Chapter 1: True Story

In the west, especially among ranchers, kids were commonly farmed out as labor for starvation wages and no wages at all. It was common for a ranch experienced kid to spend nearly as much time growing up with neighbors, other ranches, perhaps to pay back favors, as it was living at home. Kids were considered free labor, born to it. It was simply the way of growing up in the ranch kid experience. It was not common, however, for this to happen to a farm work naive private religious schooled city kid who was completely unpinned from any real farm experience or worldly raw life in general for that matter.

This particular young man, me, just eight days eighteen years old, had just graduated from parochial high school in a ceremony the night before 100 miles north in the city. I was to be working a dairy job for the summer arranged by my newspaper editor father who had farmed me, labor out, with his connections in agriculture. The wonder of it was why a dairy farmer would need or could use a kid like me versus someone with experience. My dad must have had some influence.

The trip end farewell at the dairy was unceremonious and brief. My father drove off leaving me with my heavy duffel bag in a strange place looking forward to a hike up a lonely country road toward a single light burning about a half mile away. The sun was getting low and the farmer’s wife pointed me in the right direction. Off I trudged with my load toward a reluctant goal up the gradual rise of a lonely shoulderless country road.

My dad and I had little to talk about during the 100 mile drive south and we normally had little to talk about anyway. We were not close. He was an elderly father with an obsession for newspaper work and little time for me. At 37 years of age he’d married an eighteen year old beauty, a farm girl, my mother, the daughter of a farm family well connected politically and by my teen years he’d become a stern old very judgmental patriarch. I was the baby of the family.

I had developed caution growing up in his house because he was an arch journalist, a gatherer of strictly qualified facts, good sources, and I was expected, as a kid, to back up everything I said with the same. I’d learned not to attempt to start a conversation if I could avoid it. My battered self image was bleeding, already near death, but his was the old style of family overlord rule. It was supposed to harden you against the vagaries of life. It hadn’t, really. But it did make me afraid of encounters with others. I was a bona fide seasoned introvert growing up in a changing world.

For a kid finding summer work was hard and this farm job was an opportunity to get away from a family which was pretty overbearing and stymying for my desire of freedom. I’d take my chances and I was scared, hopefully a minor delay in my obsession to run away further by working at a dairy which I imagined as Bossy the well mannered cow and lots of clean milk.

It was a cool late May evening ending a warm clear sky day and not a single car passed by as I walked along the completely deserted shoulder-less narrow road. I felt a bit like an abandoned kid who had been left with nothing but his thoughts and not really having a clue about the present. Truth be known, I was far more life-naive than most kids my age and it would use its leverage both for and against me.

But after introductions at the farm house the dairy man’s young and imported German wife had taken me aside to explain things. She was the only person who seemed to care I might have had some inhibitions about my strange new surroundings and seemed intent on describing the crew who inhabited the bunk house where I was headed. “They are sweet-gentle folk who happen to be quite different and are borrowed help from a local state run school for the retarded, four men of various ages, the intelligence of pre teens. They are very innocent and they are shy but you’ll get used to them. Just remember they are men but have little boy minds.”

My attention stopped short on pondering men with little boy minds lurking in a place where I was going to be sleeping soon as she explained how later I would get to meet one of the other help, a girl, “who is also very sweet and cute. You’re going to like her and she is very bright. We have lots of help and you are going to fit right in, just fine.”

Her eyes were focused on mine, intently, almost questioning for a reaction to what she’d just told me. It was almost as if she expected me to react negatively and I was too shy to train my gaze on her although she seemed so sincere. It kind of scared me, she, a stranger, who seemed to be assuming my trust as if she already knew me. But she was quite beautiful.

As she talked, my father, the dairy owner and the agriculture extension agent who rode with us from the nearest town were off discussing something, the three of them standing among the parked farm equipment filling what would have been a home’s front yard in a city setting.

I stood by the house with the wife while balancing my duffel bag, listening to her, nervously pondering my future as my only connection with home was getting ready to drive away. My last chance to bail out of this farm job idea was drawing near and as I was gathering facts listening to the wife I was finding little reason to stay.

I was lying to myself like I was not more afraid, apprehensive about “sweet and gentle folks” with little boy minds in a bunk house where I was bound with no formal introduction. Then again, I was by nature simply scared, as usual. And I knew if I did quit on the summer job option so soon I’d have to shoulder my dad’s scorn as I rode back to the city. I didn’t want to be called a quitter.

Wary, yes, completely. It was just how I was expected to confront on my own these strange and “sweet” men.

“It’s hard to explain” she continued, “but you won’t have any trouble understanding once you get used to the boys and the other help; you’re going to love them.” Loving them seemed to be a bit assuming.

(The experience of being with the wife in the future was mostly arousing)

She smiled at me standing closer with a definite air of expectation as though I was understanding what she meant. I wasn’t, hardly at all. It was all way out of my league and parochial kids used the term “retarded” to mock each other. I nodded my head, a jerky yes and smile, timidly I’m sure backed by a helping of fright. I was trying desperately to cling to a youthful retreating and inexperienced male macho and I stepped back clumsily grabbing at a falling duffel bag in an effort to back away from her advances as she kept trying to insert herself in my circle of comfort.

She was giving me just a little warning to both create and ease my fears. She seemed to enjoy the telling as if she might be anticipating my scared response with a hint of teasing. Yet she seemed like a cheer leader giving a pep talk as if she sincerely didn’t want me to leave and go home. She read my anxiety intuitively by understanding my nervous fears and I sensed her overzealous desire. It was an odd thing since we’d only just met. She shouldn’t have cared or known anything about me and she was hard to comprehend with what I assumed was a broken English German accent.

I sensed the situation was at odds with itself and it was confusing. I was a painfully shy nerdy city kid who had suddenly been dropped into what seemed like wild vastly human un populated country only to have her attempts at soothing words not really console what already seemed frightening. With at best very little idea about what she was trying to explain and attempting to understand her accent I was about to step off on my own to spend a night sleeping with complete strangers who apparently were not ordinary, but “sweet and gentle”, supposedly. I would have to trust what she was telling me as the truth.

As I noted what gave me pause about the slightly odd although attractive appearance of the wife I watched my father and the extension agent climb back into his Ford, to guide the car back out through the farm equipment on to the county road and drive away leaving me with my new employer, a man who didn’t seem to have two words or thoughts to share with me. As they drove away the farmer gave me a once over blank look, came close and circled while examining, then turned and signaled his wife, nodding at her to follow as they walked into the house leaving me standing all alone.

I had very little connection to the soil in my city experience but because of extended family farmers I wasn’t totally naive about farm work. But I really had little idea what I was getting into by being labor on a dairy. I knew what a cow was because of the steers my grandfather raised but milk cows were another concept of the four legged beasts. Luckily, I really liked milk.