It’s July 5th and I’m thinking about my Grandpa Naaman. I called him Pappa. or Poppa If you prefer. I guess I never thought about how it was spelled.

I’ve written about him before but something about today made me want to write again.July weather, bright sun, hot and humid, work to be done.

I thought I’d get a break when I visited the farm in July. Halfway between planting and harvest, you know, it just should have been relaxing. But no. There is always something to do.

We’d get up at 5:30. We’d been in the field at 6AM weeding the tobacco fields or the massive garden he grew. We weeded by hand, with a hoe. Or we’d be in a cow pasture with a tractor and flat bed trailer ‘gettin up rocks. Once we were on a barn roof repairing the Tin roof with new sheathing. We’d want to do that early , when it was only 80º, before it really got hot.

Sometimes we’d work with the cows. We’d mend fences or we’d make new ones. I just thought of one of the reasons I’m thinking about Poppa, I have a blister on my hand from digging. Thinking of building fences reminded me of how I’d blister my hands with post hole diggers. I was only a part time field hand, I was mostly a city boy. Soft hands blister.

Sometimes there was a calf rejected by its mother. My Grandmother, Momma, would feed it with a a weird bucket that had a rubber utter on it. She’d fill it up with some type of formula and give it to the little guy. It’ seems like she always had one or two she had to help that way.

Some mornings my Grandmother and I would head off to a neighbors farm to pick blackberries. It was prickly work but worth every nick. To this day my favorite preservers are blackberry preserves. I don’t even mind the seeds.

At lunch, which was pretty long in July, we’d eat cool vegetables mostly. Tomato sandwiches, cucumbers, squash, green beens, corn, maybe pork n beans. In those days before air conditioning we kept the house cool by keeping the stove off and the fans circulating air.

We’d alway take a nap after lunch for about an hour. About 2PM we’d head back out. Depending on when he had planted, we might top the tobacco plants or remove the “suckers”.

Once I remember helping him repair tobacco sleds for the harvest season. It left a great impression on me because of the crude but effective design of a tobacco sled. I was always curious about how things went together and how they functioned. The tobacco sled was a beautiful design.

It was built to be dragged behind a horse or mule originally and later a tractor. The. field workers would harvest the tobacco leaves, tuck them under their left arm usually until they had enough to walk over the the sled to deposit their load and then head back.

The sled was used because it was low to the ground, easy for the hands to dump their loads into. It had ingenious removable sides that were made from burlap fertilizer bags nailed to the bottom of the sled and to a 1×6 board that streched across the top of sled and was held in place by two slotted boards. You’d take the top boards out of the slot and lay them the cross members about halfway down the sides of the sled. This made it easier to lay in the first batch of leaves. When the load got halfway up the top boards would be put in place and the loading would continue util the sled was full.

The thing I thought was so cool was that we’d take those fertilizer bags, cut them in two along the side seams and nail them to the top board using soft drink bottle tops as a kind of washer to grip the burlap. This gave a larger gripping area so the bag wouldn’t tear and it recycled old bottle tops.

Sometimes we’d take a break and run to the store. There’d be men sitting around using pop crates for stools swapping lies. There were always pop crates around because back in the day the soft drink companies re used the glass bottles. We’d get 2¢ for every bottle too. Great incentive for collecting trash.

We’d often get a soft drink and a pack of Nabs( peanut butter crackers, or cheese crackers). I don’t know why they were called Nabs. I thought maybe Nabisco, The National Biscuit Company, originated the snack, but I don’t know.

Sometimes we’d get a pack of peanuts and drop them down the neck of our Pops just for a change of pace. It was fun you should try it.

After our afternoon shift we’d head home for supper. Good ole country cooking. After supper we’d take the table scraps out to the dogs for their feeding. Then a little TV.

It was always an adventure and it wore me out. I was in bed by 8:30, lights out at 9 after 30 minutes of reading.

It was just a typical day in rural America. Working hard together. Celebrating average. Enjoying freedom. Loving life and making a life long memory.