happening here,” I thought to myself. “I wonder what this will be like.”

I recognized Ms. Knight, whose initials are short for Judy Zebra, from her appearance in the “documentary” What the Bleep Do We Know!?, a pseudo-scientific look at quantum physics that had been required viewing in not one but two college courses I had taken. She had a look that had really stood out to me at the time, a Star Trek style red top paired with a fun 60’s inspired dyed blonde hairdo and big lip fillers, which at the time I found incongruous for someone who claimed to be in close personal contact with the keeper of all the universe’s knowledge. (Now, I really think anything goes.) I had driven past her compound on the way to the farm that first morning, and though I hadn’t known it was the Ramtha complex, I had taken note of it – the imposing 20-foot-high gate, looming in the fog. Out of place in that green rolling countryside.

I had moved to Olympia the previous year, at 21. Though I liked to think I was wise in the ways of the world, I was not. I had been working on vegetable farms for a few years, and was sick of squatting to plant onion starts and harvest cilantro in the muck all day. I soon realized I hadn’t considered the realities of hand milking and caring for a herd of cows in the dreary Pacific Northwest spring, but no matter. I was enthralled with the shady back channels raw milk, mostly illegal at the time, had to travel to get to consumers. Though Midwest winters had broken my own raw food diet awhile back, I still believed in the benefits of unpasteurized milk. I wanted to get to know some cows, too. That everyone on the farm seemed to be members of a notorious local cult was just a bonus.

After seeing the portrait in Sandra’s house, I found myself suddenly frightened to ask my new employers anything about Ramtha. I wasn’t sure if it was a secret, like one’s membership in the Masons, or something more akin to membership at an everyday Lutheran church or Orthodox synagogue. It was somewhere outside of any realm of my understanding – there were just no rules for how to talk to your boss about the cult they may or may not have been a part of. I kept quiet.

Sandra, in her one act of orientation, took me down to the barn to meet Randy, my actual boss, and I had trouble containing my absolute glee. He just had so much style. He was at least 6 inches shorter than me, and had an impressive handlebar mustache that was as unironic as it could possibly be without somehow becoming ironic again. It paired perfectly with his cowboy boots and silver buckle. I couldn’t believe my luck – this was the person who was going to teach me how to milk cows?

Randy and I started working side by side in the milking parlor, and he taught me everything he knew with a colorful gusto (he cussed constantly). I’m not sure he had ever really had the opportunity to be a teacher before, and he was unorthodox, but a natural. He taught with stories and directives, but what he really excelled at was throwing me in head first. He made me taste each cow’s milk, even once when one had mastitis, so I could learn to tell right away if anything was off. I can still taste the salty milk from the sick cow, which he had me drink hot – right from the udder to my cupped palm. I licked at it apprehensively - it tasted like disease. Another morning, he had me spreading compost with a bucket spreader on a huge tractor at 5:30 in the morning, in the rain. I had banned myself from tractors at my previous job after I got confused and drove one right into an apple tree, but Randy wouldn’t let me get out of anything. It was do or die at the Honor Circle dairy farm, at least under Randy’s tutelage, and it turned out that was how I learned best.

One afternoon as we were tearing down an old barn, Randy stopped out of the blue, looked me right in the eyes, and asked “Have you ever thought about where all the missing children go?” I stared at him. I don’t think I was remembering to breathe.

“No,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “Where do you think cell phones come from?” I closed my eyes and waited.

I really just wanted to keep tearing the dusty boards down from the roof of the barn, but people always seemed to want to tell me about things like this.

“Aliens,” Randy finished triumphantly. “Where else do you think we could get that kind of technology? How else could humans make something so complex? We’re so stupid. And you know, aliens like to eat kids the best.”

“Okay…” I managed. We went about our work.

Though this was Randy at his most extreme, it was always like this with him to some degree. He taught me about the “Lord of the Rings shit that lives in the center of the earth” (fairies, elves, and the like) over breakfast at his little dining room table, and quizzed me as we bottled the milk: “What shape is the moon?” (egg shaped) “How old is the earth?” (unsure…but not as old as one would think). In the next breath, he would ask me if I wanted to ride along on his cow insemination route. He moonlighted as a bull sperm salesman.

I suppose we worked well together because I never directly challenged him – I wanted to see how far he would go, how much he would share with me, and he always went right to my edge in a way that kept me driving the 45 minutes to the farm a few days a week. I didn’t care that much about dairy farming. I just wanted to know what he would say next. I asked him once how JZ Knight first met Ramtha, and he said “Oh, she and her kids were just making pyramids one day and there he was.” To this day, I still sometimes spend my time wondering what exactly he meant by this. When I had asked him to clarify he said only “You know, making pyramids!” Casual pyramid making was not something that needed any further explanation for Randy. He seemed to accept these stories as fact with an openness that astounded and impressed me. It clashed with his rough exterior in a way I found truly delightful.

Randy often asked me if I wanted to come to a beginner’s weekend at the Ramtha compound down the road. If I had been in possession of a bit less inhibition or a bit more courage, I might have gone. I clearly had no qualms about doing things just for the story. I rushed home after every shift at the farm, excited to debrief Randy’s latest with my roommates, a rowdy crew of lesbians who were usually just getting up by the time I returned each morning. I loved venturing out

into this strange corner of the foggy, mysterious Pacific Northwest and coming back home with tales of my new friend, the rough and ready new age cowboy. But I had done my research on JZ Knight, and knew the compound was rife with allegations of corruption and abuse. Though I felt comfortable trusting a Ramthan acolyte with my life every time we brought the cows in, I guessed I should draw the line somewhere.

As bewildering as I sometimes found him, and as little as I could sign on to his beliefs, I can’t in good conscience put too much distance between Randy and myself. While Randy was a Ramtha devotee, I was in some way a Randy devotee. I’ve always liked those who are capable of going farther in or out than my natural inhibitions and skepticisms allow me to travel. This isn’t to say I wasn’t familiar with these realms. I was, and am, open to magic and mystery to a degree that surpasses most of the people I know. I’ve danced at the edges of theologies and conspiracies that overlap with those of Ramthans. But no matter how outlandish or even frightening his theories were to me, at the end of the day I think Randy and I were seeking the same freedom; chasing the same high.

I don’t think Randy felt a difference between us as I did – I believe he saw me only as a funny little sister, a fellow misfit, a friend who hadn’t yet opened her mind far enough. When I finished my time at the dairy farm, Randy and Inanna presented me with a small blue silk scarf they had come across in their travels and told me to come back in six months so they could give me a wheel of homemade parmesan as it still needed to cure. I never went back.

Years later I visited a woman who worked as a spirit guide channel. As she went into the channel she started laughing.

“Your guide’s name,” she said, “is Randy.”

Nora Lindsey is an animist witch who retired from organic farming to become a hospital chaplain. She is a graduate of the Starr King School of the Ministry. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota with her spouse Stuart and their familiars Meadow (fox-dog) and Princess Magic Face (cat).