I thought about my grandfather a good deal this morning as Adelaide and I planted the daylillies we’d purchased Wednesday at Blooming Colors in Auburn. It wasn’t that he taught me anything about flower gardening. It was what he taught me about work.
We’ve always liked daylillies, and I’ve rescued more than a few ditch lillies over the years. They’re always interesting colors, and I admire their hardiness. There was a wide variety available at the nursery, and we probably would have gotten more if there’d been a place to plant them.
AS IT WAS, we chose some large ones—I don’t want to wait to see results—which meant they needed to be planted in good size holes. Anyone in National Village who has added to the landscaping that was installed when the house was finished develops an intimate acquaintance with red clay. I was glad that I hadn’t given my post hole diggers away when we moved.
It was digging those holes that had my grandfather standing alongside me. He was a grade school dropout, as so many of his class and generation were, and in his youth he worked on the railroad line that came through, moving dirt for the railway embankment with a slip pulled by a mule. He settled into farming in the days when mules mixed with tractors in doing the farm labor.
He probably stood no more than 5-foot-seven, and he weighed maybe 160 pounds.
He knew how to work. And he taught us—our cousins, my brother and me— how to work.
IT SEEMED AS IF so many of the things we helped him do involved moving dirt, though memory probably exaggerates. Still, we did spend a lot of time digging post holes and stretching barbed wire, and loading piles of dirt into the bed of the pickup truck to move it to some other place where we would shovel it out of the truck.
We were young and full of vinegar, and we attacked each job as if we were building an earthworks to fend off an impending attack. It was never long before our arms felt as heavy as the dirt we were moving and our spirits were flagging.
His shovel never had as much dirt in it as ours did, and we tossed two shovels for every one of his. For a while. A very short while.
While we were sucking for air with our hands on our knees like tired basketball players at the free throw line, he swung his shovel with a steady rhythm.
He did not have to lecture us. We learned by watching. He didn’t have to lecture us about working until the job was done, either. We knew that if he weren’t going anywhere, we weren’t either. And barring something unforeseen, he wasn’t going anywhere until the job was finished or the day had run out.
THERE WAS A FINE and welcome mist when I first went outside this morning, but it soon disappeared, and it became a day that reminded me of boyhood summers. As I dug the holes for the daylillies, my grandfather didn’t have to remind me that steady was better than rushed, nor that it’s good to finish a job before you put your tools away.
I will say that I was as glad to get finished today as I was long ago.
Bill Brown is a retired newspaper editor whose newspapers won a Pulitzer Prize, National Headliners Award, Edgar Willis Scripps Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment and Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service and Freedom of Information Awards. He is the author of “Yellow Cat, Hendry & Me: Dispatches From Life’s Front Lines. He can be reached at
bill@williamblakebrown.com
