Walking Beans, Pulling Weeds...Yes, It's a Metaphor

 

After last week's story about my farm boy days I received an encouraging email. The writer told me of their experience on the farm. She also told me about Cindy Crawford of DeKalb, Illinois...yes, THAT Cindy Crawford who later became a fashion model of note. It's not well known that she grew up in DeKalb and experienced many of the same things that all children do growing up in a farm community. One of the tasks she performed was called "walking the beans". That is where, in this case, one walks along a row of soybeans and cuts out the weeds. She got 50 cents an hour.

 

I don't recall calling it "walking the beans". Also, we didn't cut the weeds out of the soybeans either. We pulled them out (I find it odd to cut the weeds because they will continue to grow unless you yank them out by their roots).  I performed this task quite a few times. It was done mostly when the beans grew to the point they could no longer be cultivated and the weeds within the rows became evident.

 

I spent a good many days out in the fields, going up and down row after row in the field, pulling, pulling, pulling...and pulling weed after weed. In fact, I pulled so many weeds in such a short period of time that callouses on my hands bled. We weren't much for wearing gloves and they did get in the way of pulling a weed successfully.

 

Farming is very different these days compared to the days of my youth. A lot of other things are different from those days gone by. I was thinking the other day about the many good things in my youth. There is much that I appreciate from those days; many good things that I wish were still around in our day.

 

However, there are a number of things that I am very happy are gone...or at least better. Race relations were a big problem. Women's place in society was much different in a very bad way. Gays and lesbians were still 'in the closet', hiding their lives and not being true themselves. And there was the Viet Nam War, assassinations of the two Kennedys and Dr. King. And so, so much more that made the world appear that it was coming apart at the seams.

 

To a certain extent I was sheltered from those things living on a farm in Southern Illinois in the '50's and 60's. However, being a thoughtful and engaged young boy, I was aware of these things.  And they troubled me greatly.

 

So it was good to go out into those soybean fields and pull those weeds. It accomplished a good thing and it kept me busy. It kept me focused. Still I pondered the issues of the day and what they meant to my young life. Pulling weeds and thinking thoughts. Come to think of it, I'm still pondering problems of the world and still have weeds to pull. I may use gloves this time.