Harvest Moon

During August, when I go to bed at night, I can see the moon thru my bedroom window until tree tops obscure its ceaseless path from view. As the moon loses its crescent shape and becomes rounder, silver light advances into the room until I’m bathed in moonlight. The soft air of summer nights, the murmuring cadence of night insects, and delicate silhouettes caused by moon glow combine to create a mood of enchantment which lingers long after the moon disappears from sight.

I have lovely childhood memories of summer nights when we lived on the asparagus farm. As the months changed from June to July, then August, the nights grew increasingly hot. After dark fell, the family took blankets and pillows out to the yard to enjoy the cooler night air. We clustered the blankets willy- nilly to each other, and each had their favorite pillow. Most of us planned to sleep outdoors, but sometimes we would wake in the night and go back to our beds inside the house.

After we got tired catching fireflies and saving them in jelly jars, Dad might give us riddles to solve or we listened to stories of how Mom met Dad and what their lives were like when they were kids. Sometimes Adeline or I would pretend moonlight magic made us dance and as we circled and twirled in the moon light, we begged Mom to join us. One of my most precious memories is watching Mom as she laughed and danced with moonlight on her face.

When I was fifteen, a farm neighbor hired me to help in the kitchen at harvest time. Their harvest would take three days, with noon meals being served each day. Groups of local farmers would work together, taking turns harvesting each other’s crops. Not all the farmers would own the machinery needed, but the one or two that did, would use them as they moved from farm to farm. Living in the middle of the Corn Belt, I knew how harvest meals were prepared and served, but I had never helped in the work.

I started work at 8 each morning, but the farmer’s wife and another woman started work earlier. Pies had already been baked with several more ready for the oven. Chicken was frying on top of the stove and bread dough was rising, ready to be made into rolls. The two women did the cooking while I fetched and carried and helped at whatever job I was given. The dining table was covered with a white table cloth and matching napkins. Each man’s place setting included bread and butter plate, cup and saucer, and glasses for water and lemonade or iced tea.

Each day the meals were basically the same, platters of fried chicken and baked ham, sweet corn on the cob, bowls of mashed potatoes and gravy, steamed vegetables from the garden along with sliced tomatoes, radishes, scallions and pickles. For dessert there were three kinds of pie, apple, berry and a cream plus a white and a chocolate cake

The men were divided into two shifts for eating, one at 11:30 and one at 12:30. The farmer, his brothers and their sons waited to eat at the second shift, allowing the volunteer workers to eat first. Outside the kitchen door several benches held buckets of water, wash basins, and piles of clean towels so the men could wash up before eating.

The second shift was a duplicate of the first. The women kept the platters and dishes filled, but the men served themselves and passed the foods around. Pies and cakes were also placed on the table so the men could help themselves. They laughed and joked as they ate, but they didn’t linger at the table.

When the meal was over for the men, we three ate and then started the kitchen work. After all the dishes, pots and pans were washed and put away, I was free to go home, but the women made pies to get a head start on the next day’s work.

Weather

Different regions of Texas have differing climates in winter and summer. My Texas summer weather is still in the 95 -98 range. Weather is the first topic in any local conversation. It’s either hot, or getting hotter and we blame humidity. The heat index, not the number on the thermometer, is the one we pay attention to, along with percentages of rain possibility, which yo- yo up and down the scale. If it’s 20%, 50% or 60%, it means showers will be passing thru and we can, in all probability, expect sunshine before and after rain. If 70% or higher, we are in for monsoons, (good for gardens), or a deluge and floods, (bad for gardens).

Weather in Texas can change drastically within an hour. One has to experience it to believe it. I remember one winter night going to sleep with my warmest blankets, and as the jet stream switched directions, the interior of the house got so warm, I had to kick the blankets aside.

I have never gotten used to the violent weather changes. The ice storms are exquisitely beautiful to look at but not much fun to experience. They cause power outages, downed trees and broken water pipes. I was astounded when I experienced my first Texas ice storm. It was totally unexpected. Rain turned to ice after nightfall and I could hear the crackling and breaking of tree limbs all thru the night. When I awoke next morning, I was awe struck to find everything coated with ice, glistening and sparkling like diamonds. The sun was shining but the temperature had dropped too low to melt the ice.

There were power outages and broken water pipes all over town. Mom and Dad, living in the house next door, had an outage lasting 8 days. Mine lasted only 3 days as electricity at the end of my side of the street was restored sooner than Mom and Dad’s. We both had broken water pipes. My sister, Esther, was visiting Mom and Dad at the time, and between her and our brother, Charles, we managed to connect our two houses with heavy duty power cords so both our houses had lights, television and refrigeration. We all went on ‘wilderness survival mode’ until water pipes were repaired, but we counted our blessings because we still had heat to warm the house and cook with.

Broken tree limbs were everywhere. Trees had crashed due to the weight of ice, and flattened sections of my back yard fence. A huge limb from a pecan tree had fallen on top of my car, covering it with a 6 foot high canopy of frozen branches. The thick, jagged end of the limb was jammed into the frozen ground on the passenger side of the car. I was able to push branches aside far enough to squeeze into the driver’s seat and fortunately, the car started instantly when I turned on the ignition. I slowly backed the car out from underneath the branches and parked further down the driveway. Later, when we checked the roof of the car for dents, there wasn’t even a scratch to be seen.

Walking To School

The school busses are beginning to roll thru my neighborhood on trial runs. School starts in a day or so and they will be stopping to pick up the children that live further down my street. The middle school is only three blocks, four if you count the football field, from the end of our street, but the children ride the bus.

What a difference between my school days and today. My brothers, sisters and I walked to school. Our town didn’t have busses. Even when my family had a car, we walked to school. When the family moved from town to the asparagus farm on the outskirts of town, we still walked to school.

Adeline and I attended school in town, but my younger siblings went to a small country school with all the grades in one room. The distances to both schools were about equal; walking times approximately the same. We left the house in the mornings at the same time, and returned home in the afternoons around the same time.

We dressed for the weather. In the winter we wore snow suits and boots. The boy’s boots always had a jack knife in the side pocket of one boot. The girl’s boots were ankle high, either white or black. When it rained we had a choice of goulashes or rubbers to wear over our shoes when the dirt road we walked was muddy, or slushy with ice and snow.

Adeline and I had a shortcut we used on our way to and from school. By cutting thru a pasture that was almost opposite our house, we avoided having to walk the road which would have added at least a mile to our walk. Coming from school, we climbed under a barbed wire fence, and then walked along the top of a broad hill which gradually sloped to a running creek at the bottom. On the other side of the creek the pasture duplicated, in reverse, the side of the hill we walked.

There was always a large herd of cows, sometimes at the top of the hill, but usually scattered across the lower side of the hill nearer the creek. The pastoral scene of cows browsing the lush, green grass was a visual delight, but if cows meandered too close to me, I was afraid of them. Adeline, a year and a half younger, and brave to the max, was my defense and rescuer.

If the cows ignored us and went on with their grass munching, our walk across the slope was uneventful, but if any one cow took notice and began walking in our direction, all the cows began moseying our way. It then became a matter of judging whether or not I could run past the cows before they reached us. If I didn’t think I could make it, Adeline would run ahead and wave the cows off while I ran.

Sometimes our running started the cows running, in which case, their running started my screaming. Adeline would yell, “They won’t hurt you!” as she faced the cows and shooed them off, but what did she know? They didn’t chase her! Of course I always reached the safer side of the hill when Adeline was with me. She was my protector, but if I was alone, and the cows were too close for comfort, I was in trouble. If they were in the way of my running past them, I tried circling and yelling at the same time. I must confess I never had a confrontation with a cow, but then again, there was always that possibility!

Space Walking

I am overwhelmed with awe that astronaut, Steve Robinson, tethered to the robotic arm of the shuttle, was guided to the underbelly of the shuttle so he could remove two tiny pieces of filler protruding thru cracks in the tiles on the heat shield.

The walk required the most delicate of maneuvers in order not to bump, jar, or crack the tiles. The procedure was filmed under water in Houston and beamed to the astronauts so they could see how the job went before taking the space walk.

I can’t imagine the emotions Robinson must have experienced as the arm extended and moved him thru space, 230 miles from earth, traveling in opposite directions at great speeds, to position him on the underside of the space craft. His caution and composure as he reached for the fillers and gently pulled them away from the tiles, made the task look simple.

Questions remain whether the return from space will be safe. What exemplary qualities of bravery and courage these astronauts exhibit in the face of such danger! All the more reason they should not be subjected to the whims and ambitions of an agency that talk’s safety, but cuts costs in achieving it.

This current trip of the Shuttle to deliver cargo of needed supplies to the International Space Station is the first since the Columbia tragedy in 2003. It may be the last as NASA has cancelled future trips of the Shuttle until design problems threatening the lives of astronauts can be corrected.

I wonder what Grandma A would think of the International Space Station, orbiting 230 miles from earth with crews that spend months manning it. I think she would be astounded at the many space endeavors that have taken place since she saw the first Russian Sputnik. She was so thrilled to have seen it. As often as I attended Sputnik parties with friends waiting to see it as it came into view, I never saw it. There was always smog or the sky was overcast with clouds.