Thanks to my neighbors, I can say I was a farm boy.
Mr. and Mrs. Ray worked a small subsistence farm in what my dad called “the bottoms” (by that he meant the wide, flat, and once fertile expanses of land which surround the Red River in southwest Arkansas). The couple scratched out a life on that farm for more than 50 years. In the mid 1960’s, their children bought them the little home on a five acre plot next to ours. Their intention was to give their parents some well deserved rest—but the Rays weren’t having any of that. They worked that patch of land as though it were a 1000 acre ranch. At one time they had seven cows, a mule, what seemed like a billion chickens, at least a dozen hogs and even a dozen or so guineahens.
Dad thought they were crazy. But I loved it. It was like having a petting zoo right next door. And as I got older, it got even cooler. I went from milking cows (for a quarter) to trapping and killing rats in the stockyard (this I did for free—who wouldn’t?).
Today I can only remember bits and fragments about them…that bothers me. I can’t even remember their first names. The small things I can remember are priceless to me.
Mrs. Ray was the classic nosey neighbor. We were on the same party line, and she often listened in on our calls—which drove my mother nuts! But then she and mom would spend hours talking in her kitchen—where she churned butter every morning. In the fall, when they butchered the hogs, she would build a fire in her yard and render lard and pork rinds in a large black cast iron kettle. I’ve seen her ring a chickens neck with about as much emotion as a brick. I also watched as she calmly tended to her grandson’s big toe, after he managed to nearly cut it off with an axe.
I know less about Mr. Ray. I can tell you that he worked a quarter acre garden with a mule and plow—well into the 1970’s. From our air conditioned living room, I remember seeing him pause in the midday sun for a drink of water. Every year, he let his pasture renew by grazing his cows in the neighbor’s field; herding them across the road in the morning and back to the barn every evening.
The division of labor was pretty typical. Both of them did the milking, and Mr. Ray did the outside heavy work—while she took care of him and pretty much everything else. She raised the chickens, but he would scout the nearby countryside for guinea eggs.
They owned the meanest dog in the neighborhood: Teddy, a scalded, half mad chow who he slept in the middle of the road. His right hind quarter was a lunar landscape of welded pink and blue skin. The scar tissue started about an inch below his tail and ran down the entire length of his leg—including the poor dog’s undercarriage. It’s no wonder he had a death wish.
And I can infer a little more. They probably married very young—she was likely in her teens. The two of them had a few rituals. Mr. Ray would read the paper to his unschooled wife every day. They drove to church every Sunday, and to town for what few supplies they needed, every other week. To me at least, they seemed to be much more in love than my parents were. Most summer evenings, I would see them holding hands on their porch, and—in younger days—the two of them procreated merrily. They raised several children and had (seemingly) thousands of Grandchildren. Christmas at the Ray’s was a huge homecoming event. Cars filled the lawn, the tree took up half their tiny living room, and gas ceramic heaters kept the tiny house very cozy.
For mom and I they were a temporary refuge.
For me they were also a source of knowledge. Through them I had a small window into a rapidly fading way of life. It was the same hard life my grandparents lived. The life that killed my paternal grandfather when my father was only 14—forcing dad to leave school to help his mother with exactly the same activities.
World War Two rescued him from that farm, but in the Rays he saw the life that almost trapped him.
He never forgave them for it.
© 2007, by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights Reserved
