For six years, my older brother took credit for getting me hired at the cheese plant and bragged about the $500 referral bonus he used to buy a smoker. At my 29th birthday dinner, I told Dad another factory had offered me a lead mechanic job paying $8 more an hour. Dad pointed his napkin at me and said, “Be grateful. Your brother’s the only reason the plant hired you.” Donnie looked me straight in the eye and nodded.

I let it go, not because I was scared of him, because I knew who hired me, and so did Ernie. And the two of us were the only ones who’d ever need to know. Family credit is like a participation ribbon. You can have mine. I’ve got work to do. That was the one and only time I argued about it for 6 years.

Here’s what those 6 years actually looked like. I worked second shift, same as Donnie, 3:00 in the afternoon to 11:30 at night. On second shift, it was mostly me and an old mechanic named Swede Nyberg. Swede had forearms like fence posts and a laugh like a truck that won’t start. His real name was Harold. I asked him once why everybody called him Swed, and he said, “Because I’m Norwegian.” That was the most I ever got out of him on the subject.

Swede taught me the plant, every line, every pump, every motor with a bad attitude. And I taught Swede how to get the parts guy in Milwaukee to actually call back, which he said was worth more than anything he’d taught me.

By year two, Ernie made me lead mechanic on second shift. By year five, he told me straight out that our maintenance supervisor, an old-timer everybody just called Gramps, was retiring in a year or so, and the job was mine if I wanted it. And the whole time there was line four, Donnie’s line. Line four broke down more than every other line in the building put together.

Not because it was a bad machine. It was the same model as line three, which almost never went down. Line four broke because Donnie ran it like a rental car. He’d let the warning lights blink for an hour because he didn’t feel like walking over to the panel. He’d skip the cleaning between runs because, in his words, it’s cheese. It’s not surgery. He’d prop the safety guard open with a cardboard box so he didn’t have to wait for it to cycle.

And when it finally jammed, he’d get on the radio and say, “Maintenance, four’s down again.” like the machine had done it to him personally. I’d go over, I’d fix it. I’d tell him what happened and how not to let it happen again. He’d say, “Yep.” And two days later, we’d do the whole thing over. Swede used to say, “That boy’s line has a frequent visitor card.” Some nights I fixed line four three times.

In 6 years, I don’t think we ever had a full week where it didn’t go down at least once. Now, here’s Donnie’s version, which is the one my family heard. In Donnie’s version, he basically ran the packaging room. He was training me. He was keeping an eye on me. When line four went down, it was maintenance dragging their feet again. When he got a write up, which he did more than once, it was office politics.

And at every holiday, he’d find a way to work in the $500. Easter, he’d say, “Pass the ham. Sam, you want to pass it? You owe me.” And dad would laugh. 4th of July, he’d have the smoker going and he’d point at it with his tongs and say, “Sam’s smoker,” and dad would laugh. My dad started calling me the guy with the wrench. He meant it like Donnie was the guy with the job and I was the guy who came over when something broke, which in fairness was true, just not the way he thought.

My mom, Wendy, is a sweet woman, but she goes wherever my dad’s opinion goes, like a dog on a long leash. Two years ago, she pulled me aside in her kitchen and said, “Honey, when your brother gets his raise, maybe you could ask him to put in a word for you.” I said, “Mom, I make more than Donnie.” She patted my arm and said, “Well, that’s nice. You still might ask him.” What was I going to do?

Bring my pay stub to Easter. Then came the cheese. This was about a year before my birthday. Donnie skipped the cleaning between a cheddar run and a pepperjack run on line four because the cleaning takes 40 minutes and he wanted to take his break on time. If you’ve never worked food production, here’s all you need to know. You don’t do that ever. Pepper flakes ended up in 2,000 pounds of mild cheddar headed for a grocery chain in Iowa.