Sometimes history repeats itself but it can take a long time and a keen eye to recognize when it rolls around again.
Sixty years ago, between planting the crops and when the time came around to harvest them, we would often keep ourselves occupied fixing the fences on our farm. To a boy of 13, those fences seemed to go on forever and were constantly in need of fixing.
I was the designated helper, my Dad the chief fence fixer.
“Here, hold this,” I’d be ordered, as I dutifully held a tool, or a post or some wire. It seemed nothing that would involve using my brain was assigned to me. Mostly I held things while the chief fence surgeon performed his operations. Nevertheless, depending on what I was told to hold, it sometimes required me to hold things, like a fence post, straighter than I seemed capable of holding it. But I tried.
Most times, my job was pretty boring, but Dad had a terrible aversion to the passing of time and sun going down and we often worked till it was almost too dark to see what we were doing. Still, he would persist.
“Hold that straighter,” I’d be commanded, though I was by that time barely able to see what I was holding, let alone whether or not it was straight.
An added complication at the point was how the evening would grow chilly as the night fell. And still we worked. Many times I would glance enviously at our farmhouse, where I knew some of my siblings, especially my four sisters, were probably watching TV.
Oh, how I longed to be in that warm, lamplit old house watching TV at those moments. Shivering, trying to hold things straight …
So, one day last week, now at 73, I was helping my son on a project to erect a new privacy fence around our home in the city, farm life and my Dad many years gone from the scene. Several times, I was told to hold a tool, or a board, or a post. Once again, I was not the brains of the operation.
And darkness began to settle in. Along with a drop in the air temperature. I was not dressed warmly enough for this adventure.
I looked with a growing longingness in the direction of our house, not far away, where I imagined other, luckier family members were watching TV. My son had obviously inherited his grandfather’s imperviousness to the absence of light and the drop in air temperature.
However, there was one difference I noticed and appreciated.
I wasn’t called on to hold anything straight.
©2024 Jim Hagarty
