I’m Sorry

I got a phone call from the lawyer’s office.  The friendly lady asked if my sisters and I would bring our spouses and meet at the lawyer’s office the afternoon of the next Friday.  It might as well have been Friday the 13th.  I had a doctor’s appointment that day, so I had already taken the day off from work.  The doctor was kind enough to reschedule me for first thing in the morning so I was able to meet the lawyer in the afternoon.  My sisters and their husbands are retired so their schedules were more open than mine and they quickly confirmed the meeting.  One call and it was on.

It was a meeting I had hoped and prayed would never happen.

——————————————

This story actually started a long, long time ago, when I was in high school.  As I said in an earlier post, Dad and I looked at a few farms in those years.  One day we rode in his old ’72 Chevy pickup out to assess a farm he had first seen while driving a school bus.  We looked the place over, with its alfalfa field, soybeans, cattle, barn, and rundown house.  We and ended up in the driveway, facing the steel gate to the barnyard.

“What do you think about the farm, Bub?” he asked.

“I like it, Pop,” I answered.

He cut me off with, “Whadaya think?  Should we buy it?”

“Yes sir!” I answered enthusiastically.

He smiled happily.  In his inimitable way, Dad said, “I done done it.”

——————————————

I was surprised and overjoyed.  I was within a couple years of graduating high school and attending college before leaving the nest like my sisters already had, but my parents and I still had a few years to experience the farm together. 

The small herd of cattle that came with the place.  They were mainly black angus but some were mixed.  The black angus bull was huge to my young eyes, and I named him Bull Mischief.  I figured, if he ever got into any mischief, nobody would give him any bull.  Luckily the massive critter was as gentle as he was big.  Before long I could feed him out of a five-gallon bucket.  He loved it when I scratched the top of his huge head.

One Friday night my cousin, John, and our friend, Steve, wanted us three to camp out on the big pasture.  John and Steve had a football game that night so I set up the campsite while I waited for them to join me.

It was after the sun had set and the temperatures had dropped into the 30s that I saw the headlights of John’s little blue Datsun pickup pull into the driveway and stop at the steel gate.  After stopping to open, go through, and close that gate the headlights drifted forward a bit before stopping again.  The horn honked once, then twice, followed by a string of long and short honks. 

Just as I thought I should go to the barnyard to find out what the problem was, the headlights started moving again.  Before long the truck stopped beside the campsite, and John and Steve joined me beside the fire.

I asked, “What was all that honking about?”

The two burly football players looked at me sheepishly and John answered, “The cows were all in the barnyard.  As I pulled forward they all got out of the way, except for Bull Mischief.  I thought he’d move when I got close so I eased forward until the truck was almost touching him.

“He just stood there with his head reaching over the hood toward the windshield.”  My cousin’s voiced tightened, He was looking right at me.  I could hear Bull Mischief breathing and steam was coming out of his nostrils and fogging up the windshield.  His eyes were glowing red.  I wasn’t about to get out of that truck and ask him to move.”

——————————————

Mom and Dad and I went out to the farm every day to feed and water the cattle.  There were a couple of old claw-foot bathtubs just inside the board fence that separated the barnyard from the backyard of the little house.  One of us would hold the hose to fill the tubs.  Sometimes we’d sit on the fence at the same time and we’d talk.  It was just Mom and Dad and me, sitting or standing quietly and talking as one of us held the hose.  It’s amazing how many heartfelt conversations we had, just holding the hose.

We talked about life, love, family, and the future.

Years later, after Dad sold the cattle and my sons had recycled the tubs, Mom, Dad, or I would mention “holding the hose,” and we all knew what was meant.  It wasn’t the hose, or the fence, or the tubs, or even the cattle.  It was the closeness and talks we’d had.

——————————————

The farm was the bricks and mortar my parents and I used to build a better relationship.  We all loved the farm and worked hard on it. 

We sold all the junk cars, but not before I shot out all the windows with my .22.  We hiked in the woods and walked around the pasture, looking for the cows. 

I sometimes had to locate newborn calves.  The trick was to first call the herd up to be fed.  Then I’d go down in the pasture and hide behind a bush and bawl like a tiny calf.  Momma cow would then hustle her hocks directly to the spot where she’d hidden her baby.

Sometimes I’d be up in the woods playing or hunting and Mom would be somewhere else on the farm.  She’d give her version of the Tarzan yell.  “Ah-eeee-ah!”  My response sounded more like Johnny Weissmuller, at least to my ear, and carried quite well.  Mom and I would meet somewhere in the middle.  Our mutt, Lad, would run back and forth from one to the other until we got together.

The first year we cut a little cedar for our Christmas tree.  “It will be the only thing we get off this place this year,” Mom said.

It was.

My folks and I worked together, side-by-side, to remodel the little house.  We re-sheet-rocked the whole place, re-wired it, and added plumbing and a bathroom…which it had never had before.  I learned how to paint like a pro and that you don’t “change horses in the middle of the stream.”  Dad taught me construction, plumbing, and how to heat a home with wood.  He showed me how to use an axe, a chainsaw, and a shovel.  Man, did he ever show me how to use a shovel, and gave me plenty of practice too.

He taught me how to drive a tractor and then helped me gain experience with that too.  He taught me how to pitch hay.  Yeah, I got lots of practice at that too.

My parents had always worked hard to “make ends meet” for our family, and that didn’t stop.  In fact, their hard work increased.  Whereas it had previously been, “go to work, go home, and hope the kids don’t bother us,” now it was, “go to work, then go to the farm and work some more with the kid who still lives with us.”

Yes, I had more work too.  Now I had two lawns to push-mow.  Now I had firewood to cut and split.  Now I had a herd of cattle to help care for.  That included feeding, watering, delivering calves, and checking for problems.

There were beans to chop, cotton to chop, and corn to chop.  In case you don’t know what that means, chopping a crop involves using a hoe to chop down everything but the crop you want to grow.  It’s hard, dirty work on the best days. 

When it was hot, it was really hot, as the dirt held the heat and radiated it upward.  You had to wear shoes or you could actually blister your feet.  I’ve done it.  When weather was dry, the heat increased.  When it was wet, the gray gumbo caked on your feet until, every time you took a step, you lifted several extra pounds of gumbo stuck to them. 

There was a momentary reprieve from high temps with the coming of the rain, but before long, the humidity magnified the heat.

Some days I chopped alongside Mom and she shared stories of growing up as one of 13 kids.  She talked of the fights they had, but more often about the closeness, camaraderie, and love they shared.  She told of how the hard work brought them closer together.  She didn’t have to explain that; I was living it.  Our little family felt a closeness we’d never had before.

I chopped mostly alone though, while they were working at their full-time jobs, or their second jobs.  One year, the heat index reached over 110 degrees every day for a week.  I would chop the length of a ¼ mile field (a through) and back (down and back made a round), then walk to one of the troughs in the barnyard and lie back in the cool water, which I had refilled for just that purpose.  Then I’d get out and walk back down to resume my hot, sweaty work.  My skin was burned the color of coffee with just a touch of cream, and my blonde hair bleached almost white.

Dad let me hire some friends to help me for a while.  Football players, track stars, baseball players…none of them could keep up with me, except for one aspect.  They beat me in the complaints department.  “It’s freezing (during the morning).  It’s too hot (during the day).  It’s too muddy.  It’s too dry.”  But the big one was, “It’s too hard.”

Most of them didn’t last more than a day.

I soon realized that I felt pretty good.  After working on the farm for 8-10 hours or so, I’d go home, shower off, and go out for several hours, before going home and falling in bed for a few hours until it was time to get up again.  I’d hear Dad waking up down the hall.  I had to be up and getting dressed before he got to my bedroom or he’d roll me out of bed onto the floor.

I may not have liked all of it at the time, but the hardship made me stronger.  To paraphrase the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, “I thought it might kill me, but instead it made me stronger.”

After growing up with Dad, Marine Corps boot-camp was easy.

Fun is overrated.  Contentment and satisfaction are not.  There is the contentment of finishing a tough task and taking a well-deserved rest.  There is the satisfaction of a job well done.  There is a certain contentment in belonging in a family that loves each other.  There is the satisfaction of knowing that you can trust them completely.

I’m sad that my sisters didn’t experience all those times on the farm.  They were already gone and living their own lives.  They weren’t developing a love for the farm and what it stood for.

——————————————

A few evenings ago, Annie and I were sitting out on the big deck my sons helped me build, outside the studio they also helped me build.  The dreaded meeting would be the next day.

We sat quietly.  Annie and I looked out over the farm.  We saw some of the same things, but I saw most differently than she. 

There, uphill from us, stands a massive oak that had been growing as the gully gradually washed the soil out from under it.  Now the tree is huge, about six feet in diameter, and the majority of the tree is suspended above the bottom of the gully.  Really, most of the trunk is held suspended by thick roots going back into the soil.  I had my picture taken standing under the roots of the tree as a teenager.  We took pictures of our sons under them.  We’ve taken pictures of grandkids under them too.

South of us was the old gully where my parents and I used to pick blackberries, before Dad had the pond dug in its place.  Picking one day, I pointed at an unripe blackberry and asked Mom, “Why is that blackberry red.” 

Mom didn’t miss a beat, “Its red instead of black because it’s green.”

Southwest of us is that pond Dad hired a friend to dig.  He filled it with fingerling catfish and fed them every day.  The day he was ready to harvest them and have a big fish fry, he found that someone had snuck in and seined the pond.  They didn’t leave a single fish big enough to eat.

Patrick caught his first fish in that pond.

Southeast, on the east side of the waterway, are the blackberry briars where I introduced my granddaughters to the pleasures of that shiny fruit.

On the west side of that same waterway is the mulberry tree where one of my grandsons was amazed to find that you could actually eat wild fruit.  He was astonished at the delightfully sweet, slightly tart flavor.

——————————————

Down there is where too-young-to-hunt-Andy sat with me in a deer stand one evening.  When a small herd gathered within feet of us he quivered with excitement.  A few seasons later he took his first deer from that same stand, as did Travis. 

Patrick got his first deer at a different stand, just uphill from that one, which had collapsed with age by then…his second too.  Two deer in two years with two shots.  Not bad.

Straight uphill from the house is the tower blind.  My boys and I sunk four railroad ties in the ground to form a 6’x8’ rectangle and built a cabin on top of them from wood we’d saved after rebuilding the barn.  I put a wood-burning stove in it to keep us warm in cold weather (we never used it though).  I christened it by taking a fat young doe the first year.  The next year, J.B. was sitting in it while I hunted elsewhere.  Just before shooting light ended, I heard a shot coming from that direction. 

J.B.’s excited voice came over the walkie talkies we used for safety, “A buck!  A buck!  A buck!”

“Good job!” I responded.  “How big?”

“I don’t know but it’s big!”  The sixteen-year-old was excited.  “It’s dead!”

“OK,” I ordered.  “Unload and get down.  I’ll be right there.”

I made my way through the darkness toward J.B.’s flashlight and found him kneeling beside a little button buck.

“That’s the monster buck you shot?” I teased.  “Where are his antlers?”

His answer?  “I swear he had antlers, Dad.”

I just smiled.

——————————————

I was sitting in the tower blind when I heard the crashing of a big tree falling…right…there.  It smashed to the ground within feet of the blind.

Whew!

——————————————

When we bought the farm, there was a giant catalpa tree along the road.  Someone cut it down before Annie and I and the boys moved back down here.  That tree may have been a state champion tree.  The trunk was about eight feet in diameter just above the ground.  It was a monster.

Annie and I planted a line of trees along the road from our house up to the woods, planting over where the big catalpa had once stood.

——————————————

Thinking back on that first time I saw the farm, I remember, as we sat in his pickup facing the steel gate, Dad told me for the first time.  “When your mom and I are gone, I want you to keep this farm in the family.”

I promised him I would.

——————————————

Not long before Dad died, he and I had a long heart-to-heart about the future.  We talked about the grandkids.  When he got to my sons, he told me how proud he and Mom were of them, of the great pleasure they’d had helping to raise my boys.  Again he told me they wanted the farm to stay in the family, and I promised him it would.

——————————————

Somewhere I have a picture I took when Mom, Dad, Annie, Scotty, and I were walking down on the field road.  Dad was walking ahead with little Scotty reaching up to wrap his hand around one of Dad’s calloused fingers.  I zoomed in close to capture just the little boy’s hand clutching the man’s.  Another showed them, still holding hands, the boy looking up at his grandpa, who was looking down at him.  Another showed Scotty riding on Dad’s broad shoulders.

My parents, my wife and sons, and I enjoyed the farm so much.  But it was more a part of our lives than just a piece of land.  It was more like a member of the family.

——————————————

Mom and Dad thought they had everything planned out so that my third of the inheritance would be enough to buy my sisters’ two-thirds of the farm.  But the house in town depreciated considerably while the farm land appreciated…a lot.

Oh, we could have figured out something so that Annie and I could have kept the farm, but I ran up against the cold, hard fact that some people have a love of money that overrules their love of family and the desires of our parents.

——————————————

Annie and I sat out on the deck that evening before we went to the lawyer’s, and I surveyed the beautiful farm that was Mom’s and Dad’s and my dream…the farm that should have stayed with the family for another generation or more.

Annie and I managed to keep the 3 ½ acres where the buildings sit, but the other 76 ½ acres, the part where most of what I told above and so much more, took place…  For the first time in 45 years, it didn’t belong to the Matthews family.

Not long before Mom passed, she held my hand tightly and looked up at me through sightless eyes.  “I want you and Annie to keep the farm in the family.” 

I promised I’d do my best.

She stopped for a moment and, with tears in her eyes, named one of my sisters, “All she’s worried about is the money.  Once she gets that, you’ll never see her again.”

I shook my head and said, “Mom, I think you underestimate her.  Our relationship has gotten so much stronger since you’ve been sick.”

She frowned, “I hope you’re right.  Dad and I were worried that the money would split the family up.  More than anything else, we want the family to stay together.”

I told her our family is a rock and we would always be a family.

——————————————

As I write this, I look up toward the heavens.

Mom and Dad, I tried everything I could think of, but met resistance at every turn.  We just couldn’t hang on to the farm and make everyone happy.

Some of us have tried hard to accomplish the number one thing you said you two wanted, but some didn’t seem to care about it either.  Other things mattered more.

I couldn’t keep the farm like you two wanted, and I’m really sorry about that.

The number one thing you said you wanted, for the family to stay close…I’ve tried but it’s not looking too good.  It seems that some don’t want that either.

Mom and Dad, I’m sorry.  So, so sorry.

——————————————

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AT THE UPPER RIGHT. IT’S FREE!

You will ONLY receive notifications when I post new entries to my blog.

Go to the top of the right hand column where it says, “SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL”.  Fill in your email and hit the “Subscribe” button.  You will receive a verification email.  Please confirm that you want to subscribe by clicking, “Confirm Follow” and you will be set!  Thanks!

It doesn’t seem to work from a cell phone, only a computer.  I don’t know why.  Sorry.  If there’s a problem, send me your email address and I’ll sign you up.

——————————————