Grandpa Was A Redneck

               Grandpa Was A Redneck

    Recently I was watching a PBS show about family farms in Georgia that have been in existence for several generations.  One of the farmers interviewed told how his grandfather worked the farm walking behind a plow pulled by mules or horses.  Everything had to be done by hand and manual labor.  This man was amazed that his grandfather was able to manage the hard work by himself.  This got me to remembering Grandpa Riggan as he worked his farm.   I was pretty young back then and spent most of my time playing, exploring and generally having a good time. I was about ten or eleven when grandpa sold the farm and he was in his late seventies, but the one thing I do remember was that Grandpa was always working. 
     Grandpa's farm implements consisted of several walk behind plows for the various types of plowing required, a ride on mower for cutting fields of hay and a drag made of logs tied together for smoothing out the freshly plowed field.  All of this high tech equipment was powered by a team of mules named Doc and Kit.  Certain times of the year required such things as a wagon for hauling hay and tobacco or the need for a seed planter - again both drawn by mules.   These items he would borrow from neighbors.
     Most times he would do his own planting by hand and for this he had devised very sophisticated tools such as a stick that looked like a walking cane sharpened on one end. This tool would be used for planting corn and allowed Grandpa to plant without bending over.  He would walk down the prepared row and about every twelve inches he would push the sharpened end of the stick about three inches into the ground and drop in a kernel of seed corn from the bag he carried over his shoulder and with his foot he would kick dirt into the hole never missing a step.  He could plant several acres of corn per day.  I know this because I was the little barefoot boy walking behind him picking up worms and dropping them into a can for fishing.
     Sowing fields of grass or hay was performed by using the broadcast method.  He would walk in a straight line with a burlap bag filled with seed draped over his shoulder occasionally reaching into the bag for a handful of seed and with the flick of his wrist he would disperse the seed in an arc before him. His motions were such that he never slowed his pace and the coverage of the seed was complete - no bare spots.   
     Planting tobacco was more involved although it utilized similar sophisticated tooling.  The tool used to make the hole for the tobacco slip was a shorter version of the one for planting corn.  The tobacco planter was only six or seven inches long cut from the fork of a limb and shaped something like a pistol ( looking back I think the shape of these tools were an early form of ergonomics - they presented the proper shape for planting acres of crops without tiring the various muscles of the body).  Tobacco planting, as was harvesting, required several people and Grandpa would hire temporary help or as he did one year, several members of the family came in to help.  I remember Mom and Dad planting tobacco one year.  Planting tobacco required one person to make a hole and drop in the tobacco slip ( a baby tobacco plant grown from seed ) and another person to pour water into the hole and cover it over with dirt and another to keep the first two supplied with water and slips.  I was the one pouring water into the hole.  I do remember Mom only doing this one time and she was not too happy - after all, mom was not raised on a farm.
     During the hot summer Grandpa had to continuously work the fields removing weeds , aerating the dirt and  in the case of vegetables, harvesting the crop for sale at the farmers market in Gallatin or Lebanon. 
     Tobacco required what was called suckering which was removing a sucker leaf growing from the same spot as another leaf.  The tobacco plant was naturally sticky and when this job was performed in the heat of the day it was, for sure,  a dirty job.  There was an upside to this task - the tobacco plant attracted a cut worm that had to be removed.   They were  about as thick as your little finger, long and bright green with black and yellow stripes and rows of stubby legs.  They looked like one of the characters from "Alice in Wonder Land "  but they were great fish bait.
     Hoeing the tobacco was another job where a person used a sharpened hoe to remove weeds from between the plants.  Grandpa usually hired a couple of local guys to help him in this job. One year when I was about nine I talked him into letting me hoe the tobacco and get paid.  Best as I remember I got too close to some of the tobacco plants and hoed them right out of the ground.  Grandpa either didn't know of my errors or chose not to say anything.  My payment came that weekend when he and Granny took me to town and bought me a pair of shoes which I was proud of.  I wore the shoes to church with Grandpa and later to school but I was growing so fast then they were probably too small by Christmas. 
     In addition to working in the fields there were cows to be milked by hand, Grandpa had two or three, the mules to be fed and harnessed, and the pigs to be slopped ( fed ).  When the young piglets were weaned they had to be ringed - meaning they had to have a steel ring placed in their nose with pliers to keep them from rooting and tearing up the land and crops.  Placing a ring in the nose of a pig was simple, first Grandpa would pour food into the pig feed trough and the pigs would come running, once the pigs were inside the pen the work began.  There were special ring pliers that held a ring similar to a "D" ring - Grandpa would insert a ring into the pliers and with one hand he would grab a pig by an ear and raise his front legs in the air then insert and squeeze the pliers attaching the ring around the center cartilage of the pig's nose then pull the pig by the ear to the gate and throw him out into the barnyard.  This whole process was very noisy in that the pigs  normally grunted and squealed while eating but when Grandpa grabbed one by the ear you would have thought he was killing it.  Grandpa was quite efficient at this and had it been popular back then he could have had a second income source as a body piercer, bellybuttons, noses, ears and nipples couldn't be that difficult. 
     Grandpa Riggan worked hard all of his life.  He was well respected in his community and church.  He raised a large family when times were lean and he may have been poor by some standards but he did own his farm and his family never went hungry.  Many days I watched him as he walked behind his plow and in his quiet voice telling his mules to getup or whoa, gee or haw, the reins would be wrapped around his neck and shoulder as his hands grasped the handles of the plow, the furrows straight as a plumb line.  He kept to a rigid schedule - up before dawn, in the field by sunrise, and along about mid morning he would stop and walk to the tree line where he had stashed a jug of water.  There he would sit puffing on his corncob pipe and look out over his fields with eyes shaded by an old sweat stained fedora hat.  Had he known the farmers of Georgia they would have called him brother.
     Growing up I had heard the term "redneck" and understood that it inferred being a farmer who worked his fields in the hot summer sun that burned the back of his neck and quite often a portion of his chest and forearms a dark red.  According to the internet many people back then referred the term "redneck" to uneducated and poor rural southern workers.  Today the term seems to refer to anyone who lives in the country, who are not too smart or sociable, may or may not work often and generally exhibiting behavior that makes people wonder if anyone could really be that stupid.   Judging by the reality shows on TV today there are definitely some strange people who fit this description though none of them fit my conception of a "redneck".
     Grandpa was a "redneck" alright, as were many of his forefathers.  I wish he were here now so I could talk to him and tell him how proud I am to be his grandson.