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I STARTED CURSING COWS the first day. Milk, that all-American, calcium-filled beverage, turned me to the Dark Side.

Pouring milk at the Minnesota State Fair will do that to you; the combination of long hours, constant customers, and a never-ending stream of milk can put even the cheeriest "people person" on edge. I was only 16 the year I worked the milk booth. The ad in the paper made the job sound like 10 hours a day of frolicking at the fair. They lied.

The T-shirts we had to wear got to me first: tacky cartoon Holsteins in various shades of nauseating pastels. I got stuck wearing a pasty pink shirt. I hate pink.

Although we had the good sense to loathe the uniforms, our customers loved those shirts. Women practically mooed with delight when they saw the cheery pastel cows and demanded to know where we'd gotten them. I dutifully directed them to the dairy building, where they were for sale, privately horrified at their taste in apparel.

As bad as the cow shirts were, they turned out to be the least of my worries during the next 12 days in the milk booth. Each of us worked at a station in the octagonal building during our 10-hour shifts. We perched on stools made from two stacked plastic milk crates that left angry red lines on our legs. To fill the 8-ounce glasses, we lifted the heavy metal knob mounted on the counter in front of us and cold, white cow juice poured out from the tap connected to the giant tanker out back.

All day long, people crowded around the booth in lines six customers deep. My hands collected tarnish as I took in quarter after quarter, and my back ached from hunching over the gushing milk taps. Exhausted and dizzy from the sun, I could only feign a smile when smart-aleck milk drinkers tried out a seemingly endless supply of bar jokes.

"One more for the road, bartender."

"I better stop with this one. I'm driving."

"Cut me off. I've had enough."

As if the amateur comedians weren't enough, we had to deal with the ever-present threat of a milk spill. At least once a day we'd hear a yell from across the room as someone's tap came unhinged from the wall, spraying a gushing stream of milk all over the unlucky soul. The taps were perfectly positioned to coat us from neck-to-knees in a foamy dairy bath, much to the delight of the customers watching the show from outside the booth. We were forever jumping up to avoid getting sprayed from a neighbor's spill - the odds of getting hit from our own tap were bad enough. The spurts were always contained eventually, but all of us learned what it felt like to wear a milk-saturated T-shirt in 85-degree weather.

At 50 cents for an all-you-can-drink experience, the milk booth was one of the greatest bargains at the fair. But for thrifty customers, the price was never low enough. The grumblers muttered about the "good old days" when the cost was only a quarter - or a nickel, depending on the age of the complaining patron. I had little patience for their whining - we weren't a flea market, and we didn't sell to the lowest bidder.

Mothers came with baby bottles. Families camped out with huge buckets of Sweet Martha's Cookies. Die-hards kept their cups for hours to avoid paying another whopping 50-cent charge later in the day for a new one. They'd tuck the Styrofoam cups, still wet with white droplets, into their purses for later.

To make matters worse, we were forced to form an alliance with the candidates for Princess Kay of the Milky Way. For one endless afternoon, the young women running for the dairy princess title left their post in the dairy building to mingle with the common folk down at the milk booth. They took their place at the taps, smiling at the throngs of people and slowing our operation immeasurably. Did they have to wear pink cow T-shirts? Of course not. Did anyone ask them to fill a baby bottle? No way. They were stars, destined to become immortalized in butter while we toiled in the trenches for their cause.

Then there were the wannabe record breakers. They were usually teenage guys, who approached the counter as a pack, jostling each other as one inquired, "What's the record?"

Truth be told, none of us really knew. Our manager was convinced it was 64 glasses, consumed in six hours in 1975. Nobody else was sure about this number, but we passed the myth along, assuring the crowds it couldn't be done again. In fact, we pleaded with them not to try. But try they did, swallowing glass after glass of the creamy white stuff until they inevitably turned to the nearby cluster of bushes for relief. Those poor bushes probably swallowed more milk than anybody that summer.

Soon it became a game: milk pourers against the world. We were inundated with hundreds of stupid questions, and we amused ourselves by making a list of the ones we heard more than 50 times a day. "Do you have chocolate milk?" (No. No. No.) "Don't you guys sell banana milk?" (Try the Rudy milk stand on the other side of the fair.) "Why don't you guys put a cookie stand next to this place?" (Because, sir, we sell milk, not cookies.) Are there cows in there?" (This we deemed below our intelligence to answer.) And my all-time favorite line: "Bet you're sick of milk." (Yep.)

The fair lasted only 12 days, but it seemed like forever. After we closed up on the last night, I peeled off my pink T-shirt and stuffed it in my bag. I meant to throw it away the minute I got home, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Eight years later, it's still tucked in the bottom drawer of my dresser. I throw it on sometimes after a long day at the office to give myself some perspective. These days, I don't have to wear pink if I don't want to, and no one asks me for a refill. MM

Nichol Nelson is associate editor of Minnesota Monthly.