"Summertime, an' the livin' is easy"

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table in my pajamas and a duster, I was invited to go with Gerald on his Gator to see the sunflowers. For some reason, the deer have been extra kind to them this year. Hurriedly finishing my coffee, I left the house as I was and climbed in for a ride around the farm. Going past our garden and then the neighbor’s test plots, we reached a back field. Rows and rows of sunflowers were abloom in their full circled golden glory with an infrequent blue morning glory to add an extra bit of color. No wonder the electric power line down our driveway is filled with doves these days.

Over across the country road to yet another field, we next traveled on the strip still in the Conservation Reserve Program. We appreciated driving beside the thick tall corn in the field that had come out of CPR. Along a waterway filled with large rocks, I asked Gerald where those huge boulders came from. Oh, the Sullivan boys from Goreville hauled them for us probably 20 years ago, he answered. It is exciting to see what his conscientious conservation has accomplished. Occasionally, Gerald would interrupt our ride to hop down, grab his spray, and give a lethal dose to kill a rare but unwanted piece of Johnson grass. Getting rid of Johnson grass has been a career-long effort for him.

Sweet corn and now tomatoes are part of many of our summer menus these days. That make meals easy to fix. And peaches, plums, melons, grapes, and sweet red cherries from the store or fruit stand make an easy summer dessert—sometimes mixed in with the bananas that are always on our table to make sure we have the potassium needed for meds and prevention of leg cramps.

Summer company is another pleasant addition to our lives. Last week it was an unexpected but most welcome visit from Sandra Henry from Indiana. Her mother, Shirley Jones Henry, was my second cousin. Shirley was a childhood companion in summer when we both lived in hilltop farm houses with a rock-bottomed creek between. We would holler our signal and meet up for hours of play in that beautiful creek. Years later, Shirley’s grandfather, who was my great Uncle Sam Martin, moved up from his home in Sleepy Hollow to our farm named Mount Airy Farm by my aunt Myrtle when she was a girl growing up there.

Sam’s home in the hollow on farm land bought a few decades ago by the government had been built by my great grandfather following his return from the Civil War. The house is probably crumbling now, but the nearby cave used as a tool shed would still be there. The road down is no longer passable. My cousin Doug and his son David came from California over a decade ago to see it, and they are the last I know to hike down that over-grown hollow. They came back covered with ticks, but feeling accomplished.

Sometime after Uncle Sam’s death, Shirley and her husband and children moved into the house at Mount Airy. As the oldest child, Sandra vividly remembers living there and the smell of Sam’s tobacco when they moved in. Sandra loves to tell me how my daddy—always the teacher—would tell her big words as they rode horses together and would encourage her to learn to spell them. Sadly, the house burned down (another of her vivid memories), and their family moved onto Marion. Not too much later, Sandra lost her daddy. So it was only at a couple Martin family reunions over a decade ago that I met Sandra as an adult with some of her family at Ferne Clyffe Park. But a love of her mother and our love of Mount Airy Farm binds Sandra and me together.

We have carried on some correspondence about family history, and she discovered not only a wonderful story about Uncle Sam’s false imprisonment and consequent release but also a mysterious secret that my very special Uncle Oscar had a son named Hebron who disappeared from Johnson County census records after our great grandmother’s death. Sandra traced him to Missouri, his service in World War II, and finally to California. Sandra could not stay long at Woodsong as she had come down from visiting two of her brothers in Jacksonville and was on her way to decorate her parents’ and great grandparents’ graves at Cedar Grove Cemetery down in Happy Hollow. And she was able to catch up with her mother’s first cousin Lowell Martin in Goreville for a brief visit there too.

Our grandson Sam (no, not named after my great uncle but for the Biblical Samuel) was out again for a few days, and other family members have been in and out. More are expected this week, and we are excited about that. And the next week the younger cousins are planning to gather in before school starts again. So they will be enjoying sweet corn and tomatoes with us.

Summer Ends Before Labor Day Now-a-days

Tall walls of corn line many country roads, deer feast in soybeans up to their necks, tomatoes are finally ripening, and the heat tells us it is definitely summer. Yet dental and eye appointments fill parents’ calendars, newspapers ads feature school supplies, kids sweat through marching band and football practices, and schools are about to start. Some even tomorrow! I feel sorry for children going back to school in the middle of August, but as hot as it is, maybe enough schools are air conditioned these days that it will be okay.

Jeannie and her younger daughter Cecelie came through last Monday and spent the night and visited with us here the next morning on their way to Nashville, TN, to see the older daughter, Leslie, and admire her new engagement ring.
This afternoon they came back by briefly but couldn’t spend the night. They had to hurry home because they’d stayed a bit longer than they hoped in an effort to find the perfect dentist for a tooth problem that Leslie won’t have time to take care of back in her home town when she goes briefly for a friend’s wedding. The mission for the right dentist was accomplished with a first appointment tomorrow. Many good comments online gave Jeannie confidence.

Of course, they talked wedding plans while there and visited bridal shops and even thrift shops. (The current reception dreams call for lots of glass and vintage lace and unmatched plates and glasses. These early ideas may change by June, but Leslie and Jeannie are both original, and I am sure whatever transpires will be fun and a work of art.) So while Cecelie took the Gator for a spin, we drank a coke together at the kitchen table and heard Jeannie’s report of their visit. Her daddy listened on with typical wry male comments (just put a ladder up to the window and save time and energy) and I openly relished hearing the report on all their girl talk. He did too, but he knew he was supposed to make those kinds of remarks or we’d been disappointed.

After that brief break, we were off to Katherine’s and, of course, she wanted to hear a repeat of the Leslie news. She loves to hear Nashville activities and music scene talk since that was her life once upon a time. Just last week she received a childhood Winnie the Pooh book left behind with other things in a friend’s Nashville attic when she moved back to Illinois.

Very soon Jeannie and Cecelie had to be on the road again for the long many-hour drive to northern Illinois. Jeannie has already been working in her art room and will throw herself into school prep in the morning.

After Jeannie and Cecelie left, I was helping Katherine with paper work for Sam’s high school registration in the morning when she realized she had never made the call to the new dentist to schedule her and Sam’s needed appointments. (When you can’t use your hands, a phone call is often a challenge and sometimes impossible. The usual phone problems are exacerbated by a beautiful new phone David chose for her because it was supposed to be more handicap convenient—but for some odd reason, something is not working right and it keeps losing its power.)

While it was recharging, even though it was long after 5 p.m., I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the 800 number for the new dental place in Marion that at least has longer appointment-making hours. Suddenly Katherine was trapped in a time-consuming Q&A for new patients by a very kindly speaking young man in who-knows-what city. In the middle of that, David walked in with their very special friend from Israel. We thought the 800 phone call would never end, but with all that time invested, it had to be completed. Finally she was able to join the two men in the living room.

I don’t think Katherine has ever met his wife, but she has talked to her on the phone and keeps a Hebrew dictionary handy since neither woman speaks the others’ language. Somehow they communicate. David opened the present she sent Katherine, and I left the three of them happily visiting.

I’d taken Katherine sweet corn from her Uncle Garry that he passed out at his brother Keith’s birthday breakfast at Jonesboro this morning. Gerald attended on his way to Cape to get our car serviced. I also took her tomatoes from Gerald’s garden, and Jeannie had some of each put into her northern-bound car too. Finally, as I left town tonight, I delivered the bucket full Garry had sent to our sister-in-law Opal. I did not take her tomatoes since she always has them in her own garden along with the beautiful masses of flowers and plants lining her sidewalks that make a visit to her home so pleasing.

Although it was much too late by now to stay and visit, I had the special treat of seeing her three-year-old great granddaughter Josie, whom Opal was watching while Josie’s mother gave dance classes. I hadn’t seen her since she was a baby. I enjoy Josie’s photos posted by Jinna, her mother, on Facebook, but she was much more grown up than the photos revealed. I was delightfully surprised when she followed Opal’s example and suddenly she snuggled close and gave me an unasked for hug. I left with a smile on my face.

Back at the farm, Gerald had long before fixed his own supper. I hurriedly fixed myself a bite including one of Garry’s ears of sweet corn. Garry and Ginger live on the home place where Gerald grew up, and Garry is walking in their late father’s footsteps growing extra food and freely passing it around to more people than you can imagine. Dad Glasco would be proud his tradition continues.

Today was not only Keith’s birthday, but our niece Vicki, Garry and Ginger’s daughter, reminded us that 28 years ago her baby son David Brandon was born. We lost him at Christmas time that same year, and our family shed some more tears for him today even as I also shed tears for the babies dying tonight because of the famine in Somalia.