South of Southlands

With so many tales and stories out there, about growing up in the city, life in the Hood, etc, I though it may be time to tell my own story, Growing up Southern. I grew up in a small community, to be honest, about 3 miles away from a small community on a rural Georgia farm. My father was a forester with International Paper company on their Southlands Experimental Forest, but kept the family farm going as a source of income for his father and our family.

He provided the capital, and my grandfather did most of the farming until crop gathering time, when we all pitched in. I spent all of my pre-school days following Papa around, getting in the way, listening, and perhaps learning a little along the way.

 After my grandfathers death, the joy seemed to be gone from farming for Daddy, but he kept it up a good long while longer until he planted the fields in pine trees, with the exception of one small 3 acre field he kept for a “garden”.  This garden provided us with corn on the cob, beans, and for me, a place to work off misdeeds.  My elderly aunts would decend upon us every year, and I can still hear their voices plainly.

 “Vance, is you gonna plant any kawn dis year?”

 When it was ready, I’d be tasked, always early on a Saturday morning when the good cartoons were coming on, to pick corn for Aunt Jess or Aunt Beck and even on occasion Cousin Alice.

 “Boy, go get yo Aunt Jess a hundred ears of corn, then get yo Aunt Beck a hundred ears.”

 This meant at least an hour of dripping corn stalks and leaves sliding across my neck causing itching, lugging arm-load after arm-load of corn to the trunk of their cars. And always, just as I finished, wet, weary and itching like the dickens, one of them would ask.

 “Vance, can I get a hundred ears fo Miz Eula, you know she done been so good to me.”

 Off I’d go again, I’d never met or seen Miz Eula, but I hated her with a passion, when they’d finally leave, the bumper of a 1967 Olds 88 dragging the ground, and I’d rush into the house just as Bugs Bunny signed off and “grown up” TV started.

 In the final years before my father died, he’d remarked about how he just once more wished he could see the field full of corn.  I tried on many occasions to make that dream come true, but alas, my farming skills never were up to the task. Though I had all the equipment, all his advice, I never succeeded. I hope there is a corn field in Heaven for him to see. Perhaps he, Uncle Ralph, Papa and my boy Shaun are standing there looking at it now.

That’s how I like to think of them, leaning on the fence talking, Shaun running around playing and getting into something.

 Here’s my story, I hope you enjoy.