Holidays with My Family

Every family has its own culture and traditions. Our family followed the German Christmas holiday traditions. Opening presents on Christmas Eve (after milking the cows, of course) and Christmas Day was a huge family meal, with all our loved ones around the table. The meals ended with pie and coffee for the adults, and the children running off to play with their presents. Our family had one more tradition.

Our family changed, Donna and Tubby were married and had children.  I had left for college and moved out, returning on weekends to help my parents with farm work.  We were all three college-educated adults, with lives of our own away from the farm. When we were all together, Mom, Dad, Donna, Tubby, and I, we reverted to our childhood family roles.

            One year, it was our job to put ear tags on and vaccinate the young stock. The yearlings had spent their lives in the pasture, avoiding human interaction. Our task was to herd them into a corral, then single each yearling out and drive it into a squeeze chute that Dad had borrowed from a neighbor. Once inside the steel box, the front lever was held tightly to trap the calf’s head. At the same time, Ivermectin, a cattle wormer, was injected into their back quarter, as well as any antibiotics needed, vaccines, and vitamins as Dad prescribed, and each ear received a tag impregnated with insecticide to combat face flies.

Unfortunately, our assigned roles had little to do with our abilities. Tubby was tasked with standing behind the yearlings to prevent them from backing out of the squeeze chute, putting him in the line of flying hooves. Tubby, who hated cow shit and getting kicked, was on the receiving end of both.

 I was assigned to tag the ears, while Donna was responsible for administering the injections. Though I am a nurse, I found myself holding the bar to secure the yearling’s head with one hand while trying to tag a moving ear. It seems that Dad ignored everyone’s strengths. More likely, he anticipated it would be more entertaining to watch this arrangement.

Tubby had a large, fluorescent orange grease pen to mark each yearling as “done” so we wouldn't waste time recapturing one that had already been treated. Since he was at the marking end of things, this was his duty. Shoving his shoulder against the chute to hold the tornado on hooves inside, he reached around blindly, marking whatever area of the back end he could reach.

 The yearlings were terrified, bawling in fear. They shook their hard skulls from side to side, knocking me in the stomach, kicking Tubby, and jumping within the confines of the chute. Donna, unfamiliar with vaccinations, fumbled with the needles, syringes, and the bottles of medication, jabbing blindly at the pulsating muscles.

The needle kept coming dangerously close to me as Donna’s arms flailed around while the yearlings jumped and swayed. Dad and Mom were shouting incompatible instructions; Tubby was leaping from side to side to avoid the flying hooves. I was yelling and swearing at Donna, trying to teach her how to draw up the medication correctly and to stay away from my backside.

 As I repeatedly wrestled with the tossing head of the cattle and the metal tagging pliers, I felt several sharp stabs in my upper thighs and buttocks. I responded with a scream every time I was jabbed. The needles were often already used on cowhide, and the medication was painful.  Trying to hold my top half in place to tag ears, I had to salsa dance in rubber overshoes with my bottom half to keep away from my sister.

Although Donna denied it, I ended up with several cc’s of Ivermectin, antibiotics, vaccines, and vitamins through my coveralls and jeans. My screams only added to the stress and confusion. In a moment of frustration, Tubby reached into his pocket and marked my overalls with a large orange X. “There! Goddamnit!” he yelled at Donna, “She’s been done. Leave her alone; I can’t take her screaming anymore!”

The cow shit and mud eventually washed out of my work overalls, but the grease stain X remained. As a nurse since 1987, I have dealt with some very frightening diseases and have been walking away unscathed. If it can kill a cow, I am immune.

When there was an anthrax scare, I called my sister to ask, “Have I been vaccinated against anthrax?”

“Hell if I remember what was in that shit.” She said.  “Well, if we find you in the pasture bloated, tits up with four hooves in the air, we know you aren’t immune.”

During our adult years, we marked holidays with the horrible tasks Dad assigned to the three of us. I do not remember the in-laws or whoever I was dating being included in these chores. Looking back, I assume they were inside the house with Mom, enjoying pie and coffee, warm and relaxed. Dad didn’t expect his sons-in-law or daughter-in-law to have to do the dirty work.

One Christmas visit, Dad requested that the three of us adult children replace the apron on the manure spreader. Or as Dad put it, “I put the shit spreader in the barn to thaw out, so when youse kids get done eating, we can put on the new apron.” The three of us knew that the expectation was that we would do the work while Dad supervised.

The apron of a manure spreader is a double-chain “apron” with metal slats that line up with gears at the front and back of the manure box. When engaged, the linked chain moves slowly, like a dot matrix printer. As each chain moves along the right and left sides of the wooden box, it pulls the slats to move the manure. This mechanism takes the manure to the beaters, which then fling it from the box onto the field, providing organic, homemade, and free fertilizer.  The chain apron with metal slats sits on the bottom of the manure spreader box and circles around underneath the box.  It is heavy, very long, and about five feet wide.

Each day, Dad parked the manure spreader box directly under the chute of the barn cleaner. When he turned the switch inside the barn, the barn cleaner would activate, moving slats on a chain that pushed the manure and debris up the chute into the spreader box. Dad would then get on the tractor and spread fresh manure on the fields. He never bothered to clean off the chain apron or the beaters, which in the winter were quickly frozen. This resulted in the slats and the gears, now covered in solid manure and urine, struggling to move.

That Christmas, the apron chain had snapped, requiring a replacement. My job was to sit in the box of the manure spreader, holding the apron chain tight while the chain was wrapped around the bottom of the box and up into it. The chain had to be appropriately aligned to move evenly on each side. I was counted on to hold both ends so that the chain could be joined together to make a circular path around and under the manure wagon box.

As the melting manure and urine soaked into my jeans, Tubby, who was working underneath, endured the constant drip onto his face and arms. Dad stood off to the side, providing “assistance” by pointing out things like “I could have told you that would happen” and “You better get it even, or it won’t work.” 

Donna’s job was aligning the chain links with the gears covered in icy urine and manure, risking her fingertips getting smashed between the chain and gears, and getting no less dirty than the rest of us. To Dad’s credit, the work distribution was equitable.

We eventually put on the spreader apron and connected the chains.  Not before we had sworn profusely at each other and pointed out each other's character flaws. Donna and Tubby were always fond of pointing to me as I was covered in manure and saying, “And she’s the smart one!”

“Well, you two are just as covered in shit as I am, aren’t you?”

“This is why I don’t like to come home on Christmas,” Donna complained.

“Hey,” Tubby said.  “Remember when the smart one here stood on top of the shit pile at the end of the barn cleaner watching to see which slat was broken?”

Donna and Tubby laughed deep belly laughs at the mental picture of me standing on top of the manure pile, sinking to my knees, watching and counting slats of manure splash onto me to see which one was broken.

“And which of you two idiots would have had the guts to tell Dad no?” I asked.

Ignoring me, Tubby said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have dropped her on her head so often.”

“I think it was the bobby pin in the light socket.  She was never quite right after that”. Donna replied.

“And maybe if I had someone who knew how to watch a baby and had some brains, I wouldn’t have ended up like this.” I interrupted.

“It was probably all the lead paint we ate when we were teething on the bassinet and crib.” Donna mused.

“Pull the damn chain up further,” Tubby instructed.

“I’m pulling my goddamn arms off here,” I told him.

“Maybe if youse wouldn’t spend all your time bullshitting and bitching you would be done by now.” Dad pondered aloud.

The insults continued throughout the task, interrupted occasionally by “Dammit!  Quit moving the damn chain, my finger is stuck in there!”  Or “Are you even trying to get this thing on?”

After the job was finished, we stepped outside the barn into the cold December air. We had to run to the house to avoid our wet clothing freezing stiff.  Of course, no one in the warm house, full of pie and coffee, wanted anything to do with us until we washed off.   

This was another Baumgart Holiday event. My family's holiday stress started after we finished the noon meal and Dad announced, “I need youse kids to…”

It must have been Labor Day weekend when Dad said, “I need youse kids to get those steers in the corral since you are all here.”

We knew this would be an adventure that none of us were excited to participate in, especially herding cattle with our father.  As we put on our shoes, Mom reminded us, “Remember, the job ain’t done until somebody catches hell.”

Of all the family jobs Dad saved up for us, herding cattle with Dad was the one most dreaded.  We had each been through the process growing up, and although we laughed about it now as adults, none of us wanted to repeat history.  Being trampled, running in pursuit of a stray steer, trying to convince an untamed animal to be docile, none of those were what struck fear in our hearts.  It was the fact that cattle chasing inevitably brought out the demonic nature of our father in a string of insults and profanity.  The only mystery is which one of us would be the token scapegoat in today’s task.

Leaving Mom with her in-laws and grandchildren, we trudged behind Dad to the cattle yard.  Waving vaguely with his arm, he pointed to the steers in the pasture behind the barn.  “All you have to do is separate them and coax them over to that pen,” He gestured to a small corral across the yard.

“Coax” was a favorite word of Dad’s.  I never figured out his definition of coaxing, as it apparently differed significantly from mine.  In my vision of coaxing, I slowly led a docile animal enticed by a pail of grain. In all my years of working cattle with Dad, I never had the opportunity to attempt my theory of coaxing. 

Dad’s definition of coaxing appeared to be herding at least a dozen wild and large animals into a space, and then just when the animals seemed to be going in the right direction, slapping one on the ass to “get moving” along.  This inevitably frightened the animal, causing it to jump and turn in terror; the entire herd would follow in a stampede. Then the assisting child would be screamed at and insulted for not stopping the chaos as it erupted.  This process was repeated until everyone, including the animals, was sagging from exhaustion, and at last, the herd would move into the intended area.

That day’s task looked like it was just like any other.  Once separated from the dairy herd, the yearling steers would be “coaxed” through an open gate and further coaxed across the unfenced area to another open gate and inside the pen. The unfenced area was the critical flaw in the plan. If even one animal strayed from the straight line from pen to pen, the entire herd would follow, galloping through fields and woodlands for miles.

Dad positioned himself on the far side of the pen to stop any cattle from walking past the open gate of their new corral. There, the steers would be loaded onto the cattle truck the next day and sent to the feed lot.  With acres of unfenced cornfield behind him, Dad was going to be the lone guard as the three of us “coaxed” the cattle toward him.

As soon as the half dozen steers were released from the night pasture, they began to buck and run like wild horses.  The steers didn’t see the three of us standing along the intended path, they didn’t see Dad standing at the path to the cornfield.  The steers saw their freedom and began to gallop towards the cornfield. 

Dad waved his arms frantically, but the steers had reached a speed and determination that they couldn’t be stopped.  Trying to pass the cattle and get to the front to “head them off”, Donna, Tubby, and I ran futilely. We stopped running as the last steer went past Dad and into the cornfield. 

Dad stood silently.  We knew what was coming.  Suddenly, Tubby spoke.  Fists on his hips, elbows sticking out, he looked at Dad and said, “What the hell?  What’s wrong with you that you let them get past?  Are you blind or something? Why the hell didn’t you stop them? You didn’t want to stop them, did you?”

Donna and I, standing side by side, drew in our breath. Then Dad smiled.  That sly smile, which meant he knew he was in trouble, but that it was funny.  That smile that said he knew the joke was on him this time.  Donna and I started laughing aloud.  Not saying anything more, the four of us went and chased the steers out of the cornfield and into the pen.  No one dared to speak the entire time we worked, afraid the other siblings would point out that we were “Just like Dad”.