During my high school years, I worked for Cliff Anderson. He had many cows to milk, calves to raise and a lot of hay to make. He also worked at Michigan Tech during the day. I was hired to come work on his farm in 9th grade. Cliff’s boys were too young for many of the tasks, but they were used when possible. At the time, I was getting around on an old motorcycle given to me by my uncle Hobbie Antilla. It was painted red, white and blue. I think it was an Italian bike. The throttle, brakes and shifter were all opposite of the common Kawasaki or Honda. The exhaust system was loud. It only had a one-cylinder engine. This is how I got to work.
For a dollar an hour, I began working with 2 others, Bruce K. and Wayne R. Duties sometimes included cleaning the barn. This would be cleaning the gutters, cleaning the accumulation of hay and cow manure in the calf pen or unloading the hay wagon brought at the end of the day prior. The barn didn’t have machine operated gutter cleaner. We had to do it by hand. Periodically a cow would swipe our faces with a crappy tail. One got used to the smell and dirty work, it didn’t take long. The calf pen had to be cleaned with a tractor bucket that had prongs. It was too matted for us to try using a pitchfork. It was pushed out the back door into a pile. The muffler had to be removed so the tractor could fit in the pen, the ceiling was too low. Digging this pen out brought up some pretty ripe smells. Who knows how long ago