perspective

“I fixed Ernest’s roof and he said I could have all the peaches I could crawl up there and pick. He didn’t know I liked to climb trees.” – Pa

A few weeks ago The Euro and I crawled into the West Virginia mountains to visit my grandparents. We sat on the porch and Pa talked about how you couldn’t drink the town water – even if it did cost $80 a month – but how it didn’t matter because ‘Richard still lets me use his spring. I just keep these jugs and fill ’em up.’ How food prices were going up but how the fish he caught over the summer were prettier than they’d been in years. How he packed four family freezers full of fresh fruit.

He talked too about filling his wood box and his coal bins and about cleaning out the gutters and mixing concrete for a new set of stairs.

I thought, again, My grandfather shouldn’t have to have it so hard and asked him “Do you ever sit around and wonder at how different things are? Back when you were young and now. How different things could have been or might still be?”

This is what he told me:

“You know, a lot of things have changed. A lot of people aint around any more. I think about that a lot. Sometimes. But it don’t bother me like all the talk going on now. What bothers me is people saying ‘I don’t know how we’re gonna make it. Times is so tough’.

“I can’t understand it. Everybody talking about the hard times we’re in. They don’t know a thing about it. That’s the trouble. Talking about hard times and such. They don’t have no idea what hard times is. People starving in other parts of the world. Let me tell you, there’s all kinds of things that start to not-matter real fast when you can’t put food in your belly.

“Buddy I know about that stuff. I aint kidding you. Back when we was raised up there was times there wasn’t things to eat. And winters! You aint never seen such winters. You couldn’t even walk in the snow it was so deep. I remember wearing old thin shirts. Shoes you had to strap on cause they wasn’t nothing much but bottoms. I seen many a day where all there was to eat was a little meat grease and some green onions. I had that a lot. And it tasted real good too.”

He laughed.

“It was years ago. Man, that comes back to me whenever I see people filling their plates so full they gotta throw half of it away. Then standing there, shaking their heads and rubbing their bellies and talking about how hard times is.

“Why, I never had it so good. Neither have they. They just don’t know it.”