The Tell Me Experiment – Three Generations

Today I was working at the Ring Farm today, as I do every day I don’t have class and every weekend. There were 300 kids and then adults, a few families and a couple of walk-ins. It was a mad house and order was soon lost as the “responsible adults” with the 300 kids weren’t very organised. Most of the families stuck together in a group, but there was one that was just the 4 of them; 2 adult women and child sisters. There were 5 of us women doing “classes” and two men running the tractors. The owner’s brother was on the tower in the corn maze keeping an eye on that.

As three of us sat at concessions waiting to see who was doing what, I was approached by the family of 4 who wanted to go through the cotton maze and corn maze. They had just gotten off the hay wagon. So I volunteered and we headed to the cotton patch. I gave my short spiel about the stages of growth, etcetera, then decided to go with them through the cotton maze.

As we walked, I talked with the  adults, I learned that their names were Nancy and Amy and they came from Franklin County. The girls were Kristen and Tori. Nancy was their grandmother, and Amy was their great-grandmother. There were three generations of the family wandering in the cotton maze. Nancy’s son (the girls’ father) had to work so he couldn’t make it (though Amy thought he was playing golf). In the corn maze Tori said that their father would be taking two days off and their mother three. I asked about they were farming families and they were, though just for awhile. Amy’s father grew cotton, hay, and corn. Amy’s husband grew corn, clover, and something else…I can’t quite remember. He did that for awhile before landing a construction job with TDOT.

I learned several things i didn’t know. I had only heard about the cotton gin in my history book. Coming from Long Island, the “rawest” cotton I’d ever seen was the cotton balls I bought at the grocery. I didn’t know a cotton plant till I was wandering through the cotton patch maze last year. I kinda looked like the caveman that saw fire for the first time. Anyway, I didn’t realise that the cotton gin only separated the cotton seeds from the cotton. Until 1950 somthing, cotton was picked by hand and put into sacks. Amy said she could only pick about 100 pounds of cotton a day but others picked 200-300 pounds per day. The sacks were weighed and payment was contingent upon weight and how clean the cotton was. By clean, they mean cotton and seeds with little to no bits of plant or bulb mixed in.

I also learned about clover. I’d seen clover mixed in with grass and all but never paid much attention to it. Apparently, farmers plant clover crops during a fields off season because they are rich in nitrogen. Then at the end of the season, the clovers are turned into the earth and it helps the earth restore the nutrients used the previous season. Clover is NOT what we find in cloves (cigarettes). There are actually cloves that are grown in tropical climates.

After we finished wandering through the cotton patch, we talked about corn and then started the corn maze. The girls wanted me to stay with them through the maze. I decided to do the maze since there was nothing else to do. The maze is cut out as Rutherford County, TN. The major communities are marked with signs that have the history and a number. We were doing ok, until we got to the back left corner. We were writing the numbers next to the stars that mark where the communities are in the maze. We got off track somehow.

All in all, we found a little over half the communities and the girls were ready to move on. They were tired and it was rather hot in the maze with the sun beating down on us. We all dressed for the cold and suffered for it. They learned about the history of some of the communities, as did I, and they told me some additional information that wasn’t on the signs. I never knew that Sam Davis was a child who was hung as a spy during the Civil War. I just always assumed (and we all know what happens when you do that) that Sam Davis was a grown man who did something great. Eaglesville was named because a freakishly large Eagle was killed in the hills behind the town.

It truly is amazing what you learn when you shut your mouth and open your ears.

The Tell Me Experiment – The Late Traveler

I was sitting in my speech class on the first day and the instructor told us to, as an assignment, go to a party. That’s right, were were to go to a party. I didn’t, of course, cause I don’t go to parties. It’s not my scene. The assignment called for us to strike up a conversation with someone and just listen. We weren’t allowed to share stories back, offer advice or anything. All we could do was ask them to tell us more or to elaborate. After tonight’s encounter, I’ve decided to keep it up and write about the people I meet.

Fast forward to tonight, Monday 12 October 2009. There was something going on in the theatre and I was nosy. We took a test in a classroom that had computers then were set free until 7 when we had to regroup in our proper class room. I wandered through the art gallery looking at exhibits which consisted of pictures of signs through out Middle TN that were mad at the Columbia Neon Sign Company. There were blue prints, pictures, drawings, and even a box of old contracts and ledger pages dating back to the 1940s. But that didn’t tell me what was going on in the theatre.

I suffered through an hour of class then during break wandered to the far side of building, past the theatre, to that restroom to clean out my coffee cup and get some water to put my powdered tea into. While in the loo, I heard a strange sound outside the door. I surmised that someone was coming with some sort of cane or walker and opened the door. A woman about 5’2” dressed in a black sweater over a red top and black pants came in using a walker with wheels in the front and tennis balls on the back legs of it. She thanked me for holding the door and headed for the handicapped stall. I held the door open for her again and she closed it behind her.

I finished cleaning and filling my cup and then repinned my hair to stall for time till the lady emerged from the stall. I knew she’d need help with the door again and it wasn’t too much trouble to wait a moment. She emerged a few moments later and teased me that I was very pretty already and didn’t need to fix my hair anymore. I told her I was repinning it so it wouldn’t fall in my face while I was writing notes. She asked me if I was a student and I said yes. She asked what I was studying to do and I gave her the reader’s digest version. She told me that in her day education wasn’t that important and that I was smart to get one. By that time she was done washing her hands and was and was ready to head back to the theatre.

As I held open the door for her again, I asked her what was going on. She said the Kiawanas were having their yearly fund raiser. They have some sort of travel presentation come and you can purchase DVDs of different countries. So she was telling me that she had traveled to England and France and several places in the US. She wanted to travel more. She said she and her husband had started to travel in their seventies because when he had retired, she was still working. She then had a stroke which stopped their traveling for awhile.

As I followed her down the wrong hall way, she mentioned that her husband had been in WWII and that he was in Japan and the Pacific theatre. He had done some traveling then and then they traveled together in their retirement. She told me I needed to get out and see things, that it would be good for me. I asked her if she needed help finding her way and she laughed and said if I wasn’t there she’d be lost for sure. We walked back to the lobby and I walked her to the theatre door and held it for her. She thanked me again and wished me a good night.

I didn’t tell me her name, and I didn’t tell her mine, but I think I know enough information that I could find her again. I’m tempted to attend a Kiawanas meeting and see if she’ll tell me more about her travels and her husband’s time over seas. I wonder if they belong to the American Legion? Stay tuned to see if I can catch up with her again.