Farmer in his field By Anne Scheck
So many of my childhood recollections seem locked in a mental registry, unretrieved for years and usually only by a triggering event. Is everyone’s memory like this? Forgotten images flash, then unfurl, at a reminiscent touch or sound.
We are in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. I go for walks now, every morning. It is the best way to see people -- from a distance, in the open air. One recent day, I heard the collision of glass chimes on a porch just as I stood near my house and watched a field of grass waving in an uncharacteristic Oregon wind. It was a time-traveling combination. I heard the clang of a Coca-Cola bottle in a hardware store on a windy day when I was eight or nine years old – the day I met my first farmer. The hardware store had a wooden floor and a counter that looked like it was cut from the same lumber; The farmer looked strong and thin and old.
I was there on an errand. I’d completed my mission, but I had a dime. I held this tiny circle of silver tightly. Money was scarce. I looked around the store. There were many things for sale. There were seed packets, which I thought would put pretty plants in our yard. Unlike neighbors who had old tractor tires repurposed as floral planters, our small front lawn lacked flowers. But in the corner, a red refrigerated contraption with a coin slot beckoned. It contained bottled soft drinks that slid down into a slot after money was inserted. It was a Coke machine. The day was hot. And I stood for a long time looking at the seed packet and at that big red soda-dispenser. Coca-Cola was uncommon in our household, and, even when we had it, it was poured by measured amounts into drinking glasses, to ensure my sisters and I received equal amounts before the bottle was empty.
The farmer saw me looking. “How ya gonna decide?” he asked me. I shook my head. I stared at the seed package. I looked across at the red machine. Finally, I looked up at him. “I am not sure I can grow things,” I said. “But I know these flowers will look pretty if they come alive. I want to taste the Coca-Cola. But it will be gone after I drink it.” I realized I’d come to a conclusion from his question, and I took the seeds to the cash register.
I saw the farmer turn. I saw him go to the Coke machine. I saw him put in a dime. I heard the rumble of a bottle as it was freed. I saw him pick it up. I saw the gleam of the green glass that held the dark liquid. I saw him place the top under the bottle-opener on the machine. I heard a pop, then a whisper, from the bottle as the cap was removed. Then he walked toward me and he handed me the coldest Coca-Cola I’d ever touched. “Here,” is all he said.
Farmers aren’t always lovable. Often, they are stubborn and territorial and judgmental. But they are the most honest, hard-working, generous people I have ever met. And, by now, I have met plenty of them. I have admired them all. None more than the man in the hardware store. Those seeds, which ended up being grown in pots, turned out to be wildflowers, the same as I’d seen grow in meadows and alongside roads.
They put me on the path to loving land, even though I am no gardener. Once in a while, when I was young, my parents would pack us in the car to make a trip to farmland that had been in our family for generations. The farmer who rented it from my grandmother wasn’t friendly to me. But I was always thrilled to the results of his work, anyway, whether soybeans or corn, it was row after row of the same kind of vegetables that I would also see in our grocery store.
My sisters always seemed to dread these trips, which meant hours in the back seat of a car without air conditioning, but I loved the look of the agricultural countryside. There was never a time in which I didn’t spot a tractor with someone at the wheel, kicking up a cloud of dust while the sun beat down on a field that, soon enough, would give rise to food.
When my grandmother died, my mother inherited that farmland. When she told me she sold it, I astonished her with an uncontrollable crying fit – a daughter who’d weathered some painful incidents in life without shedding a tear. So she sold me a piece of the land no one was interested in buying. It was hilly, with a creek, and covered in trees. It is completely perfect.
I took my own children there when they were young, which meant a long flight back to the Midwest, and an equally long drive to this small acreage. My son, whose blood relationship to it made me think he would one day be its caretaker, showed no interest. But my daughter, who is adopted, braved countless mosquito bites and shook off ticks exploring the property. She loves it, too.
Two years ago, a farmer from the area, Mr. Mack, offered to scout this little piece of land with me, which I am determined to build upon – he and I discovered the remains of a cabin, where I hope to put a small house. I promised him the job of clearing it, and I explained to him how much it meant to me. Mr. Mack, burly and good-natured, with a no-nonsense approach to all conversation, disabused of me of the notion that this sentiment required any explanation. My penny loafers, however, which I was using for a hike around the acreage, were mystifying to him. “Next time you come here, you should have boots,” he said, noting I didn’t seem to fear snakes. Lifting one finger, he pointed to one of the reptiles sunning on a rock. I promised I’d have different footwear the next time.
Mr. Mack seemed pleased I valued the heritage of my property – farming on the land around it was still largely through family bloodline, he explained. I nodded. I understood. But right before he climbed in his truck to leave, I told him I had something to say. “My daughter is the one who seems to cherish this land,” I said. “But she doesn’t have this same family tie. She’s adopted, so I want you to know that. I think this small piece of history, here on this land, should go to someone who loves it like I do.” Mr. Mack showed no hesitation. “That is exactly right,” he said. “The land should be in your blood, not the other way around.”
With the onset of COVID-19 this year, in a pandemic that has curbed air travel, I’ve had to cancel my plans to return to my land, and I don’t know now when I will get back. I do go there, in my mind, from time to time. I see the cemetery plot of my forebears, I watch the snake on the rock, I see Mr. Mack wave goodbye from the window of his truck.
And I think of the plane trip back from that time. I was seated next to a man in a polo shirt, trim and bookish, who was on his way somewhere important. I told him I was headed back to the west coast, after visiting the family’s old homestead, a farm remnant in Missouri. “So you’re originally from a fly-over state,” he commented. For reasons I still don’t understand, I found this hugely irritating. And later, when he purchased a snack box, I waited to strike up conversation till he pulled out the small square roll and began buttering it. “What is that you have in your hand?” I asked. “Oh, it’s a bread roll,” he answered.
“No, it is not,” I answered matter-of-factly. “It is a hot field under a streaming sun. It is hours and days and weeks of care by a farmer who ventures out to that field to nurse the wheat, then again, to harvest it. It comes from making a living under the risk of weather and fluctuating price structures for wheat. It is the grain that comes from that wheat, providing nourishment all over the world. And, just to think, all of that comes down to families that live and work in a fly-over state.”
So many of my childhood recollections seem locked in a mental registry, unretrieved for years and usually only by a triggering event. Is everyone’s memory like this? Forgotten images flash, then unfurl, at a reminiscent touch or sound.
We are in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. I go for walks now, every morning. It is the best way to see people -- from a distance, in the open air. One recent day, I heard the collision of glass chimes on a porch just as I stood near my house and watched a field of grass waving in an uncharacteristic Oregon wind. It was a time-traveling combination. I heard the clang of a Coca-Cola bottle in a hardware store on a windy day when I was eight or nine years old – the day I met my first farmer. The hardware store had a wooden floor and a counter that looked like it was cut from the same lumber; The farmer looked strong and thin and old.
I was there on an errand. I’d completed my mission, but I had a dime. I held this tiny circle of silver tightly. Money was scarce. I looked around the store. There were many things for sale. There were seed packets, which I thought would put pretty plants in our yard. Unlike neighbors who had old tractor tires repurposed as floral planters, our small front lawn lacked flowers. But in the corner, a red refrigerated contraption with a coin slot beckoned. It contained bottled soft drinks that slid down into a slot after money was inserted. It was a Coke machine. The day was hot. And I stood for a long time looking at the seed packet and at that big red soda-dispenser. Coca-Cola was uncommon in our household, and, even when we had it, it was poured by measured amounts into drinking glasses, to ensure my sisters and I received equal amounts before the bottle was empty.
The farmer saw me looking. “How ya gonna decide?” he asked me. I shook my head. I stared at the seed package. I looked across at the red machine. Finally, I looked up at him. “I am not sure I can grow things,” I said. “But I know these flowers will look pretty if they come alive. I want to taste the Coca-Cola. But it will be gone after I drink it.” I realized I’d come to a conclusion from his question, and I took the seeds to the cash register.
I saw the farmer turn. I saw him go to the Coke machine. I saw him put in a dime. I heard the rumble of a bottle as it was freed. I saw him pick it up. I saw the gleam of the green glass that held the dark liquid. I saw him place the top under the bottle-opener on the machine. I heard a pop, then a whisper, from the bottle as the cap was removed. Then he walked toward me and he handed me the coldest Coca-Cola I’d ever touched. “Here,” is all he said.
Farmers aren’t always lovable. Often, they are stubborn and territorial and judgmental. But they are the most honest, hard-working, generous people I have ever met. And, by now, I have met plenty of them. I have admired them all. None more than the man in the hardware store. Those seeds, which ended up being grown in pots, turned out to be wildflowers, the same as I’d seen grow in meadows and alongside roads.
They put me on the path to loving land, even though I am no gardener. Once in a while, when I was young, my parents would pack us in the car to make a trip to farmland that had been in our family for generations. The farmer who rented it from my grandmother wasn’t friendly to me. But I was always thrilled to the results of his work, anyway, whether soybeans or corn, it was row after row of the same kind of vegetables that I would also see in our grocery store.
My sisters always seemed to dread these trips, which meant hours in the back seat of a car without air conditioning, but I loved the look of the agricultural countryside. There was never a time in which I didn’t spot a tractor with someone at the wheel, kicking up a cloud of dust while the sun beat down on a field that, soon enough, would give rise to food.
When my grandmother died, my mother inherited that farmland. When she told me she sold it, I astonished her with an uncontrollable crying fit – a daughter who’d weathered some painful incidents in life without shedding a tear. So she sold me a piece of the land no one was interested in buying. It was hilly, with a creek, and covered in trees. It is completely perfect.
I took my own children there when they were young, which meant a long flight back to the Midwest, and an equally long drive to this small acreage. My son, whose blood relationship to it made me think he would one day be its caretaker, showed no interest. But my daughter, who is adopted, braved countless mosquito bites and shook off ticks exploring the property. She loves it, too.
Two years ago, a farmer from the area, Mr. Mack, offered to scout this little piece of land with me, which I am determined to build upon – he and I discovered the remains of a cabin, where I hope to put a small house. I promised him the job of clearing it, and I explained to him how much it meant to me. Mr. Mack, burly and good-natured, with a no-nonsense approach to all conversation, disabused of me of the notion that this sentiment required any explanation. My penny loafers, however, which I was using for a hike around the acreage, were mystifying to him. “Next time you come here, you should have boots,” he said, noting I didn’t seem to fear snakes. Lifting one finger, he pointed to one of the reptiles sunning on a rock. I promised I’d have different footwear the next time.
Mr. Mack seemed pleased I valued the heritage of my property – farming on the land around it was still largely through family bloodline, he explained. I nodded. I understood. But right before he climbed in his truck to leave, I told him I had something to say. “My daughter is the one who seems to cherish this land,” I said. “But she doesn’t have this same family tie. She’s adopted, so I want you to know that. I think this small piece of history, here on this land, should go to someone who loves it like I do.” Mr. Mack showed no hesitation. “That is exactly right,” he said. “The land should be in your blood, not the other way around.”
With the onset of COVID-19 this year, in a pandemic that has curbed air travel, I’ve had to cancel my plans to return to my land, and I don’t know now when I will get back. I do go there, in my mind, from time to time. I see the cemetery plot of my forebears, I watch the snake on the rock, I see Mr. Mack wave goodbye from the window of his truck.
And I think of the plane trip back from that time. I was seated next to a man in a polo shirt, trim and bookish, who was on his way somewhere important. I told him I was headed back to the west coast, after visiting the family’s old homestead, a farm remnant in Missouri. “So you’re originally from a fly-over state,” he commented. For reasons I still don’t understand, I found this hugely irritating. And later, when he purchased a snack box, I waited to strike up conversation till he pulled out the small square roll and began buttering it. “What is that you have in your hand?” I asked. “Oh, it’s a bread roll,” he answered.
“No, it is not,” I answered matter-of-factly. “It is a hot field under a streaming sun. It is hours and days and weeks of care by a farmer who ventures out to that field to nurse the wheat, then again, to harvest it. It comes from making a living under the risk of weather and fluctuating price structures for wheat. It is the grain that comes from that wheat, providing nourishment all over the world. And, just to think, all of that comes down to families that live and work in a fly-over state.”