After my columns of the past few months, I don’t want you to get the mistaken impression that I’ve become serious all the time. For this reason, I am switching gears this month to write about the foibles and antics of my three brothers.

To protect the guilty, I’m going to refer to my dear brothers in this column as Daryl, Daryl and Larry. (If you’re old like me you’ll know I’ve borrowed from the “Bob Newhart Show” – “I’m Bob. This is my brother Larry, Daryl, and this is my other brother Daryl”).

If you know my brothers and can identify them from my stories here – have at it!

For the record, I am the eldest of the Sanders boys. Daryl and Daryl are number two and number three, with Larry being number four, the youngest. No sisters! Charles Schulz in the Peanut cartoon once wrote that “Sisters are the crabgrass on the lawn of life”.

Having no daughters was tough on our mother, but she made do. Larry, 10 years younger than me, was the one our mother taught to cook and do other sundry household duties. If our mother could have waved a wand, Larry would have been a girl.

This, of course, did not prevent me, Daryl and Daryl from being assigned by Mom, after our outside chores, to collect dry clothes from the clothesline or washing dishes (no dishwasher in those days). We took turns each night.  I rocked Larry and gave him his bottle nearly every night thus achieving reduced dishwashing duties.

The frugality of our parents has carried over into our adult lives. And our maternal grandmother used to tell us that when you continued to use something after it was worn out, that’s when you made money. It may be that kind of thinking that enabled my parents to manage a dairy herd into their mid-80’s – an occupation that second Daryl and Larry each took up for over 40 years and pursued until recently.

It was common for second Daryl to wear two left boots, because his right boot always wore out first. He also would extend the life of socks with a hole in the heel by turning them over so the hole revealed the top of his ankle.

Second Daryl sometimes – even to this day – drives his pickup with the right wheels running on the berm edge of the white line, making the whole vehicle vibrate. I think this gives him a sense of security that he’s not meandering around on the road while rubbernecking at the neighbors’ crops. And I know this irritates his wife, my sister-in-law.

I became a veterinarian, while Daryl, Daryl and Larry are all livestock farmers. Both brothers Daryl fed out steers to finish for market – one had Angus and the other, Holsteins. And they both kept a bedding pack pen in their barns – with the packs being about two feet high – which they used to their advantage.

When the steers stood in these pens, their backs were almost touching the haymow floor. So, when buyers came to purchase their steers, they’d put the animals in these pens. The order buyers stood outside the pens, where they estimated the average weight of the group before offering a price. Both Daryls reported on how this often resulted in favorable – if not inflated – bids.

My first brother Daryl was quite proud of his new 1963 Ford Galaxy. One day he sneaked down to Sproul’s welding shop in New Hampshire, Ohio, to have a “cut-out” valve installed on the car’s muffler. His bright idea: to turn on the cut-out, bypassing the muffler so his car would make lots of racket when he revved the engine at the only traffic light in town. I thought for sure Dad would hear about this from the town cop, but first Daryl lucked out.

My other brother Daryl was especially talented in sports. He competed at the state track meet and made the all-league football team. He was especially tough. As a fourth grader, he broke his arm at morning recess. He attended class the remainder of the day and rode the bus home.

Once home, he told our mother that he had hurt his arm at recess. And she was nearly apoplectic when she saw the arm, which hung at a grotesque angle, clearly broken. Of course, he was taken immediately to the hospital for X-rays and a cast.

When questioned later why he didn’t tell his teacher, he replied, “I thought it couldn’t be too bad. It didn’t bleed.”  This is the same brother who gets light-headed and nearly passes out at the sight of his own blood.

This Daryl is also the mild-mannered one, but his demeanor can be deceiving. He once got thrown out of a football game by the referee for fighting. An opposing lineman put an illegal face mask move on Daryl and handled him like a calf at a 4-H scramble. So, Daryl decked him. The ref saw the second move, but not the inciting act.

Mom had a fit over Daryl’s expulsion. He was in hot water when he arrived home. Her boy was not going to become a hoodlum!

Our father was laid-back and worked extremely hard. But he had asthma, so spending time in the hayfield or baling straw was hard on him. We would send him to cultivate corn (these were the days before Roundup) while we boys would take over the baling chores. At that time, we were baling 70 acres of hay three times a season and a similar amount of straw with an old Massey Ferguson string-tie baler.

Larry was significantly younger than us older brothers. We put him to driving the tractor and baler when he was 10 years old. He loved it. I encouraged him to run the baler as fast as he could and still be safe.

His definition of “safe” may not have been a normal person’s definition. “Safe” is when you don’t shake the bales or the brother loading them off the wagon as you cross the field.

I would load the bales behind the baler and Daryl and Daryl would unload back at the barn in the mow. We baled hay or straw faster than a “bat out of Hawkins barn.” Often, we would have the field finished before Dad showed up from cultivating a cornfield.

Dad gently chided us, “Now boys, there is no need to be in a big hurry.” The truth was we were in a race to see how fast we could do it out of Dad’s sight.

Our mother graduated from college in 1934, when few women attended college. She played the piano and organ and loved to play at church and weddings. She was determined that her boys were not going to be rapscallions. She insisted we take music lessons. We had a saxophone that was passed down from brother to brother. But the younger Daryl wanted no part of it. He gave into learning the flutophone, as did Larry.

Our mother insisted that she wasn’t going to raise any quitters. If we participated in a sport, band, 4-H or other activity we had to stick with it for the school year. She also wouldn’t tolerate a negative attitude about life. Both of our parents instilled in us the importance of maintaining a positive attitude. This sometimes led to harassment at school, perhaps for being overconfident at times.

She was a petite, genteel lady, committed to raising God-fearing, responsible sons. My wife, Kris, still talks about my mother’s efforts.

We attended church on Sundays. If you told a lie or used a swear word, you were at risk of getting your mouth washed out with soap.  I can tell you she wasn’t bluffing on that score.

Mom baked a fresh pie six days a week, then a cake on Saturday night. We were permitted to eat only half of the cake on Saturday so that there would be adequate dessert for Sunday dinner.

After saying grace, it was understood that we boys would be polite and courteous at the dinner table. If we behaved badly, our mother’s first warning was when she started tapping her foot.

Our father generally didn’t intervene unless we really went over the hill. And he laughed at some of our antics.

After the main course, heavy on meat, salad, two vegetables and potatoes, we consumed a pie. And Mom usually provided a plate of home-baked cookies to top everything off.

When it came to filling our plates, second Daryl was usually the most daring. If he had his eye on the last portion of steak on the serving plate, the rest of us boys would be in danger of being poked with his fork if we reached for the last piece. If only one cookie remained on the serving plate, Daryl would put down the cookie he was eating, pick up and lick the remaining cookie placing it back on the serving plate so no one else would claim it.

I could go on and on, but I’ll conclude, you can’t take the farm out of the farm boys.