Reflections - Country Favors

Azalea

The first Tuesday in May, Spence beckoned me. “I’ve got something to show you.” His boots swished through nearly foot-high, north yard grass. In the raised bed we’d created to honor Sister Loretta, forget-me-nots surrounded the angel statue and overflowed the timbers. I paused in wonder.

But Spence took several more steps. Poker faced, he stopped beside the azalea we’d planted for my friend Barb. Delicate red flowers dotted the bush.

“Wow.” I framed flower portraits in my cell phone viewer then waded through the grass to set out on a health walk with Spence.

Nature provided sunglasses, baseball cap, and no jacket exercise-weather that day. When we reached Flickinger’s horse pasture a half-mile down the road, several red-winged blackbirds sang choruses of their reedy conk-la-ree. Towhees whistled tow-hee and robins chirped cheer-up cheerily.

The Flickingers greeted us too. Charlie parked their white sedan in the middle of the road. He and Deb grinned from the front seat. Charlie called through the driver’s side window. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m getting over the flu.” Spence swung his arms up in the air and slapped them against his thighs.

“He naps a LOT.” I patted Spence’s shoulder.

Spence proceeded to tell the saga about the April twentieth onset of the flu he thought was a cold and his four-hour April twenty-ninth emergency room visit. “Then the doctor says, ‘It isn’t COVID. It isn’t pneumonia. It isn’t RSV. It’s flu. Go home, rest, and drink fluids.’”

In unison, Deb and Charlie’s mouths dropped open.

“I use horse medicine when I get sick.” Deb pursed her lips to punctuate the sentence. “It’s the same as people-medicine, only cheaper.”

The conversation switched to the horses, horses pastures, and hay. Spence pointed at the field across the road that Charlie leaves fallow for hay. “My grass looks like your field. My lawnmower broke again. It’s May. The mower breaks every May.” Using his hands as visual aids, Spence described a broken piece of bent plastic. Skippy, a lawnmower mechanic down the road, would order a replacement—once his computer was fixed.

We finished the conversation with cats and weather forecasts—more rain. Deb shook her head in disgust. “That will make the grass grow even higher.”

The Flickingers’ car crunched driveway gravel at the end of the horse pasture. Spence and I continued to the other end, pivoted, and headed home. Before we returned to their driveway, Charlie’s riding mower rumbled over the field behind their century- and a half-old farm house. He’d taken the weather forecast to heart.

 

Flickingers' Farm

Spence did too. The next morning he attached the brush hog to his Mahindra tractor and mowed or, as he described it, “knocked down the high parts.” Another description could be combing the grass, a likely expectation of a brush hog. I didn’t tell him that. Only a fool would get in the way of a country man and his style of grass management.

After two hours of hum-buzzing around the north field, down his dad’s old driveway, along the house driveway, and over the south lawn, Spence trudged inside. Smut smeared his face, thinned by weeks of the flu.

“Aren’t you tired?” I assumed he would stretch on the sofa for one of his three or four daily naps.

“No. I was sitting.” And he sat some more at his desk in the guest room to work on lead safe issues. At two o’clock, he stacked his papers and marched outside.

Worried that he needed rest, I argued with myself. He rested while sitting. He’s a grown man. Let him decide. Besides, Wednesday was the first of two cleaning days. At age seventy-five, I paced myself. I needed to clean the guest room—easier with him out of the way. The Mahindra hummed-buzzed outside. Cat claws scritch-scratched the wood floors inside. Spence’s cat buddy Rills dodged the dust mop.

Around four, Spence came inside. I chased a pile of cat hair in the great room, and a lawnmower rumbled outdoors. Maybe our neighbor Rob came home early and was cutting his grass.

Spence banged pots and glanced out the kitchen window. “Charlie’s mowing where I cut.”

Charlie might not have considered the brush hogged areas were cut. But I only offered a “Huh,” swept up the cat hair, and dumped it into the garbage bag.

Spence went out to investigate.

Charlie’s mower rumbled for an hour and a half.

Over dinner Spence said, “I asked Charlie why he was mowing. He said because my mower was broken.” Spence took a bite of his homegrown asparagus. “And because I wasn't feeling well.” Spence scrunched his forehead. “I hope he didn’t mow the asparagus.”

After dinner, I toted crushed aluminum cans outside. The fragrance of fresh cut grass—one of nature’s lovely spring scents—overwhelmed me. I let the dishes soak and soaked in the fragrance of Charlie’s kind favor.

Cleaning the second half of the house Thursday, I glimpsed the cut grass through the windows. Charlie’s kindness stayed top of mind.

How could I thank him? A card seemed lame.

I dusted and reflected on other images of country folks doing favors for neighbors. Spence often shares tomato and pepper seedlings he starts. Kathy gives away fresh eggs her hens lay. Sandi calls with news of fabric sales I won’t want to miss.

Once Tammy told her mom to call me because a bear lounged in Peggie’s tree and I would want his photograph. And a stranger stopped his pickup because Spence was monitoring a raccoon stagger along the road by our house. Spence admitted he didn’t have time to assemble his rifle and find the stored ammunition. The stranger pulled a pistol from his glove compartment and shot the rabid animal.

By the time I’d swiped the last wisp of cat hair—well, for a millisecond Thursday—I had an idea. On one of Spence’s sleep-all-days, I’d shopped and bought a bag of apples. He bought another bag when he felt up to shopping again. While Spence took his post dinner nap, I peeled, cored, and sliced in hopes Charlie and Deb liked apple pie. Luckily, the pie baked bubbly and brown with its fluted edge intact.

Friday, Spence drove me in his Maverick down West Creek Road because I didn’t want to carry a pie, tucked in a grocery bag, half a mile.

Deb was weeding the flowerbed by her front porch. Three longhair tabbies swished their tails and swarmed around her.

I slid out of the pickup and handed Deb the pie. “This is to thank Charlie for all the mowing he did.”

“Oh, he was going to come back and finish.” Deb dropped her trowel and took the pie. “Charlie was angry with me. I told him to be back at five-thirty because we were going to church. The grandkids had a graduation event there.” She smiled sadly. “Then it rained and he couldn’t get back.”

“Spence is buying a battery powered mower.” I didn’t want Charlie to think he needed to cut our entire lawn and field. Spence mowed after dinner for exercise—weather permitting. 

Spence rounded the truck. “Skippy ordered the part for the old mower. I don’t trust it.” No poker face on Spence this time. His expression broadcast regret and sadness.

Deb raised and lowered the pie. “Charlie will be so pleased. He loves homemade pie. He says he wants to eat dessert first because he sometimes doesn’t have room after he’s eaten.”

“Charlie did a good job. He didn’t hit the pump.” Spence didn’t add that Charlie mowed down our asparagus beside the path. Grass had hidden the asparagus shoots. With all the rain, more will grow.

“There’s nothing Charlie likes better than mowing except maybe getting on the back of the horse,” Deb said.

Each of us has our own way to extend favors. Charlie mows. I bake pies. Country neighbors look out for each other.

This renews my faith in people. And, even more than gazing at the wonder of May flowers, living among such folk satisfies my soul.

 

Apple Pie for Charlie