life in patches - River City Area Magazine

The Schoolchildren’s Song

When do we get the pumpkin? What’s that smell? When can we eat? Can I get a big pumpkin? I’m gonna get the biggest one! Can we go to the playground? I gotta use the bathroom.

The children sang like a chorus at the same time, although not quite in unison, as they exited the schoolbus onto the dirt lot.

“Are we gonna hear a band?” one asked as he looked up at the stage in front of the bus. Above the stage, signs covered weathered boards: Welcome to Owen Farm, God’s Pit Crew, and Danville. Below the stage, a lone banner announced Celebrating 20 Years.

An old planter sat at the left edge of the stage and a plow was on the opposite side.

The children immediately bolted for the tools.

“Stop! Right! THERE!”

And they did.

“Before we go any further,” the teacher started, “please remember that IF you get a pumpkin depends entirely on how you act. We’ve got a lot to do. Get in a line.”

What’s in that store? It smells like funnel cakes out here. Can we go in the store? When is the train ride? Can we pet the animals? I’m big enough for the zipline! Will a rabbit fit in my pocket? Will the bus leave us if we get lost in the corn maze? Ewwww, that pumpkin has warts. I still gotta use the bathroom.

Their song continued…

life in patches — A small sample of the Owen Farm fall harvest. By philip gillis

Pumpkins from the Side-by-Side

The trailer on the back was loaded as they turned the corner.

Pumpkins – Miniboos, Giant Atlantics, Big Moose, and Blancos.

Gourds – green, yellow, orange, smooth, and bumpy.

And good old-fashioned carving pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns.

“But this is really what all the school children come to see.”

The ten-by-ten wooden fence surrounded what can only be described as…

“The Great Pumpkin.”

Taller than a small child and wider than three of them standing shoulder to shoulder.

“We grow one here every year and EVERYONE has to take a picture with it: pregnant ladies wearing pumpkin shirts and even a few people have shown up in the Charlie Brown shirt.”

The Start of the Couple’s Trail at the Chapel

The one-room chapel rested at the bottom of the hill. A white porch extended off the front with the words Amazing Grace in the shape of a cross at the apex. Three columns of benches, five per column, led the way down the hill.

A trail of barely wilted flowers started at the porch, reached up the hill, and ended at the top where a flowergirl’s basket lay abandoned.

A light flickered in the cabin further up the trail – directly above the wedding reception venue.

“Everybody loves that cabin,” the man said earlier, “but they really love taking pictures with that old outhouse even if it ain’t nothing but a shed.”

The voice of Etta James rolled in and out of the venue along with the wedding party.

At lasssssst…

The Bluegrass Band’s Intro

The man on stage cleared his throat and swung his guitar under his arm.

“We appreciate all y’all coming out today. I think most of you know all of us on stage, but I love telling this story. A few years ago, my daddy came up to me and said, ‘Son, you think you can put together some old country songs the men can sing in church?’”

A man behind him with a tan cowboy hat on his head and a Gibson acoustic guitar across his chest smiled.

“I said ‘I got ya, pop.’ I started off easy with Hank Sr. and I Saw the Light and Lord Build Me a Cabin. My best friend suggested You Don’t Love God (If You Don’t Love Your Neighbor). And the church loved it so we got adventurous – Sister Rosetta’s version of This Train, Sturgill’s A Little Light, and Jamey Johnson’s Lead Me Home.”

The guy leaned into the mic as if he was whispering a secret.

“And we might have even sung Three Wooden Crosses once or twice because sometimes the message is more important than a word that you ought not say in church.”

Behind him, the other men in the band, all in black, smirked and the crowd laughed.

“And here we are now playing for all of you. Thanks for coming out. And let me just add… Don’t those hotdogs and chili and funnel cakes and ribbon fries smell delicious. We gotta hurry up and get off this stage and get something to eat.” The band agreed.

He closed his eyes and inhaled it all – the food, the fall afternoon, the friendship, the music…

“Boys. Ready?”

He looked over his shoulder and they nodded..

There’s a long black train, coming down the line, feeding off the souls that are lost and crying…

The crowd joined in.

The Tale from the Summer Camper in the Fall

“I swear,” the boy said from the cart being pulled by a small train. Gray smoke occasionally puffed from the stack. “There was a waterslide right there next to the climbing wall on the other side of the metal slide. It went all the way down the hill, and we played games right there.” He pointed to a well-worn patch of grass that was slowly recovering from the summer. “And over there is a creek that you can splash in and I caught three crayfishes in it.”

“CrayFISH.”

“Whatever and we’d walk all up and down the creek and sometimes the water’d be high but other times it would be low and there were these little dams in it that they said had been there hundreds of years and Indians used to use them to catch fish but we didn’t catch any real fish.”

The small locomotive puffed and pulled the carts toward the wooden fence.

“But they only do that type stuff during the summer because it would be too cold now and besides… Who has ever heard of Fall camp? I bet the crayFISH are probably gone now and right up there was-”

The boy stopped.

A Texas Longhorn stood on the other side of the fence – each horn about three feet long.

“So that’s all it took to get y’all to take a breath and stop talking for a second.”

The children shot looks at each other, paused, and started again.

What about the potbelly pigs? And the goats and llamas? And the ducks and the geese and the chickens? Is that really Noah’s ark on the playground? Is there a bathroom out here?

The Creek

Before the store…

Before the pumpkin patch…

Before the farm tours…

Before the chapel and cabin…

Before all of it…

Silver Creek.

Indian weirs.

A home.

The Father and The Husband’s Story

The faded green and rust-striped 1961 Dodge truck sat just outside the backdoor of the country store. Wooden pallets fashioned on the sides of the bed allowed hay and pumpkins to be stacked higher many years ago. More recently, they served as something for a quick child to climb.

“What do you think?” the man said as he put a hotdog to his mouth.

The store shelves were lined with mason jars of local honey, Virginia peanuts, wooden baskets with dish towels saying Farm to Table and Bless this Kitchen, and small sacks of Old School Brand grits. An antique, wringer washing machine was repurposed and now said Ice Cold Drinks. A wooden American flag hung above a white stove. Pies in the pie safe were replaced with horseshoes and candles.

And above it all was a sign: Virginia Grown.

“It is a little more than a pumpkin patch.”

“That’s what we hoped for. It is what we wanted, and especially what she wanted.” He paused. “From all her bunnies in her Bunny Barn to the old door we used as a headboard for the bed in the cabin. And she always knew how to get what she wanted.”

The pumpkins felt like they were miles away, and the music stopped for a moment.

The store inhaled and exhaled.

Twenty years and eight acres of a pumpkin patch.

Forty years of marriage, three children, and seven grandchildren…

A flood of memories in…

An outpouring of life…

When music came from the stage…

“I choose you… Every day in a hundred different ways.”