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.

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.