Gemstone Quarry

One of the old guard, a time in a man's life when he can remember when men were men and women were women.

Was there such a time?

In carving out a place to live, just you and your family against the elements, aren't the duties, the chores, the basic will to live as clear as a cold spring hidden under a cliff?

That's what he believed.

That's what he saw when he looked at the grandkids playing in the apple orchard.

What happened?

Do the times change or just our memories of them?

He kicked a boot against the iron railing, took a sip of his RC Cola and tossed a handful of peanuts against the back of his mouth, mixing the fizz with the salty nuts and remembering many summers like this, time just a couple of hands on a watch.

Where was his wife?

Parkinson's disease.  Long, long years of therapy followed by home health visits and then the LPN who stayed with them in the end.

Fifty-four years of marriage.

A freezer full of frozen foodstuff handpicked from the best of what the farm produced.  Rows of canned beans and tomatoes in the cellar.

Not a single child or grandchild interested in taking over the farm...

He dropped the bottle onto the soft grass next to the back porch.  He'd pick it up in the cool of the evening and store it with all the RC Cola bottles he'd saved over the years, a tiny nest egg for emergencies that only the nosiest of grandkids knew was tucked in the back of the barn.

If only he had his wife's secret ingredients for the banana pudding she used to make, he'd give it to his daughter as a special gift for Christmas.

"You boys don't go climbing up into the higher branches!  You'll tear 'em up and break your neck when you fall!"

He looked out over the fields and wondered what was going to happen to them.  He didn't have many good years left in front of him and plowing was getting to be a chore.  His neighbour, a hippy professor, offered to do the plowing for him but he wasn't so sure the prof didn't expect to be able to plow a few hippy weed rows for himself in the process.

From moonshine to hippy weed, every generation had its diversions.  He kept his kids off both but he didn't know his grandkids well enough to know who was and who wasn't.  Gotta trust your kids to watch their kids.  Can't do it all when they're scattered to the wind and you're working a farm.

"I reckon you kids better come inside and eat some supper.  It's getting too hot."

As the grandkids raced back to the house, he held the backdoor open for each one as he knocked the rest of the dirt clods off his boots.  No reason to let the flies in or carry mud into the house - less work later on after all the grandkids had gone home and left him to clean up the farmhouse in the quiet, humid evening with just the tinny buzz of a baseball game coming from the kitchen radio.

While he sliced up watermelon for the kids, he remembered an old box of recipes he'd found stuffed up into the top of the hallway closet.  Maybe that's where Ethel had put her list of banana pudding mixings.