Posts Tagged ‘share croppers’

So I had an epiphany this last weekend. An honest to goodness, wow this is an amazing mother freaking awesomely fulfilling moment of clarity. It came to me while I was covered in mud, with blisters forming on the backside of my thumb (that also erupted and looks rather scary honestly). As my spine felt as if it was going to rupture itself out of my very hide, a moment of self awareness struck me and knocked me out of this universe and into blissful harmony. I’m talking heavy duty transcendental seeing God shit here. It happened as I was tilling the earth.

I have a good friend called M.E. who has been having a rough go as of late. Truth be told, she has had a rather rough go for quite some time. She has had a strong desire to have a vegetable garden and recently came into some unexpected money that allowed her to have the ground prepared to grow veggies.

However she was unable to till it herself, as she has a rather severe and unusual case of arthritis. Arrangements were made and she hired the father of her son’s girlfriend (son= Krish) to not only till the soil but also to cut the sod ahead of time to make row prep that much easier.

Well the day arrived, and so did her helper… well he stayed only long enough to bitch and complain about the conditions as he attempted to do the job. Then she called me.

I’m the sort of guy people call when they are in a jam. I just have this willingness to assist in tight jams and my friends know it. She offered to pay me for the job, and even though I’m willing to do it for free, I’m no fool.

I rode over with her daughter Rhia (a very sweet lady who also has a blog (www.rhiasrubbish.blogspot.com) and proceeded to see what kind of hell I was in for.

After all it had been at least 20 years since the last time I prepared a garden.

As many of you may or may not know (if you have read previous posts) I come from a family of sharecroppers. My maternal grandparents sharecropped for most of the beginning of the early twentieth century. Tending huge acreages of all manner of crops for others, in exchange for little or sometimes nothing in return. They eventually owned their own farm until my grandfather passed away. When he died, my grandmother came to live in Texas in a small house, a vegetable garden was planted on the side as there was no room to put it anywhere else. Later still when she moved into an assisted living center, there too was her ever present garden. My mother also had a garden, as did many of my aunts and uncles. Whenever family gatherings took place at one of these homes, you can bet even money on where the many children of such big families were congregated or put to work… that’s right in the fields, as our elders before us had done.

I always hated gardening. The stooping, the digging, the weeding, the fertilizing, the planting, the tending, the pest control, the harvest… the absolute unending drudgery of it all. But the one task I hated most was the tilling. Every spring close to Easter, my mother would borrow this old cast Iron 3 blade push tiller. It was reddish brown from the rust build up it had grown as it leaned against an old shed since the last time it had been used. Often it was rusted so much by the year of neglect that the first order of business was to get a couple of cans of WD-40 ready and a sledge hammer from the garage.

Spraying on endless streams of oil into nooks and crannies, banging on the old tiller like a gong. The task was endless tedium to a young boy like me. In moments like that I often wished I could find a young stupid child to fool into doing the task, much like Tom Sawyer was apt to do. Sadly all of the kids in my neighborhood knew better than to investigate noises from my home. My mother had found them in front of our house smoking pot one afternoon, and instead of calling the cops, she put them to work in our garden.

With the tiller moving smoothly now, there were still loud metal noises still ringing in my ears from my attempts at getting the blades to move freely, and shaky limbs from the shock force of bracing the metal; I began the work that we used to intend for Mules. If the force of the unsticking of the blades was hard, the use of this hand tilling machine was obviously an invention of the Spanish Inquisition.

Thankfully, M.E. is a bit more modern than my banjo playing relatives. She had acquired machines. Real, honest to goodness gas powered machines. These implements of destruction were the required tools for the designated job. No problem… that is until I saw the ground.

Nothing defines Texas soil as well as the word Clay.
It might make pretty pottery, but it sure as heck breaks the back of those who till it. This stuff was putty with bright green dastardly crab grass (the evil kind you can only find growing in Mesquite, TX). Now if you know anything about gardening, you know that it’s best to till soil when it is dry… or at least drier than what I am talking about here.

However, I knew that there was a job to get done. So I head over to the machines to teach myself how to use them as neither of them had used the machine before. After flustering about with finding the switches to turn the machine on, it trumpeted to life with the sound and exhaust of a Volkswagen beetle, circa 1972. The throttles allowed you to drop the blades, engage self powered movement, increase the thrust of the vehicle over tough terrain, and damn did it have power. That sucker began tugging on my arms like a two year old wanting a cookie tugging on its parents arms.

It made my neck ache, it kept getting clogged up, and after a half a row it was just pointless. Absolutely and utterly pointless. It was a damn foolish idea to try and get this garden tilled on this day. The ground was far too soft. No wonder the guy she hired quit so early on her. He had been very undiplomatic in explaining it to her, but sadly he was right. There was no way we could get these gardens tilled today.

I stopped the machine and said that if we want to make any headway here we might as well do the job by hand. After all I didn’t want to disappoint M.E. who had hired me to do this job. So all three of us started going after this mammoth job by hand, with implements of destruction that had seen better days.

As we worked ourselves into a fine sweat we removed sod cuttings as well as out tools would allow. The rich loamy soil bursting with fragrant odors filled my nostrils. My hands dug deep into the cool green earth, and then it just hit me. I was filthy, I was covered in mud, I was in pain and I was content. That’s right, I was content. It felt very good to be there. Right there at that moment.

After having my fill of hand tools, covered in sweat and with labored breath I said I was going to try the machine again, Rhia offered to unclog the blades as we continued onwards, and the mutual teamwork worked out well. We had both gardens desodded well within 95% of all the wicked crabgrass. The whole backyard smelled of the rich deep smell of freshly cut grass, and the pungent odor of freshly cut onions (M.E.’s backyard was a literal field of wild onions).

When Rhia left we exchanged blogs (that’s www.rhaisrubbish.blogspot.com), not long after that Krish arrived. And just in time too. He took care of most of one of the plots of earth that needed to be tilled, and taught me how to operate the machine. He also reused the sod cutter a bit to help grab up the 5% that I was unable to get. He started prepping the machines to go back while I completed the tilling of the garden.

If the sod cutter had power, the tiller was a raw beast. I felt like I was some kind of mixture of a rodeo cowboy and matador. The raw power of the machine ripped through my body, daring me to tame it with my own strength. I did, though it jarred me. It shook me. It rattled my cage… It felt so good. My back is aching with joy with the memory of it. The earth came flying up in great clogs, wafting the odors of the freshly tilled soil so boisterously that it over powered the exhaust fumes of the engines.

I was in a perpetual state of bliss, a meditative trance if you will.
That which I had detested had become a moment of salvation.
The work was complete, and my pride ensued.

Sometimes old adages are true.
You can take a boy from the farm, but you can’t take the farm from the boy

I do believe I am going to have to have a garden this year.