I was an immature eighteen-year-old beardless socially inept nerd that summer. I’d just graduated from high school and would be headed off to college that fall. The job market in Spokane sucked so I jumped at the opportunity to work for my dad’s cousin in Saskatchewan for the summer.

Uncle Elmer farmed wheat just over the border from Montana. I’d been there four years ago and thought that it was really neat. I got to sleep in the old bunkhouse with my young second cousin Roy, who I recall being like eleven at the time, and I also got to drive a farm truck for a couple of days helping with the harvest. That alone was enough to make a fourteen-year-old kid feel important. I would earn pretty good money for the summer and it would all be in cash, tax free, and would therefore not interfere with my financial-aid status at the college.

I took the Greyhound to Havre, Montana and Uncle Elmer drove down and smuggled me into Canada. Viet Nam was still going on and a lot of kids subject to the draft fled to Canada instead of going into the Army. I’d have a 2-S student deferment as soon as I started school so it wasn’t an issue for me, but it was a lot easier to just cross the border on an unguarded dirt road than it would be to explain to the Customs agents that I was just there for a visit.

“Will I be driving truck again?” I asked as we made our way North.

“No, Jess. I sold the equipment and leased the farmland out. It just wasn’t big enough to make a living on anymore. I build fences now, and you’ll be helping Roy and I do that.”

“Oh.” Before they’d let me drive the truck so I assumed that I’d be doing the same thing. Building fences sounded like work, but at least I’d be able to bulk up a little.

The only indication that we’d crossed into Canada was a small sign along the dirt road warning that importation of illegal aliens or contraband was forbidden. We finally pulled into the farm, which was just about as I remembered it, and I got reacquainted with my cousin Roy, who was definitely different that I remembered. Four years ago he had been a diminutive eleven-year-old prepubescent kid. Now he was fifteen, bigger than me, and sported a wispy moustache and scraggly sideburns.

“Hi,” he said, extending his hand. His arms were thick and hairy, like those of a grown man and he clamped down so hard that it almost brought tears to my eyes. We had supper and sat around on the porch for a while before Roy and I retired to the bunkhouse for the evening.

Large houses cost a lot to heat in the winter so most farms have rather small houses and include out buildings like bunkhouses that are only used during the warmer months. This one was originally designed to house the crew that was once necessary for the harvest. It had been remodeled several times during the years, most recently to include a bathroom, and was now a comfortable bedroom suite with two large beds and a smaller set of bunkbeds for visiting children. This was Roy’s summertime home and it even had a TV set.

Talk around the dinner table and the porch had been about family and other relatives and such. Once we were safe in the Men’s Hut it was obvious that despite his adult appearance Roy was still very much an adolescent. “Do you smoke or chew?” He asked. I did neither. He wanted to, but both were forbidden. “Ever tried pot?” Once, and I didn’t care for it. Bummer. He had tried it once it and liked and had hoped that I’d brought a butt-load of it with me so that we could stay happy all summer. “Ever get drunk?” A few times. So had he, and he’d also gotten caught. “Ever had sex? With a girl I mean.” Yeah. “How was it?”

“Great,” I lied. I had been walking home one night a year ago when a Chevy van stopped and offered me a ride. The driver was an older lady, at least twice my age, and she pulled off the side of the road and split a six-pack of beer with me and then pulled my pants down gave me my first blowjob. She kept licking my dick and balls until I got it up again and then shed her panties and hiked her dress up and got on top of me. All I could do was lie there while she bounced around, and she didn’t even know that I’d came until I started getting soft again.

In fact, it had not been great. Up until the last year I had attended a Catholic high school that wasn’t even coed. All of the Fathers and Brothers and Nuns hounded us about sins of the flesh and lust and impure thoughts and self-abuse, and pounded in the fact that sex was reserved for married couples only. We would joke about what a fine wife Sally would be, or how we would dearly love to marry Janie, at least for one night, but deep down I still thought that I would go to Hell for having unmarried sex. I finally rebelled and was allowed to switch to a public school, but the many layers of guilt that I had accumulated took a long time to shed and I still had a lot of issues.

Roy was still a virgin but had high hopes and wanted me to give him some pointers about taking a chick to bed. Yeah, right. My one encounter had been an act of statutory rape and I didn’t really know how to even talk to girls, let alone try and get them into the sack. “It’s been a long day for me, I’m going to hit the hay,” I said, changing the subject.

The next day I learned a little about fence building. Most of the land in Southern Saskatchewan is privately owned farmland originally acquired through homesteading. Although the farmers owned the land, the Crown, or government, owned the mineral rights underneath the land. There was a lot of oil and gas exploration going on and each exploration site and wellhead needed to be fenced. Uncle Elmer built some fences for other farmers, but most of his work was on these well sites. The smaller gas wellheads had a simple barb wire fence twenty feet square with a rudimentary gate, while the large oil wells with pumps required a woven wire fence that was vandal resistant.

The work was physical, but I quickly toughened up and it wasn’t any problem for me to keep up with Roy and his dad. Summer is short so we usually worked twelve-hour days. Television reception was really poor and they only got three channels, so Roy and I spent the evenings listening to the radio and talking about the various bands and singers and a lot of other stuff too, like high school and the differences between Canada and The States.

He thought that living in such a small community sucked. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing, all the girls in school knew all the guys, and if you tried to buy cigarettes or rubbers or drink a little beer the word would get back to your parents almost instantly. He envied my living in a large city and he couldn’t hardly wait until he turned sixteen and could get a driver’s license so he could slip away to Swift Current or Medicine Hat and whore around with impunity.

We usually took off Saturday afternoon and went into town, such as it were, where Roy would shoot the shit with any of his schoolmates that he might encounter. His mom and dad would do the grocery shopping, and I’d just kind of wander around, wishing I had enough guts to make a move on one of the few chicks about my age that I saw around.

The last week in July brought a change in the weather and a huge thunderstorm roared through the area. The truck slipped and slid in the greasy mud and we barely made it back home. The next day didn’t look much better. Thunderstorms were still booming across the landscape, so Uncle Elmer decided that Roy and I would stay inside and clean up the equipment while he and Aunt Judy took the truck to Medicine Hat and picked up a load of posts and wire.

“What’s that thing?” I asked, pointing to an unfamiliar piece of machinery in the corner of the barn.

“That’s a grout pump,” Roy answered. “The well drillers use them to pump a fine mortar-like stuff around the well casings. It was broken, so they gave it to dad. He fixed it up and was going to sell it, but so far nobody seems to want it.”

“How’s it work?” I asked. I was always fascinated by machinery.

“This hose goes in the grout tank,” Roy explained, holding up the end of a stiff rubber hose. The other hose drops in the hole and the pump forces the slurry in around the casing. The pump comes apart so you can clean it, otherwise the grout inside would set up and ruin it.” He then went to the door and took a long look down the driveway before coming back in. “Want to know what’s cool?” He said. He primed the small engine and pulled the starter cord, and when it was running smoothly he opened the control on the pump. It sounded something like the heartbeat of a large animal, and the two hoses pulsed every time the pump cycled.

“Put your hand over the end,” Roy said, handing me the suction hose. I did, and it sucked the palm of my hand almost into the thing and I couldn’t for the life of me pull it away until the pump cycled and released me. “That’s only about half way open,” Roy said. “Any more and it’d pull your skin off.” He shut the valve down to free my hand, and then just barely cranked it open. “Try it now,” he said.

This time it was just a gentle, pulsing suction on my hand. “Here’s what’s cool,” Roy said. He looked around again, dropped his pants and shorts, and put the hose up over his balls. I had never seen him naked. He kept his shorts on or a towel wrapped around his waist while in the bunkhouse and faced away from me to get dressed. He had a lot more hair down there than I did but his dick and balls didn’t look as big as mine. He let the hose massage his nuts for a minute or two while his boner swelled, and when it had reached its full dimension he poked it into the end of the hose. I was almost ashamed to watch as he stood there swaying in accompaniment to the machine that he was humping. I admit that I had a somewhat sheltered life, but this seemed bizarre by anyone’s standard and was obviously something that only a real pervert would do.

“Your turn,” he said three minutes later, handing me the hose. I hesitated; I had never jacked off or even gotten hard with another guy watching, and even though I was swinging more below the belt than Roy, I felt nervous about participating in something so freaky. On the other hand, I could use the relief. I had only been jacking off about once a week, but Roy took extra-long showers every couple of days.

I accepted the hose mostly so show that I wasn’t chicken. I stuck my balls in the end and was immediately reminded of the blowjob that I’d gotten a year ago, and I felt my dick stiffen. I slowly pulled my balls out and plugged my dick in. It was a tight fit, but once inside it felt wonderful and I didn’t last a minute before releasing what felt like the biggest load in my life. I dropped the hose and staggered backwards out of breath, light headed, and wobbly in the knees, too weak to even pull my pants back up.

“Want to do it again?” Roy asked a little later, when both our heart rates had settled back down.

“Yeah.” My next confession was going to be a real doozie. The prior stimulus had caused my balls to puff up a little, and now they were a tight fit in the hose. “Turn it up a little,” I requested. If a little was good, a little more would be even better, right? Besides, Roy had messed with the thing enough to know what he was doing. He had just grabbed the valve lever when there was a blinding flash outside and the almost simultaneous thunderclap of a nearby lightening strike.

I saw Roy jump and then I heard the pump engine lug down and I glanced over to see him looking quizzically at the detached valve lever that he was still holding in his hand. The engine accepted the increased load before I could extricate myself, and it suddenly felt as if all my insides were being drawn down into the hose. I screamed, and Roy finally came to his senses and killed the engine, but not before the pump had cycled three more times.

The next few hours are all a blur to me, mostly of pain, and it wasn’t until late that evening that I became fully aware that I’d been castrated. Roy drove me to a Nurse Practitioner in town, and I was immediately transferred to a hospital in Medicine Hat. The doctor told me later that the closest thing to my injury that he’d ever seen was when a demented man tied a cord around his balls and jumped off of the roof. The bottom of my scrotum had split open and my testicles were torn free of my body. Uncle Elmer later removed them from the pump chamber.

To say that the summer I spent building fences made a lasting impression on me is definitely an understatement.