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Ryland Brown Whitlock
"He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it that counted – and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone." ~Ellen Glasgow
http://youtu.be/6TS9ugnarQQ Playing Spoons~The Amazing Scotty Brothers {My grandfather could do this}
http://youtu.be/khxx3sCVhtE Oh Shenandoah~Tennessee Ernie Ford
“If the rain spoils our picnic, but saves a farmer's crop, who are we to say it shouldn't rain?”
~Tom Barrett
Granddaddy with Jeff, Pam and me, Easter, Circa 1965
I woke up on this crisp, cool, beautiful autumn morning with thoughts of my grandfather at the forefront of my mind. He would have been 106 years old today. I wish he was here to celebrate the day with us. I’ve not seen him in a long time, and I miss him. I miss him a lot! For those who are new to my blog, he was a farmer. His name was: Ryland Brown Whitlock. I use to chuckle as a kid over his funny sounding name, and especially over his middle name. I remember when he first told me what it was, I thought he was pulling my leg. He loved to do that. I didn’t have a very favorable reaction to it — what can I say? I was young and hadn’t learned the art of not applying foot-in-mouth. If my initial reaction regarding his name hurt his feelings in any way, he never let on. Basically, I told him it wasn’t a good name. WHO wants to hear that? No one. I smile now over the irony of his middle name, Brown, and the fact that he was a farmer. I remember in elementary school, whenever we’d hear about Farmer Brown, I’d always proudly say, “THAT’s my granddaddy!” Not every child can say that their grandfather was a farmer, and I was VERY proud of that. To me, he was every bit as important as Jimmy Simon’s grandfather who was president of a local bank. Did I say that I miss him? I’ve been thinking about him a lot today—recalling fondly the memories I have of him. They are good-each and every one of them.
I went back and re-read an entry in my blog that I wrote about him last year. I’ve included an excerpt of it below:
...I remember when I first learned of his middle name. He was taking me to the henhouse to gather the eggs for the day. It was one of the highlights of the farm chores that I got to do – going to the henhouse around three o’clock, taking the small basket that was hung outside the door, and going inside that sauna-esque wooden structure that smelled of hot hay and sweaty chickens. It was dense, musty inside there, but I loved it. Granddaddy would toss chicken feed on the floor away from me to divert the chickens’ attention, so that I could get to the nests and retrieve the warm, golden-brown eggs. He taught me how to carefully collect them and place them in the basket so that they didn’t crack or break.
On one particular summer day, before I got inside the enclosed exterior of the chicken coop - the place where they could come out and walk around, my grandfather noticed a nail that had come lose from the fence. It was sticking out from one of the posts just waiting to scratch someone who moved too fast beside it or stumbled upon it. It was slightly rusty, which spelled instant trouble.
"Martha Jhill!" he called, in his loud, sometimes gruff voice. "Move away from there and come on over here!" he directed. He lifted me over the fence, before he unlocked it and walked through. He took hold of my hand, making sure I didn’t venture over to the danger spot.
He and my grandmother only called me by both of my names if they were fussing at me over something I had done that my parents would have spanked me for, or I had ventured into a danger zone that might wind up with me getting hurt. Even being a, sometimes, gruff, old farmer, he had panic moments when it came to his grandchildren and something unanticipated, like a rusty nail that had cropped up in our path, which could do us harm. He reminded me in many ways of my father: there was a soft, marshmallow center deep inside him.
After I had gathered the eggs, I looked up at him and asked him about something that had just occurred to me: I didn’t know his whole name. He called me by mine periodically, but I hadn’t a clue what his was? Suddenly, I was very curious to know that detail about my grandfather.
His hand fisted over mine, swallowing it up as we walked out of the henhouse to make our way back to the farmhouse. He made certain to steer me clear of the rusty nail, until he could tend to it. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, as I held tightly to both his hand and the basket.
“What’s your name, Granddaddy?”
"Ryland Whitlock’s my name," he told me.
I made a silly face. "I know that!" I told him. "What’s your middle name?"
He trudged along, pulling me with him. "Brown," he said.
I remember my face scrunching up. "Brown?" I repeated back in shocked disbelief, uncertain if he was pulling my leg. "What kind of name is Brown?"
"It’s my name," his voice rumbled as he claimed it—owned it.
I looked up at him, needing to see his eyes to make sure he wasn’t kidding me. "That’s a color not a name!" I said with emphatical skepticism.
"Well, it’s my name!" he repeated unwavering.
My brows came together letting my mouth engage before I thought about how the next comments would be received. [Kids and their brutal honesty!] "Wow!" I said, still surprised by the fact. "That’s really your name?"
He nodded that it was.
"That’s not even a good color!" I remember my tone inflected on the good as I mumbled it.
He looked down at me, slightly amused by my observation. "What’s a good color?"
"Purple!" I said without a thought.
"Ah," he grumbled in a tone that was comparable to a hand swatting at something to dismiss it.
It didn’t stop me from continuing. "Purple is the best color, then blue!" I enlightened him. "Pam would say pink first, but it’s purple!" I wanted to make sure he understood the hierarchy, in my world, of color importance with purple being at the top of the list. Brown and beige were down near the bottom close to black.
He was silent as I rambled on.
"I think I would rather have purple as my middle name over Brown," I told him.
"Mm hm," he replied, letting me know that he heard me regardless of whether he agreed or not.
We walked in silence for a bit more before I looked back up at him and asked in complete seriousness. "Why don’t you change it?"
"You don’t change your name, Shorty!" he replied with certainty, then amended his thought. "Unless you’re a girl, and you get married. Then, you can change your last name."
I thought about that for a minute. I didn’t think I’d like being named ‘Brown’. To me, Ryland was a funny enough name without having to attach the unappealing color of Brown to it. I truly felt sorry for him. I liked my name. I was named after my grandmother, then Daddy added the Jhill along with it. My mother stuck the silent "h" in there, making my name seem a little funny too. I wondered if he liked his? I asked him as much.
"Never really thought about it," he mumbled, as we reached the farm house, and he opened the door for me.
The opening of the door and his comment ended further discussion on the matter, as my grandmother came to collect the eggs, and the conversation turned to the cobbler she was about to make using them. I, however, have thought a lot about it over the years.
Shakespeare said that "a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet." I get that. My grandfather by any other name would have still been my grandfather: big and tough, non-talkative, loyal, dependable, honorable, and good. He would have still been a husband, a father, and grandfather. He would have still risen at the same time every morning - long before dawn – dressed and ready to begin his many daily chores by six a.m. He would have still been a farmer.
He worked hard, but he didn’t play much. Occasionally, he’d take his pole and go fishing. Once in a while, he’d take his shotgun and go hunting. There were a few television shows that met with his approval. Fame and wealth didn’t impress him. He reserved his admiration for a good harvest and a fair price for it. He was impressed by a new Ford car — something that was built well to last a long time – something that was dependable. He admired a country singer who could carry a fine tune, as he called it. Ernie Ford was one of those singers. Don’t think for one minute that I didn’t notice his favorite vehicle and one of his favorite singers both carried the name "Ford".
There were things about him that impressed me however. I was in awe that he could tell simply by thumping a melon whether or not it was ripe. I don’t recall ever tasting anything other than a sweet one that came from his picking. He could whittle too. But, one thing that impressed me the most was late on a Sunday afternoon, long after the supper dishes had been cleaned and before we headed back to evening church service, as we sat on the porch amidst the buckets of shelled peas and shucked corn on the cob, he would pull out his mouth harp, cup his one hand around it and begin strumming it with his thumb. The music he produced from it was incredible. I’d never heard a sound such as that, and my grandfather could play the heck out of that thing! Or, he’d take two spoons and clack them together and tap them over his knee and arm, making them play the most magical music too. He could do amazing things like that—things that made your jaw drop. He wasn’t a college graduate, but he was smart. He knew the land. He knew how to work it and how to yield from it. He understood weather, and how to make the most of whatever came–how to plan around it. He understood seeds – when to plant them, how to plant them and what he could expect from them. It sounds easy, but it wasn’t. It was hard, back-breaking work. It wasn’t a job that paid well, but it was vital for the survival of our society, much like teachers.
I don’t think he would have considered himself a teacher, but he was. His lessons involved instructing when to pick a crop and when to leave it on the vine a little while longer. He could peel a tomato in one motion, then turn the skin around until he’d made a rose. I found it an amazing trick because I could never make my peel look anything like a rose. He could have you take a card from an unmarked deck, then tell you what it was you drew. [Years later, I learned how he did it, but it was a "wow" moment when I was a little kid.] The biggest lesson he taught me was from playing checkers. He always let whichever grandchild was playing against him win the first game to prove to each of us that we were winners. After that first game though, he wiped the floor with us. It made us try harder to be better and smarter at how we played the game with him. It’s amazing the life lessons that are offered in the simplest ways, unbeknownst to you at the time. He ALWAYS let us win the first game though so we’d never doubt that we could do it.
He called me "Shorty" because I was no bigger than a minute, as he use to say.
There was nothing any better than sitting in his lap as he drove the tractor - his one, strong arm around my waist, securing me to him while his other steered that humming machine that plowed the land in which we planted those seeds he knew so much about. He truly was a master at what he did. At the end of the day, all of his buckets and pails were lined up to get ready for market, and there was nothing more beautiful than the rainbow he had made with rows of food. There was deep yellow squash; ripe, red tomatoes; bright green bell peppers, watermelons, cucumbers, peas and sugar snap beans; pale yellow ears of Silver Queen corn; dark, violet blue eggplant and the list went on and on. Then, the rows repeated in another rainbow using all the same colors but with fruits as the star attraction. At the end of it all, after he’d removed what he needed for his family, was the basket of those delicious, golden-brown eggs.
His idea of success differed from the vast majority of people. If he had a roof over his head, food on his table, clothes on his back and had provided the same for his family, he was a successful man. He was...”
Then, I went back and re-read an entry I’d written about him two years ago on what would have been his 104th birthday. I’ve taken an excerpt from that entry to share as well:
...I knew him as the kind of man described in the following saying: "my grandfather had silver hair and a heart of gold". I came into his life when he was 56 years old. He left mine when I was 28. Neither of our lives were ever the same with my coming and his going. I think he would agree with that statement.
Today, my granddaddy would have turned 104 years old. I’ve been thinking of him all day - pulling my memories out and examining them all. Each one is like a precious pearl, and I’d like to share some of them with those of you who care to read about him:
My grandfather wasn’t by society’s standards considered an educated man, because he didn’t go to college, but he was smart in his own ways, which were just as impressive. For instance, he knew that you could yield about 183 bushels of corn per acre. He also knew that you shouldn’t plant soybeans until you were certain that the last frost of the winter season was over, because the ground needed to be warm for best growth. He knew that soybeans needed to be planted in the section of his farm that got the fullest sun . He also knew to use nitrogen rich fertilizer for this particular crop, because they grew better in soil with a higher nitrogen content, and the soil needed to be kept moist for optimum growth. He knew that growing tomatoes required patience, because they can take a long time to grow, and he knew exactly when to stake them and exactly how far apart that stake should be from the actual plant so that you didn’t damage the root system.
However, the most amazing thing my grandfather knew, in my opinion, was how to tell the ripeness of a watermelon simply by a thump. He didn’t have to thump it more than once either. He knew by the sound that his finger made against the rind of that melon whether it was ripe for the pickin’. It was a marvel, because when he sliced it open, it was always a deep, beautiful, melon-red and as sweet as sugar. He could do the same thing with a cantaloupe - one sniff from where the vine had been pulled away from the plant, was all he needed to know if you were going to get a sweet one or not. My granddaddy taught me the culinary taste of how much better cantaloupe tasted with a sprinkling of black pepper too. If you’ve never tried it, you don’t know what you’re missing!
There were other things he did which I found fascinating. He could play a mouth harp like nobody’s business, and I never knew that two spoons held together just so and rapped against one’s knee could make music - that was, until my granddaddy showed me that it was so. He could produce some toe-tapping music with those spoons too.
Demonstrative love in the form of words wasn’t something he was big on. He told you he loved you with his hug. His hugs were Goliath in strength. He held you tight and for a few extra seconds than a normal hug.
He whittled stuff too. It might not sound like much, but my granddaddy was really good at it. Try it sometime. I guarantee you that it’s not as easy as it sounds or looks.
He was also a GREAT story teller. Lord, that man could make your seams bust with the yarns he spun. It’s a gift to be able to tell a good story. As a writer, I know the degree of difficulty it takes to accomplish that particular feat. His always brought you to laughter with his stories, to the point of almost wetting your pants. I’m not ashamed to say that. It’s the truth. That’s how funny his stories were. It’s good to laugh like that. More people need to laugh like that more often!
As a farmer, he took on the hottest day of the year without a second thought, because his livelihood depended it. His families needs depended on it – on him being stronger and tougher than the elements. If it meant that he was out in the fields by 6 a.m. planting, that’s what he did. His days were long. They were rigorous. They were especially grueling during a time when he worked not only his fields during the day but worked a neighbor’s late into the night, because the man was unable to tend to his crops.
That was my grandfather’s Magnificent Obsession. For those of you who never saw the movie with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson [you missed a great movie], the underlying message of the film was this: practice doing good deeds secretly. Secretly was the key to the thought. You reap more spiritual benefit from doing something out of the goodness of your heart - never seeking praise for doing it, not wanting fortune or fame as a result.
The theme, from what I learned, was based on a passage from the Gospel of Matthew [6:1-4]
"Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father, which is in heaven.....That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly."
That’s what my grandfather did by that gesture. Outside of his family and the family of the friend on whose behalf he worked, I don’t know if anyone else was aware of his good deed. It wasn’t what motivated him. That’s what made him not only special, but a great man, in my opinion. Great men in history have done far less to earn that title.
My granddaddy was a big teddy bear. He could appear gruff, but he had a marshmallow heart. One of his tender spots was for his grandchildren. I remember the last year that we lived in Virginia, we went over to Nannie and Granddaddy’s on Easter Sunday for lunch and the Easter egg hunt.
The Easter egg hunt was as big a deal for my grandfather every year, as it was for us. He was the one who hid the eggs, you see. I, being the baby of the grandchildren at the time, didn’t have the advantage that the other kids did, namely, being bigger and able to reason where good hiding places might be. So, my grandfather put an egg on top of the well, on the bench of the picnic table, on the stair of the front porch, at the base of the big tree that stood to the left of the farmhouse, in the grass beside the door of his small shed. When the hunt started, he took hold of my hand and took me over to each spot, saying "looka there, Shorty! Looka there!" [There’s a photograph of me standing on top of the picnic table counting all my eggs - attached to this entry]
***
It was during those visits that the wonder of the farm was impressed upon me. Granddaddy sat each of us in his lap on the tractor and tilled one row of the field that he was working on. He let us ride in the back of his truck too. It wasn’t a typical flatbed truck like a Ford Ranger. This was a big truck used to harvest produce. It had plywood attached to either side of it that was painted green, and he tied a rope across the back so the bigger kids could sit on the edge and hold onto the rope. It was a BIG deal. He only went under 5 m.p.h., but it was an adventure. I never got to sit on the edge. I wasn’t old enough or big enough, but so I wouldn’t feel left out, he always gave me one of whatever vegetable or fruit we’d picked and told me that my job was to hold onto it and make sure nothing happened to it. It was an important job for a little girl, and from where I sat, a bigger deal then sitting on the edge of the truck and holding onto a rope.
Then, there was the hen-house. Every afternoon at about three o’clock, he let me gather the eggs. They were the most amazing things I’d ever seen - they were big and brown and warm. I’d never seen brown eggs except on my grandparents' farm. I’d always thought eggs were white, and when I held them at home, they were cold. [Yeah, I noticed stuff like that.] He held my hand and led me into that hot little house filled with screen windows and rows of wooden troughs, like you’d feed a pig from. They were filled with hay, and the smell of the hay was heavy in the air because of the heat. I was afraid of the chickens pecking at my feet, so he’d throw a little feed into the center of the coop’s floor to distract them, while I gathered those eggs in the basket. I looked forward to that part of the day most of all, and took great pride when my grandmother made us breakfast the next day because I had been the one to collect those eggs, and they tasted so good...
...Lessons. That’s what he taught us in his own, grand-fatherly way - valuable life lessons. They were just as important and just as necessary to our overall ability to get along in the world as what my parents taught.
He wasn’t an overly demonstrative man with words, as I previously mentioned. There weren’t a lot of "I love you’s" when we were little, but we knew how much he loved us by the strength of his hug. He gave Goliath hugs as mentioned! And, when we were little, he loved for us to take turns sitting in his chair and watching television with him. His chair rocked, and he always rocked it a bit when we sat with him. It was soothing. You were the envy of the other kids if you got to sit in the chair with my grandfather. I remember the extra treat we got after supper too. Beside his chair, on the end table that had the white lamp with the light blue dot patterns on it, was his candy dish. It was filled with hard candies - all colors, shapes, sizes and flavors. He’d reached over and open the lid of that carnival glass bowl to the grand kids during television time, but the one who was in his lap got to pick first.
On Saturday nights, we watched Hee Haw. Outside of All in the Family, I think it was his favorite show. I remember one time, Tennessee Ernie Ford was on. I remember him pointing to the t.v. and saying sternly to my brother, sister and I.
"You need to pay close attention to this. This man can sing! This is music, not that racket you listen to!"
I paid attention. Ernie Ford was a great singer. I never hear "Shenandoah" that I don’t think of that night and my grandfather. [It’s what he sang that night.] Yeah, I have always paid attention to something, when my elders advised me to. I wish more kids today would listen to their elders. But, I digress...
Then, always, when the vacation drew to a close, and it was time for us to go back home, he’d hand each of us a shiny, silver half dollar. That was a BIG deal back then. Fifty cents was a huge chunk of change. Thinking back on it, given the times and inflation, it was a generous gift for a farmer to give to his grandchildren, but that’s the kind of man he was.
My grandparents couldn’t wait for just the summer visits though. Each year, they drove down for Thanksgiving. We couldn’t wait to see them anymore than they could wait to be seen. Their car was loaded down with jams, jellies, pickles, canned green beans, canned greens, canned tomatoes, pear relish and always a Smithfield ham. I still remember the giddy feeling of knowing they were coming, and counting the minutes down from when they expected them to arrive – standing at the window and staring out, waiting for the first glimpse of their Ford. It was the same feeling being on the train, waiting for it to pull into the station, then searching the crowd as quickly as we could to find them. And, always, always, always, it makes me get a little teary thinking about it --- hearing them call to us, each of our names and running to them, arms wide open and feeling those big, strong arms of my grandfather wrap around me. I love you. It was loud and clear. There was nothing mistaken in its conveyance.
It was the same when they came to our house. Out the door we’d fly, arms wide open, running like we were in a P.E. class race to see who could reach them first, happily calling out to them. The hug was always the same: BIG. Strong. Full of love.
And, I can hear in my mind’s eye, my grandfather saying, "Come here, Shorty!" That was his term of endearment for me, because I was big on opinion but not height. [Some things haven’t changed].
When they left us to go back home, he’d say in a tone of cautionary love to his child’s child, "Behave and mind your manners!"
After we moved to Maryland, we drove down once a month to see them. The times had changed but the visits stayed the same. There was always the offering of a piece of hard candy. There were always the recollections of a story here and there during the visits. We continued to go out with him in the fields and work [He farmed his land up until six weeks before he passed.] and watching his old, worn hands masterfully slide over a plant, picking beans or whatever he was working on, like he’d barely touched it. There was the occasional concert featuring his mouth harp or the dueling spoons. Sometimes, we’d just sit on the front porch and talk about the happenings of this family and that....getting caught up with the news of the town: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, kid’s graduating from this or that, changes in the church and so forth, as the crickets chirped and the night fell as the stars came out. In those moments, there was nothing any better than that togetherness–that conversation.
I remember the last words he ever said to me as he walked me out to my car after a late-winter visit. In his later years, he began to tell us he loved us when we left him after, he gave us the big hug that evidenced that fact.
Then, he put my overnight bag in the backseat, and palmed me a $20. Next, he held the driver’s door open for me.
"Check those tires when you get home, ya hear. They’re looking a little balled."
I nodded. "I will, Granddaddy."
"You mind your manners."
Another nod of assurance. "I will, Granddaddy."
Then, he closed the door.
I looked up to him. [I didn’t need to be sitting in the front seat of my car to do that, mind you.] Still, un-abashed, I looked up at him and said. "I love you, Granddaddy!"
He cleared his throat. "I love you too, Shorty!"
Then, he said as I started the car. "You be careful now, ya hear! Don't drive too fast! They’re a lot of fools out there who don’t pay attention to nothin’! Watch yourself."
I nodded. I didn’t say anything else, because it didn’t matter how old I got, I was always a little overcome with emotion and tears when I left him and my grandmother.
By the time I had slowly pulled my car around the circular, gravel drive of their house that led out to the main road, he’d made his way around to the other side of the house so that he could watch me pull out. He always waved and never turned to go back inside the house until the car was out of sight. I know this because I always looked back in my rearview mirror and saw him standing there watching me leave.
That’s the last image I have of him: standing beside the house with his hand in the air, waving goodbye as he watched me drive off. It’s a treasured memory.
I heard once, years ago, someone ask on a talk show, [which one right now, escapes me], but the interviewer asked, "if you could go back to one moment in time, where would you go?"
I’d go back to when I was young – on the farm with my grandparents. It’s like a Rockwell painting, those times – warm and heartfelt. I loved them. I didn’t know how much until they were both gone. I don’t need the question to make me wish, sometimes, that I could go back and spend just one more day with them. I’d appreciate it so much more. I know that now. Age and hindsight are wonderful things at times...
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt his big, strong hug, and I miss it - like I miss his laughter and his voice, especially when it was saying something to his Shorty.
Today, I drove over to the cemetery to pay my respects. I kissed the etched stone of his name and touched his dates, and I told him this: "Happy Birthday, Granddaddy! I’m minding my manners, and I’m being as careful as I can be. But, most of all, I miss you and greater than that, I love you! Shorty loves you so very, very much..."
I wanted to say something new today about him that was a truly fitting tribute to the kind of decent and honorable man that he was. I wanted the message to be one that left NO doubt what a special man my grandfather was. Then, I remembered something that Paul Harvey had once said about farmers. Oh, it’s a gem. More than anything I could ever write as tribute or accolade, it sums it up perfectly and best. For those of you who don’t know or have never heard of Paul Harvey, [WHERE have YOU been?] he was a radio broadcaster—a brilliant one with a voice as comforting as one of the quilts my grandmother made for each one of her seven grandchildren! Mr. Harvey made observations about things. Go to YouTube and take a listen to his pearls of wisdom sometime. There are many to enjoy. The one I chose today is relevant because it so aptly describes my grandfather. It’s no surprise that it’s called, “So God Made a Farmer”. It was the name of a speech Mr. Harvey gave at a 1978 Future Farmers of America convention. My understanding is that the speech was a derivative of a 1975 article written by him and published in the Gadsden Times. Here is text of that beautiful prose and the YouTube clip at the end, which I encourage everyone to listen to, because you haven’t TRULY experienced this, until you’ve heard it spoken by Paul Harvey:
“And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker!’ So, God made a farmer!”
God said, “I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer!
I need somebody with strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch, until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon...and mean it. So, God made a farmer!”
God said, “I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And...who, at planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, pain'n from ‘tractor back’, put in another seventy two hours. So, God made a farmer!
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds, yet stop on mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So, God made a farmer!”
God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees, heave bails yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets...and who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So, God made a farmer!
It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight...and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed...and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self feeder and then finish a hard days’ work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who'd laugh and then sigh...and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what Dad does.’ So, God made a farmer!”...
Happy Birthday, Granddaddy! Shorty loves you very, very much...today~and always...
http://youtu.be/7UBj4Rbq3ZI So God Made a Farmer~Paul Harvey
http://youtu.be/6LCkVXv1lfM Grandpa, Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Old Days~The Judds
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