What I'm about to lay out here is not true. Well, certain points are true, but to say that my parents' intent was exactly how I'm going to explain it is not. They truly love and cherish their three strapping sons and in no way saw us as beasts of burden created simply to work the land. For now though that's how I'm gonna make it seem.
My birth was designed by QuickBooks. Okay, it wasn't around yet, but if mom would have had it back then I'm sure she'd ciphered out growth and profits and at what point they would have needed to have an extra hand around to fetch the old man the water jug, then advance to feeding hogs and get promoted to running the chisel plow. What I'm aiming at here is that from the time my older brother was about 13 till my little brother hit say 21, 22 my parents always had a dependable hired hand (Dad might balk at the idea of dependable, so for his sake I'll say readily available). Basically a good 17 or 18 year span where they've got from one to three of us available to do their bidding.
We were trained in the ways of the hired hand from a young age. Sure it all seemed innocent. When you're seven and mom says 'Dad's outside working on the tractor, go see if he needs any help' you go running with a smile on your face. That's how it starts, first you're handing the old man a little ol' wrench and asking curious little kid questions about how the tractor's PTO works. Next thing you know you been in the same field all day, the lights fading and you've still got dozen more bales worth of hay to roll up before you can head home. The young mind absorbs everything like a sponge, and they know this. You go with dad and watch him grind feed when you're five, its fun. He gives you the little spade shovel and you playfully toss corn into the grinder when your nine, its fun. Then you're 15 and the old man ain't nowhere in sight, and you're heaving a ton of corn with the massive scoop shovel into the gnashing, loud as hell gears of the grinder. No one taught you how this insanely dangerous machine works, but you've seen the old man do it enough and whether you were paying attention or not you damn well ought to be able to get the job done.
Now I say the old man ain't nowhere in sight. That's not because he's kicking back having a cold one, rather he's out expanding the whole operation. And expand we did. I'm not going to, but I could probably go back into Ma's aforementioned QuickBooks and chart out the growth of the family business and find a peak at some point when I was between the ages of 18 to 22. At that time I was at the prime working age and yet to move on to my own job or move out of the house. My older brother was still available if we were truly in need. And my little brother was at the age that driving a tractor and other such things he was easily capable of doing unattended.
Ma and Pa had themselves three genetically controlled farm hands. Who were capable of performing tasks nearly exactly as the boss wanted them done, as they had seen the boss do those tasks over and over again for a decade and change. Country Osmosis is the technical term I literally just made up for it. Now each of these three quasi-clones have their own strengths and weaknesses. One is as big as a bear, but about as personable. Another will always get the job done, but he ain't in a hurry to do it. And the third is the smartest of the bunch, but a little too headstrong most of the time. So while it was pretty easy to create their work force, just by hitting the sheets, our parents also have to take responsibility for creating their employees' shortfalls. Something a normal HR department can shy away from.
I loved working on the farm. Sure it was hard work a lot of the time, but it was infinitely better than working at the GAP, or Olive Garden or where ever the hell else high schoolers work. And I was born into it. Shit, if you listen to what I said above I was bred specifically for it. I've since left the farm, but my little brother is still with it. Reckon he'll try and make a go of the farmer's life for as long as he can. And like our dad who was brought up the same way we were he can say he was born to be a farmer. And sure other folks can say the same about their chosen line of work, but it's the rare discipline in which you're literally training on the job when you're five years old. And that's what I mean when I say we were bred to be farm hands.
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