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Watermelon
Seeds
by Ed Crabtree
When
we celebrate that birthday that marks the mid point
in our lives, that point half way between 0 and 90,
many of us discover a new aspect of adulthood, one
in which we begin to remember faded memories,
events from those long ago times of our lives.
Perhaps we are just more comfortable with
ourselves, our families, and our careers, that we
suddenly have the presence of mind to reminisce
about the days we have not thought about for so
long. Perhaps it is indeed a part of the aging
process in which some natural phenomena, some
chemical signal being generated and those memories,
long forgotten about, and buried deep in the
recesses of our brain, move to the forefront and we
remember a certain event or era that is a part our
individual histories.
One
of my most treasured memories of my youth, are the
four years my family lived in the eastern part of
the south central Ozarks, in Shannon County, or as
they say "Down in the Mark Twain." The small town
in which we lived was surrounded by National Forest
lands that quite literally started where the
sidewalk ended. Looking back now, I marvel at the
paradox of having resided in town but yet enjoying
a backyard comprised of thousands of acres of
forest. Public lands in which those of us boys, at
that time in our pre and early teenage years, could
run amuck and enjoy our childhood in the great out
of doors, unlike the latchkey children of today
that escape reality, not in the forest and fields
as we did, but in the virtual reality world of
video games, television, and the
Internet.
But
more important to me than those recollections of
the deep woods of the Mark Twain, are the memories
of life in the rural Ozarks, memories that give me
a deeper understanding of the hill country and its
people and the life experiences that make those
wonderful folks the staunch individualists that
they are.
In
those days when Nixon was in the White House before
Watergate was even heard of, when the outside world
was concerned about the Paris Peace accords and the
beginning of the end of the war in Viet Nam, when
some of you folks, now nearing retirement age were
young and marching in the streets protesting that
war, the folks in the deep Ozarks were more
concerned with survival. They concentrated on just
making it through day by day, suffering through the
hot summers and cold winters, working in the local
garment factories and mills of the timber industry,
businesses that were just about the only source of
employment in that region. Those folks weren't near
as concerned about the worries of the outside world
such as the cold war and the concept of mutually
assured nuclear annihilation, the environment or
the other causes of the day, as they were about
receiving that telegram or phone call from Uncle
Sam offering condolences for the loss of a native
son in that South East Asian conflict, so far away
from our beloved Ozarks. The rural people were more
concerned with making a living, "putting up" home
canned foods, fire wood, raising hogs and cattle on
subsistent farms, livestock that could either be
sold for much needed additional income or butchered
for food.
Back
in those days, there were numerous books and
magazines that told of an utopia, a mystical
magical region, where the air was fresh and clean,
cold clear water gushed forth from mountain
springs, and land was cheap and plentiful. A place
where city folk could escape and homestead in log
cabins just like the pioneers, a place called the
Ozarks. These same serial periodicals, featured
stories telling how the enterprising soul could buy
a small parcel of land and raise bunny rabbits,
pygmy goats, and other animals for fun and profit.
How to shear sheep, card and spin wool, build solar
collectors and other devices from recycled
materials, how anyone could relocate to the Ozarks
or other remote rural regions and live a simple
life in harmony with nature. These articles made
the prospect of life in the country seem so
wonderful, such a romantic adventure, that many
folks left the cities and found their way here to
try their hand at all of the topics the authors of
those publications had expanded on.
Yeah
right, many of them arrived here in old recycled
school buses and vans with psychedelic paint jobs,
tie-died "T" shirts, long hair and rose-colored
glasses, folks that the locals stereotyped as
"Hippies." Some of these "Hippies" couldn't cut the
rural experience, however some did manage to adapt
to the ways of the Ozarks, and still remain here
today. Their long hair now cut short and graying,
or exhibiting signs of male pattern baldness, and
their east or west coast accent barely discernable
as they now speak fluent "Ozarkese." These folks
were the subject of many a rumor and story, started
by the locals that simply did not understand the
ways of these strange newcomers. The conventional
wisdom of the native Ozarker at the time, being why
anyone would want to wear their hair so long or
dress so differently, and why would anyone want to
experiment with the ideas that these newbies to the
Mark Twain had about gardening or animal husbandry.
So anytime one of these folks came to town and made
a comment or asked a question that was a faux pas,
the gossip in the community buzzed with comments
and questions like, "Didja (Ozark for did you,)
hear what them thar hippies did now?"
One
of the favorite haunts for the folks in the town
where I lived was the hardware store where you
could buy anything you might need. The proprietor
carried common hardware, livestock feed,
fertilizer, fishing, trapping and hunting supplies,
and a complete line of gardening necessities.
Remember the smell of the "Ortho" chemicals, dusts
and pesticides that every retailer of lawn and
garden supplies carried in those days. The smell
was so strong that a blind person could find the
aisle where these items were stocked. Well anyway,
you get the picture, this was a stereotypical small
town hardware store that had most anything you
needed, including a place to loiter and gossip or
swap lies as the old folks used to say.
Now
any of you that have "put in a garden" (Ozark
phrase meaning tilled the ground and planted such
things as 'taters, corn, and tomatos,) or
knowledgeable in such things as agriculture, know
that there is no possible way to estimate the yield
of vegetables from the seeds contained in a single
one of those ubiquitous seed packets found in every
retail store that sells such things. Soil
conditions, moisture and air temperature being
variables that greatly affects the success of the
seeds germinating, growing to maturity, and
producing vegetables or fruit. You just plant the
seeds in the appropriate manner and take reasonable
care of your garden and hope for the best. All
conditions and variables being just right you can
expect a yield, but there is still no way to
accurately say that "X" number of seeds in a
particular package will produce a certain amount of
product. Again if you are knowledgeable in
gardening or agriculture you would know this, but a
typical Ozarker that grew up tending a garden every
year since they were old enough to walk and pull
weeds, thinks that everyone should just naturally
know such things.
I'll bet you can now see where I
am going with this story.
Well
on one Saturday morning, some of us boys were
drooling over a .22 caliber rifle the owner of the
hardware store had just got in, all of us mentally
trying to figure out how many yards we would have
to mow that summer and how many pop bottles we
would have to pick up (remember when you could ride
your bike down the road and pick up glass pop
bottles, put them in the basket on your bike, and
then turn them in at the store for the deposit) and
then after we came up with the money how were we
going to convince our folks we needed a new rifle
and that they should sign for it as we were all
underage. So while we were all deep in thought we
failed to notice the silence that had fell over the
store, the old men swapping lies, now quiet and
starring at the folks who had just entered the
front door. The visions of using that new rifle to
terminate marauding beer cans, or bringing home "a
mess" of game (a mess is Ozarkese meaning enough
game to make a suitable entrée) to our
Mothers who would be so proud of their sons for
providing fresh meat for the table. Daydreams that
only country boys of a time gone by could
fantasize, were suddenly gone as we were no longer
oblivious to the silence of the ol'timers and their
usual talk of the weather, politics, stock prices
(livestock, not shares traded on the exchange in
New York City) and fool young'uns drooling over
rifles. Sure enough we turned to see some of those
"hippie" folks walking towards the shelves where
the gardening appurtenances were
stocked.
Now
remember, humor in its truest sense is the ability
to laugh at our selves and the funny things we all
do, not an individual's lack of knowledge or
misfortune.
Now
visualize a bunch of rural men and boys loitering
in a hardware store from the late 1960's in one of
the most remote towns of the Ozarks, and then
visualize three young people dressed in a style of
clothing that was at that time totally foreign to
most Ozarkers, looking like they had just come from
Woodstock, that historic Rock and Roll concert, and
you pretty much have the picture in mind. So one of
these intrepid newcomers, who left the city behind
and only sought to find a new life in the hills,
starts browsing through a rack of seed packets and
selects an envelope full of Watermelon
seeds.
Yep
you guessed it, the poor guy actually turned to the
proprietor and asked, "Can you tell me just how
many melons are there in this pack of
seeds?"
For
a moment every eye in the store was trained on this
young man, and every man and boy was silently
asking himself, "Did he really say what I think he
said?" Suddenly the silence was broken as everyone
in the room burst out laughing at the innocence and
naivety of this young man's inquiry. He was
absolutely sincere, but simply didn't realize that
there was no way of answering his question, nor did
he understand why everyone including his friends
was laughing at him. One of his group quietly took
him aside and explained the situation to him, but
it was too late, the word was already spreading
around town about the silly question the kid from
California had asked. The locals had fun with this
for several weeks, each time the story was repeated
it was elaborated upon, until it had almost took on
folk tale proportions.
As
time went on, I heard that the group or commune
that this young man was a part of, had almost
starved and froze to death that winter, but the
story as told by the locals was that some of their
neighbors, in true Ozark fashion had come to their
rescue and helped them, even teaching them the
survival skills necessary to make it through life
in the Ozarks, skills that those of us accustomed
to the demands of these old hills take for
granted.
If
he is still alive and living here in the Ozarks,
that man would be in his mid fifties, probably a
grandfather by now. Surely life experience in the
rural Ozarks has reformed and molded this young man
into one of the wonderful and rugged individualists
that is typical of all native and long time
residents of the region, a person proud to be known
as a citizen of Ozark Mountain Country.
Humm,
I wonder if he ever found out how many melons are
there in a pack of watermelon seeds?
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Stone
Creek Crossing
