“Son, a man’s character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn’t do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin. A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth.”
— “Little Britches”
by Ralph Moody
One of my father’s favorite sayings any time we belly-ached about some awful job on the farm that he was asking us to do, was, without fail, “It builds character.”
Scrubbing the milking parlor and polishing the pipeline on a day off from school, “just in case the milk inspector comes one of these days,” most definitely was going to be met with a chorus of moans and groans from every single kid within shouting distance.
I realize now in my wisened old age that what we needed for that tough job was a power washer, but who needs one of those when you have healthy, hearty kids with buckets of soapy, hot water and wire-bristle brushes? It didn’t kill us, but it wrecked quite a few of our rare days off from school.
Another character-building soliloquy was sure to be repeated each time we were told to set our alarm clock even earlier than usual on a school day, when we had first-calf heifers about to calve.
So, just to be clear, we were given the golden opportunity to lose sleep in order to experience the fun of getting a first-calf heifer in a stanchion to be milked for the first time.
“It might take an extra half-hour to get this accomplished, so let’s start a little earlier for the next week or so,” we were told.
When that newly-freshened heifer then tried to run us over, fought the entire idea of being closed into a stanchion, kicked us with gusto when attempting to wash her udder for the first time, then proceeded to knock the milker off each time we placed it — do not despair. It is the best character-building experience anyone in the entire world could experience. Lucky us! We were the chosen ones to be given such a great opportunity to build character.
I felt character seeping out of my pores when bucket-breaking a rodeo-ripping calf. The assignment was to make absolutely sure that the newborn calf got every drop of that precious colostrum milk that we just experienced an agonizing series of kicks to obtain.
I was entrusted to get this right, and I took my responsibility seriously. Head-butting, finger-gripping, idiotic behavior from this calf was a given. Endure it, every bit of it, but do not let that calf win. Eventually, it would figure out why you offered your fingers as a sacrifice while introducing the bucket. Take your fingers back too soon, and the calf would protest and stop drinking from the bucket. Start all over again, and to quote another one of Dad’s sayings, “it doesn’t pay to complain.”
All of this exasperating dance would be so worth it because think of the character you are building. Enough for a lifetime!
