I officially marked my sixty-fifth birthday, a couple of weeks ago. As I plow into the last half of my sixties, I can testify irrifutably that the concept of “The Golden Years” is a complete myth, like a federal balanced budget, or the idea that oysters will actually improve stamina. As it turns out, old is old. Period. I find that aches and pains are showing up a lot faster than they disappear and lately, various body parts are doing things that they aren’t supposted to do. Other body parts aren’t doing things they are supposed to do. It’s perplexing and the bottom line is there is nothing golden about it. My body recently decided to introduce a fairly painful and totally odd thing that a doctor charged $200 to describe as “trigger finger” and explain that “it happens, as we age”. He suggested that I return if it doesn’t improve, but I don’t see the point. If it happens “as we age” how is it going to improve? I may have just saved myself $200. However, there is one genuine pleasure in advancing years. That is the relative ease with which I seem to be able to completelyslip away from reality and into a great moment, from the years when I was still young. Those moments make me stop whatever I’m doing and pause to let the delicious memories waft quietly over me, while a slow smile spreads across my face. If anyone askes why I am smiling, I am quite apt to just say, “aw, nothing”, because these moments are too private and beautiful to share. They’re all mine. There is one, however, that I think I would like to share with you.,
I grew up on a family farm in southeastern Idaho in a devout family, whose religion featured a lay clergy. That meant any member was likely to be “called” by the brethren to service in some job such as Sunday School Teacher. My father held very demanding church positions, during my childhood, but the demands of the farm could not wait, so Grandpa, who lived a quarter mile away, at the other end of the farm, was pressed into service as surrogate farmer in residence, while Dad was at church meetings. I should explain that when I was growing up, Grandpa was my father’s father, Grandma was my father’s mother, Grandad was my mother’s father and Nana was my mother’s mother – all very tidy. This story is about Grandpa.
Grandpa was a farmer, pure and simple. He was born on a farm, lived his life on the same farm and died on that farm. He was good at it and he never aspired to be anything else. He was already an old man, when I formed my first memories of him and he always had that old man smell. I found it comforting. He believed in wearing things out, not wasting anything, so on a work day, you might find him in clothing that had been carefully patched by Grandma. Suits were for Sundays. The farm was 12 miles from the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation and in that place were men who knew how to make good, sturdy buckskin work gloves. Grandpa always had a fairly worn pair either on his hands or in his hip pocket. Have you ever smelled buckskin? It’s comforting, too.
The word “shite” peppered his vocabulary from time to time. I was mostly unclear about the meaning, but it seemed to be used for emphasis, or clarification, during times of stress or frustration. I asked him to explain a couple of times, but I got only silence in response. It sounded vaguely like cussing to me, but I discounted that because Grandpa was a religious guy and would never do that. Besides, Grandma would never allow it.
He was a simple, straighforward man and I wouldn’t call him vain, with one exception. The curl. His grey hair was parted at the side and while most men would simply brush it back off their forehead, his was arranged in a complete curl, that lay across the left side of his forehead and just a bit along the side of his head. He was very proud of it and
Grandpa, his sweetheart...and that curl
was known to carefully wrap it around his finger, so the effect was just so. At least a couple of times, I even saw him wear one of Grandma’s pink, sponge curlers, to help train the all important feature.
He was strong as an ox and almost worked the rest of us to death. About midway through Summer, when Idaho was at it’s hottest, it was time to cut, chop and stack hay to provide winter feed for the stock. Our job was to climb on top of the stack and pitch the hot, dusty stuff around to form the perfect shape and size stack, that would withstand Winter snow and wind. He was a perfectionist at this and I believe we built every stack at least three times, before it met his standards.
He had an odd habit of singing to himself, when he worked, but he never bothered with learning lyrics, or a tune. That was way too much trouble. Far better in his mind to simply hum the nonsensical phrase “die-dee-die-dee-die-dee” over and over to a kind of rambling, undefined set of almost-notes that never really went anywhere. After awhile, it became kind of pleasant to listen to, but I’m not sure why.
He was in charge of the family milk cow and the two of them were great friends. Her name was Lady. She wore a black, leather harness on her head, which was pretty useless, because nobody ever hooked a lead shank to it, to guide her. She simply followed Grandpa, wherever he went. She lived in the pasture, on the far side of the apple orchard, next to the house, and after the morning milking, she would follow Grandpa from the barn to his house. He would peel off to the left to enter the house, say goodby to her and she would amble down the road to the pasture, through the open gate and into the pasture for the day’s grazing. The gate never got closed – no reason. Lady never went anywhere and she would need to get through it that evening, when Grandpa called her. When that call came, she would amble back to the house and stand in the driveway waiting for Grandpa to come out with the bucket, look at her and say, “C’mon, Lady”. Then, the two of them would walk off to the barn for the milking. They were good buddies, those two.
Grandpa was an accomplished authoritarian. He took his role of family patriarch seriously. Driving to the main road into town, from our house required passing Grandpa and Grandma’s house. One day, he happened to see me driving by, shortly after receiving my driver’s license. Evidently, he perceived that I was moving at a rate significantly above the legal speed limit. I don’t think he could have proved it, but the point is that he didn’t feel the need to prove it. When it came to issues of parental (or grand parental) control, his perception was judge, jury and executioner. I was speeding. Period. He explained this concept to me, later that afternoon, while he was driving me to another piece of farming ground we owned, three miles away. It was a pretty short and direct conversation, full of simple, declarative sentences. I was speeding. I wasn’t to do it, again. If I did it, he would take away my license for one month. I remember this monologue being delivered, while he was driving through the tiny township of Riverside (speed limit 35 MPH) at speeds of somewhere over 70 MPH. He didn’t seem to take note and, somehow, I neglected to bring it up.
But I believe it’s time to tell you how I learned about “shite”. Irrigating rows of potatoes is part science and part art. In the Spring, the fields are tilled and planted into ramrod straight rows, perhaps a quarter mile long. During the Summer, water is delivered throughout the Snake River Valley in a system of canals and smaller ditches into the fields. The job of irrigating involves walking back and forth across the top of the field to regulate water flow down each, individual row, so that the flow will eventually reach the ends at the same time. Too little water produces potatoes that are too small and too much produces rotten crops. Grandpa and I spent many hours together doing exactly that. The thing is, once you have regulated the rows of water, there is little to do but wait, so Grandpa and I spent many more hours, sitting on the ditchbank, talking. It was during one of those times when Grandpa decided to leave reality behind and head for a happy moment, in his youth.
We were playing Mumbledepeg on the ditchbank and it was ungodly hot. Every farm boy worth his salt carries a pocket knife and Mumbledepeg is a game that involves holding and tossing the knife in creative, ornate ways so that it flips and spins through the air before landing on the soft, plowed earth of the field, with the blade sticking into the earth and the handle pointing straight up. If successful, it is then up to the opponent to duplicate the move and then try to outdo it with a more ornate, involved toss. It passes the time. I asked Grandpa who taught him to play Mumbledepeg and I’ll be damned if he didn’t do EXACTLY what I said I do, these days. He stopped talking, adopted a faraway look and slowly began to smile. After awhile, he said, “my older brother”. I asked him if he remembered his older brother and then the smile dissolved into laughter and the laughter got more and more robust until it took over his whole body and tears streamed down his face, as he sat back against the side of the grassy ditch and gave way to the overwhelming memory that was flooding back to him. I had to beg him several times to tell the story and he finally summoned up the strength to force it out in short, segmented phrases, between all the uncontrollable laughter and tears.
As a boy, he and his brother, along with some of his brother’s friends, had gone skinny dipping in the river, on just such a hot day as this one, possibly in this same spot since his father homesteaded our farm. Well, his older brother was larger than him, of course, as were his brother’s friends and he told me that as a joke, they held him down on the edge of the river and farted in his face. Then he dissolved in more laughter. I said, “Grandpa, that’s a terrible thing to do to a kid and it’s definitely not funny. Why are you laughing?” And he said, “Because (laughter)…because (more laughter)…because, when they weren’t looking….(a long period of overwhelming laughter and tears)…..when they weren’t looking, I shite in his sock.” And as he struggled to get the word “sock” out, he fell backwards onto the grass of the ditchbank, succombing totally to hysterical laughter, not even trying to wipe away the tears streaming down his face, and looking for all the world like an eight-year-old kid as he rolled around the ground.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, was the first time I fully understood the meaning of the word, “shite”. I’m thinking
Grandpa and the same sweethear, near the end of well-lived lives
that if I had any class at all, I would be put off by a revelation like that, but somehow, whenever I think of it, a slow smile tends to creep across my face…..