Farm Days

There comes a time in every young man's life when the realization hits him that he wants to outdo his father.

What each young man desires to surpass his father in, varies. I haven't yet conquered a steady theory behind this phenomenon, but I assure you, I've been thinking really, really hard about it all while sitting here, listening to mellow alternate rock music and eating microwaveable tequitos.
Still ... nothing.
When I was fourteen-years-old, I asserted that my life accomplishment would be to beat my giant-sized father in a game of basketball. I was tired of hearing about how successful a high school player the old boss had been, I felt it was time to introduce him to the new boss. By the time I was fifteen, dad's knees weren't what they once were and beating him in a pick-up game consisted of no more than insisting on driving to the hoop everytime I had the ball.
So good. Dad and I got through our little war without too much love lost. He was still heroic and yet I was allowed to feel worthy of assuming his crown.

But then, several years later, dad got a kick out of telling and retelling the story of the time he saw Tina Turner open for The Rolling Stones for a scant $2.00 entry fee. To see either of those acts these days (much less both) would cost no less than several of my limbs and the limbs of three of my closest friends*. I didn't realize it at the time, but his fortune (and price inflation in the music industry) really irked me.
I wanted to beat Dad.
Basketball was no longer my Holy Grail, no longer the benchmark in the subtley silent war between father and son. I wanted to see something big for almost nothing. The funny thing was, I hadn't articulated this desire until I found myself standing a mere forty yards away from my own idol, Bruce Springsteen in a Louisville arena back in 2000. The details of how this all came to be are better suited for another blog. But there I was with Bruce, for free.
And although the concert experience was sweet and something I will remember for a very long time, it turns out that the most beneficial garnish of that night was my ability to follow up my dad's story about his damn rock concert bargain.
The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner $2.00 = pretty darn good
Springsteen 0 dollars = brilliant magnificence.

I love my father. He is a hero to me in ways that should both humble and flatter him. And in a way, I guess my feelings for my dad in regard to this occasional and manic competetion that he isn't even aware of, leave me a little cold. Live and let live. This is how I hoped to view things once I left that Louisville arena half-a-decade ago.
And for the last five years, this is how things have remained.
But no longer.
The itch has arrived on it's pale white horse once again. But this is it, the final showdown.

* * *

For the past year, I have been employed at an organic farm in the backends of a Boston suburb. When I utilize the term farm, I am not expressing my environs with any hyperbole. The farm has hay and crops and hogs and wheel barrows and fertilizer and mangy dogs and chicken coops. This place even has a dinner bell, but my shift ends at 2 o'clock every afetrnoon so I never get to hear it.
Anyway, my job is technically to shaperone two autistic teenagers enrolled at the school that I work for. The Natick Farm is their employer, not mine, but because the farm relies on everyone's help to keep production successful year-round, they see no reason why I should only be there to supervise. They, in fact, see me as someone who should be picking up the slack for both my students, Danny and Big Moosey. Big Moosey is a giant teenager who could snap me in half if that was something he wanted to do. Imagine Of Mice and Men's Lenny only instead of overalls, he is clad in Red Sox paraphenilia and I don't usually get bothered with the mess of dead rabbits. Danny, on the other hand, has messily thick red hair and the uncanny ability to quote late-night infomercials in perfect pitch. He is disasterously unaware of most everything else including the ironic t-shirts his parents dress him in that say witty things like "Blame my parents" or "I'm not autistic, I'm just ignoring you".
These are my boys. This is my life. And this is the setting for what I hope is the final showdown with my father.

Since before I can remember ever wanting to outdue my own father in various meaningless life experiences, I've been regaled in stories of his childhood growing up on the animal farm. He grew up with dogs and horses and sheep. Pigs that passed away and became the following morning's breakfast, cows with no long term memory for cruelty.
Growing up in Chicago or parts close to, far away from country livin', I was always admiring of Pop's experiences; his ability to have acclimated so seamlessly from country to city mouse. I guess I always wanted that too.
Or at least that chance.

That chance slammed into my knees last July at about 15 miles per hour, was named Orville, and came in the form of a muddy bovine with a spirit harkening back to Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape".
"Hey Mr. S! You better grab dat pig, man!" shouts Moose successfully ignoring the fact that I'm on my knees in the mud like a hockey goalie preparing to, as Moose suggested, grab dat pig.
"Thanks Jay. I'll do my best. You wanna come gimme a hand?"
"Aw, naw man. You... You got it, man. Just grab 'im."
Right.
Just grab a slippery sow with the obvious intention to remain free. I went to a private art school, I take the train everywhere, I bleed easily. What previous life experiences have prepared me for pig wrastlin'?

Moose and Danny have spent a year on the farm before me, but you'd never know it to watch the melee that is unfolding on my first day on the farm. I scoot left, I scoot right, Orville just oinks in piggish glee realizing that the new lanky farm-hand is just as useless as his two autistic counterparts. And before you suggest that I'm being insensitive to both my students, and before you remind me that these kids are unlike you and me and before you poo-poo my reliance on them to carry out the job they have been sent there to do, keep in mind that I was smiling, okay? Not yelling, not screaming.
Also, the pig beds are nothing more than mud and lettuce.
And I was already tired from laying down new beds for the turkeys out of a soil that is mostly eight-month old leaves, lettuce and old spelt (fermented grains and vegetables), so I was already a mess and stinking of a hefty evening of boozing the night before.

So please, step out of your glass house and allow me a little saracasm.

"Just grab 'im Mr. S! You gotta grab 'im!"
"Moose, you come over here and grab him! He's fast, you know!?" Orville was in my grip for just a second, but the short, bristly hairs along his legs surprised me and I let go. Danny thought this was funny. At least I thought he did, because he decided to shout, "BOOM! Tough actin' Tenactin! BOOM! Tough actin' Tenactin!" And usually if he has sudden commercial outbursts, he is either annoyed or amused and seeing as how he was leaning against the cyclone fence doing little else but watching, I couldn't see Danny being all that annoyed.
"Aw, naw man. You can catch 'im, can't you, Mr. S? Huh? You... You can catch 'im, Mr. S."
For some reason, Moose insists on addressing me each time he talks to me. Every sentence aimed at me either starts or ends with "Mr. S.".

My patience was becoming scarce, as was the amount of unmuddied skin left on my body. This was my first day on the farm, and my boss (whose name was Skeet, if you can believe that) sent us into the pen without much warning that the pigs were feeling squirrelly this afetrnoon. I thought we were just putting some turkey beds down, man. Gimme some warning. I'm no pushover, but had I known I was gonna dirt dive this pig into the ground, I woulda worn my painter's pants.
So much of my job is defined by the results you get out of the students you are supervising. Even though they've been working for Skeet for more than twelve months previous to my arrival, Skeet seems like a likeable, but unforgiving country sort. The "what've you done for me lately" -type who might see my multiple missed tackle opportunites on this pink-menace to be a bad omen for Moose and Danny's socialization into the working world.
"Moose get over here! I need your help." With Big Moosey, the difference between a question and a statement has nothing to do with tone of voice or punctuation, and everything to do with the "thank you" that you have to put at the end of the sentence when you want to ensure that there is no confusion.
"Moose! Chase Orville close to me, so I can grab him. Thank you."
"Aw. Okay, Mr. S. You want me to chase the pig? Huh? Is that what you want me to do? I'm gonna get dirt all over me, Mr. S. I'll get all muddy."
That's Moosey in a nutshell, I'm covered in slop and old lettuce and blood and I'm on my knees and mumbling swears to myself but he doesn't wanna soil his Red Sox t-shirt.
I could kill him.
Moose starts shooing Orville closer to the side of the pigpen that I'm on. I decided moments ago that the second Moose got close enough to me, that I would toss a chunk of slop on him. That's what teachers are for; to educate and to experience lessons of life from... well, today's lesson was gonna be never to watch your teacher get put through the grinder while you sit on the sidelines trying not get dirty.
Remember, the far was their job, not mine.
I finally wrangle Orville, a feat I'm still unclear if I did correctly. I tried to grab the pig around the belly, but realized he was about three seconds away from another escape, so I bailed out and grabbed his two hind legs.
On a completely unrelated note, it is my opinion that a pig's squeal is the most horrific noise registered by human ears.

We get the pig back inside the enclosed portion of the main pigpen (where the pigs sleep and discuss pig stuff amongst one another) and I stand there looking at Moosey, then at Danny. Danny hasn't moved from the fence.
"How you feelin' Danny?"
He replies quickly and with a slight lisp, "I feel happy."
"Good, Danny", I say. "Good."
"You got mud on you, Mr. S."
"I know, Moose. I was laying in a pig pen for the past five minutes, remember?"
"Oh. Yeah, Mr. S. You were. You were workin' hard, huh? Huh, Mr. S.? You were workin' hard, huh?"

And there it was. "You were workin' hard, huh?"

Clarity.
And then it was as if the mud washed away from my body. It was as if Moose had spoken the secret to eternal life. It was suddenly as if I hadn't spent the last few days on the farm chopping and stacking wood, or piling boozed-up leaves on the floor of a 90 degree chicken coop or purifying mulch, or rebuilding portions of the tool barn or wrangling hefers while my students stood stone like and watched me. I was working hard. Harder than I've worked in a long, long time (physically speaking anyway), maybe ever.
There were only two people in my life I could count on knowing the fatigue and frustration farmwork had left me with. My roomate Armin (real name), who had this particular job with Moose and Danny last year, and my father.
My father, whom could no longer guilt me into taking out the trash by telling me of all the early mornings he spent milking his cow. I no longer have to sit idly by and let my Dad tell his bumpkin tales of childhood farmhanding, and if he does go into them, I can interrupt him with some of my own. We can connect. Not that we couldn't before, but as I mentioned previously, these father/son competitions are one-sided and arbitrary and now I've got experience instead of longing.

Orville was worth a winning game of hoops and free Springsteen tickets any day of the week. My greatest fear now is my Dad telling me that when he was twenty, he was always able to get autistic kids to listen and obey him.

===================================

* I don't wholly believe my father. I believe that he saw The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner, but I doubt it was for only $2.00. I imagine, in reality, he saw them for $25.00 and Tina got frustrated with Ike halfway through the set and forced Mick and Keith to do the extra long version of 'Midnight Rambler'. Over the years, Dad has either forgotten the truth or chosen to ignore it. To my kids, grandpa will probably tell them he saw The Stones, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix play at a backyard pool party where the cover was only a dime. It is my job as a parent not to raise such gullible children that they believe all the lies my father will try to get over on them.