dr. chen

Take Grandma to the beauty at 8am on Thursdays, breakfast at Paw Paw’s while I wait, post office and bank on the way home. It’s my Thursday routine these days, I like it. I’m a regular at Paw-Paw’s Thursday mornings, along with the Sheriff and all the other “men” of the city. When Grandma thinks about Paw-Paw’s she remembers how when her and Pop used to go in there to eat all the ”men” would be sitting on one side of the room at a table, and she would always ask, “Frank, you want to go sit with the men?” He said he’d rather eat with her, every time. Now that I go there to eat for breakfast and see the table with all the men that old story means something totally different. To be honest, I would much rather sit and eat with Grandma any day than sit at that overweight table of city “men.” Pop was no fool. Now it’s not just a story anymore.
In the bank today Pop’s Sunday School teacher came in and stopped by to say hello to Grandma, then turns to me and says, “Now you’re the one who wrote the article in the Reporter, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Sure did like that. My wife and I even saved it, and we don’t save much.”
Hard to know how to take comments like that, but it feels good inside. It feels good in a really good way, like I’m a metaphysical limb of Pop extending beyond the grave or something, still reminding people, “Character Does Count!”
The weather this week couldn’t have been better. Crystal clear and sunny during the day with steady breezes all the way through. At night it gets chilly but it still stays crystal clear and the stars almost seem to pop out at you (no pun intended, maybe.)
Life is good here on the farm. Dave stops by for some porch time ‘bout twice a week and I am amazed each time by how much he knows about this place. Brooks is getting into chickens, wants to start an organic chicken farm out here so he’s ordered all the books and done all the research he can. This approach, Brooks’ favorite, is a good one. It reminds me of the way mom started studying cancer when Dad was diagnosed, or how she got back into it making sure the company was sold properly, the way Dad would have wanted it to, there again she learned it all on the fly, in the middle of it. Brooks, I guess, is lining up hit shot. More like bowling perhaps. It is one way to acquire knowledge about how to do something concrete, prepare prepare prepare and then put into action next spring it sounds like. I’m excited to help whenever, it’s all a part of it. I think that’s what it’s about though, taking the Longview. There’s an art to the long view, the farmer’s view, the vision that knows where to plant a tree not just so that it will look good now, but how it’ll look in thirty years. Everyday I walk around and admire Pop’s placement of trees. He’s encoded himself unwittingly into the land itself. Dave gets a kick out of the idea that someone would read a book about raising chickens. For him it’s just something you do. He can’t really tell you where he learned how to raise chickens, or how corn and peas are good to plant in the low parts, he just knows.
“See corn takes alota water, an’ peas don’t take much at‘ll, so youc’n plant ‘em right next to each other over there in the low field and they’ll do just fine. Too much water and the peas are all just vines, no peas.”
There is one sort of knowledge that comes from books (The metaphorical Book form of knowledge is being referenced here too,) and there is another sort of knowledge that comes from experience. The “Arts and Crafts” approach I’l explain in the book. You do it once, you see how it goes, you adjust a little and do it again, starting all over from scratch with the quality of your first expiernce and your good sense and your creativity most importantly to guide you.
The value of Dave’s experience is somewhat priceless I suppose, and to him it ain’t nothing but what you do. He can tell you how many years it’ll take to get a good cutting if you plant pine trees, how to kill the Johnson grass with a “poisonous rag on the front of your tractor that’ll kill just the Johnson grass right down to the root when you drive over it,” in case you wanted to get the fields super heady again, or how to build a place where you can board horses and make a living doing it, if you wanted. His only warning about chickens, and it’s a good one, is that “you gonna wake up one morning, step out here in the morning barefoot to get your paper and step down these steps and SPLAT! You gonna step in chicken poop, cause they poop wherever they eat and all over the place.” Grandma was sitting out there too and heard this and I think it piqued her a little bit. Hadn’t thought about that. Then I had the image of chickens running around the farm everywhere and it was very funny, very funny to me.
There’s a wonderful interdependency between Dave and I. I think we both feed off what comes naturally to the other. These sorts of relationships are the one’s I’m fondest of, and I am thankful we have good folks like Dave around here chock full of experience. In some ways he knows more about this place than any of us because when the boys went off to school Dave was still around helping Pop out when he needed it. He can tell you when the fields were planted, fertilized, transplanted, anything you can think of that went on around here he knows about it. I mentioned I found some picture of snow on the farm and he remembers it exactly. Even remembers how Pop had the gas heaters running because the power was out for seven days, and there were only three vehicles that could drive in the whole valley because the snow was so high.
I’ve learned you can’t rush flushing out these sorts of stories from Dave, or Grandma, or anyone else around here. You can poke a little here and there but you can’t rush it. When they do come out you appreciate them better and they seem to tie into some sort of perfect timing unfolding behind the scenes of mere chance.

*

Grandma’s in there watching the Auburn game. She’s more of a football fan than I am it seems. She loves a good ballgame, and Tiger Woods when he’s playing, and the Braves when they’re on. To think, Grandma has a team and I don’t. I always told you she’s cooler than me. I’ve got a team, except it’s a band, and I could tell you about it…

*
I just went on my nightly stroll down the driveway to take note of where the moon is in the sky and take the time to take notice which stars pop out the most each night. There’s a motion sensor light in the back garage, the garage where we keep the food that we feed Meadow, the stray cat that showed up about the time Pop was getting sick and has stayed around ever sense. We’ve been noticing that the food has been getting thrashed, the bag’s been ripped open, and clearly something other than poor little Meadow has been eating the enormous amount of cat food that’s gone missing.
As I was walking outside tonight I noticed the light was one, so I magically deduced that something was over there moving, and so I looked…and there it was. POSSSUM POSSUM POSSSUM, POSSSUM! I was at a distance so he didn’t notice me but with the light on I could see him slowly waddling into the garage, disappearing through the cracks of Mollie’s Chester drawers she’s storing out there. I waited for a moment, heard some rustling around, some turning over of objects, and I laughed to myself. We decided to put the food on the top of the Chester drawers so now I’m not sure if a possum, POSSSUM! POSSSUM! could reach it. I guess we’ll have to wait and see in the morning.