Bud and I were busy scraping old loose paint from the wall of the college dining room and conversing about things not too profound.

“You boys cut the talk and concentrate on your work,” came a voice from behind me. It was the voice of C. P. Williams, the business manager of Lincoln Memorial University, where we were students. We quieted down long enough for C. P. to exit the room, but I miscalculated. 

“Anybody who can’t do this work and talk at the same time has a one-track mind,” I said in too loud a voice. Bud was motioning me to hush but I hadn’t noticed.

“Don’t you know who that was?” said Bud.

“Yeah,” I said.

“He heard you say that he has a one-track mind,” Bud said.

C. P. was not the most popular man on campus. In fact he may have been the least. He was a tall, bald, imposing figure whose profile made one think of an eagle, or maybe a buzzard. Anyway it was best not to cross him. It was my sophomore year at LMU and I had been promoted from the farm to the maintenance department with a raise to twenty-five cents an hour applied to my tuition costs. As you may have already guessed, the very next day I got word to report to the farm foreman. He welcomed me back to my twenty cent an hour job.

The day started early on the farm. As soon as the cows were out of their stalls and milking was done, the stalls were ready for me. Daily layers of fresh straw built up in a few days to be fairly deep, just right for a pitchfork to sink into. The first fork full of the day exposed a divot for the aromatic vapor to waft above the stall floor. Many a fork full later, a farm hand hitched a tractor to the wagon I had loaded and moved out to a field with the “pile it” aboard. I proceeded to pile it here and pile it there; then back for another load.

Not all our work involved cleaning stables. One day we went out through a pasture to an odd locking structure where we stopped. It appeared to be a building set at the edge of an earthen mound that dropped off sharply under the building to the lower level. The gabled roof on the building extended some ten feet beyond the mound’s edge and seemed to be supported on stilts. It didn’t take long to get to the business at hand. One of the farm hands led a steer up the mound through the entrance to the building. A pistol was aimed at the beast’s brain, and at close range, fired. The animal dropped immediately. Then his jugular vein was cut to expel the blood. The hind legs were secured to a rig and hoisted by block and tackle to an overhead trolley and moved out over the lower level. There the carcass was skinned and made ready for the butchers. The bowels and other waste were left on the ground. The gate to the pasture where the hogs were kept was opened, and the hogs came in for the clean-up. They did a thorough job of it. Meanwhile the beef was hauled off to the butcher shop to be made ready for hungry students. 

Another day I found myself headed for the slaughterhouse again. This time, however, the victim was one of the members of the clean-up crew. The procedure was pretty much the same as before except that the hog was much more pig-headed than the steer had been. After a lot of poking and heading off he was driven to the position for the slaughter. Things went according to plan; his guts were left on the ground and the gate was opened to the hogs. A hog came in and sniffed and turned away as if losing his appetite, then another, then another, unlike a hog. A lot of milling around occurred with the hogs until finally one of them ventured to bite into the leftovers. Others joined him. Eventually they cleaned it up but without enthusiasm. One might conclude that hogs are reluctant cannibals.

The worst job of my farm experience was working in the hay fields on a hot sunny day. I didn’t mind loading the hay into the wagons, but the thing that made it bad was the chaff that blew back into my face as I unloaded a fork full up onto the wagon. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad on a cool day, but on a hot day when I was soaked with sweat it was miserable. The chaff stuck to the skin and to my sweat soaked clothes. I could hardly wait to get back to the showers. There was no place to scratch because I itched all over. The only good part of a day in the hay was to get away.

Although my work on the farm was primarily as a “pile it”, it was part-time and best of all, nobody ever saw Mr. Williams snooping around the farm.