Uncle Lon was what everyone called a tough old bird.
As I was told as a child, he was made up in some high percentage of Cherokee Indian. I have no idea whether that is true either in terms of percentage or tribe, but I do genuinely believe it is true that his heritage was Native American. He had the facial features, and his skin color was the hue that would cause Caucasians to refer to Native Americans as Red Skins. Of course, it was shamefully derogatory, but it was also shamefully descriptive.
Uncle Lon was married to my mother’s younger sister and they had a couple of daughters — both older than me. I thought Aunt Chlorine and her daughters Jimmy and Juanita were wonderful members of our extended family. Salt of the earth.
But my earliest memories of Uncle Lon are that he scared the hell out of me…and he enjoyed it. And I didn’t like him very much for it.
He was an incorrigible jokester, and was always looking for ways to tease me. Most of the time, he liked to tease me about what a good-for-nothing my father was, which would especially anger me. I would eventually come to understand that he had great respect and love for my father; but once he knew how to get under my skin with this teasing, he was relentless. Even after Dad had explained to me what Uncle Lon was doing and I could see it…I still didn’t like him. He seemed like a bully to me even though I didn’t know what a bully really was yet.
While I never knew his age for certain, I believe he was a little younger than Dad; but not much. Uncle Lon had learned the masonry trade somewhere early in his life and was good at it. I know this to be so, because Dad said so. Dad had no tolerance for poor workmanship of any kind from any tradesman. But he held Uncle Lon’s practice of his craft in high regard. I wouldn’t say the two were ever close, but they “got along”, as the phrase went.
Before we got the John Deere B tractor, Uncle Lon would come to our farm, harness up a team of mules and would cultivate and plant one of our tillable fields. One particular summer, the crop was corn. The crop had been planted and was at the three-leaf stage and ready for its first cultivation.
On this particular occasion, I knew Uncle Lon had come over and I knew from having seen it done dozens of times before that he had taken the mules to a lower field where he hitched them to a plow, put the tied-together harness reins under his arms and around his back, put his hands on the plow handles, commanded the mules to move forward and commenced to go from row to row, with the plow turning the earth beneath his feet. Controlling the plow and the team of mules is tricky work, and doing this without damaging the young corn stalks is a test of strength and experience.
As Uncle Lon started the plowing, all went well, as they say, until it didn’t.
My memory of all this picks up when I noticed Uncle Lon at the big 60-gallon metal water trough that sat along the fence between the barn and the chicken house. When I saw him, Uncle Lon was bending over the trough, cupping water in his hands and throwing the water on his face. He looked to be in genuine distress, and as I got closer to him, I saw that his face and arms were bloody and there were numerous cuts and scratches on both.
He told me the story about the mules getting spooked at something — maybe a rabbit running across their path — and bolting from their easy walking pace to a full run to escape whatever they had perceived as a threat. Uncle Lon still had the reins around his back and the plow in his hands. When the mules turned from their path down the row of corn and burst into a run, poor Uncle Lon had no choice but to try and keep his feet beneath him, keep the plow in front of him and, if possible, dig his heels in to stop the runaway mules.
He failed.
As the event progressed, they tore a path across the field, dragging the plow and Uncle Lon in their wake and didn’t stop until they reached the fence line at the far end of the field. By that time, he had been whipped about without remorse, thrown to the ground multiple times, all while trying desperately to keep away from the sharp blades of the plow.
When it was over, Uncle Lon was shaken, injured and in need of some serious succor. He tied the now spent mules to a fence post and then made his way up to the barn to wash off the blood and dirt and assess the damage that had been done.
That’s when I saw him and we sat together for quite a while, determining that nothing was broken that wouldn’t heal in its time. Interestingly, there were no jokes or teasing. We just talked about why mules do what they sometimes do and about how quickly routine becomes high drama.
I tried to get him to come on up to the house and let Mom take a look at his wounds, but he wouldn’t do it. He just slapped his knees, got up, said he still had work to do and set off back down to the lower pasture to finish what he had come for.
I don’t know why it took getting dragged across a field of corn for Uncle Lon to show me the enormous interior strength he possessed. Maybe the real question is why it took Uncle Lon getting dragged across a field of corn for ME to see the enormous strength he possessed.
Oddly, the teasing days were at an end after that, as I recall.
I gained a lot of respect for my uncle that day. A tough old bird indeed.
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