Country Connections
By James and Ellen Perry
Late one afternoon while sitting on the porch, shadows getting long, a song came on the computer. It was a pretty song by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood and released in 1966.
The first line lyrics were, “Strawberries, cherries and an angel kiss in spring.” The name of the song was “Summer Wine.”
While listening to the song I drifted back to 1956 and the summer when I turned eleven years old. We always had a strawberry patch on the farm, but the wild strawberries tasted much sweeter and better.
Back then the wild strawberries were almost everywhere, especially along the dirt roads, which is all we had. I was reminded of a poem taught us at Rose Hill School, “The Barefoot Boy,” by John Greenleaf Whittier with these lines: “And my red lips redder still, kissed by strawberries on the hill.”
That poem brought back to me by the song reminded me how my brothers and I played, laughed and cried as children.
We didn’t have any cherry trees, but our neighbor, Sam Cook, had both red and black cherries, and after he and his family picked all they wanted he let our family have the rest to can.
As for the “Angel kiss in spring,” that came a year later. You never forget that first kiss, even if the girl kissed you by surprise.
That song also reminded me of the summer I stayed with my paternal grandparents for three weeks to help my aging grandfather catch up on his farm work.
After being there and helping for a week my grandfather said, “Jim, I’m going to the house. You take my team of mules to the creek and water them. Then put them in the barn and come eat dinner.”
That my grandfather trusted me with his team made me feel 10 feet tall.
My grandfather and grandmother raised 14 children, never owned an automobile, or had a television during their life. His team was his most prized possession. During World War II they had seven sons in the army at the same time.
The same summer of 1956 my daddy started me plowing with 'Old Beck,' which was his mule. I learned fast how to plow.
It was actually fun except plowing in new ground which always had hardened dead sassafras sprouts that would slip through the four-foot cultivator points and slap you on the legs. Boy, that hurt.
There are things that every teenage boy should have to do for a summer: "Plow a mule" is one of those things.
There is one thing that every 15-year-old girl should have to do for one summer: Wash all the family clothes on a washboard and tub. This would change their snotty attitudes.
But going back to Old Beck, I think it was 1954.
A pick-up truck came to our farm with this young medium sized red-haired Jenny mule (That means a female mule.) Daddy had traded for her as we needed a work mule.
People today do not realize that up to the 1960s, if you farmed in the hills or mountains a mule was much safer than the farm tractors which could roll over. Being two-wheel drive with bad brakes back then, they would run away down a hill and either roll over or hit something and could kill you. There are still people killed on tractors today.
My cousin Dan’s family had a mule named 'Old Moody' who had a backbone that raised about two inches above his back. Old Beck had a smooth back. In winter months on weekends, we would ride the mules down to Norris Lake, which our farms joined.
Back then TVA would drain Norris all the way to the Clinch River. We could see old homesteads, bridges and arrowheads everywhere. Dan always insisted on riding Old Beck, and me being younger, took what was left—that being Old Moody with the protruding backbone. It made for sore times in certain parts of the anatomy.
Most people today think farming with mules and horses are things of the past. This is not true. There are good Christian people all over Canada and the USA who still today farm with draft animals.
There are the Quakers, Mennonites and Amish who have beautiful farms, raise their families and make a profit farming. There are Amish farmers in Tennessee.
If we are ever attacked by either of the other superpowers, the Amish will fare much better than will those who depend on electric power, public water and gas or diesel-powered equipment.
If you want to know more about surviving another Great Depression or a war inside our USA, Google a song written and recorded around 1920 by Jimmy Rodgers. The song is “No Hard Times.”
Remembering that good mule Old Beck and her contribution to our family’s livelihood, I remembered another song from 1962 written by Harlan Howard and recorded by Hank Cochran.
A lyric from that song was, “No matter what the request, she gave it her best.”
That lyric from “Sally was a Good Ole Girl” surely described Old Beck. She has been gone a long time, but every now and then her fond memory comes through my mind.
Well let me see if I can find some wild strawberries.