A much worse experience awaited me on a frightful day some months later. I was grinding feed for our cattle in the upper part of the barn, which was situated under a hayloft. It was a bitterly cold day, so I was wearing several layers of clothing to stay warm. Walking from the barn back to the house after finishing the job, I felt something crawling on my back. Reaching back, I grabbed it, pulled my coat and all my clothes off over my head, and began jumping on the pile to kill whatever was inside. Thinking I was crazy to be undressing in subfreezing weather, my grandfather came running over to see what was wrong. I shook out the clothes, and a huge dead rat fell to the ground. From that day on, I tied my pants legs at the bottom and wore tight clothes around my chest and neck so nothing could go up or down my body. To this day, the image of that dead rat is something I’ve never been able to completely drive out of my head.
In a strange sort of way, my battles with these critters was a welcome diversion from the repetitive tasks and the sameness of every day. Getting up each morning before the sun broke the horizon and going to school smelling of manure started to get to me. So did Grandad’s general demeanor. He was not a particularly nice man to work for, criticizing my every effort. No matter how I raked hay, milked cows, or plowed a field, it was no good. The concepts of encouragement and compliments were as foreign to him as Zen Buddhism and astrophysics.
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