Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 14:10:37 -0500
From: “N.A. Booko”
Subject: Cultivating a memory . . .
When I was a child of maybe 11, living in a mill village, all the houses had space for a vegetable garden. Some were small, but our’s was quite large. One spring, I decided to plant my own little garden. I ordered a manual push cultivator from Sears, Robuck and Co. Probably all of $12.00. It have a big iron font wheel and two plowing attachments. That was the late 1940s.
One season did it for me. Too many other tempting things to do. I put the cultivator aside in our storage building. Years later, I had gone to N.Y.C. to study, an older cousin wrote and asked if she could borrow the tiller that season- It was 1957. I thought she had returned it, since my folks never mentioned it to me. Long story short, she hadn’t returned by the time I moved back to N.C. in the early 1970s. That is when I confronted her- Sure enough, my little tiller was still in her storage shed. It was in remarkable condition. She too, had only used it one time.
I brought it home to Chatham County- Tried using it in a new garden and man, was that work. Back breaking. I bought a gasoline tiller and got the job done. My little tiller got left by the side of the garden for several season- I noticed its wooden handles were becoming weathered and rust was covering the metal. I moved it under cover, but eventually parts of the handles crumbled. But it was still my little tiller. Its big iron wheel still strong and impressive.
This past Saturday was sunny and I got the idea to till a little garden and plant some seeds that had been around far too long. Lettuce, mustard greens, etc. Small chance they would germinate, but who knows the internal workings of a seed? I went to the garage for my modern electric tiller- There, to my wonderment, my old manual garden tiller was perched on top of the electric tiller- It had to be moved in order to get what I wanted.
Then the idea hit me- Why not, just for fun and memory-sake, use my childhood tiller to plow at least a tiny portion of the new garden. I did. It was just a difficult as before, but oh, the wonderful feeling it gave me. My old friend hadn’t let me down . . and I’m gonna take care of it for the rest of our days . . .
N.A. Booko
N.A. Booko lives, writes and gardens in Chatham County, where in some parts of of the tilled land, I am still a really big wheel . . .