Battle Royale

Sibling fun. Trudy and Fred with Tracy off-camera holding Fred's face

If you have a sibling, then I’m sure you have experienced some sibling rivalry. And, I’m sure there have been times when you have hated having a sibling or maybe even wanted to hurt them. That was the same for us. Our lives may have been different in many other ways, but the sibling rivalry was there, and it was there in force!

From a very young age, Tracy and I were always viewed as one so we almost always fought as one as well. Even with two of us, Fred was unbearable! He was the meanest brother around and would beat us up any chance he could. He not only would beat up Tracy and me, but he also would beat up our cousin, Joey, and treat him poorly because he was so close to us. I don’t think Fred liked that there were three of us, so he would beat us up to prove that having more wasn’t always an advantage. Maybe it was just that we were all too scared of the consequences to fight back, so we always were the victims and Fred would get the worst of the punishments.

There were so many things that would provoke Fred to beat us up. Most of the time it didn’t make sense the things that would cause so much fury within him. If he felt left out because he didn't know what we were laughing about, that could cause him to beat us. If we said a swear word, that could incite a beating. If we didn’t help with his chores, he would beat us. If he was chasing us and we ran faster than him, he would wait for the perfect time and beat us up. Basically, anything we did on the farm could cause Fred to beat us up. It just depended on what kind of mood he was in. He rarely caused any real damage, which was usually more infuriating than if he actually had. He would punch, kick, hit or slap us, but there were rarely bruises that could be seen. Without bruises, there was no proof and therefore no punishment for Fred, but Tracy and I would get in trouble for tattling.

Sometimes when Tracy and I would tell on Fred but have no proof, the adults would find new ways to punish us. They would have whoever told on the other kid hold hands while doing chores with that kid. So, if I told on Fred for beating me up, they would make me hold his hand while milking the cows. It was annoying because it forced us to be even closer to the enemy.

When I was a kid, I basically had no muscles, but I was super fast. So many times, Fred would get mad at something Tracy or I did, and I would get him to chase after me instead of Tracy and I would run fast and far. He rarely caught me. It was truly terrifying because I knew that if he did catch me, he would beat the crap out of me, and I would be in a lot of pain. I literally could run for a few miles around the farm before he gave up and decided catching me wasn’t worth it. If only I had that speed now!

There were a few times when Tracy and I actually caused harm to Fred. The difference was, when we really hurt him, we felt bad. There was one time we were all kind of rough-housing around one of the metal beams in the barn where the hay was stacked and ready to feed to the cows. Well, it started out as fun until one of us pushed Fred too hard and he fell back HARD against the metal beam. His head was bleeding and it looked really bad. Turns out he had to go to the emergency room and get stitches. Of course, that was an extreme incident, and we both felt bad about it. I’m pretty sure we were both pointing the finger at each other, so I can't really say who was the one to actually push him that final time when he hit his head.

Most of the time, Tracy and I didn’t fight with each other or hurt each other, but of course, living on the farm, we did fight occasionally. And even when we weren’t fighting, there were accidents. I have lead in my body as a reminder of two of these times Tracy decided to get rough with me. Once, she was doing homework on the bed and told me to come up with her to do my homework. She had her #2 pencil pointed upward, and I didn’t see it when I jumped on the bed, and the point went deep into my knee. That spot is a pretty significant mark even to this day. It’s kind of fun to have this war wound, though, and I get excited to tell people about it. The other spot of lead in my body is in my upper arm. Tracy was playing doctor with a mechanical pencil and ended up pushing too hard when “giving a shot” so the lead went in and broke off in my arm. This spot is much smaller but can still be seen to this day.

Probably one of the more extreme incidents on the farm was something I did. Fred was being his normal annoying self and acting like he was better than Tracy and me. It was the summer, and we were a little older, 13 and 14, so we had the task of cleaning the pens. To someone not familiar with farms, this means nothing, but cleaning pens was the worst job ever. Poop was literally a couple of feet deep, and it could have been there a long time. We would have to get through the hard exterior layer to get to the stuff that was underneath that was easier to scoop out. This job was done using pitchforks and, I’ll say it again, it really sucked! For some reason, Fred thought he didn’t have to help us, and that pissed me off. He came by taunting us about the work we were doing and the fact that he wasn’t helping, and I just couldn’t handle it. So I took my three-tined pitchfork and heaved it at Fred like a freakin’ trident! It flew hard and fast, and I’m SO thankful that Fred jumped out of the way just in time. It missed him but went deep into the tire of the car that was parked behind where Fred stood - my “grandma’s” car. We worked together to pull it out of the tire, and then Fred joined Tracy and me and we diligently cleaned the stalls until we were granted a break. Shortly after the pitchfork was removed from the tire, “Grandma” took the car to go visit her mom. We later found out that she had to get it towed because the tire went flat. We never told anyone what happened. All the adults assumed that she must have run over one of the large nails that were around the farm. Honestly, I can’t say that I even feel bad about puncturing her tire. I would have felt bad if the pitchfork had hit Fred, of course, but I was kind of laughing that it went into her tire.

As we got older and learned more words, especially swear words, we would say them just to see how the adults would respond. Mostly, the adults didn’t care. But Fred, he cared. He was constantly telling Tracy and me to respect our elders (because he viewed himself as an elder, at 14 months older than us) and would get PISSED if we directed a swear word at him. This would incite a beating if he was close enough to conduct one. There was one time he was driving us home from school and one of us said something he didn’t agree with (likely we were swearing). He was furious that we wouldn’t apologize, but he was driving so he couldn’t do much. He literally pulled over on the side of the road and spit at us! The giant wad of snot stuck to the side of the van. It was disgusting! And then he continued driving home. We hated him for the majority of our childhood and into early adulthood.

Eventually - several years into college - our relationship evened out, and we were able to treat Fred as a normal person and not the mortal enemy (and vice versa). But back on the farm things always seemed like a battle for survival, and hopefully these stories provide some insight into how sibling rivalry can take on a whole new do-or-die meaning for farm kids.

Living That Bullied Life

When I was growing up, there were bullies in school, but bullying was something that was kind of glossed over. It wasn't really an issue that was discussed much, which meant I had to deal with bullies without really having a word for the problem or an understanding of why people would be so mean to my siblings and me. Of course, I knew the specifics of why people made fun of us - we were the “stinky farm kids.” However, there was really nothing we could do to avoid being stinky. Since we lived and worked on the farm, it was hard for us to even realize we smelled bad. To us, it was just life.

During our elementary school years, kids didn’t seem to DIRECTLY taunt us too much about being stinky, but they still WHISPERED about it around us constantly. We started to be very aware that we were being talked about and would tell our parents, but nothing changed. Our parents, mostly “Dad,” would say that they would “show them,” but they never did anything. It was mostly a lot of talk from those who should have protected us. We still had to help with chores before school but weren't allowed time for baths or showers before we had to run to catch the bus. There was never even talk about changing our schedule so we could bathe daily; we were told we could only take baths every other day. So we would wear zip-up hoodies with the hoods tied tight around our faces or wear bandanas tightly wrapped around our hair to try and protect the stink from reaching us. Now I know that no matter what we did, the smell would permeate all layers and there was no getting away from it - unless we stopped working all-together.

By the time we made it to middle school, the bullying had reached an all-time high, and it was basically a nightmare to go to school every day. My place of escape had lost its glamour because kids were so evil. We continued to do what we could to not smell bad, which included wearing perfume and lots of deodorant, but nothing really removed the smell. 

Not only were we the stinky kids, but we missed the first day of school in sixth grade! Sixth grade was the first time we left our tiny school, where we knew everyone, to go to a large school that included children from three other schools. At the end of fifth grade, two of the best friends Tracy and I had suddenly became friends with each other and ditched us. So not only did we start in a new, larger school, where we had no idea where our classes were (this was the first time we changed rooms for each class, too), but we also had no friends outside of each other. Tracy and I didn’t have any classes together that year either, which sucked. 

Every year in middle school, we were assigned lockers. Sometimes we could pick a locker partner, and sometimes one was assigned to us. Having lockers for the first time turned out to be dreadful. Lockers were places where people did evil things and made us feel absolutely terrible. We had many car fresheners tied to our jackets, and we had room freshener sprayed all over our things daily. We would also find notes calling us “stinky” and telling us to take a shower and clean ourselves. The bullying didn’t stop at our lockers. We were also called names as we walked down the halls, and we were sprayed as we walked quickly from our lockers to our next classes. I still loved school, when I was in a class, and it was still better than being on the farm, but I hated the feeling of constantly being on edge and wondering what would happen next as I walked down the halls or went to my locker.

We didn’t just suffer while walking the halls of school. Kids thought it was fun to do mean things to us from the moment we got on the school bus until the moment we got off. Sure, there were some days when we were left alone. But more often than not kids would bring room freshener, body spray or perfume and spray us the minute we sat in our seats. Sometimes the spray went in our eyes, but it never seemed to matter. I don’t recall any kid ever getting in trouble for bullying us. However, it may have been that we didn’t ever tell on them because we didn’t want to be labeled as snitches. What I do know is that if I was ever given a chance to go back and relive any of my younger years, I'd pass.

The Great Escape

I always felt differently about school than other kids did. Growing up on a farm made me both love and hate school

Going to school meant I would see how other kids got to live and all the things they got to own. We were always poor, and we couldn’t afford any of the new toys. So there were many times we would just watch as other kids played. We couldn’t really join in unless the games used imagination. But that all changed one day in first or second grade when our mom FINALLY bought Tracy and me each a My Little Pony figurine. We were so excited to have toys like all the other girls in our class, so we took our ponies to play with the girls. But at some point during the day,  someone took our ponies when we weren't paying attention! No one would fess up to it, and there was nothing we could do about it, so we went home as sad little girls with no ponies. We never got ponies to replace them and never wanted to bring our favorite toys to school again.

Even though I couldn’t take any of my toys to school for fear of losing them, I still looked forward to going to school - because it meant I could get away from the farm work. To a child, the farm work seemed so hard! I just wanted to run around and play all day, but I wasn’t allowed to because running a dairy farm takes a lot of work and people. After working on the farm for only a year or so, I realized I would never have the kind of childhood others had. We would have to get up early every day and put in an hour or so of work before getting on the bus to go to school. The chores took up a large portion of our after-school time as well. We only had 30 minutes to an hour of actual "kid time" before it was work time. Our "kid time" was generally when we could play, but sometimes we had too much homework and didn't even get time to play. So, we would come home after school, do some homework, maybe play and then go out to do some more chores. So while most kids hated going to school because it was work, I loved going to school to get away from work.

In addition, school was one of my favorite places because I loved learning new things. I especially loved learning to read! As soon as I could read, I read everything. I would ask to go to the library as often as possible and would check out four to eight books every time we went. I would bring them back and read them out loud as we were doing chores around the farm, and I would read to myself when I had some down-time. For me, reading a book let me visit a world that was so different from my own, an imaginary world that helped me forget that I lived on a farm.

Not only did I like to learn new things in school, but I always wanted to be the best at any new thing I did learn. Throughout kindergarten through 12th grade, I rarely got a grade below a B, and I would be so upset at myself if I got a C. I always worked very hard and studied non-stop to shoot for those A’s. However, even with all the effort I put into getting good grades, my mom would often tell me I was stupid. I didn’t know how to not be stupid, and I kept trying my best to get better grades. Now, I can look back and realize it was never about the grades. My mom just felt powerful when telling me I was stupid - so I could get all A’s on my report card, and it still wouldn’t matter

Like most kids, we sometimes thought school seemed too hard, and we would hope for a snow day. However, when we would actually get a snow day we would truly miss school. Snow days, for farm kids, meant a lot more work. Many times, the adults would just pile on more work that needed to be done. So we would do the normal day-to-day operations and then also have to do other chores that otherwise would have waited for a longer break from school, like Christmas or summer. So snow days were generally not fun, and we'd get sad when we heard the news of school being closed. Other kids got to do fun things like go sledding. We got to do those things, too, but only if all of the extra chores were completed.

So, like we did in so many other ways, we lived a sort of reverse life. While other kids escaped FROM school, we escaped TO school. It provided a strangely comforting break from life on the farm.

The Secret Lives of Farm Kids

Some of the things we did as kids on the farm could be seen as unusual and definitely weird, but to us, it was simply the way things were. These were things we actually enjoyed, and they helped us deal with the bad things that came with living on a farm.

During the summer months, when we were home for longer periods of time, we would get bored, so we would have to find ways to entertain ourselves. That meant improvising and turning the farm into our own playground. There were many hot days when we would take a short swim in the tanks where our cows drank. When we did this, we were surrounded not only by refreshing water, but also by cow snot, algae and water bugs - all of which lived in the tanks. 

If we completed our chores and didn’t fight, we were treated to something even better than swimming in the cow tanks. We would either go for ice cream in the nearby city of Millington or go over to a family friend's place and swim in their actual pond! All of us kids would get so excited when our parents would talk about a “treat” because we knew it would be one of these two activities. We wouldn't always know until we got in the car which it would be because they would tell us to put on our bathing suits and come prepared. The best was when we were treated to both! We would go swimming and then out for an ice cream cone dipped in either chocolate or strawberry.

Many days, Tracy and I would walk all around the farm completely barefoot because we decided we didn’t like to wear shoes! This meant we would walk through A LOT of poop. The outdoor pens, where we kept the heifers that couldn’t be milked yet, got rained on frequently, which meant the poop there was a super soupy consistency. Tracy and I used to love walking through that and feeling the poop squish between our toes. Obviously we would rinse off after walking through that much poop, but it was always this weird, exhilarating moment.

Another fun game we liked to play could have been dangerous. There were five silos around the farm, but not all of them were used to store feed. A couple of the older ones were left empty, so we used to play inside of them. One of my favorite things to do was take in several bouncy balls from the quarter machines and bounce them to see which ones could go the highest. All of us kids would go inside the silo and compete. But it was sometimes confusing because we each brought more than one ball, and after locking ourselves in it was hard to see and avoid getting hit by all the bouncing balls. Several times I got nervous that we would get locked in the silo - and with no adults knowing where we were, this could be dangerous. So, more often than not I would try to leave the door at least cracked open.

Sometime while we were in grade school, we learned about trampolines and decided we needed one, but our family couldn’t afford one. Then, once again finding things around the farm to make into toys, we found our own trampoline! Granted, it was pretty gross and didn’t last, but it was fun for a few days. One of our cows had died and was buried in a field, but apparently she wasn’t buried deep enough, so she bloated up, making a mound in the field. We had so much fun jumping on her while she was all bloated and were sad when the bloating went away and we no longer had a trampoline. It wasn’t until a few years later that we actually received a real trampoline. Even this real one wasn’t the safest thing around though. It had been sitting on the property of one of our neighbors and had been surrounded by weeds, nearly a part of the land from years of no use. We were so excited to have it. This trampoline wasn’t round like most of them are. Instead, it was a large rectangle, and it was missing several of the springs from around the edges. As we started to bounce on it, we realized the springs that were remaining didn’t necessarily want to be there either - because they would fly off! If you weren’t careful they could hit you as they went flying through the air or you could slip while bouncing and fall between the frame and the bouncing pad. Since there were missing springs and there was no cover on the remaining springs, slipping while bouncing was the main concern, but we truly loved that thing.

Looking back, it was the strangest things that brought us moments of true childhood happiness.

Just Beat It

As a kid, I thought my siblings and I had a pretty normal life, and I believe others thought so, too. At least from the outside looking in, it seemed to be normal. My mom would beat us if we lied or lost something, but, “Didn’t all moms do this?” Since she began beating us when we were very young, it seemed normal when other adults treated us the same way. This was all we had ever known, and so we thought that every kid must have been experiencing the same things in their own homes.

After moving to the farm and developing routines, we would get beaten or punished if things didn’t go according to routine. It seemed that Fred would get the most beatings and punishments, but that was mostly due to the fact that he would talk back to the adults more frequently and the adults absolutely hated that. We were also constantly told to respect our elders, which meant we always had to abide by what the adults said. Fred sometimes would act all high and mighty around Tracy and me and tell us to respect our elders because he was a whopping 14 months older than us. It was that kind of language that landed him in harms way more often than not.

But none of us were immune to trouble. Even the smallest lie could result in a beating. Our tiny single-wide trailer wasn’t the most well-built house in the land, so things tended to break pretty easily. Once, the toilet paper holder in the kids' bathroom broke when Fred was in there and was kind of hanging on by a thread. We knew it was broken, but we were all afraid to tell our parents, so we just acted like it had never happened. Eventually, they noticed it was broken and asked who had done it. No one wanted to fess up, so we acted like we had no idea it was broken and no idea when it had happened. Because no one would take the blame or point a finger, we all received beatings with a wooden paddle. We were each hit at least 10 times on our butts. It was not the first time we had received beatings like this, which was why we all had been afraid to say anything. Unfortunately, our silence meant we all paid the price.

We went to the flea market up by our grandparents' house often in the summer months. While there, our mom would come across new paddles and would ask us which we would like best for our next round of beatings. There were plain wooden ones and wooden ones with holes. Mom liked to point out that the ones with holes would actually hurt more because they could catch wind before hitting us, so of course, no matter our preference, she would end up purchasing one of those. But she wasn't limited to paddles when beating us. She would use basically anything lying around the house if she couldn’t get to the paddle she had bought. So there were times we were beaten with a fly-swatter or belt along with our chosen wooden paddle.

One time, our mom misplaced her knitting needles and insisted one of us kids had taken them and needed to return them immediately. It turned into this frenzy, with all of us searching the house frantically to locate them so we wouldn’t get beaten, because we knew that was coming next. After searching for a while, we still hadn't located the damn needles, so we were all lined up, and we prepared to get our beatings. If we knew a beating was coming, then we might be sneaky enough to pad our pants with a shirt or something inconspicuous so it wouldn’t hurt, or at least wouldn't hurt as badly. We all got hit another 10 or so times. Shortly after receiving our beatings, we located the knitting needles, and they were exactly where Mom had left them. She never apologized for beating us, even when she had to have known she was in the wrong. That’s just the way it was in our household. You got a beating and understood that it was always your fault.

When Tracy and I were still relatively young, I’d say around 6 or 7, we were doing one of the “easy” jobs on the farm. We were holding the cows' tails so the adults doing the milking wouldn't get slapped. Suddenly, the tail Tracy was holding slipped out of her little hands and hit our “dad” in the face. He was not impressed by this so he took the tail and swatted her HARD across the face. She had a nice-sized gash across her cheek for several days and had to go to school looking like that. I don’t remember anyone asking her about that mark.

Looking back, I realize that our “dad” rarely ever beat us or made us afraid that we would get a beating for doing something wrong. He always seemed to be the more nurturing parent. However, there was one time when he got really pissed at Tracy and me. We had to have been pretty young, like 6 or 7, when we thought it would be fun to stand on the roof of his car. Apparently, this car was his pride and joy - some kind of fancy make or something - and he was NOT happy to look up and see us. He’s a big man, over 300 pounds, and we had rarely seen him move quickly. However, that day, he ran pretty fast and chased us around our trailer until he finally caught us and gave us each a good beating. Outside of that one instance, though, I don’t remember him ever being the enforcer of beatings. If he did seem unhappy with something any of us had done, he would just threaten to tell our mother. No one wanted that!

Our new "grandpa", who never even cared to learn our names, loved to beat us and took joy and pleasure in finding new ways to hurt us. He didn’t use the paddles that our parents bought. Most of the time, he would just use his own strength and force over us. I remember one specific time I was on the receiving end of his abuse - and it was not fun. Usually, it was Fred whom he targeted, because Fred would talk back to him and our new "grandma" a lot. Our "grandpa's" favorite way to punish us was to slam our heads into a cinder block wall. In this instance, I was slammed into the corner of the wall so that the sharp, protruding portion went into my head. It hurt a lot! Since I had long hair, it wasn’t noticeable, but there is still a small bump on my head from when this happened. Fred got his head slammed into the same cinder block wall or another wall countless times by this man. As we got older, our "grandpa" would try to find new ways to hurt Fred. One of the worst things he ever did was hold Fred up by his neck and choke him! Fred couldn’t really breathe, but our "grandpa" didn’t care. He was mad that, once again, Fred was mouthing off to him. After that particular incident, Fred had actual hand-prints around his neck! I don’t remember the timing of when that happened, but I think it was over a summer break. All of us kids tended to get in more trouble and fight more frequently over the longer breaks from school because we were expected to do so much more of the farm-work during these breaks.

We were constantly walking around in a state of fear, wondering what we would do wrong next to incite another round of abuse - be it physical, verbal or emotional. Looking back on all that we went through and all that had to have been apparent as abuse, it’s a wonder our school-teachers never got involved to call the authorities. I know, that today there would definitely be more questions and concerns from teachers and school staff. It just goes to show how much things have changed in the past 20 years.

The Perils of Farm Life

When you work and live on a farm, you’re bound to experience some hardships. Most of them seem manageable, but there are some that are so bad they land you in the doctor's office or emergency room. I already shared the story of getting kicked in the nose when I was 5, but that was not the last time I would end up in the emergency room.

Being on the farm gave us kids ample access to things that were dangerous - and some things that really shouldn’t have been dangerous but that we made dangerous in our quest to make things interesting.

When I was 9 or 10, Fred, Tracy and I all decided it would be fun to stick soybeans in our ears. However, I was the only one that really stuck them in there deep. Fred and Tracy kind of placed them on the edges of their ears, so when our parents called us for something they shook them out. I wasn’t able to get the beans out of my ears and we were afraid of being late - so I just ran with them in there hoping they would eventually fall out. Well they never did.

A couple of days later when my mom asked me a question I said “What?” one too many times and she got mad at me asking what my problem was. Fred and Tracy were kind of snickering of to the side so she snapped at them, too, wondering “What is so funny?” They proceeded to tell her that I had soybeans stuck in my ears. Mom looked into my ear and tried to get it out only to realize it wasn’t coming out and was concerned because it looked as though it was sprouting inside my ear. So off to the emergency room I went with Mom!

Once we got to the emergency room the doctor asked what ear had the soybean and I replied “Both” at the same time my mom was saying “The left ear.” At that moment, my mom looked at me, completely perplexed. When it was one ear it was bad enough, but to be stupid enough to get beans stuck in both ears...! The doctor tried a couple of different methods before finally settling on a suction device that was able to break the beans free and suck them out of my ears. Once they were out, it was clear to see that they had, indeed, sprouted and started to grow inside my ear!

I was not the only farm casualty. When Tracy was about 8, she was playing around with a milker and stuck it on her face. That may sound innocent enough, but the milkers had a pretty good suction on them - kind of like a vacuum. So next thing we knew, she had a quarter-sized mark on her face! The mark looked kind of like a bruise, and she had to go to school looking like that. We all still kind of laughed because she should have known better by this time. We had stuck the milkers to ourselves previously, but only for a few seconds. This time, she had left it on too long and had to pay the price.

A few years later when Tracy was 10 years old, she had another incident. After morning chores we usually had a coffee break, where we would eat some kind of sweet treat and drink milk or coffee. Because we were still in the barn, we didn’t really have seats, so most of the time we would stand around or find an old 5-gallon pail with a lid to sit on. Most of the old pails around the barn were from this strong soap mixture or from acid that was used to clean the milk tank and keep it sterile. Well, one of these pails had some excess acid sitting on top of the lid when Tracy sat down. We had sat on it before and never thought anything about it. However, this time the acid seeped into her pants and through her underwear. Within a few hours, it was apparent that the acid had done some damage. Tracy’s butthole was in a lot of pain, and she had to spread her cheeks for Mom, “Dad” and so many other people to see what was going on. Eventually, she went to a doctor, and they confirmed what we thought had happened. The acid had burned her butthole and was causing intense pain. So the doctor prescribed her a “donut” to sit on, which is basically a small inner tube. She was pretty embarrassed to take the donut to school and sit on it while in class, but it was better than being in pain. She was in fifth grade at this time, so it was not a good time to bring this kind of attention to herself.

When Fred was a kid, and even to this day, he became obsessed with plants and agricultural stuff. He has always had a green thumb and could make anything survive, whereas I would kill all plants. On the farm, he especially got into marigolds and black soybeans. When we would open the pods of soybeans there would be black ones intermingled with the normal white ones. Well, he did an experiment and planted several black ones, and sure enough, we soon had a ton of black soybeans. Even though he truly had a love of black soybeans, he also was insanely obsessed with marigolds and would save the tops of them in Mason jars so he could plant them the next year. I never got the obsession. To me, marigolds smell really bad! He would plant his marigolds around the front of the barn and would be in charge of maintaining them. One summer, when he was 11 or 12, he was especially proud of how his marigolds were doing when it was suddenly jeopardized! There was a thunderstorm rolling in, and our Australian Shepherd, Ace, was not a fan of storms. In fact, he was downright terrified of them. So he went to the place that seemed the safest in this situation - a corner in front of the barn, right on top of Fred’s marigolds. Fred saw this and turned furious! Tracy and I watched as he walked up to Ace and hit him HARD on his stomach. Of course, Ace was not pleased with this treatment and was already terrified of the storm, so he retaliated the only way he knew and bit Fred on his forearm. The teeth went in deep and Fred was bleeding pretty badly. So once again, Mom was off to the emergency room with another child. I can’t remember exactly, but Fred may have received a couple of stitches for two of the cuts that were deeper, but he was mostly just bandaged up and told to keep an eye on it. From that day forward, we all knew to keep our distance from Ace when he was frightened.

A few years later, Fred would be rushed to the hospital again, this time for something that seemed much more severe than a dog bite. By ages 14 and 15, we kids were basically running the farm, but there were still a few things that were best left to the adults because of their dangerous effects. Well, one day Fred went out and wanted to get a jump start on the chores, much like 5-year-old me had the day I was kicked in the face. One of the longest and most tedious jobs was cleaning and sanitizing the milk tank. It had to be kept up to standards that would allow our milk to be picked up and later sold in stores - so that whole soap and acid mix that Tracy had sat on was a very important part of running a dairy farm. Fred started the process of cleaning the tank. It started with a cycle of the heavy-duty sanitizing cleaner, and then the acid would get added and run through its own cycle. Well, apparently he didn’t wait long enough between the cycles or didn’t rinse thoroughly enough before adding the acid. The effects were bad. He inhaled the mixture and immediately started coughing and having difficulty breathing. So off to the emergency room again. It turned out that when he inhaled the chemicals his lung had collapsed! This resulted in him being put on inhalers and getting medical treatments to help him heal from getting these chemicals deep into his system. That was one of the scariest things I ever saw on the farm, and I was pretty worried for Fred.

Each of these short stories shines a little light on farm life and how difficult it really can be. Although not all of these directly relate to the work we did on the farm, they all tie into the dangers of working at such a young age and being around machinery and chemicals.

Daddy's Little Helpers

When you're 4 or 5 years old, there aren’t many things you can do to help out around a dairy farm - and there aren't many things you should be expected to do because they just aren't safe. Unfortunately for my siblings and I, life was rarely the way it "should" have been.

In order to have a lucrative farm, things need to be run a certain way. For the first year or so after moving to the farm, we kids weren’t required to do much of the farm work. Instead, our parents and newly acquired grandparents (who lived in a house next to our trailer) would handle most of the day-to-day operations. During the busy months of summer when we also had fields of corn, soybeans, hay and straw to maintain, they would enlist help from some of the other farmers who lived near us.

While the adults worked on the farm, Fred, Tracy and I were in the house with a babysitter. I don’t really remember too much from that time other than we liked her and we looked forward to the time our mom and “dad” would come back to spend time with us. We especially looked forward to seeing our new dad, whom we liked to call the “Tickle Monster” because he loved to tickle us and make us laugh so hard.

After about a year of living in our new house, we started spending more time going to the barn and learning to do chores. Fred started going out before Tracy and me because he was a year older. They wanted to get him started before us so he could show us the ropes. The first thing we were able to help with was sweeping hay. We had to keep the area where we walked clean and keep the hay in front of the cows so they could eat. Along with sweeping the hay, we were tasked with cleaning out the piles of poop from behind the cows by hoeing the poop into a gutter. This job was scarier because cows are big animals that like to kick, but it was one of the jobs we did like more. Our other main task was to hold onto the cows' tails while the adults milked them so the adults wouldn’t get smacked in the face. Out of all of these jobs, holding the tails seemed to be the hardest because the cows had a lot more strength than we did as kids and we didn’t want to upset the adults by letting them get hit in the face with a tail. But, sometimes it happened because those tails were just so fast!

We did this work for several months before we started to get any kind of compensation. But after awhile, we got paid for some of our chores which made us work even harder. Our first monetary compensation really doesn’t seem like much, but we were so excited to be getting paid anything that we didn’t mind. We were tasked to count each pile of poop that we cleared from behind the cows into the gutter, so it taught us counting as well! I would always try to get more poop than Fred or Tracy, and sometimes we all kind of fibbed the numbers to get more. It made it kind of a game for us to see who could get the most.

Always trying to compete with Fred and Tracy and trying to impress the adults with my willingness and ability to do the jobs given to me did have some drawbacks. I vividly remember one unfortunate experience that took place when I 5 years old. I wanted to prove that I was ready to get the work done and went out to start chores early, all by myself. Once I got to the barn I got a hoe and started my normal task of cleaning up the poop behind the cows. There was one cow, #9, that was very skittish and quick to react; all the adults told us kids to be careful around her. Well, that fateful day of trying to get things accomplished for the adults went awry. As I was busy cleaning up, I didn’t pay much attention to which cow I was behind, and before I knew it, I was cleaning up behind #9. She was not OK with me being there and hauled off and kicked me right in the nose! I went flying across the aisle and to the ground.

I jumped up as quickly as I could, but by that time, I was freaking out and crying and the blood was down to my feet. It looked as if I had been in a terrible accident. The first adult to see me that day was my grandma, who raced to get my mom and clean me up. My mom rushed me to the emergency room to see what kind of damage had been done. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, just a lot of blood and tenderness. Cows have holes in the bottom of their feet and that was where my nose went, so it wasn’t even broken. However, to this day, my nose is still pretty tender.

Trying to do the jobs of adults is no joke, and it's not all that fun. This was just one of the many times my siblings and I were injured because we were expected to do adult work as kids. And it was one of many proofs that our lives were far from normal.