The Preacher, Hell, August, Lefty’s Italian Tomatoes and a few other things.

okieinexile · 08-11-2006, 03:20 AM

The Preacher, Hell, August, Lefty’s Italian Tomatoes and a few other things.

By Bobby Neal Winters

For everything there is a season or so says the Preacher. When this appears, it will be the middle of the month of August, or so close to it that it’s not worth arguing about. It’s the time of year I start thinking about Hell.

There is a reason for this that is more than the heat. When I was a kid and went to the revivals at my church this time of year, the concept of Hell became all the more real to me. The sermons were much more affective.
“Shape up and quit your sinning, or you can look outside and that’s what you’ll get forever and ever.”

No evangelist ever said that of course, but, to a kid, he didn’t need to. That was the inference we drew. Yet these days, having a grown-up’s perspective, I might think differently.

“Preacher,” I might say through a smirk, “I’ve lived though more than forty Augusts in the southern Great Plains. You can’t scare me.”

I am only joking, of course. August is not really hell, but if you think in a broad, poetic way, August is like a threat of imminent death. It helps you to focus on the important.

August burns away the unnecessary, the distractions. You have to figure out what really needs to be done, and you have to do it in the two hours of the daylight in which doing things is not absolutely suicidal.

For example, I’ve taken to going on my walks first thing in the morning. I set my alarm at six, but sometimes I wake up earlier and lay in bed until I either go back to sleep or decide that I can’t. On the mornings I can’t, I get up and walk as soon as there is enough light to put one foot in front of the other. I did that this morning. Somewhere along the way—and the secret I will take to my grave—I saw a man out stealing his neighbor’s paper. And he saw me seeing him steal it. We each stopped for a moment and looked at each other, and then we spoke, neither saying what the other knew.
It’s August, such things as stealing papers won’t be important again until after Labor Day.

The grasshoppers have been making that sound. Either you know the one I’m talking about or you don’t. It’s the sound that calls boys to catch them, hang them on a hook, and toss them in the water where there will be coolness, wetness, and then the release of death.

“Catch me, gore me, and drown me,” they say. “I’d die in the belly of a bass just to be wet again.”

The garden vegetables are getting ripe, the tomatoes in particular. My friend Lefty from Frontenac gave us a mess or two. Though he is not Italian himself, one of his Italian friends from Capaldo taught him the secret technique that only Italians know. It is passed from father to son and only two in a family can know it at once. Lefty didn’t tell me why he was let in on the secret, but I got the feeling that was for my own protection.

I think you have to sing to them and pour red wine on their roots, but that’s just a guess.

Lefty’s not the only one with produce. On the home front, our grapes and peaches have started to get ripe. I grow three varieties, green and pink and purple, one vine of each. We’ve already run through the green ones. The pink ones are ready to eat now, and they’ve never been sweeter. I have to think it has something to do with the hot dry weather, but maybe I am just trying to rationalize bad weather. To put purpose where there is one.
It’s August, and sometimes the sun causes our brains to overheat.

The peaches are perfect too. They are Indian peaches we transplanted up from Oklahoma a few years back, and their fruit is red. I stepped out briefly this afternoon, pulled one off the tree, and ate it fuzz and all. The heat from the sun had warmed up the juice inside. As the juice was running down my throat and dripping off my chin and with the fuzz sticking to my lips, I looked at the red flesh I’d just exposed and felt like a carnivore, one who’d just ran down a small, round, sugary animal.

It’s August, and we think strange things like that.

(Bobby Winters is a Professor of Mathematics, writer, and speaker. You may contact him at bwinters1@cox.net or visit his web site at www.okieinexile.com.)

flowperson · 08-11-2006, 11:43 PM

Just sublime, Bobby !

Self-referential truth is the best kind with which to teach, but you already knew that, eh?

Keep 'em coming.

flow....

okieinexile · 08-13-2006, 03:06 PM

Glad you liked it, flow.

InLove · 08-16-2006, 07:31 PM

Hi and Peace from Texas, Bobby

Long time since I posted on your forum. Been saving up all your articles to read and send to friends. I intend to devour all the juicy stuff soon, fuzz and all, as you say.

Quote:

Originally Posted by okieinexile

August burns away the unnecessary, the distractions. You have to figure out what really needs to be done, and you have to do it in the two hours of the daylight in which doing things is not absolutely suicidal.

I have been unable to help much with the lawn this year due to an illness which is getting better. My husband, who did a great job alone in my absence, has been coming home from work every day this week and looking longingly at the yard, proclaiming each evening, "I am going to mow tomorrow". I told him to wait for the predicted cold front that might come on the weekend. It will only be in the upper nineties, then.

InPeace,
InLove

okieinexile · 08-17-2006, 12:28 AM

I think I am going to mow Saturday Morning. If I get up early enough, that is.

InLove · 08-19-2006, 03:01 PM

LOL--I can't resist:

It is now 9:04 on Saturday morning, Okie. Do you know where your lawnmower is?

InPeace,
(In Silliness)
InLove

okieinexile · 08-20-2006, 12:21 AM

Oi! The grass has stopped growing and I have stopped mowing!

I, Brian · 08-20-2006, 10:51 AM

Our lawnmower broke, and that's enough excuse for me - for the time being at least.

InLove · 08-20-2006, 09:50 PM

I thought about making sun tea, but I am afraid it will burn.

okieinexile · 08-22-2006, 02:48 AM

The farmers are having to feed the hens chipped ice to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs.

earl · 08-23-2006, 12:01 AM

Hi fellow (Okie in exile) Kansan. Just got done mowing the yard & as you know we had about 5-6 inches of rain here this week. I hate, absolutely hate mowing. As far as I'm concerned you probably should have entitled this one "I fought the law(n) and the law(n) won."

Goin' down to see our Okie son tomorrow. Have a good one, earl

okieinexile · 08-24-2006, 01:07 AM

You must have gotten the one we missed. We got one where the drops were about 6 inches apart.

Where 'bouts you from?

InLove · 08-25-2006, 12:58 PM

If I'm not mistaken, I think earl is on the road right about now. He'll probably check in soon.

Our AC went out a couple of days ago. This is not an option. Bad news. Very, very bad.

Our son has been working in the AC business for about 4 months now. Good news. Very, very good.

We got some of that rain. Yup--drops about 6 inches apart. Winds strong enough to take down our patio table, umbrella and all, just in time for the sun to come back out full force. Gonna have to sit under the trees now. Call me crazy, but I'm almost certain that the birds know that I am friends with that black cat.

InPeace,
InLove

flowperson · 08-28-2006, 12:35 AM

Hi all !

We live in the driest desert in N. America...4 1/2 inches of rain per year. Don't have to mow anything anymore here unless you own a golf course, and most of them here have more rocks than grass. In June you just set the AC on 80 and let it run like that until the middle of September. But it's "dry" heat ( hahahahahaha !) and fairly bearable unless it goes above 105.

Keep smiling mowers. I used to do that along with the "shovel the white stuff" thing. I don't like predictions because people plan and G-d laughs... but I intend to do neither ever again..."mow and shovel" that is.

flow....

cavalier · 08-28-2006, 01:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flowperson

Hi all !

We live in the driest desert in N. America...4 1/2 inches of rain per year. Don't have to mow anything anymore here unless you own a golf course, and most of them here have more rocks than grass. In June you just set the AC on 80 and let it run like that until the middle of September. But it's "dry" heat ( hahahahahaha !) and fairly bearable unless it goes above 105.

Keep smiling mowers. I used to do that along with the "shovel the white stuff" thing. I don't like predictions because people plan and G-d laughs... but I intend to do neither ever again..."mow and shovel" that is.

flow....

Me either. Here in Taiwan hardly anyone has a lawn, apart from trees, the only green I can see from window are the rice fields. Snow on the highest mountains is headline news.

Wouldn't mind some of that dry heat though, from May through October it's so humid here you get a sweat on doing nothing.