RUMINATIONS

It is hot. It is as hot as I remember it being in a long time. The evenings are warm. The breezes in the evening are warm. This kind of heat draws stories out of folks. People my age, from the south and who had farming grandparents can swap stories from dusk till dawn about hot summers, long tobacco rows, bathing in tin tubs in water warmed by the sun. Our common ground soothes us. When we are drawn by a sound, a photo and even this kind of hot weather, memories come flooding back.

At one time I talked about Mr. Owl who I saw on the top of the water tower at times. We developed a relationship built solely on my imagination and need for Mr. Owl to show up. At times he would hoot from the nearby woods. I would hoot back. Not well. I am sure I did not have him fooled. Mr. Owl began to show up less and less frequently last year. I  believe he did not cotton to the development going on around him. It has been months since I saw him or heard him.

God fills a vacuum. Enter the whipporwill calling from the small bit of forest near my mom's. My papa talked back to whipporwill's as they sang out in the evening. He could call up a whipporwill, which, if you are not familiar with "call up" means he could get a whipporwill to come to the nearby trees and commence to sing, "whipporwill! whipporwill!"

Between the heat and the whipporwill snippets memories of hot days on the farm during tobacco season began drifting through my mind...we got up before sunrise, often at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Outside the mist hung in the trees and, in places, on the ground. People would be coming later to help take in the tobacco. Chores for set-up had to happen..toting jugs of water to the barn, setting up the tobacco horses where women would string the tobacco onto sticks that would later be hung in the barn. As we worked the sun began to melt off the mist. We had a huge breakfast that will live in my memory until I die. Granny would make eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy...there was no holding back. Work was gonna happen. It was gonna be hot. We needed our strength. My papa ate a huge plate of food. He would be in the fields with the men, walking the rows and pulling tobacco. No women did that job on his farm We worked at the barn. Lunch would be a sandwich and iced tea. My grandparents saw time as money when folks were working for them so we got at it fast as we could...granny muttering if I slowed down..."Time is money!" The depression stamped an indelible sense of the value of a penney on people that lived through it.

There is so much more. Maybe I will think on it again another day but I gotta go for now. They say that many a farmer's child went to college to keep from working tobacco all their lives. Motivation at it's best. Later!