Among my strongest memories of childhood are those of Dad and the garden. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the garden, but I seldom did much work. I was more interested in the soft dirt that was good for making mudpies. I was attracted to the organization—freshly weeded plants all in long straight rows. I remember skipping from one end to the other, then back again, delighted by the pathways. Once Dad found a very old dime while hoeing; he pondered who might have lost it—and when? He put the dime in a glass ashtray inside the kitchen cabinet where he emptied his pockets every day. The dime stayed there for the rest of his life.
Occasionally I was required to help out with work in the garden, but more often I helped with the harvest and processing of the fruits of Dad's labor. I spent many afternoons shucking corn. Dad used to tell us that he'd pay $10 to the first person who found a red corn cob. Of course, he knew there wasn't one, and I think I really knew it, too, but I'd look anyway, everytime I peeled the shucks back from the ear. I also had to help string and break green beans. Mom usually did the stringing, and the kids would have to do the breaking. Bushels of green beans. Bushels of corn. We were a big family, and a big, productive garden was essential for filling our bellies. Dad also raised cattle, and in winter months we ate beef. But often in summer the table was stocked with only vegetables fresh from our garden—corn, green beans, potatoes, squash, okra, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
One hot Saturday morning in July, Dad asked me to help him pull corn. I had other plans, but he responded to my complaints with a stern reminder that he was boss. I followed him to the corn patch and began pulling ears to toss into the bushel basket. Suddenly I felt a burning sensation on my arm, and in an instant I was screaming in pain. Dad was soon beside me and calmly explained that I had probably been stung by a packsaddle. He lifted leaves of the corn stalks closest to me until he found the culprit and showed me how it hid underneath the leaf. I didn't care. Tears were running down my face, and I was still screaming. Dad sent me to the house for the comfort of Mom and ice.
On another hot day, probably earlier in the season, Dad told me he needed me to help him hoe the corn. I griped and complained but Dad just handed me the hoe and assigned me a row. He went to work on the row next to me, whistling as he always did, occasionally bursting into song. He loved working the soil under a hot sun. At some point he noticed that I wasn't making much progress, and he tried to teach me the art of hoeing. "Let the hoe do the work," he said. And later in life, when he built my house, I remember him telling me as I nailed studs beside him, "Let the hammer do the work." On that morning in the garden, he tried to show me how to rhythmically swing the hoe so that the blade cut into the soil just below the surface and cleanly cut the weeds. He tried to explain the art of this task that he so enjoyed. But I was thinking that I just wanted to go back inside and call one of my friends on the phone to talk about boys and songs on the radio.
I planted a garden this year—my first garden in many years. I sowed field peas, set out basil, tomato and pepper plants, buried onion sets and potato eyes, and dropped seeds for cucumber, squash, watermelon, and pumpkin. Then I took some time off for a summer tradition—travel. Dad used to love summer vacations. He took us to Florida or Carolina beaches nearly every year, once to Washington, D.C., and another time west to the Grand Canyon. Regardless of where we went, one thing was a constant: Dad's daily comment on the progress of weeds overtaking his garden. Every day we stayed on the road meant more hoeing when he got home. We'd be building sandcastles at the edge of the surf, and he'd say something like:
I'll bet those weeds are enjoying our absence. When I returned recently from exploring castles and museums, I discovered that the weeds had enjoyed my absence. I carried the hoe to the garden and went to work. My back and my hands ached, and the sweat dripped from my face and ran down between my breasts. This job was taking longer than I had anticipated, and I wished that I had put on sunscreen. I tried to remember what Dad had attempted to teach me about swinging the hoe. Something about standing up straight and letting the hoe do the work. What else had he said? If only I'd listened.
