It Was Good

I had the pleasure and privilege to grow up on a farm in Southwest Virginia. In point of fact, I was pretty much just 'across the ridge' from the creator of this blog for all my formative years and didn't even realize it. Neither did I fully realize at the time how privileged I truly was, nor how intense the pleasures were while growing up.

Certainly, there was a vast amount of hard work that had to be done. One thing about living on a working farm, you seldom have the opportunity to get bored. There's simply too much to do. Between feeding livestock, milking cows, mending fences, tending to the garden and whatever other 'cash crop' you happen to be relying on at the time, your time is very seldom ever your own. At least not for very long.

I have often described myself as an 'only among four'. I have two older brothers and a younger sister. On the upper side, the gap spans 12 years. On the lower end of the spectrum, the gap spans seven years and a different gender. Just as I was getting old enough to begin to explore the world, my brothers were already moving off into their own worlds. There would be occasional concentric orbits, but never the complete merging of habits and hobbies a closer birth order would have created.

So, as I grew up, a great deal of my time was spent alone ranging over the pastures of our farm toting a sprayer full of weed killer, or battling cedar sprouts with a pair of by-pass pruners, or hoeing endless rows of tobacco. The days were long and hot. The work wasn't always difficult, but it certainly seemed endless. The harder work came about when the brothers and my father were around. That's when the heavy lifting of building barns, working cattle, putting up hay, or dozens of other chores had to be done.

Through it all, I didn't feel overly privileged. I still remember the satisfaction and accomplishment I felt when the last stick of tobacco was hung, or the last hay bale was stacked, or the last steeple was driven into a fence post, or the last stick of firewood was plopped into the woodbox. At the time, I didn't realize that was a privilege. But it was. In so many ways.

We were privileged that we lived on our own land and could make what we would of it. The limits were, primarily, our will, ingenuity, and the land's inherent nature. Some parts of the farm grew better tobacco than others. Some strips of the pasture grew thicker hay. We could manipulate and work around those things.

I was privileged that I had excellent role models in learning how to work and how to live. Work worth doing was worth doing well. There were times when you could work smart, but not hard. Other times, there was no other solution than to just 'grab it and growl' as my dad often said.

I was privileged to grow up in a place and time when good friends could be counted on to help you work and struggle and suffer just as surely as they could be counted on to play, laugh, and joke around.

At some point near the end of high school my friends and I began to catch on. Perhaps it was two-a-day football practice when we noticed that the 'town kids' were exhausted near the end of the morning practice, and while we were tired, we weren't spent. We understood, with at least a small degree of pride, that when practice was over, we were going home to work for a few hours before we came back for the evening practice. Our town buddies were going to crash under their air conditioners.

We were privileged and we slowly realized what a great privilege it was to be from a place and time were it was good to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and, if necessary, self-contained. I'm from the little community in Lee County, VA called Stickleyville. When people once used to ask if I was from 'the sticks', I could very proudly say 'Yes'.

Perhaps one of the proudest moments I had came when I took a job with a cruise line not long after graduating from college. In one of the lounges on the ship, there was a large display case filled with photos of the staff. The photos listed the person's name and their 'hometown'. I noticed that virtually everyone had listed their state capital as their 'hometown'. I knew this wasn't true. It seemed to be more important to list a recognizable city than their actual place of origin.

Not me.

On my picture which has many long years ago been tossed by some ship's photographer, I listed Stickleyville, VA as my hometown. How could I not? It was a place of privilege.