Picking up rocks and pulling your weight

This I a story about making sure you pull your own weight and never do something half ass or in the case of this story, you barely show up. I was probably about 8 or 9 years old, which made CJ 11or 12. I believe the whole family was up at the West Salem farm picking up rocks and getting ready for the crops to go in. We hated to pick up rocks; the only good part about it was to drive the four wheelers around. The worst part was when dad was right there with us because then we knew that we had to work extra hard as not to attract attention.

Well for some reason that day, CJ decided that it was too hot and he would go out into the field, grab a little small rock, come back to the truck, toss it in, and then grab an ice cube. He had already been doing this for a while when dad showed up and much to our surprise, he kept it up with dad right there. It did not take dad too long to realize that me and Kristin were doing 5 times the work CJ was and he had had enough. I think he yelled for just a minute to surprise CJ and then had his belt off and CJ got laced across his ass. And that was all CJ needed; he was in hyper drive after that. I do not think he has ever picked up so many rocks as he did after getting his ass lit up for being a lazy ass.

Dad had an incredible work ethic and he instilled that in all of us. It was days like these that we found out that you could not slow down or do something half ass otherwise there would be hell to pay. There were definitely times he went overboard on the manner in which he thought he had to teach us that we needed to work to make something of ourselves, but it is something that was needed and we are all better because of it.

A side note on this story. Whenever one of us got in trouble by dad, the others sure felt good about it. You were glad it was not you but you were also glad because you would remember something that that sibling had just done to you and it felt like justice was being served.

Shawn