Mo Cain on sat 2 sep 00
Janet.
I was in the process of shutting down the computer and signing off the =
list for a few weeks. We leave for Europe and the UK tomorrow. Your =
piece about the Old Man was terrific and very touching. I remember my =
dad and his mates with their allotments after WW2 and you bring back =
memories of sitting with them while they picked the spuds. Helped too at =
a tanner a sack.
Thanks so much for the reminder...nicest piece I've read in a long time.
regards mocain exPat Brit now firmly rooted in ATL.
Off tomorrow to take the new grandson to meet his great-grandmother for =
the first time for the four generation photographs
Janet Kaiser on sat 2 sep 00
The old man who lived next door when I was a
child in the 1960s, really was an Ancient. He
had been one of the last farm hands to be hired
at the local "Hiring and Firing Fair" which
apparently stopped shortly after World War I.
He wore dark serge trousers, a waistcoat and a
striped collar-less shirt with the sleeves
rolled up. Never saw him in a coat. Or a collar,
although he did have a box with one in on the
high shelf above the fireplace. Grey with age.
Last laundered and starched by his wife. The
hob-nailed boots he always wore were polished on
Saturday night, ready for Sunday. Newspaper
spread on the table, it was an evening's job and
entertainment by the light of an oil lamp.
The Old Man would go out in the early morning to
dig or hoe or mow until lunch time. Slow,
economical, rhythmic movements. Long hours in
the summer. Short in the winter.
He would sit in his garden or in the shed in
poor weather, munching a wafer thin "Bechdan"
(bread and butter) and swigging cold tea out of
an old lemonade bottle which was never washed
out. I was banned from that shed by my mother,
because his only lavatory was at the other end
from the hooks where the tools were hung. An
earth closet with two holes in the wooden lid,
which stank to high heaven in the summer and
steamed strangely in the cold winters. A large
barrel stood outside. That was for the urine out
of the night pot. Good for the garden.
The good stone outhouse was used to keep the
"Rent Pig". Fattened, slaughtered and sold to
pay the rent on Lady's Day. Sometimes a little
could be saved to provide fat for cooking. Bad
years often did not even afford that little
luxury.
In the afternoons he would do more of whatever
task he set himself that day, at that season and
that time of year. Pricking out plants, earthing
up potatoes, pruning apple trees, spraying
carrots, staking raspberries, cutting twigs for
peas, building a clamp of root vegetables for
the winter, twisting onions into strings,
burning rubbish... All the tasks a gardener must
complete.
An hour before sunset, he would gather all the
tools he had used that day and clean them with
the same stolid deliberation. Clean off the
soil. Oil the metal. Wipe the saw down before
tying oily rags around with string. Polish the
spade, which looked like it was made of
burnished silver. Wire brush the hoe. Sharpen
the scythe and oil it before carefully wrapping
rags around the blade.
That scythe blade was about three feet long, the
wooden handle with two hand holds much taller
than he. Sharp as a razor. Saw it cut a rabbit
in half once. Poor thing was crouched down,
frozen with fear. Should have run.
Seeing the Old Man rolling across the field,
laying swathes of golden wheat flat in neat
patterns was poetry in movement. Minimal.
Magical. One side of the field to the other.
Back and forth. He still mowed an acre a day at
aged 80. Slowly and deliberately. Even a child
could watch in awe. Living history. Made school
lessons more interesting.
Then making the stoops of corn to dry. That was
also history when other fields hummed to the
sound of the combine harvester. Spitting bales
of straw out as they went. Those farmers laughed
at the Old Man. Silly Old Man they jeered as
they leaned on the gate.
Did the Old Man think it was his bread for a
year? Or just another of the tasks for the
patient gardener? Following the same rhythms of
his forefathers. The last of the many
generations living off and from the land, simply
reaping the harvest of the endless toil.
His callused hands with long horny nails were
black. He worked every day, summer or winter,
hail, rain or shine except on Sundays, Good
Friday and Christmas Day. The Lord's Day was
spent indoors by the coal fire reading Y Cymro,
the weekly Welsh newspaper. The Bible had not
been opened since his wife's funeral thirty
years before. Shameful Old Man. Never went to
Church or Chapel. A sin in those days.
The only son and grandchildren never visited,
except reluctantly for an hour on Christmas Day.
They were rich tenant farmers, ashamed of the
Old Man. Mere farm labourer. Could not speak
English. A peasant. Old. Worthless.
But they came to take him away when the gangrene
set in and his leg was already black to the
knee. He had cut his toenail using an old
razor... My mother recognised the ominous signs
and called the doctor, who informed the family
he must go to hospital. They said they did not
have time to take him there. An hour by car.
The tools were taken away with the Old Man. They
took him away to die in their house ten miles
away. Forced him to leave his home of 50 or more
years. The table, the chair, the feather bed and
all the Old Man's possessions fitted onto the
trailer next to the Old Man, who was wrapped in
a blanket and laid down on the wooden planks.
Saved them two journeys that way and the
children travelled in the car. Practising for
the funeral when he would be in a shroud not a
blanket. Laid in a box not just bare planks.
The garden in now a wilderness. Only the apple
trees reach above the brambles and thorns. An
ash tree is growing up through the roofless
space of the decayed shed. No corn will grow or
be harvested in the field again. No pig will
ever pay the rent.
And the tools? Probably rusted away in a shed on
the farm. Forgotten and unwanted. Just like the
Old Man, who was buried in a strange churchyard
ten miles away from his wife. May you rest in
peace Old Man. Dead these thirty years and more.
But your tools do live on. And your ways. Young
eyes were watching and learning.
Janet Kaiser
The Chapel of Art . Capel Celfyddyd
HOME OF THE INTERNATIONAL POTTERS' PATH
Criccieth LL52 0EA, GB-Wales Tel: (01766) 523570
E-mail: postbox@the-coa.org.uk
WEBSITE: http://www.the-coa.org.uk
Lee Love on sun 3 sep 00
Hi Janet,
Fine writing. You give the old man new life.
Many of the farmers around here are similar to the old man.
The family farm has been somewhat protected here in Japan. But most of the
people working in the fields _are_ old men and old woman. The young
people don't want to break their backs like their grandparents did. You
can't blame them, really.
I'm afraid that these little farms will disappear soon. Then
rice and other
plants here will only be grown by factories and machines like they are back
home in the States. I guess, the only hope is in those little plots on the
side of the mountains that are too steep for machinery. They know their rice
tastes better than the rice does grown in the States, but I don't know if
they know why.
Sometime quality requires the touch of a human hand.
--
Lee Love
Mashiko JAPAN Ikiru@kami.com
Help E.T. Phone Earth: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
GURUSHAKTI@AOL.COM on sun 3 sep 00
Wow, what a powerful and moving story!
It reminded me of my own father, whose garden shed was cleaner than my mom's
kitchen! He didn't have many tools, but he always put them away, after
pristinely cleaning them, in their allotted space. He loved to work and only
sat still to eat or at night when he would play a little solitaire and read
his bible.
He worked until the day he died at 82, taking care of his own 1/2 acre of
ground (not a weed to be found on the property!), volunteering with Bingo
nights and fund raising dinners for his beloved American Legion, helping any
one who needed a hand, doing all the housework for Mom, and still finding
time to bowl three times a week. He was top bowler on his team by the way,
and very proud of that! :-)
He only complained that last year that his legs were bothering him, but yet
he marched forward every day to do what needed to be done and to follow his
passions.
Thanks Janet for stirring my heart and my own memories of my Dad. I think he
and the Welsh farmer would have been good friends!
Warmest regards,
June
PurpleLama@AOL.COM on tue 5 sep 00
Janet,
That was an amazing. story. I agree with a suggestion someone made earlier -
we should compile a book of Clay Art short stories - a book of wisdom.
Thanks for sharing.
Shula
PurpleLama@aol.com
in the air over the US - somewhere between home (Redondo Beach, CA) and work
(Stamford, CT)
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