Sister's Revenge: Two Dips Are Better Than One

When my brothers and I grew up in Florida in the 50's we didn't have a lot of money to waste. My dad was able to provide us with the bare necessities but there was little left for anything else. In fact, he would go to the dairy in Tampa to get each of the older children a male calf every spring. The dairy gave them away to anyone who would take one because they didn't have much use for male calves, which is understandable. We children raised them, later selling them to be butchered for beef when we had them at a good weight and that was how we got money for our school clothes each fall.

We lived in the country by that time, some forty miles inland from Tampa. Dad used to borrow and old pickup truck from our neighbor and he and my two older brothers made the trip each year to get our calves. I was never allowed to go and pick out my own calf like the boys and couldn't be made to understand why. Mom always told me it was too dangerous since they, literally, had to chase the calves down and herd them into the old pickup truck. Because of this situation, I always got the ugliest, sickest looking, puniest calf available...my brothers went out of their way to see to it.

Those calves had to be fed with a bucket of formula with a nipple attached because they weren't weaned yet. We had to get up early enough each morning to mix the formula, feed the calves, hose down the cement floor of the barn and put out fresh hay across it before we were allowed to do play with our friends. I have to tell you, shoveling up what comes naturally to a young bull, spraying and putting down fresh hay is not the most glamorous job a young girl could want . I never minded the formula mixing and feeding too much but I hated when it was my turn to clean up the mess.

Occasionally the calves would have to be dipped in sheep dip. To those of you who don't know what this pleasant experience is like, I will try to explain. The vat was a concrete pit that had a ramp at each end so the cattle could go down one ramp, pass through the dip then up the other ramp into the pasture. You would fill the pit with a mixture of sheep dip and water to a level that was equal to the neck of the calf. Now, sometimes they were more than willing to escape the pit, other times you'd have to tie a noose around their neck and try to pull them out.

As usual, my calf was the runt of the bunch. The boys really went out of their way that year to find me a real looser. My brothers used to laugh at me because I always named my calf, that particular year the calf's name was Archie.

I took care of Archie as if he was my one and only child. I tried things with that calf I never tried in the past but something was wrong...Archie would not grow. My brother's calves were getting big and their horns were coming out nicely. Archie didn't have any signs of where his horns were supposed to be...not even the little knot that comes up first before the horns break through the skin. Occasionally Dad would come out to the barn and check him out. I believe he thought I wasn't feeding the calf correctly but he couldn't understand what was going on either and Archie soon became the talk of the neighborhood.

It seemed at least once a week there was another neighbor, old farmer, ex-rancher, you name it, who came to look at the calf and give his opinion of what Archie's problem was. The opinions ranged anywhere from not having enough minerals in his formula to being born during a full moon. Yes, that was being born during a full moon. It seemed a lot of the country folk relied on the moon for every thing they attempted. Anything from planting potatoes to buying new tractors but nobody seemed to know what Archie's problem was.

One day when my brothers were to dip the calves a neighborhood girl named Eva ,among others, wanted to watch. Now, Eva was the neighborhood teenage vamp, who was more than developed for her age, and all the boys were breaking bones to get a bit closer to her as they watched.

"Now, instead of getting behind the calf and pushing your guts out, all you have to do is lead him through the dip with this rope. You might want to stand back a little more, Eva." My brother Ronnie crowed like a lone rooster in a hennery.

My brother started tugging gently on the rope but the calf stood his ground, he wasn't going anywhere. Ronnie then cleared his throat a few times and pulled the rope with a little more authority...nothing, the calf wasn't moving and Ronnie would rather have swallowed broken glass than ask Jerry to help him pull his calf down the ramp.

Jerry couldn't resist the temptation to try to impress Eva a little more by grabbing the rope from Ronnie and telling him he would pull if Ronnie would push. Then the fun started, it was like a scene from a Laurel and Hardy movie.

"On the count of three you push hard and I'll pull the rope with all I've got." Jerry told Ronnie.

OH! The pleasure they gave me that day. All the memories of everything they ever did to me were suddenly rushing through my mind as I watched what happened next.

"One...two...three!" The boys counted together before they made their big move.

Ronnie's calf, for whatever reason, decided to lunge forward down the ramp at exactly that moment. Ronnie screamed as he grabbed the calf's tail for balance and was pulled in the vat of sheep dip along with the calf. Jerry pulled the rope so hard he fell on his butt when the calf leaped forward and was ran over by it as it ran up the other side.

"OH...there is a god!" I marveled as I watched them rolling around in the mud blaming each other for what had just happened. The funniest part of the story was Eva leaving with another young boy because she thought Ronnie and Jerry were show-offs.

I could have said a lot of things to them that would have been justifiable...but I didn't. Just having the privilege of being there at that moment was enough to sustain me for life.

I actually thought for a time the boys were maturing a bit because they started treating me little better. Then I found out it was because they were afraid when school started I would tell all their friends what happened. I milked it for as long as I could but had to give it up when I found out Eva had chomped at the bit to be the first to tell everyone about the embarrassing incident.

The boys were devastated and didn't want to go to school until the story died down a little. In spite of my efforts to keep the story floating around it, eventually, it got replaced with another story about another unsuspecting boob that did something stupid. I have to tell you though, for a bit that summer and fall I was riding high and enjoying every minute of it.

My brothers had no problems selling their bulls for meat on the hoof but Archie was around a long time because his growth was stunted. They seemed to get great pleasure from this until one day a man stopped bye and offered me forty dollars for Archie, a full ten dollars more than they each recieved for theirs. It was wonderful!

I don't know if the man thought Archie was still a calf at that time or if he knew he was stunted, but I didn't ask any questions, I just took the money and ran. I had to listen to a lesson on honesty from my mother over the sale but it was still a sweet deal to me.

Though the incident I spoke of was many years ago I still have to smile to myself everytime I see a calf in a pasture along a country road. I wouldn't have thought it then, but memories like those have become precious to me and I wouldn't trade them for any amount of tax-exempt money.

Both my older brothers have since passed away but I know if they were here today we'd all have a laugh about what we, years later, named... "the sheep dip incident."