My older brother, Jake, is four years older than I am and he turned 16 in the fall, and so the next spring my working life outside my old man's farm started. I was just turning 13 that summer and we started hauling hay for a couple farmers near us. My brother had done this for a couple years prior with other neighbors and older friends of his, but once he got his license I was brought on. Plus at 12 I wasn't exactly a physical specimen and couldn't keep up during a normal working day. The point being I started my working life not getting paid by the hour or on salary, but by the bale.
It's well over 15 years ago now, but I'm fairly certain that first summer I made 7 cents a bale. Depending on certain circumstances that rate could be decent or it could be shit. On some days we could do a thousand bales in seven hours, that works out to ten bucks an hour. Not bad money for a 13 year old. Other days we might only get through 300 in the same time. At that point I'm way under minimum wage, but I didn't know the difference. I was a child and had literally no expenses. Every dime I made at the time went right into my pocket. Which was nice at the time, but now thinking back it's just frustrating, as nearly every dime I make goes to either my landlord or the various banks that own my ass.
Now then, the value of hiring me along with my brother is our ability to work together. We were trained to be farm hands by the same master (as I mentioned previously), and so we inherently worked well together. The down side of being the second man to your teenage older brother is that this cat you love and hate all at the same time is sorta your manager. He would set everything up and these old fellas we worked for directed instructions toward him. All I did was stack hay, sweat my balls off and take lip from Jake. We would jaw on each other all day long; in the field, in the barn, in the truck driving between the two. In subsequent employment I've tended to keep my mouth shut if a coworker is slacking or screws up. I do this because I tend to be pretty direct and harsh in such situations. Going toe to toe with my brothers for the first decade of my working life instilled the idea that if you can't take my criticism for botching your job, well then I'm gonna make fun of you for getting huffy about me taking the piss out of you in the first place. It creates a vicious cycle.
You would think this might have an adverse effect on our productivity. In fact it has the opposite effect. Hauling hay, driving a tractor, generally a lot of ranch and farm work is monotonous. And verbally taking shots at each other puts the work in the background, and you just do it, at speed, without thinking. A lot of different professions have a similar system of camaraderie, work hard and talk shit while you do it. Perhaps that closeness and viciousness between my brother and I was what made us better than most other folks in that particular job. We would occasionally work with other high school age boys who did the same summer work. I don't care if it was a crew of four boys, Jake and I would work them into the dirt. We'd work faster, smarter and better than most chumps, and be spitting venom at each other the whole time. The old farmers we worked for loved us, and they were happy to shuck off a few bills at the end of the week to a couple kids. And a farm boy's work ethic starts in moments like that, working your ass off getting paid seven cents at a time.
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