Saturdays Down South
How family and hard work reveal the true meaning of wealth
Every year, without question, my two brothers and I dreaded one time more than any other. We grew up in the strange spaces between a growing urban city and a small-town soul. My father set up his medical practice in Lexington, KY and we spent most of our days riding bikes everywhere we went.
Lexington was a growing town but still maintained that small town feel. We could stay out all day and have plenty to do, with no real risk of danger and we’d never pass the same place twice. My younger brother and I spent plenty of time together, being so close in age.
We were typical boys in a house full of boys. That had its moments. My older brother had me by four years so there wasn’t a lot of palling around with him. Time apart, age gaps, and epic skirmishes could not break the bond we all shared when it came to the dread of late fall/early winter.
My grandfather on my dad’s side was C. R. Hager, or Grandpa C as we called him. He lived about 24 minutes due south of our home. The C stood for Cornelius and the R didn’t stand for anything. Kind of like a place holder we all accepted.
Almost every weekend in the late fall/early winter, my dad would pack up the three of us along with chain saws, enough fuel for the day’s job, work gloves and a case of Mountain Dew and head to Grandpa C’s farm. The entire property was a modest 38 acres tucked away on the edge of a town called Nicholasville.
It was a picture of small-town America.
The house always reminded me of something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. I remember the first time I saw “Freedom from Want” and had to double check that it wasn’t my grandmother setting out the turkey for a Sunday lunch.
Sunday was a non-negotiable at the Hager farm. My aunt Nela, Uncle Dan, and my dad brought all the families together for lunch after church on a weekly basis. You better be sick or dying if you missed that meal. In all truth, you had to be sick or dying to want to miss that meal. My grandmother Ru was the best cook in five counties. In her later years, we missed a lot of things about her but nothing more than her cooking and hospitality.
Sundays were a treat but there was something entirely different about a Saturday headed south. We knew we had to be up early, and no friends dared spend Friday night with us less they be asked to join the fun. The smell of the oil and gas mix, the chill of the wind and the sound of Casey Kasem’s top forty on the radio all grew stronger as the farm grew closer. The crisp Kentucky air has a smell like fresh buttered popcorn in late fall.
I’m sure it’s true of most states when the leaves decay and smolder in the fields but to me it just smelled like home. The colors seemed to melt into a sweet inevitable grey as I stood there and watched, Saturday after Saturday, the Southern Railroad cars passing through the back of the farm. Now that seemed like an adventure. “Where does it go daddy?” I remember asking. “A long way son. As far as you’d ever want to go and right back here. That train is how everyone gets what they need.”
The only sound that could overpower the train cars was that chainsaw. My uncle brought a gas-powered log splitter that was bigger and scarier but there was something so incredibly raw and powerful to me about those chainsaws. I was never old enough to use them before the farm was gone, but I watched and felt like it was a rite of passage to be handed a tool like that. There was a danger of not respecting it, the power of what it could accomplish not just for the job at hand but the whole family each winter. It always held my imagination and called me to earn the trust of those men.
Once the work began, I often remember thinking, isn’t there a guy that drives through the neighborhood selling wood? Can’t we just buy all this from him?
Why do the grownups in my life still do things like cut their own wood or mow their own yards?
In short, I was a little spoiled. Even so, I longed to hear them call my name even if it was just to stack wood, but that didn’t mean I connected with the value of what we were doing. One thing I did latch onto, any job they could give me was a chance to prove I could be trusted and that meant everything to me.
We weren’t exactly growing up in the 1800’s, but each family had wood burning fireplaces. The wood that warmed the main two rooms of the house in the winter depended on those tools each fall. I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to do more than just stack the wood in the back of the truck. My grandfather pulled me over by the side of the pond and handed me an axe. The head had a sharp end on one side and a flat end that looked like the oversized head of a hammer on the other. There were no trees around, so I knew Granpa C wasn’t about to ask me to chop something down. “Look here son.” he said, “This is a maul and a wedge. You put that log in the fire like it is, and it could take a week to catch. We’re going to break it up into smaller pieces, so it burns better.” I sure wish I’d listened better to what he was saying. All I cared about was him telling me when to hit what!
After a brief tutorial, which I still don’t remember, he picked up what looked like a huge metal door stop and placed it sharp side down on the log. He looked back at me and told me to take the flat end of the axe head and tap that sucker down into the log.
Now it’s amazing some of the things you see as a child, over and over, and never really take in. I had seen them splitting logs for years and even pulled the pieces from the piles as they fell apart, but it never occurred to me, or maybe I just never noticed, that someone held their hand down there like that while the axe man drove that wedge into the log. Suddenly the task I had been given held a reverence that rivaled the chainsaw.
Was my grandfather really going to just trust me to swing an axe that weighed more than I did into a nail the size of an Oreo Cookie? Was he really going to hold that wedge for me while I let that hammer fall like a wrecking ball from my string bean arms? I got my answer just about the time I raised that axe over my head.
“Whoa boy! Hang on now son. You ever had to start a nail?” He asked.
“Yes sir. Dad and I built a ramp for my bike, and I got to help.”
“Well, there you go.” He replied as he handed me the wedge and walked back to his chainsaw. It took me a minute, but I realized what was going on soon after. This was not the act of trust I had envisioned. Nevertheless, it was the job he gave me.
I don’t remember how much wood I split that day, but I can tell you it wasn’t enough. I got more wedges stuck in more logs and asked for help more times than I can remember. When my dad came over after finishing with the trees he just smiled and nodded as he gathered the remaining pieces up and carried them over to my uncle. The power splitter would finish the rest of the work that I couldn’t. Soon it would be time to stack it all up and head back home. No shame for the wood I never got to, no condemnation for my small contribution compared to the others. Just a father watching a father bless his son with work.
That was Saturdays for us in the fall. At the time we moaned a groaned like we were being called into the draft for war, but once we got to work everything seemed so clear. A simple task with a simple but significant outcome. Watch and learn. Be faithful in what’s been asked of you. Be aware of the work those around you are doing and respect the effort.
My brothers and I were learning what it meant to provide, what it meant to take care of those who depended on you. We sure hated not being with our friends on those days, but something was being seared into our conscience like a cattle prod.
It was more than just the value of hard work that soaked into the fabric of our souls out in those fields. There was an understanding growing in our character that would become part of the foundation of the rest of our lives. Placing our hands on the very thing that would, in part, sustain us, kept us in touch with the real purpose and potential of the wealth around us. We knew that farm didn’t come cheap.
We knew our father’s tireless work and medical practice gave us resources we didn’t deserve. Somewhere on that farm I watched as grown men became camels in the eyes of needles. I watched my grandfather live out the ideas he fought hard to put in place as the superintendent of the school system during the civil rights movement. I spent time with my dad that I never could have back in town
No one could hear his pager going off over all that equipment and I loved that we weren’t going anywhere even if it did. I watched my older brother as he was trusted with that chainsaw and wanted to be just like him. I still remember cutting down my first tree with an axe and dragging it back to the others. It was so small it didn’t even need splitting. Grandpa C cut it into logs just the same and never said a word.
My brothers and I often look back on those days and wonder what kind of juvenile moron wishes the family farm away. The foolishness of that wish hit home when Grandpa C became too old to look after the place anymore and his kids were understandably too busy with their careers. Something set in on me that seemed so out of place when that happened.
How could we have gotten so busy with life that we lost touch with what seemed to give us so much of it?
When did we take our hands off the saws, setting them down for some other tool that promised riches but robbed us of our wealth? We had all set about taking what was given and making more of it, but we never stopped to ask why.
Many years would pass, and the fields grew over before the family finally decided to sell the land. I think it’s now a Walgreens with a small neighborhood behind it. Looking at it now, you would never imagine the men that stood in those fields, inspiring the souls of us boys as we worked away. If you stood by the pond today, you would strain to hear the Southern Railroad over the tractor trailers hauling goods down main street and out to the bypass.
The farm is gone but the question remains.
Why do rich men spend their money trying to buy more time and resources?
Why do they pay someone to mow their yard while they drift away from the true value of the wealth they so desperately seek.
This begs another question.
Why do wealthy men still do the things they could pay others to easily?
Wouldn’t their time be better spent doing other things? Why would a wealthy man bother to mow his own yard? The answer sits smoldering in a field as a young man breathes in the autumn air. It calls each of us to believe that even though the very word of God says it’s beyond difficult, it’s not impossible to be wealthy and still be in touch.
In fact, maybe it’s one and the same.
Maybe being wealthy isn’t really about who has the most toys. True wealth is what you can take with you. True wealth is beyond man’s ability to measure and accumulates when you aren’t even looking.
My experiences down on the farm have given me a wealth of lessons I lean on every single day of my life. I was never smart enough to study and be a doctor like my dad. I never took school seriously enough to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and teach others. I do know this.
Rich men don’t mow their yards, but wealthy men do.
