GRAPEVINES
AND STEALING
A few years ago, when my parents built an addition onto our modest
farmhouse and moved here from the Middle West, our side of the house gained a
covered porch. I planted a Kousa
dogwood in front of it, right in front of where the western sun buns into
tired eyes, and furnished it with a swing for two and a grapevine.
When we first lived here thirty years ago I discovered an ancient vine
all but strangled by forsythia gone mad, and rescued it.
That vine fell to the addition, though a cutting from it grows on the
other side of the house and will set grapes this year for the first time, but
the farmer brought me a young vine fourteen years ago, when the addition was
completed and the porch was built, and it has flourished.
In spring summer and fall I rock in the swing, read, drink gin and
tonic in the evening and orange juice and coffee in the morning.
I look at the grape vine, the Kousa which just now is covered with
blossom, and the old silver maple at the edge of the street, full of holes
which house squirrels and starlings, and often in the fall crows sitting on
its gaunt branches jeering at everyone.
It makes me happy. The
swing is built for two but usually there is just me and some friendly ghosts,
most notably that of my mother who died seven years ago on Saturday and is
still deeply mourned, as they said in Victorian times.
I love the vine. It’s
the friendly Concord grape, one of the few things that remain truly seasonal
and thus tastes of late summer always. The
vine itself, which is as thick as my arm and has flattened itself through the
floor of the porch scrawls a haggard pattern on the railing all winter and
right through early spring and then suddenly throws out long green branches
with curling tendrils at the ends and along the sides and the skeletal little
grapelets jut out from the sides like line drawings.
If I am not careful they’ll ramp over the whole porch and the swing
and hide the silver maple, but this year I am careful and tie back and prune
and keep my unimpeded view.
When I am sitting in the swing, the grapes and the vines and the silver
maple and the dogwood seem so beautiful, so important.
**********************************
Why do people think it’s alright to steal from farmers?
I have been thinking about this question for many months.
Last summer I wanted to write about it, but I couldn’t figure out how
to write about it objectively. I
wanted to understand how it is that someone can take a walk through a field
and pick lettuce and tomatoes and onions and take them home without paying and
yet that same person would not dream of taking money out of the farmer’s
pocket.
Now I think I know. Maybe
I’m wrong, and some other farmer’s wife will correct me, or even one of
the thieves will write to me and say no, that’s not why I do it, THIS is
why...
Here is what I think: I
think that people think it’s alright to steal from farmers because of the
dirt. Farmers are always dirty.
They come home from work covered with mud in the winter and dust in the
summer. Their jeans wear out in
two weeks, their sneakers are a wreck in a month.
They work in the dirt, and what they make comes from the dirt.
They put a little seed, or a tiny plant, into the dirt, and it grows
into a flower, a cabbage, a lettuce, an onion.
You would think that people would see this as a miracle and farmers as
angels, but they do not, except in articles between the covers of romantic
magazines. Common as dirt, my
mother used to say, and though the expression has gone out of usage the
sentiment has not.
Something else: in
Illinois where I grew up the noun “farmer” was usually accompanied by the
adjective “dumb”. And people
are always surprised to discover that the farmer went to university and did
not major in agriculture.
Some stealing stories, all of them true:
The old guy who put a six-pack of eggplant on the floor of his car and
walked into the stand to pay for one six-pack of tomatoes.
The “old friend” who came early in the morning to “help out”
amd was discovered to have a trunkful of hangers and vegetable plants hidden
in his car after he asked the farmer for a discount on a flat of tomatoes.
And argued about the price. And
came back even after he had been caught and told to get out.
The people who ask after his mother (dead for ten years) and tell him
what good friends they were and try to get discounts on a six-pack of tomatoes
and a parsley plant. And argue
about the price.
The old lady who stole walnuts and drove away in
a Mercedes.
The sister of a former employee who loudly demanded a discount.
And: “You’re not going
to charge for that cucumber plant , are you?
It’s the last one.”
The people who take one plant out of a six-pack and stow it in a pocket
or purse.
Every day the farmer has a new story.
The wealthy landscaper who has a fleet of trucks and a house at the
shore and a house in Italy and tried to drive away with a crate of figs.
In his Cadillac.
Why do people think it’s all right to steal from farmers?
Because they work in the dirt and their produce is dirty, and dirt is
cheap, therefore it ought to be free.
***********************************
It’s summer and the grapevine is unwinding itself all over the
railings, peonies are in bloom, roses about to burst, the leaves on the trees
are new and young, the Kousa is full of blossom, I sit on the swing and gaze
at the new moon, there are blessedly no mosquitoes yet.
These seem like the most important things in the world.
I don’t have to steal them.
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