Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Sir Winston Churchill
C.: I’ll go see d.c. and we can write our blog. Then, I can relax while Tucker’s training. He wanted me to train with him, but I feigned having a sprained back leg. He’ll never know, because he doesn’t have time to read. He takes his training very seriously. (knock)
d.: Who is it?
C.: It’s me, Cal.E., your neighbor and co-blogger.
d.: Oh, what a nice surprise. Come on in, Cal.E. What brings you here in the middle of the day?
C.: It’s time to write our blog.
d.: Okay, what do you want to write about today?
C.: Well, you were going to tell us the story of your uncle, the outlier who was a cotton farmer.
d.: Really, Cal.E. I think I would have remembered if I had something planned to write in our blog today. I have a….what’s it called when someone can remember everything very well?
C.: An eidetic memory?
d.: Yes, I have one of those. So, using my….
C.: Eidetic memory?
d.: I would have thought of the correct word at some point…Cal.E., is it?
C.: Yes.
d.: I’ll be right with you, as soon as I find my shoes.
C.: Maybe I can help. What do they look like?
d.: They’re gray with black soles, and are really comfortable.
C.: Would those be the ones on your feet?
d.: So they are. Now, we can get on with the blog. What did you want to write about today?
C.: Your uncle, the cotton farmer.
d.: How do you know about him?
C.: Can you just tell the story, please.
d.: Okay. I actually put that quote at the beginning of the blog from the greatest orator of the twentieth century, Sir Winston Churchill, because I think it describes my uncle. He was an outlier in many ways.
C.: Because he made money farming, when most people lose money and go bankrupt?
d.: Yes. My uncle did inherit a lot of his land and equipment from his father, which put him at an advantage over most other farmers.
C.: Was he well-educated as well?
d.: That depends on your definition of that phrase. I don’t think that my uncle had a college education, but he was a wise man because he knew how to use the knowledge he gathered from his dad as a kid working on the family farm and expand on it. He saw the “oil crises” coming in the early 1970s, so he converted a lot of his equipment to natural gas. He reasoned that, even though natural gas was more expensive at the time and it costs a lot to convert equipment to a different fuel source, the conversion would pay for itself over time.
My uncle was proven to be correct when petroleum became in short supply. He had plenty of fuel to run his equipment on, and he was one of the first cotton farmers to rotate his crops and plant legumes to replenish the soil.
C.: What’s a legume?
d.: A legume is a plant that produces food that matures under the ground. The two most popular are peanuts and soybeans. Before a lot of cotton farmers were aware that those crops replenish the soil instead of striping it of its minerals, my uncle discerned that growing soybeans was profitable. And farmers don’t need to rotate the fields legumes are grown in, unlike cotton. Since legumes replenish the soil, the soil actually grows richer, and that makes for a higher crop yield and more profits because of the crops' higher yield.
C.: But, weren’t a lot of cotton farmers rich before the supposed oil crisis of the last century?
d.: “Rich” is a subjective term, but cotton farmers did well in the Mississippi Delta for almost two-hundred years growing cotton without rotating their crops. They didn’t realize that they were stripping the soil by doing this.
C.: Why not?
d.: Because the soil in that area is so rich that their yield stayed consistent for many years. My uncle was one of the first farmers to realize he needed to rotate his crops after he noticed a slight dip in his crop’s yield. When he started to grow soybeans, he found out that it was a very profitable crop in addition to replenishing the soil.
C.: Your uncle sounds like a wise man.
d.: Wise, and maybe a little lucky as well. He lived to be almost ninety.
C.: Most farmers don’t live that long, do they?
C.: No, because they inhale (and sometimes ingest) many chemicals. My uncle also started smoking cigarettes when he was eleven. He was also known to enjoy an occasional beer and/or highball.
C.: But people who work at physical labor often imbibe after a hard day in the hot sun. It relaxes them.
d.: That’s true, but my uncle would enjoy his beer during his lunch break, as he chain-smoked cigarettes, lighting a new one off the “dead soldier.”
C.: And he lived to be almost ninety?
d.: He did. The joke in my family was that no virus or microorganism would dare approach my uncle out of fear.
C.: Because he was a big, scary guy?
d.: No, not really. He was average-sized, and he couldn’t use his right arm very much. I remember him hooking his right thumb into his belt to support that arm.
C.: What happened to his arm?
d.: Well, when my uncle was born, doctors weren’t well-versed about the hazards of large babies. He was a big baby, and he dislocated his right shoulder when he was born. However, the issue was never addressed properly, and the shoulder’s ligaments grew incorrectly. That was never corrected, so my uncle learned how to write and eat with his left hand, even though the left side of his brain obviously controlled his body. His handwriting was barely legible.
C. Was his handwriting worse than yours?
d.: It was, believe it or not. However, like everything else in his life, my uncle found a way to deal with it. He learned to be a lefty and succeeded where most people fail. That, I think, is because my uncle refused to ever give up on anything as long as he lived.
C.: Well, d.c., as usual, your story has inspired me. I’m going to call my husband and ask if he’ll come pick me up so that I can train with him. I’ll call him right now….
“Meow Z. Tongue, why are you calling me now?”