Summer time was a mixed blessing at my house. Like any young lad, I couldn't wait until that last day of school. You remember that one. The day the books were returned. You hoping of course the teacher didn't spot the page that was accidentally torn out. Getting release at 2pm instead of the usual 3pm. Saying goodbye to the friends you would not see until the next school year started. And of course hoping that you would get out of there before the Principal realized the mistake they made and informing you that you would not be advancing to the next school year level. Well maybe you didn't worry about that, but believe me I did.
The Summer school vacation didn't mean total freedom for me. I was expected to work during the summer. Not a real job, not yet, but I had a paper route and worked in the gardens my Grandmother and Mom put out.
A little before that final release day, the man would come with his tractor and break the two front lots and the back two lots of my Grandmothers property. She owned about 3/4th of the block and what the house and yard wasn't sitting on was broke up for gardening. This garden had most everything that a Southern Indiana garden could produce. And a lot of stuff it wasn't supposed to produce. And there was where my job would come in.
Before I could take off each morning to scout the neighborhood and see what my neighbor friends were up to. I had to go out in the gardens and pull weeds. I tried to get out of that duty by pulling up a few tomato plants and the like, but found out that course of action was not a good one. Scratch one more free yard stick from the county fair.
The number one weed that my grandmother pointed out. The one that she most hated. The one that I had better not miss. The one that she never wanted to see was the infamous Morning Glory. Now as everyone knows, the Morning glory wasn't a weed. The Morning Glory is a flowering Vine. Pretty little flowers on it. However in my Grandmother's gardens, the Morning Glory was a weed. To my Grandmother, the Morning Glory was the Kudzu of the North. "If you let them get started Rodney, they will take up the whole garden and you won't have these good veggies to eat next winter," she would tell me "Besides, every vine takes up the water and nutrients from the bean plant that's next to it and you won't have any good crops".
So every morning, before cruising the neighborhood I had to answer one question Correctly "Did you pull the Morning glory's out Rodney?" The correct response was "Yes I did Grandma" and I had better be telling the truth. If I wasn't telling the truth, a fate worse than death would befall me before the day was out. My Grandmother or my Mom, whoever was the maddest would stand on the back porch and yell at the top of her lungs the dreaded, "RODNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY RODNEY DALE SMITH YOU GET YOURSELF HOME AND I MEAN NOW" I could be on the other end of town and I would hear that. And if I didn't one of the kids with me would. And I would know right then, I would be picking my own switch off the Cherry tree to learn my lesson with.
Now before I go any farther with this I want to make sure you understand. What is considered abuse today was considered old fashion discipline back then. I mean we are talking about the late 50's and early 60's and what I received was generally what I deserved. And while I didn't think much of it then, I can see a place for it today.
So back to the Morning Glories. I have to admit my Grandmother's gardens stayed pretty clean of Morning Glory vines. If the Home and Garden Magazine people were to visit and inspect the gardens they would not have found a one. She would have won an award for her gardens. I did learn to hate Morning Glories. I attacked each and every one I found sprouting up each morning. I will say she did let me have one growing beside the house so I could look each morning and tell just what it was I was supposed to pull. And yes, it did have those pretty little blooms on it. But they had no place in the garden, so like Luke Skywalker, I zapped them.
I want to leave my childhood now and jump ahead to the year 1984. There was a book written about that year, however I still haven't read it. I was in my 40's with a job opportunity becoming available in Joplin Mo. I went and stayed with my Cousins and visited Joplin for a couple of weeks just looking the area over and trying to decide if I really wanted to move down there. Going from being a Hoosier to becoming a Show me type person takes a certain amount of courage and I wasn't too sure about it.
One night my cousins took me up town Joplin to go to a street fair. Or festival or what ever they called it. While looking at the displays of stuff for sell, I happen to notice a man selling belts. As I needed a new one I approached his stand and proceeded to look through his stock and found one that appealed to me. I didn't even try to figure out what it was about that particular belt that I liked. I just knew it was the one I wanted and it was in my size. I gave him my selection and he Stamped my name in the back of it "ROD" and I walked away with my new purchase. I showed my cousin Kay the new belt and she looked at me kind of strangely but didn't say anything.
It wasn't but a couple of years after that that I had to put a couple of new knotches in my belt because I was gaining a pretty good waistline. Of course by that time the belt wasn't a straight piece of leather, but had this curve in it. You men know what I am talking about. Anyway I took a real good look at that belt for the first time since I had bought it.
I couldn't believe it. It was impossible but there it was. One of the prettiest Morning Glory vines you ever saw complete with blossoms was imprinted on that belt.
Life's kind of funny that way, however that little story is just the beginning of this chapter.
Being a semi-country boy, we lived on 1st street, which meant that a lot of our time was spent walking the woods looking for such wonders as Greens, Poke, Poles suitable to be used for the pole beans and of course every nut that fell from the trees in Pike County. We would all get in the car and after a while we would find our selves in one of my Grandmother's favorite gathering spots. We even did a lot of Mushroom hunting and of course when time permitted went to the river to catch some pretty good fish.
However there was one excursion that I just hated to participate in. that was going Blackberry picking. You went Blackberry picking in the late summer and all you had to do was stand there in front of the Blackberry bush and pick the berries. Sounds fun don't it? Getting to eat all the Blackberries you could sneak and filling up your bucket.. But there was just one problem with berry picking. You had to get to the berries. My grandmother knew where every available Blackberry bush was in Pike County. They held the biggest, plumpest, blackest berries you ever seen but they were protected. You had to pay the price to get to them berries, or at least I had to pay it.
The Price I paid was total humiliation, pain and more suffering than a boy of 10 or 11 should have put up with. I don't know why any other member of my family that went berry picking didn't have to pay this price, but I paid, and paid, and paid. Maybe it was because I was the only male in my family, living with my Grandmother my Mom and my little sister as I did. My dog was even a female.
One Day not long after going berry picking with the clan, dog included, I discovered an intense necessity to scratch. I had an itch. I had a bad itch. I had an itch so bad that no matter where I was or who I was talking to I had to scratch my itch. A chigger had taken up residence on my body. He, or maybe I should day she, could not take up residence on my arm or my leg or any of the other common places. NO this chigger had found the most sensitive part of any young lads body to take up residence on. I guess I should say in not on because if you know anything about chiggers, you know they find a good soft spot and proceed to burrow into the skin. This particular chigger had found my soft spot. This chigger had managed to either craw up my leg or down my body from the waist until it found the area he or she wanted to burrow and proceeded to make my life hell.
I was not supposed to be touching this area, I had heard from the Kids that If I touched this area too much I was most certain to go blind. The only time I was supposed to be touching this area was when, I needed to go to the bathroom and when washing. This chigger had to just go and craw out on the end of that thing, little as it was, and burrow right in the end of it. It was like getting a full injection of Spanish fly, something I heard about later but of course never had the chance or daring to check out.
For the next several weeks, like I said no matter where I was or whom I was talking to, my hand would be busy trying to pacify that itch. The more I scratched the more it itched. Someone told me to paint it with fingernail polish remover. Someone else told me to use chigger-rid on it. I just knew school was going to start before this monster that had invaded my body was going to get tired of my scratching and depart.
I would be in Sunday School and an attack of itching would start. After the first couple of Sundays My teacher, who heard of the infestation of Rodney would look the other way, then one Sunday she took me aside and told me I could go to the restroom without asking if I wanted to. It was just awful I would find my self doing something like the Pee Dance without the need to go pee. And right in front of everyone.
Somehow I would get through it and life would go on as before. I really believe to this day that that chigger would go into hibernation and wait until the next summer to begin the attack all over again. Because the next summer and the following summer after that, it was chigger hell all over again. And at the same place.
There is something else I believe. I believe that chigger introduced me to sex. Well after all that fooling around and scratching, you know something is bound to happen, and it did.
I remember one summer day during my 14th year, my Grandmother stood up and announced that the next morning it was back to the blackberry bushes we would go. She must have noticed the look of horror that came across my face because she then said "Rodney? You don't want to go do you?" "well, you don't have to."
Well you can not imagine how perfect her garden looked after that announcement.
Rod Smith