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Show PHOTOGRAPHYGary Blodgett WOODS CROSS MAYOR Ralph Argyle does more than just serve as that city's leading civic leader. He alsVbwtft and operates a dairy farm and drives a school ' " UU3i Mayor combines talents pushed onto me. We'd always been more or less a "Doctor" family. My older brother was a doctor. I always wanted to work in an office." LUCILLE ADDED: "Ralph hated cows, but he told me he loved his mom and dad and he had to stay and help them." They were w By JUDY JENSEN WOODS CROSS--How did a "rich city" girl and a boy who's "always hated cows" end up as dairy farmers? The story began at Davis High School over 40 years ago, when the president of the girls Zenith club and the president of the Boys Association fell in love. RALPH AND Lucille Argyle owners of Argyle & Sons Dairy, have been married 43 years. According to Lucille, "inspite of all that has happened we've been very, very happy and we have a wonderful family." Ralph lettered in every sport at Davis High, including football, basketball and track. According to his wife, he threw his first javelin to win a bet. From there, he went on to become Utah State Javelin Champion. "Those farm boys had lots of muscles from milking cows," Lucille explained. RALPH'S FATHER had a dairy in Woods Cross and every night when he got off the activity bus, Ralph would go to work milking cows. Ralph was the youngest of four sons. In 1940, just when he was going to graduate from high school and go on to college, his father had a heart attack. He could no longer work the farm so Ralph had to take over. "Those were tough times," he said. "I had always disliked the farm and felt it was more or less dad had lots of hassles with the inspectors and I wanted to cut out the middle man." ANOTHER MAJOR change Ralph made when he took over was milking the cows by machine. Up until that time, the 70 cows had been milked by hand. "Dad said they couldn't make a machine that would milk cows because it would ruin the cows." He noted that he has delivered as many calves over the years as some obstetricians deliver babies. He explained that a cow has to have a calf every year or it doesn't produce milk. And a cow will have 12 to 15 calves in its lifetime, "if you're lucky." "COWS ARE strange animals," he said, "If they roll over on their back and can't get up they'll be dead in 5 minutes." He said many times he would be out in the field and see a cow with its legs up. "I would have to run into them with the tractor to push them over onto their feet." Over the years, the farm provided pro-vided all kinds of excitement for the family. Ralph tells the story of being out in the field irrigating one day when he noticed one of the 40-foot lengths of pipe had sand in it. "I lifted it up over my head so I could bounce it on the ground. When I did, it hit a high tension Continued on page two MAYOR RALPH ARGYLE Woods Cross married in 1943 and moved into a small home next to Argyle's parents. pa-rents. "I had never even seen a farm," said Lucille, "and now I was a farmer's wife." When Ralph took over, the dairy sold Grade A milk. "I changed to raw milk," he said, "because my Talented mayor Contl nued from page one wire and started to smoke and it burned the pipe nearly in half. I thought that was a stupid thing to do so I went home and decided not to tell anyone. About five minutes later two fire trucks, an ambulance and the paramedics arrived. My son Brent, who is the South Dav-Fire Dav-Fire Chief, arrived and ran over to me and asked if I was the man that was supposed to be dead? It seems a man from Colorado who had been passing by on the freeway saw the incident and called the fire department depart-ment to say I had been killed. It was one of those times when you don't want anyone to know what a stupid thing you've done and pretty pret-ty soon everybody knows." A TYPICAL day for Ralph begins be-gins at 4:30 a.m. when he feeds and milks the cows. He has driven a school bus for 29 years and he has to pick up his first kids at 7:05. He's back in the dairy at 9:30 and from there he goes to city hall to serve as Woods Cross Mayor. His afternoon after-noon bus route begins at 2:15 and he's back at the dairy by 4 p.m. to open the store and milk the cows again. In the evening he's usually got a meeting to attend but sometimes, some-times, "we just relax," he said. The 70 cows have dwindled to 28 now, but the dairy still produces and sells about 60 gallons of milk a day. The store is open from 4 to 7 p.m., six days a week. Customers come from as far as Ogden to get the raw milk from the last raw milk dairy in the county. Argyle said many of the dairies have gone out of business because the government govern-ment has encouraged them to close. RALPH SAID people keep asking him why he doesn't retire. "I tell them I'm tired all the time I just can't get the, "re," on it," he laughs. "There are people chasing me for the property now and one of these days someone will offer me something I like and I'll sell." Until that day he'll just keep getting get-ting up every morning at 4:30 to be with his cows. "I'm so glad Ralph is mayor," said Lucille, "It's good for him to be away from the cows, because after a while 'vhey really get to you." Especially for a guy who has always hated cows. |