Summers on Uncle John’s Farm
By Robert L. Gruner
I remember many of the times when I'd go to mother's brother
John Shannon's farm for the summer months. You'd think I'd
reached a foreign land, the difference in the people there and in
the city, yet it was less than 20 miles from our house in the city
of Memphis.
The street going to his farm was paved until we reached the city
limits, then they became gravel roads the rest of the way there.
I think the country areas have a monopoly on dust because whenever
cars passed his house, that sat within 30 feet of the roadway, dust
settled on everything and there seemed to be no end to the amount
of it. It was gritty when it got inside my mouth and it choked me to
breathe it, but I seemed to accept it as a normal part of the country
atmosphere.
I thought little of going to the well and drawing a nice cool drink of
water. The well was close to the back door of the farmhouse and
under the shade of a small tree. It had a large pulley mounted
above the well and a ragged rope that was tied to a long cylindrical
pipe that looked to me as if it had been fashioned from a piece of
corrugated metal roofing material to form a long round container.
It probably held half a gallon of water per scoop, as a guess. One's
idea of size is distorted with age. As a kid, everything seemed larger
than it did when as an adult I viewed it again.
I can relate to the advertisement that used to air on television featuring
an Indian who stood surveying the land and a single tear dropped from
his eye as he saw the pollution created by earth's human inhabitants.
I have that same type of feeling when I view the general area that
the old farmhouse and farm once occupied. The very high hill that was
named, "Windy Hill," is long gone. Also gone are the hills that I so loved
to go up and down in their car. The gravel road is gone. All of those
things have been replaced by flat land covered with three hundred homes
and paved streets. Even the small lake on the rear part of the property
is gone. It was drained, low spots filled and more homes built there.
When I see that, I think of all the good times and all the creatures that
used the land as a habitat and it makes me really sad. Sometimes I
wonder just what progress really is.
That small area of land was home to humans, fish, farm animals,
thousands of grasshoppers and bugs of all sorts that were interesting
to a kid and home to countless memories of that kid who has lived
to become this old man.