Approximate date: July 1965
Main characters: R.D. Brown and me
Introduction. Dad had two black men who were his main help during my days of working on the farm before college: Brown and Spot. Here I will focus on RD Brown. Brown was scrawny – not more than 120 lbs, hunched over a bit, wrinkled, and one eyed. He was an aromatic mixture of cigarette smoke, whiskey, and unwashed negro, and he had a cackly laugh that carried. When I was between say 12 and 15, one of my main farm tasks was to go with Brown and clip pastures. Some of our most memorable experiences were at Wyoming – a place of about 1,500 acres west of US Hwy 61 and just north of the LA/MS border.
Brown would pick me usually around 6:30 am and our first stop would be “The Store” (Treppendahl’s) which was then located one block northwest of the courthouse square There we would fill up our 2-gallon water cooler with ice and water and get our lunches. I would always get a can of Vienna sausages (referred to as “round steak” by Dad), a can of either peaches or mixed fruit, a honeybun, and a Pepsi. Brown would always get two slices of white bread, three slices of baloney, a chunk of cheese and an RC Cola. We put the canned drinks in the cooler to be enjoyed at lunch and then headed out for Wyoming.
As I think about it now, Brown and I spent close to two hours together every day when we could and usually did converse. The drive from Valhalla to the Store and then from there to Wyoming, which was down a long winding gravel road, and then lunch and then cleaning or fueling the equipment. Brown never went beyond grammar school – he was barely literate. But he was curious and had given thought to how things worked and had his theories. For example, if I asked him how it was that the eye could see, he had an answer. The eyeball shot rays out that bounced off whatever they hit, and it came back and told the eyeball what was out there. (It did not take me long to learn that in school not to offer Brown’s theories on various aspects of physics.) Still, in retrospect, it is very commendable that Brown wondered about things, and lacking literacy, education, and television, he used his observations and imagination to conjure up theories. To me, he was a modern-day black Leonardo Da Vinci.
Wyoming was a mixture of woods and pastures. It had the single largest pasture by far of any of our places. That pasture was about 200 acres and one border of it was a bluff overlooking Bayou Sara.
Brown always drove the larger tractor and pulled a 15’ winged clipper. I drove the smaller tractor and pulled a 6’ bushhogg. So, between the two of us, we had a 21’ spread. The average speed of the tractors was around 5 mph. A rule of thumb is that the number of acres you can cover in a day is equal to the speed of the tractor times the width covered. Theoretically then, together we could cut about 100 acres in a day. But in cutting smaller fields with lots of obstacles, 75 acres was about max.
We had started on the big pasture on a Thursday morning. We picked a shady place in the middle of the pasture to put the cooler and our lunches. At noon, we broke off mowing and headed for the shade trees for lunch. As we approached, I saw movement near the cooler and as we got closer, I realized it was a bunch of crows. They had found our lunch bags and ripped them open. Nothing but the wrapper was left of my honeybun – but the crows could not open the cans of fruit or Vienna sausage. Brown’s lunch, however, was a total loss. Not a morsel was left of his bread, baloney, or cheese. He was furious with the crows – he must have stomped around and cursed them for 10 minutes. His repertoire included the standard 4 letter words. But his most condemning curse phrase was to call someone or something a “yellow bellied sap sucker”. He profaned the crows a dozen times or so with that moniker. I shared my sausages and peaches with him, and we had grumbling stomachs that afternoon.
The next day we got started bright and early. Brown was determined to finish the big pasture before we went home for the weekend. Rather than driving the tractors back to the barn to refuel them, he brought two 5-gallon cans of diesel with us and left them with the cooler. We had both learned lessons from the crows. No honeybun for me. Just a can of Vienna sausages and a larger can of fruit. I dug out a hole and set them under the bottom of the water cooler. Brown was not changing his diet – but he did change where he kept his food. He secured his brown lunch bag on the tractor in a spot directly under the fuel tank.
We got after it. By noon, we had really cut that pasture down to size and as we broke for lunch, we agreed that we should finish it that afternoon. Brown did not want to waste time. Rather than relaxing to have lunch with me, he went and got one of the diesel cans to refuel his tractor. As noted, Brown was a small fellow and it was no easy task for him to hoist the 35lb can of diesel up on the tractor. He opened the fuel cap on the tractor and the spigot on the can and attempted to pour in the fuel. He lost control of the can and diesel poured down the side of the tractor. I jumped up and helped him steady the can and complete the fueling. Brown put the caps back on, put the can back where he got it, and got a cup of water from the cooler. He then went to the tractor to retrieve his lunch. He suddenly let out a howl and then started cussing the crows. I came running over but I didn’t see any crows. Brown turned around as forlorn as I had ever seen him. In his hand was his brown bag lunch -completely soaked with diesel. He wailed, “Those yellow-bellied sapsuckers beat me again!”