CyberFarmer


Several decades back, on a hot and humid August day, a kind of day on our rural Southeastern Oklahoma farm which tickles your rib cage with tricklets of sweat, makes you flick at ticks and chiggers climbing up your overall leggings, a lesson in humanity is well taught.

Back then, we are richly poor. Our farm is amongst the better known and considered a wealthy farmer's homestead. We have two ornery cranky Missouri mules and electricity. We are amongst the elite of local farmers. So elite, we have an eight hole wood burning stove with an oven which serves well as a heater to take off some of Winter's ice storm chill, when 'toe sacks hung on our interior walls couldn't keep Old Man Winter out. Most of us kids even have two pairs of socks and decent work boots.

There are others far more wealthy than us, however, including a man with, of all things, a car. We don't have a car but we have two mules, a wagon and a few tow plows. Never venture off our farm, least not far. A car is of no real value to us, but is of value to some.

Arm raised straight, trying to pick off a tick from my sweaty armpit, a tick intent on sucking me dry of blood, I hear a distant honking of a car horn, a major event in our lives; a car out front. Gritting my teeth, jerking hard and hoping I got his head as well, a drop of blood appears just before dropping my arm to have a look at a very wealthy person honking his horn for our attention. It's a '52 Chevrolet or maybe a '54 Dodge. I don't know. Those cars all look the same, big, black and covered with farm road dust.

"Come over here. Yall come over here. I want to talk with you," this wealthy car driver is shouting from our sharecropping field edge. Mind you, we are not poor it's just Granny and Grandpa decided we need to do a little sharecropping after last year's drought. We have a sixty acre farm, homesteaded all proper. This extra forty acres of corn is just to help us get by, maybe to survive a bit better and not go so dog gone hungry so often with last year's crop ruin.

Granny and Grandpa, courteous as they are, begin walking over to talk with this man, our sharecropping land owner. When our grandparents are a good distance down a row, all of us young kids run off to other rows and head for this dusty dirty road. Don't make a bit of difference really. Most of us youngins are more of a nuisance than good farm hands. Besides, what kid could resist looking up close at a car, with most of us having never even sat in a car.

This car driver and our grandparents are talking, mostly about our crop, its condition and all. We are only catching bits and pieces of conversation staying far enough away in concealment to not be caught ourselves. Can't rightly remember this man's name. Don't care. He is waving around a thick switch, a type of switch our bottoms know well. All along, with these animated motions, his voice is becoming louder, more demanding sounding. Granny gestures with a hand to our fields, an encompassing motion with her leathery dark brown hand stained with years of toil and soil. She is proud, like all of us, having amongst the best of field corn anywhere around. Raising his voice even more, this wealthy car owner starts in on how we should be using a tractor, modern plows and insecticide sprayers, along with other big words none of us could make a lick of sense of.

Grandma gestures again with a, "...look at our fine field of corn." Sends most of us kids to bawling and screaming when this wealthy man lashes out and strikes Grandma's hand, "You dumb woman, you ain't listening to a word," he is quickly cut off by Grandpa who grabs his switch, snaps it in two, then begins beating this car driver over his head with the thicker business end of his broken switch. Never saw a man run so fast before. Right funny looking with the way he is dressed, all city slicker like. He ran so fast he literally left behind his slip-on soft city like shoes. Those shoes adorned a scarecrow for years after, being of no use to farmers in need of work boots.

He never returned to our farm again, he and his car. Most likely because he was killed several months later at a farm some ten or so miles down our old road. Tale came back up the road, he was shouting and waving a switch around directly in front of a team of mules which didn't take a hankering to all his excitement and arm waving. It's said this car driving land baron was trampled and dragged to death by those ornery Missouri Mules. Nobody really knows if his arm waving did it or a farmer's annoyance led him to give one of his mules a swat on the butt. Either way, seems just deserves were served.

Our Grandpa, a fiery Irish immigrant is one of those men simply too good for our world. Later in our hot sweaty afternoon, after giving all of us kids a good switching for sneaking around and after reminding us of our dutiful chores, Grandpa goes into our farm house, cleans up, slips on some fresh overalls then begins walking up the road, some ten or more miles to our local sheriff's office to turn himself in for fighting. He turns himself in alright and returns home near sunrise, to have breakfast and go to work. Granny and Grandpa are talking, seems our sheriff told Grandpa, "Ahh Cecil, you go on home now. I'll take care of this," after refusing to arrest Grandpa for fighting. Grandpa is ashamed of himself, "Mama," his term of endearment for Grandma, "I need to be put in jail for fighting."



Our Sheriff sees to this fighting incident well enough. Several weeks later, a long time favorite farmer and our loved sheriff comes around, in a car. Plenty of excitement for all and no switching for dropping our hoes and running up to our old road to greet him with all due respect and friendship. He is a good man who helps all throughout McCurtain county to survive, with a judicious helping hand here and there.

After customary pats on our heads, lots of, "Yes sir," and "Thank you, sir" pleasantries, Sheriff McKinney waves his hand at us with dismissal, which is promptly obeyed with a dash for our fields to return to work. One thing you never do is disobey our sheriff. He is a respected man.

Bent down, back sore, I am pulling at a tough upstart weed, listening to older cousins and uncles talking a few rows over, laughing and taking a break. This weed enjoys a commuted death sentence for a bit when I plop down between corn stalks to listen.

"Yes sir, Sheriff McKinney said Grandpa is guilty of fighting sure 'nuff and fined him a gallon of milk, right then and there," an uncle bemuses, "Cecil fetched the sheriff a gallon, gave it to him and asked if he should go to town to be put in jail for his fighting. Darn if Dave McKinney didn't just laugh like a braying mule."

Over sweaty days to come, a story unfolds amongst corn stalks, bugs and those damn blood sucking critters. Sheriff McKinney accepts his fined gallon of milk, sends Grandpa back off to work, "Cecil Marrs, wouldn't be fitting for me to put you in jail. Look at those fields out there and your family out there working like dogs to stay alive. You get on out there and lend a helping hand. You ain't no use sitting in jail."

Grandpa returns to work, off by himself to deal with his shame of being a criminal. Sheriff McKinney hands his gallon of restitution milk to Grandma, "Bertha, would yall mind skimming me off a pint of cream for my wife? I'd rightly be indebted to you if you would." She does just that and, while in privacy, Sheriff McKinney buys four pint Mason jars of white lightning from a cousin, at a pretty good price as well. McKinney knows our cousins make the best white lightning anywhere within McCurtain County, quite unknown to Grandpa, but not Grandma.

Seems a dozen lifetimes since my farming childhood. Still my recollections of those days of hard labor and sometimes hunger, leave me with the best of memorable lessons.

There are many in life who are real smart, drive a car, know a lot about high technology, but when it comes to basic humanity, they ain't got a lick of sense.