The Autumnal Equinox

Growing up in Missouri in the fifties we didn’t hear the words Autumnal Equinox much but we were familiar with the fall activities.  Crops were harvested and garden produce canned.  We didn’t have freezers yet, but many vegetables were stored in cellars- right along with a snake or two.  My parents had large gardens as well as apple and peach orchards.  Most of that was sold at our farm as well as designated areas in town for Farmers Markets.

I didn’t experience much of the crop harvests such as wheat, corn, or oats, but Bob did, so I asked him to share his memories with me. A funny one was when he was about 4-5 years old and he wanted to go with his dad when he took the horses out to shuck corn. His dad told him if he went he couldn’t come back until the work was done – and he meant it.  It was quite cold for a little boy and upon returning home he looked at his parents and declared, “You should not have let me went!”

“In the late forties and early fifties most small grain crops were harvested by combines, however a few die-hards still used the grain binder and threshing machine.  I drove the John Deere B pulling a grain binder and Dad sat on the binder keeping watch over its operation.  After binding the yet-to-be-cured grain it was shocked until it had ripened. Then came the excitement of Threshing Day!

“Farmers that we had bound grain for arrived at our farm with their tractors and hay racks to haul the shocks to the threshing machine which had been set in place the day before.  Early that day the Rumley Oil Pull was fired up and the threshing machine came alive with bundles being pitched into the feed platform.  The straw/chaff was separated from the grain and blown out the opposite end of the machine.  When one farm was completed, it was on to the next neighbor’s farm.

“There are still some threshing machines and a binder or two in this valley rusting away,” Bob states.  “They bring back fond memories.”

By the time Bob was in high school they had purchased a ’49 Dodge two-ton truck.  He was suddenly in the trucking business hauling hay, grain, tractors – whatever needed to be hauled.  There was a certain girl that would sometimes ride in that truck when he took wheat into town.  We arrived at the elevators in Walker, Missouri late one day. The men were preparing to close and really didn’t want to unload him, but one of the guys  said, “Look what he’s got with him.  Maybe we’d better.”  They did and we went on our merry way.

Bob states that he wouldn’t trade those years on the farm for anything! It established his work ethic for life and he still works as hard as any man I know.  It was a time of rejoicing and being thankful for all they had prepared for the cold winter months ahead.

September 22  is that day when the days and nights are approximately the same length and it happens all over the world at the same time although our clocks will say different things.  It marks the end of the growing cycle (which the Spring Equinox kicks off) and gives us the fall season in all its autumnal splendor for us to enjoy as the birds and butterflies start their migration southward.

Our inward harvest should be rich as well with gratitude for all that we have been given.

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I ran into Tom the other day.  Tom T. Turkey, that is.  (T. for Terrified) Oh, he tried to hide his identity but I’d know that waddle anywhere.  He had on some kind of outfit designed to make him look taller but I could see the stilts inside his pant legs.  Silly bird.

And his ID card!  Did he really, really think he could pass as Paul Bunyan?  8910 North Wood Forest.  Honestly!  Probably should have been something like 123 Turkey Shed Road!  It says he’s Paul Bunyan, Logger.  More like PeeWee Runtyan, Toothpicker, if you ask me.

That red plaid shirt with the scarf wrapped around his neck was effective.  It hid the dreaded “turkey neck” pretty well.   Can’t say much for the beak though.

He was acting awfully weird.  In a fowl mood, too.  Nothing I said cheered him up.  The hens had been pecking at him to lose weight in light of the up-coming holiday, but the chitlin’ scraps had just been too tasty lately.  He said it was a conspiracy!

A car backfired as we were talking and he jumped like he’d been shot.  Very nearly scared the stuffin’ right out of him.

I offered to buy him lunch to boost his spirits – told him the café had a pre-Christmas special that we could gobble down. Oops!  He turned really pale.   I guess it didn’t help when I mentioned giblet gravy.  He took off at a turkey trot!  Touchy little fellow today.

Tom went back to the Bunyan sized woodpile that he had started hiding behind.  But not for long.  I saw him in the hardware store buying a can of blue paint.   What on earth would he want that for?

It’s been a few days since I’ve seen Mr Turkey – er- excuse me – Mr. Bunyan, but I did witness the oddest thing a couple days before Christmas.  There was a strange creature in a red plaid shirt astride a blue ox.  They were scurrying out of town when I heard him whisper “Giddy-up, Babe, Giddy-up!”

A couple miles from our home is a golf course. Right next to that fence a fox decided to make her den and had five kits there – on the street side. They have provided so much joy for the community with many people stopping to take photos. Naturally, the inevitable happened and one got hit and killed. I wasn’t surprised but it broke my heart anyway. Life is hard for the animals too. They face daily survival issues same of we do.  They have since been taken to a safer place.

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THE HOME WITHOUT A KITCHEN

There are homes without a bedroom, where davenetts suffice,
There are homes where parlors play no leading part;
There are homes that have no dining-room, no pantry nor bath,
But the home without a kitchen is a home without a heart.

It’s a sort of filling station to a boy of nine or ten,
It’s the family trysting place with apple pie,
And the smell of hot, brown, ginger-bread upon a frosty night
Is a memory you’ll cherish till you die.

It’s the room where you’ll find mother, where little folks can come
to tell their troubles and have broken hearts made whole;
Oh, a house can be most anything, a mansion or a shack,
But a house without a kitchen is a home without a soul.

Poem by Miranda Snow Walton
“From Rags to Riches – A History of Hilliard and Bear River”
by Margaret Moore Lester

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