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\begin{document}

\title{A Season on a Farm}
\author{David Pierce}
\date{Early 1989 and June, 2014\\
Last edited, July 25, 2016}
\maketitle

\tableofcontents

\section{The view from 1989}\label{part:orig}

\textsc{The farm} where I worked in the summer of 1988 was near Berkeley 
Springs, in eastern West Virginia, across the Potomac River from 
Hancock, Maryland, at the River\apo s northernmost bend. It was an 
organic vegetable farm called Sleepy Creek, and it belonged to Norman 
and Donna Hunter, who were about forty and had nine-year-old 
identical-twin daughters. The twins were told just that summer that a 
sister, older by some years, had died as an infant.%%%%%
\footnote{Footnotes in this section were added in 2014 or later.
See \S\ref{sect:about}, page \pageref{sect:about}.
Norman\apo s or Donna\apo s parents had sent Donna and Norman 
on a trip to Lourdes, hoping for miracle cure for their first child; 
but it did not work.} 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Donna once 
told my comrade Hal that she and Norman had married too young. 
She told my comrade Elise that she and Norman stayed 
married only for the sake of the girls. Norman and Donna had 
grown up, not in the country, but in small cities in Pennsyl\-%
vania.   Norman had dropped out of college, but Donna was
qualified to teach in West Virginia public schools. She had,
however, given up teaching and was working instead on the farm, 
sometimes like one of Norman\apo s employees, sometimes as a boss 
herself, although then her orders would often conflict with 
Norman\apo s.

     I visited the farm one day in the middle of May and met the 
three people who were already working there. Elise and Gerry 
had been out of college for a few years and had come to the farm
seeking relief from office-work.  They had lived together in
Washington and were sharing a shack on the farm.  The third
worker was from Rosedale, West Virginia, a place he mentioned as 
if everybody knew where it was.%%%%%
\footnote{If you needed geographical help,
he would tell you that Rosedale was near Sutton and Gassaway.
According to \emph{Wikipedia,}
each of the latter two is a town of fewer than a thousand residents,
while Rosedale is an unincorporated community whose population dropped
after the natural gas boom ended in the 1970s.
The places are in Braxton County,
which is named for a signer of the Declaration of Independence.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
He told me his name was Ward,
\enquote{you know, as in maternity ward or mental ward.} When I sat with 
him in the yard, he heard one of the twins nearby complain that 
she was \enquote{stuck.} He responded by singing the jingle from a 
Band-Aids commercial: \enquote{I am stuck on Band-Aids, \apo cause Band-Aids 
stuck on me.} He told me he had a warped sense of humor.

     Gerry invited me to stay and have dinner, it being his turn 
to cook. Over dinner, I talked with him and Elise about art in 
Washington; but I did not know what I could talk to Ward about. 
I might have asked him about his life, which, I learned later, 
had been spent in several places besides Rosedale. He had lived 
on a tobacco farm, spent some time in college, been in military 
service, and driven a taxi in Miami, and yet he was younger than 
I.\footnote{I was 23.}

     Later in the summer, Gerry reminded me of an incident that 
had happened on the day of my visit. The four of us had just 
met, and I said, in response to a question from Elise, that I was 
thinking about studying mathematics in graduate school. Ward 
said that he studied math on his own, so I asked him what in par\-% 
ticular he worked at. Gerry told me that my look of disappoint\-%
ment was pronounced when Ward said \enquote{college algebra.} I had
hoped my look was not so obvious.  I did not like to appear
%[\textbf{page 2}]
disdainful of any mathematical interest, no matter how rudimen\-% 
tary. But math was for Ward a way to pass the time, like playing 
solitaire. He spent hours that summer making a certain table of 
numbers that he calculated by tedious long-hand multiplication.%%%%%
\footnote{I think there is no avoiding the conclusion that,
if I was indeed disdainful of Ward,
it was for not being very bright.
Any \emph{amateur}---lover---of mathematics is still doing it to pass the time.
As I recall, Ward was calculating G\"odel numbers.
This was a pointless activity.  
The usefulness of G\"odel numbers is entirely theoretical.
G\"odel\apo s Incompleteness Theorem can be understood as follows.
Every number-theoretic formula $\phi(x)$ has a G\"odel number,
which can be symbolized by $\gn{\phi(x)}$.
There is a formula $\theta(x,y)$ such that,
for all formulas $\phi(x)$, for all numbers $n$, 
the sentence $\theta(\gn{\phi(x)},n)$ is true 
if and only if the sentence $\phi(n)$ has a formal proof
(in some predetermined axiomatic system).
Let $\psi(x)$ be the negation $\lnot\theta(x,x)$.
Then the sentence $\psi(\gn{\psi(x)})$ is true, but has no formal proof.
This is the point.
Writing down the actual number $\gn{\psi(x)}$ would be impractical.
Apparently Ward did not understand this, or did not care.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

   When I arrived for my first visit to the farm, Norman was out mowing hay. 
When he was through, and I introduced myself to him, he shook my 
hand, but he did not smile or look me in the eye.%%%%%
\footnote{These days I am suspicious of men 
who shake my hand without looking at me.
Apparently this suspicion goes back some years!}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I decided to 
work on the farm because I liked Gerry and Elise.

   When I arrived to work at the end of May, Norman said, \enquote{I 
thought you weren\apo t coming until tomorrow.}  
I was the fifth worker: a fourth had already 
been there for a few days. Karen had just finished two years of 
college and was going to spend her junior year in Germany. Two 
days later, my new roommate arrived. Hal and I shared the \emph{corn crib,} 
a standard farm structure converted to a bunkhouse. Pieces of 
cardboard boxes were stapled up to cover the chinks in the walls. 
Hal arrived with head nearly shaven and a set of weights and 
barbells, also some publications of the Adult Great Books 
Program. I learned later that he had been the singer for a DC punk band 
called Body Count.\footnote{I find one song of theirs on Youtube,
but I am not sure that I recognize Hal in the accompanying still photos.}

   The workers\apo\ kitchen was on the back porch of Norman\apo s 
house, and it contained the one sink for our use. For our other needs, we had an 
outhouse over near the barn. The porch was long and narrow, its 
outer walls mostly window. Our shower was outside, 
in full view, the head hanging on one of the mullions of the porch. 
The shower did have hot water. Karen had been surprised to learn its location when 
she arrived to work: when she had visited, and Norman 
gestured towards the shower, she thought he meant it was in a 
shed that happened to be in the same general direction.

   Since we ate our meals on the porch, we heard what went on 
within the house. Norman and Donna occasionally yelled at one 
another or at the girls. Norman would belch for the world to 
hear. When fall came, and the girls had to go to school, 
getting them ready in the morning was particularly stressful for 
the family, and having to overhear the family became increasingly 
tiresome. I wonder how much they heard of \emph{us,} for often what we 
talked about was them.

   Early in the summer, deer were eating our crops at night, so 
I was assigned the task of chaining up the dog in the garden to 
scare them away. However, on some nights, Ward went to sleep in 
the garden instead. He took a rifle that Norman had borrowed,
and he would tell Hal that there would be deer-steaks for breakfast. 
Ward and Hal were the only meat-eaters among us six. Ward 
never bagged a deer, and he must have been feeling embar\-% 
rassed, since he used to talk of his hunting prowess. He said 
he needed his \emph{own} rifle, and one Saturday at the beginning of 
July, he hitch-hiked to Rosedale to fetch it.  

He never came 
back.
%[\textbf{page 3}]
Now, I had been annoyed by some of Ward\apo s habits, and I had 
rarely had anything to say to Ward, but I felt glad to have come  
to the farm and known this person, the likes of whom I could have 
met nowhere else. He and I had got along amicably enough. 
Therefore I was surprised to learn how much animosity the rest of 
my comrades felt towards him. After his departure, he became the  
chief topic of conversation, mainly as an object of ridicule.%%%%%
\footnote{Some weeks later, Ward was in Hancock,
and Hal and I took him the things he had left at the farm.
Something that I had learned from Ward about communication is on page 
\pageref{Ward-gesture}.}

  Hal soon moved out of the corn crib into Ward\apo s old room. 
He first asked whether I wanted to move there, but I preferred 
just to have the drafty crib to myself. Ward\apo s room was in the 
\emph{apartment,} a collection of rooms, elevated by telephone-poles, 
above the concrete slab where we washed and packed vegetables. 
In time, the apartment would house the new workers\apo\ kitchen. 
Being insulated, but not well ventilated, it was not a good place  
to be during the heat of summer.  However, Karen had another room up 
there.

  Hal said that he would never forget Ward. Nonetheless, he 
told Norman that we were glad Ward was gone. 

Norman said, \enquote{Well, 
I\apo m not. He kept you city-slickers in line, and he was the only 
one of you who knew that farming is a life-style, not just a 
job.} 

Norman was alluding to such things as Ward\apo s willingness 
to do some work on Sunday, nominally a day off. Ward would work 
on a Sunday because he did not know what else to do with himself  
(besides the arithmetic for his table of numbers). As 
Karen observed, farming was very much just a job for Ward, who 
had come all the way from Rosedale simply because no employment 
was to be found there.

  Norman used to have many criticisms of us city-slickers, 
though he had once been one himself. He ridiculed our habit of 
reading newspapers and magazines, saying, \enquote{If people cared more 
about their neighbors than about what\apo s happening in Biafra,%%%%%
\footnote{The war and famine in Biafra,
which had seceded from Nigeria,
had happened in the late 1960s,
when Norman would have been in his early 20s.} 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 
the world would be better off.}

Exactly what it consisted of, this 
caring about one\apo s neighbors, Norman did not say; nor do I think  
he showed it by example. Maybe in his case it was just the act 
of being an \emph{organic} farmer, not using synthetic chemi\-% 
cals. Norman and Donna did not feel at home among 
their neighbors. Several times I heard Norman rant about 
neighbors who hung their laundry in the front yard, where all 
passers-by could see it. Having taught at the local junior high 
school, Donna knew the sorts of people that attended it, and she  
knew she did not want her own daughters to go to school among 
them.  Norman felt likewise.

  Norman wondered why we workers ate dried beans when there 
were fresh green beans growing in the garden. He spoke as if it 
were our duty to use farm-produce whenever we possibly could, and 
indeed I tried to take this duty to heart.  I was amused to
%[\textbf{page 4}]
learn later that Norman never ate winter squash, which was our 
biggest crop.

  According to Norman, vegetarianism was for city people who 
were ignorant of the importance of animals to the farm economy. 
He was referring to the usefulness of their manure. Norman 
raised rabbits to slaughter and sell,%%%%%
\footnote{He sold them to Restaurant Nora,
near Dupont Circle in Washington.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
                                     chickens to slaughter and 
eat himself, and hens to lay eggs. What we cleaned from the animal 
pens would indeed go to the compost pile.%%%%%
\footnote{Our gang of workers that year drank a lot of milk,
which was apparently unusual, and Donna did not like to buy milk for us.
She and Norman considered buying a goat to supply our needs.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

  Norman was fearful of saying something nice, though 
occasionally he tried to say it. When we workers did something 
poorly in his eyes, which was often, we heard about it;
but if we had worked well, we might perhaps get a barely audible, 
brief mumble of approval. 

Once Norman and I were sitting on the 
porch, and I was eating some pancakes that I had made.
By way of making conversation, 
Norman noted that I made a lot of pancakes.  
Then he said, \enquote{I hate pancakes.} 

One day after work, I was changing 
the oil in my Volkswagen bug%%%%%
\footnote{It was my mother\apo s car,
which for some reason I had at the farm for a couple of weeks.} 
when Norman came to talk to me. He 
told me that I had been slow in performing a certain task that 
day, and he suggested ways to be more efficient.  He spoke 
carefully, as if he were worried of being 
hard on me. Then he looked at the car and said, \enquote{I hate Volks\-% 
wagens.}

  Life with Norman would have been easier if making a living 
by farming were not so hard. The farm made its money mainly by 
selling produce at sidewalk stands in Washington, and we had to 
leave the farm as early as 2:20 a.m.\ to set them up. The one 
Wednesday stand required Norman and one worker. The two Saturday  
stands required Norman and Donna and three workers, and the twins 
would go along too.%%%%%
\footnote{The Wednesday stand was at Georgetown University;
the Saturday stands, in Glover Park and Adams-Morgan.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 We would first visit wholesale markets in the 
city.  If we had grown more produce than we could sell 
retail, we would leave the excess for wholesale. Otherwise, we 
would just buy additional produce that we could sell at our stands.
Then we would go to set up these stands. 

We were ready to 
leave the city by six in the evening. The trip back to the farm 
took two hours, and then we had to put unsold perishables into a  
walk-in cooler. So a market day was long. Still, it was good to 
see where the money was coming from, to be back in the city and 
to see lots of people. The day was such a stimulus that
one could have trouble feeling sleepy that night.
This was a problem, since one really did need rest.

  We hauled most of our produce in one large truck\mdash a truck with a 
sliding door in back. If we needed more room, we used a pick-up 
truck as well. On the way to Washington in the early morning darkness, 
Norman would usually have one of us workers drive the big truck,
while he slept in the passenger seat. 
On the way back home, Norman drove, but whoever was 
sitting next to him had to listen to him. He was not a conversa\-%  
tionalist.  He had no interest in hearing what his
%[\textbf{page 5}]
passenger had to say: he never asked a question. However, he 
frequently turned his head to glance at his listener as he 
talked, and so one felt obliged to give him an occasional ac\-% 
knowledgement.

   The summer was hot and dry. The driness was not a tremen\-% 
dous problem, since we had irrigation-pipes and a creek to draw 
water from.  We did spend a lot of time moving those pipes 
around. The heat was a good thing in one sense: 
it was harder on Norman and Donna than on us young people.
When our overseers felt too hot to work, 
they would often let us stop too.

   On hot afternoons, Norman would drive with his daughters 
down to the fields, and he would ask us whether we wanted to take a break. 
The proper answer was, \enquote{Yes.} 
We would climb in the pick-up truck 
and ride over to the swimming-hole, a wide and deep section of 
our creek.  We would strip and dive in, not bothering with 
bathing-suits. Once or twice I picked up a leech on my foot. 
Ward used to stand in one place in the water, head bowed, 
watching for fish. The twins would play with inner tubes. 
Norman would bathe for a while, then return to the shore to lie 
in the shade. The rest of us would swim to the sunny rocks on 
the far shore, though it was hard to find a seat among their 
sharp edges.

   Sometimes on those hot afternoons, we should have preferred 
to return to the house without a swim, but this was generally not 
an option. When Norman offered us a break, a swim was what he 
meant. If we did not want to swim, we must not be too hot to 
work\mdash though as Hal once said, maybe Norman just liked to see us 
naked and to have us see him thus.

Early in the summer, it was common to take an afternoon break.
There was not much picking to do, but mostly 
weeding, and it was easy for Norman to figure that the weeds 
could wait. In the second half of July though, more and more 
crops matured. We began picking on Sundays. Norman had 
told us in the beginning that we might have to pick on an 
occasional Sunday; but now it was clear that every Sunday was 
going to be an occasion. Gerry rebelled. He told me on a 
Saturday evening that he and Elise were going to spend the next 
day in Washington, and I would be welcome to come along. 
When I mentioned the picking, Gerry said he was intentionally 
ignoring Norman\apo s excessive demands. As it happened, Karen and 
Hal had already left the farm for the rest of the weekend, so I 
would be the only one there on Sunday, if I stayed. Being more 
dutiful, or foolish, than Gerry, I did stay.

   When I saw Norman the next morning, I told him that everyone 
else had left. He handed me a list and said \enquote{Well, here\apo s what 
you have to pick.} But then he started complaining to me about 
his irresponsible workers. I argued the workers\apo\ position as I
%[\textbf{page 6}]
could. 

What I remember most about the conversation is Norman\apo s 
saying about my comrades, \enquote{They don\apo t care about me, they don\apo t 
care about my family.} It was a childish complaint. Though 
it may have been valid, we might have spoken likewise of him. He 
complained that nobody had thanked him for any raises in pay he 
had given, although I had thought it was \emph{understood} that salaries 
would go up every month.%%%%%
\footnote{Salaries were nominal, around \$300 a month, 
though we had no expenses, 
unless we wanted health insurance---which I did have.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 
                                 I recalled a Saturday morning when 
Donna was sick, so that Elise had to be awakened\mdash robbed of four 
hours\apo\ sleep\mdash to go and take Donna\apo s place at market.  I
mentioned to Norman that Elise had never been thanked for taking 
Donna\apo s place.  Norman did not think she needed to be thanked, 
since she was just doing her duty.

    After our talk, Norman and I did some of the picking 
together, but left the rest for the others to do. That evening, 
Norman put a note on our kitchen table saying that we would 
start work an hour earlier on Monday. I considered assuming that 
the note did not apply to me; but then I started work with everyone else 
anyway.

    Gerry induced Norman to declare that we would work on no Sundays 
after the first week of September. We workers arranged a 
schedule for the Sundays until then, according to which two of us 
would do a Sunday\apo s picking, leaving the rest with a full day 
off. The first Sunday of our schedule was a day off for me. I 
had been to market the previous day, where I was met by an old 
friend, Nicolas, who drove me back to the farm and then stayed 
for the night. The next day, we went for a swim, planning to 
drive off afterwards for a tour of the countryside. As we walked 
back from the swimming-hole, Norman met us and called me aside.

    Gerry and Hal were scheduled to pick.  Gerry was already
picking, but Hal was not on the farm; he and Karen had driven off 
on Saturday without telling anybody of their plans. Norman said 
that we could schedule the picking any way we wanted, but as far 
as he was concerned, each of us was responsible for every 
Sunday\apo s picking, so if the picking did not get done that day, he 
would yell at me as much as at Hal. Norman shook as he said 
this, as if it were all he could do to keep himself from having a 
fit. Nick wanted us to leave without doing any work, but I 
decided that I ought to help Gerry.  Nick then decided to help 
too. However, Gerry would not hear of our helping him.  He said 
that he would do all the picking himself,
to avoid ever feeling obliged to work on his \emph{own} day off. 
So Nick and I drove away. 
We passed Hal and Karen as they drove towards the farm.

    A prospective employee was visiting the farm that day, and 
for some reason she decided to come back and work with us. 
Norman said that he thought she had a good understanding of what 
farm-life would require of her.  She lasted two days.

%[\textbf{page 7}]
   Lisa arrived on a Wednesday afternoon, while we were still 
at work. She went for a swim. The next day was especially 
long. Near the end came haying, a strenuous task. 
I suppose there are several ways to deal with hay, once it 
is cut and dried in the field, but Norman\apo s way was to drive a 
tractor, which towed a baler, which in turn towed a wagon. The 
baler raked up the hay and tied it into rectangular paral\-% 
lelepipeds.%%%%%
\footnote{In the word \enquote{parallelepiped,}
the stress should fall on the antepenult.
The word used to be spelled \enquote{parallelepipedon,}
which was a direct transliteration of the Greek \gr{parallhlep'ipedon}.
This is compounded of \gr{par'allhl-} \enquote{parallel}
and \gr{>ep'ipedon} \enquote{plane surface.}
The latter Greek word is in turn compounded of
\gr{>ep'i} \enquote{on} and \gr{p'edon} \enquote{ground.}
Thus, unlike the vowel O in \enquote{parallelogram,}
the second E in \enquote{parallelepiped(on)}
is not just a linking vowel.
There is no mathematical object called a \enquote{piped.}}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 
These bales were fed onto the wagon, where two of us 
workers would stack them. A full wagon was taken back to the 
barn, where we stacked its contents in a loft.

   I don\apo t think Lisa rode on the wagon that day, but she did 
unload it and set the bales on the elevator into the loft. Her 
ungloved hands became blistered from handling the twine that 
bound the bales. Next morning, she picked cucumbers with Gerry 
and complained about her sore hands. Gerry urged her to go back 
to the house and ask Donna for something to put on them. 
Finally, Lisa did go, but according to Donna, she just packed her 
things onto her motorcycle and rode off, saying that we were all 
a bunch of nuts.

   Upon her arrival, when asked how long she would stay, Lisa 
had said, \enquote{If I like it, the rest of my life.} After her 
departure, we speculated: had she come one day later, she 
might have missed one of the hardest days of the year, and so 
might have stayed longer, getting strengthened by months of work 
for the hardest days of the next year.

   No doubt Lisa should have worn gloves when throwing hay 
around. Perhaps somebody had recommended them. Conceivably I 
had, though not strongly, since I never used them myself, and so I
assumed that anybody could do without them. \emph{My} first day at the 
farm was also a long one, and it also ended with the baling of hay. 
Gerry and I filled two wagons with bales that day. Furthermore, the 
elevator was broken, so we all had to get the bales into the loft 
by hand. I just lived with the blisters I got. My hands 
toughened in time.

   Hal\apo s plan to leave the farm on the last Friday in August 
was the cause of some bitterness. For his departure would leave 
only four workers at the farm, three of whom would have to go to 
market on the next day. Elise\apo s and Gerry\apo s parents were 
coming to visit, from New Jersey and Tennessee respectively, and 
naturally both children wanted to stay at the farm on Saturday to 
greet them. However, they could not convince Hal to stay one 
more day and go to market in their stead. Fortunately, Elise\apo s 
friend Andy had been visiting that week, and \emph{he} was able to go to 
market.

   On Saturdays at that time of year, the Hunter family and one 
worker took the big truck to Washington, while two other workers 
followed in the pick-up truck. On the way back, the
%[\textbf{page 8}]
Hunters took one vehicle and the workers another.
Each group was free, 
either to go out to dinner or to go straight back to the farm. 
On this particular Saturday, Andy was going to stay 
in Washington after the market. Elise and Gerry had plans to 
meet their parents for dinner in Berkeley Springs.  They asked 
me to make sure that Karen and I came straight back to the farm,
so that it would not be left unattended. Norman did not 
like workers to leave the farm before he himself got back.
\enquote{The 
work-day isn\apo t over until the big truck is unloaded,} he would say. 
But he could hardly complain if at least \emph{some} 
workers were still at the farm to do the unloading.

  The Hunters took the big truck and went out to dinner after 
market, but Karen, Andy, and I wanted to go out too. Gerry and 
Elise had not made of Karen the request that they had made of me. I 
figured that if we did not take long to have dinner, Karen and I 
should certainly get back to the farm before the Hunters.  I
carelessly assumed that Gerry and Elise would leave the farm for 
their dinner-engagement, whether we were back or not. So the 
three of us went to an Italian restaurant in Adams-Morgan, 
and then Karen and I said good-by to Andy and drove back 
to the farm.

  Alas, Elise and Gerry had waited for us, though they were an 
hour late to meet their parents. They had worried about what 
might have happened to us. I was ashamed not to have kept my 
word to them. My consolation was the thought that they ought to 
have told their wishes to Karen as well as to me. At any rate, 
the two of us together might have had the sense to return on 
time.

  Tim, our next new comrade, arrived a week from the next day, 
on the first Sunday of September. Karen was going to leave in 
another week. Tim said that he figured farm-work was better than 
flipping burgers in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland. 
Otherwise, he did not talk much, did not ask questions, and had 
an unsettling look in his eye; but he could work quickly.

  It so happened that Tim\apo s first week at the farm was the 
week of Nathaniel\apo s visit. I was glad for the opportunity of 
conversation with a friend from St.\ John\apo s College, but I also put Nat to 
work along with the rest of us.  When I started feeling 
contrite, and I urged him to go off and enjoy himself for a while, 
he still stayed to work. He got along well with my comrades. It 
was Tim\apo s turn to cook dinner on Friday, but Tim had little 
experience with cooking, especially vegetarian cooking, and so Nat 
cooked with him.  He baked a cake in honor of Karen\apo s last day of 
work on the farm. On Saturday, he gave her a ride back to her 
home in Great Falls, Virginia; then he went on to his own home in Annapolis,
after stopping to visit our stand in Washington.

%[\textbf{page 9}]
    A week later, the Hunters drove from that stand to the 
beach, planning to return to the farm in two days. Norman had 
told us what to do in his absence.  This included some work on 
Sunday. I said that I thought our Sunday tasks were over.  He 
said he hoped we would give him a break, since there were 
things that just had to be done, and Sunday was the best day to 
do them. I failed to point out that if they \emph{had} to be done, he 
should forego his vacation and do them. Silly me, I figured he 
would soon be giving \emph{us} a vacation. I expected Gerry to put up a 
fight over the assignment of Sunday work, but he kept quiet.

    On Sunday morning, Gerry told me that he did not want to 
work. I was prepared to argue that he had implicitly agreed to 
work; but then he said that he was willing to work that day, 
only not until later. Elise expressed similar sentiments. The 
two of them spent the rest of the morning watching Olympic 
coverage, brought to the Hunters\apo\ television by their dish-% 
antenna.

    I was in my corn crib later when Gerry and Elise came to 
tell me that they were quitting. They had had enough of Norman\apo s 
oppression. I then understood the need to sit down when hearing 
bad news. I tried to argue that there was something to be gained 
from putting up with Norman.
I recalled words from Martin Luther 
King\apo s great speech, \enquote{Unearned suffering is redemptive.}%%%%%
\footnote{I had saved a copy of this speech,
as it had been printed in the \emph{Washington Post}
on August 28, the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
It was 
an irrelevant reference, but in any case, if I myself had been 
able to tolerate Norman, it was only because I could see that Elise 
and Gerry were trying to do the same thing, and having a hard time
of it.  I knew they would always be sympathetic with my own
complaints. Farm-life would be dreadful without them to talk
to.

    Norman withheld part of his workers\apo\ monthly pay, to keep 
them from leaving early. If they stayed until Thanksgiving 
or Christmas, they would receive their full pay. However, Gerry had 
confirmed through an attorney that Norman\apo s practice was in fact 
illegal, and he and Elise were prepared to sue, if they had to, 
to get from Norman all of the money that they had earned. They 
would rather that Norman gave them the money freely, by way of 
acknowledging what he never had before, that they had been 
valuable workers.

    Gerry and Elise met with Norman after his return, and he 
acknowledged his shortcomings as a boss. They agreed to stay 
on, and I was glad.

    A week later, Tim was gone.   Before dawn on a Friday
morning, I was awakened by the sound of a car driving up to the 
farm, then voices. I went back to sleep. When I got up, I
learned that the car had been Donna\apo s, driven by Tim. Our 
buildings and vehicles were on a hill, and so Tim had been able 
to roll the car away and start it out of earshot; but
%[\textbf{page 10}]
when he returned, he had to drive all the way back. Norman heard 
the car, came outside, and found Tim at the farm\apo s fuel-tank, 
ready in his ignorance to put diesel in a gasoline-powered 
car. Norman made Tim leave the farm at once, on foot, with all of
his possessions, including the amplifier for his electric bass-% 
guitar.

    What made Norman so eager to get rid of Tim was something 
Norman had not told us. He himself had not known it until after 
he had hired Tim. 
Tim had a police record that was \enquote{as long as your arm.} 
A friend of Norman predicted that we had not seen the last of Tim.

    A former employee of the farm was staying with us at the 
time of Tim\apo s dismissal. Jim had once worked at the farm for 
five years. I used to wonder what had made him leave, while 
Gerry wondered what had made him stay so long. With Tim gone, 
Jim decided to finish the season with us.%%%%%
\footnote{Jim told me later 
that he regretted this decision almost immediately.
Of course the decision was not Jim\apo s alone.
Norman had to agree to hire him back,
and he was resentful of Jim\apo s having left before.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 Less than a week 
later, on Thursday, October 6, we had our first frost. We picked 
tomatoes, whether red or green, into as many boxes as we had, 
and then we set the green tomatoes in the greenhouse to ripen. It was 
good to think that most of our picking ended with that task.

    A week from the following Saturday, Jim and I were working 
alone on the farm. In the morning, I went into the house to use 
the Hunters\apo\ bathroom, to avoid subjecting myself to the coldness 
of the outhouse. After using the facilities, I wandered across the 
hall to Norman\apo s office, attracted perhaps by the pictures on the 
wall. When I turned to leave, I saw Norman\apo s marijuana plants 
hanging to dry behind the door.

    I had been at the farm for a while before I saw Norman 
smoking a joint. Afterwards, the sight became increasingly 
common. I assumed at first that he had a friend nearby who grew 
marijuana; then Karen discovered where he grew it himself. 
The drug clearly caused him problems. He smoked it to combat 
stress, but the drug only masked stress and ended up making
things worse. He once told me that he would get chronic
headaches. I did not tell him what I thought obvious, that
marijuana use had something to do with those megrims.

    On the Saturday when I saw Norman\apo s drying plants, Jim and 
I were to can some tomatoes. We put jars of them on the stove 
to be sterilized, then went down to the fields. We were pulling 
up the sheets of black plastic that had kept weeds from our 
crops. As I was pulling, I saw a car drive towards the house. 
The tomatoes were ready to come off the stove anyway, 
and so I walked 
back up to the house myself.

    I did not see the car at the house. While I was at the stove, I heard a 
noise at the cellar door. I looked out the window over the sink,
and I saw my old 
comrade Tim fleeing, with Norman\apo s marijuana plants cradled in 
his arms. I went outside and heard a car drive off.

%[\textbf{page 11}]
  Tim looked pathetic as he fled. Why should he run? \emph I was 
not going to try to stop him; but he just 
did not know \emph{who} might see him. Such was the troublesome 
ignorance of a criminal. I could well imagine the thrill he felt 
as he and his accomplice%%%%%
\footnote{I assume there was an accomplice, who owned the car.
Tim had no driving license.  
He had \emph{said} it was because he had never bothered to get one;
and I had been na\"{\i}ve enough to believe this.
Later in the day when Tim stole the marijuana,
\emph{Hal} turned up with an accomplice.
He said he just wanted to show his friend the old place.
The tour must have included the edge of the field
where Karen had found Norman\apo s marijuana plants growing.
So Hal was too late, unless the plants taken by Tim
had been harvested somewhere else.  
I did not tell Hal about Tim\apo s earlier visit.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 
drove off; but how ephemeral it must be!

  When Norman returned from market that evening, he was only 
mildly disturbed. \enquote{I don\apo t mind losing the marijuana,} he said; \enquote{I just 
don\apo t like knowing that Tim has it. Well, at least he didn\apo t get 
the good stuff.} 

Next morning though, Norman claimed that Tim had 
stolen two thousand dollars, or maybe one thousand\mdash at any rate, 
enough so that Tim could be charged with a felony. This 
monetary theft was probably a fiction, though I was willing enough to believe 
it at the time. Norman said that the money was receipts from 
Wednesday\apo s market; but Gerry pointed out to me later that 
Norman habitually put his money in the bank on the day after a 
market.

  Before calling the police, Norman wanted to be sure that
I would assert positively in court that I had seen Tim run off, 
but not say what I had seen him run off with. I 
said that I would not commit perjury. 

\enquote{Why not?} Norman asked.

  Norman heard later that Tim had been caught in Maryland for 
some other crime, and that he would be tried for that crime, and would serve any 
resulting sentence, before being brought to trial 
for the robbery in West Virginia.%%%%%
\footnote{When Norman reported the robbery to the police,
the police were sorry he had not called them
on the night when Tim had taken Donna\apo s car.
Apparently there had been a rape in Tim\apo s home town of Cumberland that night,
and rape was already on Tim\apo s record.
I never heard anything more about Tim or my testifying against him.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

   Pulling up the plastic in the fields was our last agricul\-% 
tural duty,\footnote{Except harvesting Christmas trees, 
and cutting pine boughs and making them into wreaths, as mentioned later.}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
though we still had other sorts of duties to perform. 
We baked sweet things, like cookies, to sell at market, 
and we worked on finishing the kitchen in the apartment. The usual 
situation was that Gerry and Elise did the baking, while Norman, 
Jim, and I did the carpentry. It seemed unfair thus to divide the 
chores so consistently. There was urgency to the baking, while 
the carpentry could go at any pace. Also, I thought that Gerry 
had especially wanted to learn something about construction. 
When I asked him, he said that indeed he had wanted to learn, but 
that he was resigned to learning some other time, since he did 
not want to work with Norman or Jim. I do not know what Elise\apo s 
feelings were, except that she and Gerry both were counting the 
days until Thanksgiving, which marked the end of their commitment 
to the farm.

   It had not been clear to me that I did not want to stay at 
the farm for another season. During the summer, I had reasoned 
that I was enjoying myself overall and that another summer could 
only be easier. The problem was that I did not know with \emph{whom} I 
might have to work. At any rate, I figured in the fall that I 
was willing to stay on past Christmas, if Norman had any use for 
me. I told him so, though his response was non-committal.
%[\textbf{page 12}]

However, as I talked to Elise on one of her and Gerry\apo s last days 
at the farm, I wondered how I could \emph{ever} have offered to stay at 
that wretched place any longer than I had to. My friends told me 
they were relieved that I had come to my senses.

   We worked until the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and then 
Gerry and Elise moved out their things.  I went home for a 
week, there being no farm-work to do. It was joyous to have 
whole days of freedom from submission to Norman. We three old 
comrades spent an evening together in Washington. But the 
holiday was marred by my knowledge that it would end with a 
lonely return to the farm. At least I knew that by Christmas I 
should leave it for good.

   Norman was disagreeable when I got back, for he had had to 
put up with holiday house-guests, and the last of them still had 
not left. One day soon after my return, while I was making 
applesauce for market, Norman had a fit over my 
inefficient and improper method, although it was the method I had used 
on other occasions, and he himself had never shown me \emph{any} method. 
He threw pots and pans around\mdash not around the room, just 
around the stovetop. He muttered about why I couldn\apo t
do things as they had been done at the farm for twelve years. 
The performance was spectacular, and I nearly laughed at it. I 
tried to talk to him, but then he stormed away, saying he had 
things to do. Hal used to call him \enquote{Stormin\apo\  Norman.}

   \apo Twas the Christmas season, and the farm sold trees. We 
had a grove of them, though Norman did not want to cut them 
until he had used up the trees he had bought from a friend nearby. 
Norman calmed down once he had sold a few of these. Jim and I spent time 
cutting boughs from wild pine-trees and making them into wreaths. 
Our work-days ended early.

   Winter approached. Jim slept, warmed by the wood stove in 
the apartment, but I still slept in the corn crib. Donna used to 
say that I was going to have to move to the apartment myself, but 
then Norman would point out that previous inhabitants of the 
corn crib had stayed there until Christmas. I took on the challenge 
of staying there myself.

I never knew how cold the nights 
\emph{had been,} but a weather-radio told me how cold they were \emph{expected 
to be.} When I heard a prediction in the single digits Fahrenheit, 
I almost fled to a heated room, 
for I did not know how I could bundle up 
at night any more warmly than I had been bundling already. Then 
I figured out a way, and I did stay nearly warm enough in the crib.
However, when temperatures rose back near freezing, I was relieved. 
When they were to drop again on my last night but one, I gave up 
and went to sleep in Karen\apo s old room. I should soon enough be 
living in a heated house anyway.

\section{The view from 2014}

\input{farm-retrospect}

\section{About this document}\label{sect:about}

\input{farm-about}


\end{document}
