Weeds

by Edith Summers Kelley

These children played and quarreled and made discordant, schoolyard noises in the dooryard of a little, three-room shanty standing upon forty-seven acres of heavy clay land which Aunt Annie Pippinger had inherited from her father. The front yard had been plowed up at some time or other but never planted to anything; and the result was a plentiful crop of ragweed, yarrow and pink-blooming soapwort. Two or three rose bushes clung to the broken picket fence and made it gay in June; and by the front door there was a large bush that bore beautiful creamy roses, tinged in the bud ever so slightly with delicate pink. By the back porch a lilac bush as tall as a small tree made April fragrant for the Pippingers.

The back dooryard was beaten bare and hard by the playing feet of children and the dumping of endless tubs of soapsuds and pans of dishwater. A discarded cookstove lying on its side against the back wall of the kitchen, formed the nucleus for a pile of rust-eaten pots and pans. Beyond the bare spot, a fringe of mustard, ragweed, and burdock reached to the picket fence. Along this fence a dozen or so stalks of hollyhock bloomed in summer gorgeously pink and scarlet against a blue sky. The smoke house and the back house occupied opposite corners of this yard, a well worn path through the weeds leading the way to each.

A stone's throw beyond the picket fence stood the barn, a structure that had been in need of repairs these many years, and part of the roof and sides of an old wagon shed. Here, too, was the horsepond, overhung by a big weeping willow, and a small corral that Bill had built for the milking of the cows. Beyond rose a grassy slope dotted with locust trees. A few straggly apple and peach trees, mostly sprung from seed, grew here and there in odd corners.

The Pippinger farm, like all the rest of the land immediately about it, consisted of hills sloping more or less gently into each other, so that there was no level ground to be found anywhere. This was characteristic of the whole of Scott County. Everywhere there were hills: steep hills and gentle hills, high hills and low hills, plowed hills, and grassy hills and weed-covered hills, but always hills. These hills sometimes ran in long ridges across the land with hollows on each side and other hills sloping up from the hollows. The only level land was the narrow strips at the bottoms of these hollows made by the washing down of soil from the hills.

A great deal of otherwise good land was spoiled in this way. If the hills were kept in bluegrass or sweet clover, they "stayed put." But when they were plowed for corn or tobacco and afterward left to grow up in weeds, the heavy rains cut deep gullies in their sides and washed the good soil to the bottom. This was the case with most of the Pippinger acres. There was only a small amount of land left that was smooth enough to be plowed for corn. Ever since the family had moved onto the place, which was when Crawford was a baby, Bill had talked about how he was going to "stop up them gullies an' put in sweet clover." But each year the gullies wore deeper and each year Bill talked less about reclaiming them. There was still enough pasture, however, for two cows, Roanie and Reddie and a team of gray mules that answered, though sometimes reluctantly, to the names of Tom and Bob. Scratching and cackling hens made the barnyard lively; there were geese on the horsepond; and a few turkeys ranged in the surrounding fields and grew fat on the corn and alfalfa for miles around.

This was the center of the universe for the Pippinger children. Here they played the games that they had learned in the schoolyard: "Blind Man's Buff," "Tag," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and "Little Sally Waters." They made playhouses in fence corners where they treasured up bits of colored glass and stones glittering with mica. They hunted for the eggs of hens that had stolen their nests. They stalked the turkeys to find out where they were laying the precious turkey eggs. They stood around their mother as she churned and with greedy little fingers scraped off the spattered blobs of butter as they appeared on the dasher stick and the churn top. When house-cleaning time was come and their mother had the front room carpet out on the line, they crept in between its dusty folds and crawled gleefully up and down making the mild April evening vibrant with their shouts and laughter. They gathered wild raspberries and blackberries in summer and in autumn hickory nuts and black walnuts. They brought up the cows for the milking and exemplified the phrase, "Straight from producer to consumer," by milking into their own mouths. They made dandelion chains in spring and burr baskets in autumn and scattered the silky fluff of ripe milkweed pods into the sunny autumn air. They held buttercups under each other's chins to see if they liked butter. They quarreled over the possession of playthings and other subjects of childish dispute. Sometimes they fought savagely and kicked each other's shins and made vigorous attempts to scratch and bite, then ran crying and complaining to their mother.

A radius of some eight or ten miles about the farm formed their entire world. Within this circle was Clayton, the source of groceries, candy and Christmas toys, as were also the homes of the various grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins with whom they visited. Almost every Sunday, and sometimes on a week day, Bill would hitch up Tom and Bob to the spring wagon as soon as the morning chores were done, and the whole family, dressed in clean denim and starched calico, would jog away over the winding dirt road to the home of one or other of their kin for an all-day visit. The parent Pippingers sat on the seat in front, which was padded with a couple of old patchwork quilts; and the children made themselves comfortable seats in the thick straw of the wagon body.

So they would drive out into the sunshine, up hill and down hill, across rickety wooden bridges, around gentle bends and sharp turns, past corn patches and tobacco fields and long stretches of land grown up in weeds and brush; through little groves of second growth maple and hickory, past old log houses and weathered frame shanties and big tobacco barns and occasional large, more or less pretentious dwellings surrounded by lawns, till they came to grandad's or Aunt Abigail's or Cousin Rubena's, and there halted for the day.

It was not considered necessary to warn relatives that on such and such a day they were to receive seven all-day visitors. Such an idea had never occurred to Bill or his wife or any of their connections. The Pippingers themselves received many such guests, and were quite as glad to be visited as to visit. There was no sin greater than the sin of being stingy with your time, your food, or your work. To intimate by word, deed, or look that visitors were not welcome was unthinkable in the social circle in which Bill's family and their kin moved.

When the visiting Pippingers reached their destination, whether it was grandad's or Aunt Abigail's or Cousin Rubena's, the procedure was always the same. Everybody, men, women, and children, came out to the wagon to welcome the visitors. There would follow a few moments of general kissing, handshaking, comments on the weather, and mutual inquiries concerning health. Then the men unhitched, put up the mules, and retired to the barnyard to chew, whittle, and exchange silence-punctuated views on the three main topics of common interest, the weather, the crops, and the neighbors. The children straggled after them or ran to the wagon shed to see the new litter of puppies or started a game of "Hide and Seek" in the dooryard. Aunt Annie Pippinger went with the womenfolk back into the house, where, having laid aside her sun-bonnet and jacket, she immediately started to scrape potatoes, cut string beans, peel apples, or otherwise help with the preparations for dinner.