Chapter Eighteen: Rooster – Time on My Uncle’s Farm

Chapter Eighteen: Rooster – Time on My Uncle’s Farm

Chapter 18 of the Autobiography... Letter R, Rooster.

Chapter Eighteen

Rooster – Time on My Uncle’s Farm

When I was growing up I spent a lot of time on the farm owned by my Uncle “Butch”. I was always excited when my parents planned to go to his farm to visit. He had dairy cows, beef steer, chickens, and even a goat in his front lawn at one point. As much as I grew up around people farming and whatnot, I still didn’t spend much time on farms outside of his. It was the one time I could go and explore the world on my own terms. I could get on his four-wheeler and take off to wherever I wanted to. He lived on a dirt/gravel road in the middle of nowhere outside of Marshfield, WI. So I could even ride the four-wheeler down the road as long as it was at a reasonable speed. Behind his farm property he owned some wooded land that he used during hunting season, and I would go exploring in during the non-hunting season. I could spend all day out there depending on the amount of gas I had in the tank. Worst case scenario, I’d just ride back and get some more. I got to ride on tractors, four-wheelers, three-wheelers, and even drive a truck once when I was really young. I don’t recall how old I was exactly when I did all of this stuff, but I know I had a great time. 

 My Uncle taught me how to milk a cow when I was pretty young too. That skill just kind of stuck with me and I’m glad for it too. Since then I’ve worked on a couple of different farms and had to milk cows on them too. 

 One summer when I was really young my Uncle told me that if I went out to the chicken coop and caught a chicken, then he’d give me ten dollars. So I went out there and was chasing chickens around for what seemed like forever. When I finally got one of them cornered I started to close in on it and it was hopping and flapping and scratching and squawking and screeching like all hell broke loose. I managed to finally close my hands around its neck, but not until after it had scratched and cut me up from head to toe. After that I took the chicken to my Uncle up by the house and told him I finally caught a chicken for him. He told me to go ahead and just set the chicken down on the ground and he’d pay me the ten dollars he promised. I argued right away that I had spent almost an hour trying to catch this chicken, but he stood his ground and asked me to put it down anyway. When I put it down he handed me a twenty dollar bill. Then I asked him why he gave me a twenty instead of a ten and he replied, “Well, that’s because you brought me a rooster.” Ever since then I paid more attention to the difference between a chicken and a rooster, and during that time, I realized how unbelievably mean his rooster actually was. I’m surprised I still have both of my eyes today. 

 Now, as much as I enjoyed spending time on my Uncle’s farm when I was growing up, I also had one of the worst memories of my life happen there too. It was November 21^st, 1997, and my Brother, my Dad, and I were all staying at my Uncle’s for deer hunting season. It was a Friday night and the following morning was opening day. It was a typical “guy’s night out” for those times. We didn’t have very many times that we were all hanging out together anymore since my Brother and I were growing up and had our own friends. So when the three of us would go out for deer hunting season, we would have as much fun as possible. Well this year it included us meeting at a local bar and having some drinks. But for whatever reason my Brother and I had been taking our time with meeting everyone there. By the time we had decided to go by there my Dad’s truck was gone from the bar. Instead of looking for him, my Brother and I decided to just go back to my Uncle’s house and call it a night. Shortly after that we were sleeping in the living room when I heard my Dad stumble into the living room and plop down in the recliner sitting next to me. When I asked him where he had been and he replied with some slurring nonsense, I knew something was wrong. I was dreading turning on the light, and when I did, I don’t think I could have been prepared for what I was about to see. He had blood running down his face, blood on his hands, and blood running down his leg. His pants were tore wide open and the little bit of his leg I could see on the inside was tore wide open. I immediately woke my brother up and then my Dad starting asking me where his truck was. So I had my brother look after him while I ran outside to see where his truck was, but all I could see was his foot tracks through the fresh snow. So I ran back inside and told him his truck wasn’t out there. He still couldn’t remember where it was either. My Brother and I agreed that he needed to go to the hospital so I ran upstairs to get my Aunt, and was surprised to find my Uncle in bed with her also. I had thought all along that my Dad was out with my Uncle and that the truck was wherever my Uncle still was. Now things got confusing for me. I told them that my Dad had walked back to the house and was covered in blood and we didn’t know where his truck was, but I needed someone to give him a ride to the hospital. My Aunt told me she’d taken a prescription sleep aid, and my Uncle had been drinking, neither one was able to drive him. I’m unsure exactly how my dad got to the hospital after that. I think I was somewhat in a form of shock. But I think my cousin came by the house and drove us there while my Brother went out looking for my Dad’s truck. 

  When we were at the hospital they were asking all kinds of questions about how he had been hurt and no one had any answers. No one knew anything about how it had happened, yet. Next thing I knew a couple of Sheriff’s deputies walked in looking for my Dad. I didn’t know what to think at that point. All in all they told me he was involved in a high speed chase with a civilian, had crossed the center line, exceeded one hundred miles per hour, driven through some people’s front lawns and finally ended when rolling his truck a number of times into a corn field. No one found either him or the other man who was originally seen in the truck, until then. By now it was November 22^nd, my fifteenth birthday, and I was so scared for my Dad at this point. I didn’t know what was going to happen after that. It became a turning point for my Dad, but unbelievably it didn’t phase me into even considering the least bit that maybe the same thing could have happened to me when I would drink and drive after that. I consider myself a lucky person today and will never forget my fifteenth birthday for the rest of my life.

Chapter Eight: Hangover – My First Hangover

Chapter 8 of the Autobiography... Letter H, Hangover.

Chapter Eight

Hangover – My First Hangover

  When I was twelve years old I was spending a little time on my Uncle’s farm near Stratford, WI. One of the days that I was there I had been working in the barn with my cousin and one of the farm hands. I was helping them scrape manure and mucking out the stalls and throwing in more straw while they finished up milking for the night. One of the two of them decided to have a couple of beers and offered me one too. It was an Icehouse and surprisingly it didn’t taste that bad. I’m not sure if that was because it actually did taste good to me or if it only seemed like it because I felt like I was grown up because I was drinking beer with my older cousin. 

  Either way, it didn’t last long. After I finished the first beer he told me to go ahead and grab another for all three of us. This went on beer after beer until the twelve pack was gone. But then of course they came up with another twelve pack, only this time it was Old Milwaukee. I still don’t know today how I managed to choke down that second twelve pack with them knowing how disgusting Old Milwaukee tastes. It must have been the fact that I had one hell of a buzz already. While we drank the Old Milwaukee we went inside and each got showered up. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting prepared for but they mentioned a party at some point. 

  When I got out of the shower they gave me a flannel shirt and a John Deere hat to disguise my young boyish looks to the people we were going to be around. When I left I was with the farm hand, Bud. He’s like family to me since he’s my cousin’s age and has been around since I was in diapers. Bud and I picked up his girlfriend and he asked me if I wanted to go to the bar with him before the party got started. Of course I was all for going out to a place that adults hang out at. So we stopped at a bar somewhere around the area. To be completely honesty, I was pretty drunk at the time. When we got inside I remember them asking me what I wanted to eat because I needed to eat something to sober up. I ended up eating deep friend breaded shrimp and had a beer before we left there. After the bar we went to another bar where someone was having a party and it was all-you-can-drink tap beer for five bucks! I was thinking, who could pass up a deal like that? Well they said the bouncer at the door was carding people but they knew him. So Bud’s girlfriend held my hand like she was my girlfriend and they talked the bouncer into letting me in. When I got inside and got my cup the bartender asked me what kind of beer I wanted and I drew a blank. I didn’t know what kind of beer I wanted so I said Ice House. He told me they didn’t have it on tap, but they had Miller Lite and MGD. I remember picking one of those two and I had a few beers while I walked around this place full of young adults. There were all kinds of people, but they all seemed like they were staring at me, which they probably were. I mean, a twelve year old kid in a bar? I’m sure I was a little obvious. But hey, they never said a word until I was so drunk that I was passing out at the bar. 

  Even then the bartender politely tapped me on the shoulder and said I couldn’t sleep there. He said that either I sat up and drank a beer or I had to leave. So I slammed the rest of my beer, asked for another, told him to give me five more minutes, and laid my head back down. All I remember after that was my cousin or Bud walking me outside and laying me in the back of a pick-up truck where I told them to leave me so I could sober up. I don’t remember a thing after that until I woke up the next day in the guest bedroom at my Uncle’s house. When I rolled over and saw the puke on the floor, I knew I had gotten sick. 

  It was the worst feeling in the world not knowing what happened for the rest of the night. That feeling was even worse than the sick feeling I had in my stomach and the pounding headache I had. I got up and brushed my teeth before I walked out to the barn to find my cousin so he could fill me in on the happenings from the night before. When I got out there all he could do was laugh at me and asked me how I felt. I told him I felt like shit. He said I probably just needed to get some more food in my stomach, and that reminded me that I needed to go back inside and clean up the vomit next to my bed. Even after I had some breakfast I still felt like that for most of the day. My cousin told me I should drink a beer and it would make me feel a whole lot better, but I wasn’t going for it. Either way, I thought I would have learned something from that night, or more so, the next day. But the one thing I learned was that hangovers get better and that the more I drink in life, they stop happening. 

  Not the best lesson in the world. I never would have thought I was fueling a fire that was turning me into an alcoholic.