Feb. 8, 2010
MANN TALK: Recollections Evoked by Deathbed Reminiscences
By Perry Mann
There was a child went forth every day,/ And the first object he looked upon, that object he became,/ And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,/ Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.-- Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
I read the obituaries. At 89, I seek to see if there are any of my contemporaries who have been fingered by fate. Of those few I recognize, I dwell on the memory of them. It flavors my coffee. Then, I wonder what will be on that page when I go. It would be interesting to be somewhere to read it. I hope it reads that I died and not that I passed away or departed to the arms of Jesus. He has his arms full; and I wish that I will go into the arms of nature from whence I came.
I read recently the obituary of a man who would have been 100 had he lived nineteen more days. On his deathbed, he dictated a tribute to his father. His tribute upstaged his obit. It evoked my heritage as I read his heritage. His father’s legacy to him was much the same as my grandfather’s legacy to me.
Tribute: “He taught me farming: when to plow, when to plant, how to build a haystack, how to graft fruit trees, how to raise livestock, how to shear sheep, how to handle horses, how to cut corn, how to cradle wheat….” I learned all of these and more following my grandfather and doing as he did.
When I was five and could count to ten, my grandfather gave me my first lesson in farming: thinning corn. He instructed me to leave only two plants per hill. I was to thin the hills to two. Since there seemed to be no end of hills, the task seemed a Sisyphean one. But my age was considered and my grandmother was on my side, so I petered out soon and received no reprimand.
Before I reached to age of nineteen and joined the Army Air Corp, I had learned every lesson about farming corn from thinning, to harvesting, to feeding it to the stock and to myself. I hoed it, I plowed it, I cut and shocked it, hauled it to the barn, shucked it and stored it. And went to mill with it and partook of that culinary gem: skillet-baked cornpone.
I learned to make hay. And from the experience I learned that the body sweats in more places than just the brow. To work in the loft of a barn near its inner roof on a hot July day forking hay to its far corners while covered with chaff and chased by wasps---is to appreciate fully a shade tree and water from a well. I learned to scythe hay, cut it with a horse-drawn machine, windrow it with horse-drawn rake, shock it and haul it to the barn. Then in winter fork it from the loft to the cows and horses and sheep. Also, I once discovered in the loft in the spring that an eccentric hen had secretly made a nest and filled it with eggs, an Easter windfall.
I learned how to raise, work and care for livestock. Horse power on the farm was a sine qua non. To turn a field with a spade was unthinkable. I learned to move the horses from the pasture to the barn where each would go to his stall---eagerly in winter expecting to be fed and reluctantly in summer expecting to be bridled, harnessed and worked. I learned to work them in plows, mowing machine, rake, wagon, sled and in logging chains. I fed them in winter. I can still hear the anticipatory whinnying from them when I opened the grain box.
I had a dog and he and I would go to the pasture and drive the cows to the milking shed in the barn. I learned to milk but most of the milking was done by my spinster aunt. I learned to feed calves whose mother refused to let them suck. I would take a bucket of the mother’s milk, wet my hand in it and offer it to the calf. It would suck my fingers and I would then lower my hand into the bucket of milk. The calf would follow and suck my submerged fingers. Eventually the calf would learn to suck milk from the bucket without the fingers.
In February when it was lambing time, I often had to go to the woods to find a sheep and her lamb. Even domesticated female animals depart, for safety’s sake, from the herd to birth their babies. They hide them just as deer do. I found once a lamb on a rainy, cold morning sheltered dry inside a hollowed snag of a tree a quarter mile from the flock. She was safer at home. But domestication does not erase what nature etched in genes over eons. Neither does human civilization erase nature. Humans do irrational acts that are activated by the sub-conscious: An open fireplace in a centrally heated house.
I learned to cradle wheat. Cradling wheat is arduous work. It would tire a coalminer soon. My grandfather’s farm in places was steep. I have cradled wheat on an incline that would stress the heart just walking up it. And I have had the satisfaction of looking at a field that was the day before waves of amber and, at the end of the day after, stubble with shocks of bundles of wheat dotting the field.
I learned to use an axe, pull a crosscut saw, split boards with a froe, build a deadfall and snare trap, trap for muskrats on the river, hunt at night with a dog for coons, hunt with a shotgun for squirrels, rabbits, and quail, drink from a spring, fish with a fly, hunt with a patience.
I know the deceased remembered more than he dictated. For him I would add: I have sat on the porch facing west many evenings watching the sun set after a day of labor. I have seen the stars and all of heaven before I retired. In winter, I have huddled before the fireplace warmed against a killing freeze. And I have retired in a room with no heat in zero weather and heard at dawn the clank, clank of my grandmother’s clearing the ashes in the kitchen stove in preparation of starting a fire with embers from the fireplace.
The difference between freezing to death and having a hot breakfast depending on a handful of hot coals in a fireplace speaks of the hardiness and the will to survive of those of the deceased and his father. And of my grandfather and grandmother and all those anonymous folks that survived the winters and made the springs and summers productive of what was needed to live another year.
Part of me is what I encountered when I went forth on those days I lived on my grandfather and grandmother’s farm and has been a part of me to this day.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
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MANN TALK: Recollections Evoked by Deathbed Reminiscences
By Perry Mann
There was a child went forth every day,/ And the first object he looked upon, that object he became,/ And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,/ Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.-- Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
I read the obituaries. At 89, I seek to see if there are any of my contemporaries who have been fingered by fate. Of those few I recognize, I dwell on the memory of them. It flavors my coffee. Then, I wonder what will be on that page when I go. It would be interesting to be somewhere to read it. I hope it reads that I died and not that I passed away or departed to the arms of Jesus. He has his arms full; and I wish that I will go into the arms of nature from whence I came.
I read recently the obituary of a man who would have been 100 had he lived nineteen more days. On his deathbed, he dictated a tribute to his father. His tribute upstaged his obit. It evoked my heritage as I read his heritage. His father’s legacy to him was much the same as my grandfather’s legacy to me.
Tribute: “He taught me farming: when to plow, when to plant, how to build a haystack, how to graft fruit trees, how to raise livestock, how to shear sheep, how to handle horses, how to cut corn, how to cradle wheat….” I learned all of these and more following my grandfather and doing as he did.
When I was five and could count to ten, my grandfather gave me my first lesson in farming: thinning corn. He instructed me to leave only two plants per hill. I was to thin the hills to two. Since there seemed to be no end of hills, the task seemed a Sisyphean one. But my age was considered and my grandmother was on my side, so I petered out soon and received no reprimand.
Before I reached to age of nineteen and joined the Army Air Corp, I had learned every lesson about farming corn from thinning, to harvesting, to feeding it to the stock and to myself. I hoed it, I plowed it, I cut and shocked it, hauled it to the barn, shucked it and stored it. And went to mill with it and partook of that culinary gem: skillet-baked cornpone.
I learned to make hay. And from the experience I learned that the body sweats in more places than just the brow. To work in the loft of a barn near its inner roof on a hot July day forking hay to its far corners while covered with chaff and chased by wasps---is to appreciate fully a shade tree and water from a well. I learned to scythe hay, cut it with a horse-drawn machine, windrow it with horse-drawn rake, shock it and haul it to the barn. Then in winter fork it from the loft to the cows and horses and sheep. Also, I once discovered in the loft in the spring that an eccentric hen had secretly made a nest and filled it with eggs, an Easter windfall.
I learned how to raise, work and care for livestock. Horse power on the farm was a sine qua non. To turn a field with a spade was unthinkable. I learned to move the horses from the pasture to the barn where each would go to his stall---eagerly in winter expecting to be fed and reluctantly in summer expecting to be bridled, harnessed and worked. I learned to work them in plows, mowing machine, rake, wagon, sled and in logging chains. I fed them in winter. I can still hear the anticipatory whinnying from them when I opened the grain box.
I had a dog and he and I would go to the pasture and drive the cows to the milking shed in the barn. I learned to milk but most of the milking was done by my spinster aunt. I learned to feed calves whose mother refused to let them suck. I would take a bucket of the mother’s milk, wet my hand in it and offer it to the calf. It would suck my fingers and I would then lower my hand into the bucket of milk. The calf would follow and suck my submerged fingers. Eventually the calf would learn to suck milk from the bucket without the fingers.
In February when it was lambing time, I often had to go to the woods to find a sheep and her lamb. Even domesticated female animals depart, for safety’s sake, from the herd to birth their babies. They hide them just as deer do. I found once a lamb on a rainy, cold morning sheltered dry inside a hollowed snag of a tree a quarter mile from the flock. She was safer at home. But domestication does not erase what nature etched in genes over eons. Neither does human civilization erase nature. Humans do irrational acts that are activated by the sub-conscious: An open fireplace in a centrally heated house.
I learned to cradle wheat. Cradling wheat is arduous work. It would tire a coalminer soon. My grandfather’s farm in places was steep. I have cradled wheat on an incline that would stress the heart just walking up it. And I have had the satisfaction of looking at a field that was the day before waves of amber and, at the end of the day after, stubble with shocks of bundles of wheat dotting the field.
I learned to use an axe, pull a crosscut saw, split boards with a froe, build a deadfall and snare trap, trap for muskrats on the river, hunt at night with a dog for coons, hunt with a shotgun for squirrels, rabbits, and quail, drink from a spring, fish with a fly, hunt with a patience.
I know the deceased remembered more than he dictated. For him I would add: I have sat on the porch facing west many evenings watching the sun set after a day of labor. I have seen the stars and all of heaven before I retired. In winter, I have huddled before the fireplace warmed against a killing freeze. And I have retired in a room with no heat in zero weather and heard at dawn the clank, clank of my grandmother’s clearing the ashes in the kitchen stove in preparation of starting a fire with embers from the fireplace.
The difference between freezing to death and having a hot breakfast depending on a handful of hot coals in a fireplace speaks of the hardiness and the will to survive of those of the deceased and his father. And of my grandfather and grandmother and all those anonymous folks that survived the winters and made the springs and summers productive of what was needed to live another year.
Part of me is what I encountered when I went forth on those days I lived on my grandfather and grandmother’s farm and has been a part of me to this day.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
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