Of Old Men and Dogs

Darcy's Note:  Today is September 25, and would have been my Grandpa Quinn's birthday.  He actually passed away on September 19, 2002.  Additionally, I lost Sis -- the dog in this essay -- on September 14, 2006.  So, in both of their memory, I am posting here an excerpt from an essay in my book, Circling Back Home: A Plainswoman's Journey.  The book is available from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, at www.sdshspress.org, if you are interested.

Of Old Men and Dogs

            “C’mon, Sis,” I call, following the trail around a bend in the timber. She’s off nosing under some deadfall for rabbits and squirrels, so I call again, a bit louder. This time she hears me, picks up her head, and trots back over to the trail. “Good girl,” I coo, putting my hand down by my side so she can nose my palm, a habit we’ve had since she was old enough to reach. Sis has never been the type of dog to jump up to greet me, but she and I do share a language, a bond born of years of walks and hikes like this one. Her ebony coat, normally full and wavy but now shaved for the summer, reveals even more gray hair than last year, and she tends to chase rabbits even less. Then again, I’m sure my head shows a few more gray hairs, also, and I find myself resting more on the rocks around me than I used to.

            After one particularly steep climb, I stop again to sit on a boulder and catch my breath. The late-July afternoon sun beats down on the open sections of the trail, so I perch on the edge of the timber, just inside the shade line. As my eyes adjust to the change in light, I notice specks of red in the vegetation around the sun-warmed boulders in front of me. Clearly, Sis, who snoozes with her head on her forepaws beside me, could care less, but curiosity tugs at me. Crouching down, I’m amazed to see dozens of red raspberries! I stand and look more closely; there seem to be bushes everywhere on this hillside, and most all of them are loaded with the red fruit.  Although I’ve hunted berries in these mountains for several summers now, never have I encountered more than a few raspberry bushes at a time, and then with only enough fruit for a taste.  Usually my family and I pick chokecherries or gooseberries, both more abundant here.

            Stooping down again, I pick a few; the ripe ones seem to fall off their core at the slightest pressure, just the way I remember picking them back in South Dakota as a girl.  Their sweet-tart goodness bursts in my mouth – better than candy. By now Sis has noticed that I’m eating -- her radar for that particular action is as sharp as ever -- and she comes over, tail wagging.  “No, girl, these aren’t for you; let’s see if I can find something else.”  I rummage in my fanny pack for a snack, and finally come up with a package of slightly crushed crackers. I’m not as prepared for our hikes these days as I used to be. This afternoon, I only decided to go after Shawn came in from the field early, unexpectedly, and offered to watch the kids so I could get away by myself for a while. So I grabbed a water bottle, my fanny pack with its notebook and pens, and my sunglasses, and loaded Sis in the back of the truck. It was only on the way up the mountain that I realized I’d forgotten something to eat. Now, Sis is satisfied with the broken crackers, and I’ve got all these berries around me to snack on – sometimes God comes through in the best ways.

“Hey, girl, let’s walk a little farther and see what we find.” The raspberries have given me a new drive to explore more, hunt farther on up the trail. I don’t feel the strain in my legs as much now; the pleasure of spotting another bush outweighs the heat and fatigue of this afternoon.

            The entire area seems to be covered in thickets; I’ve heard of places like this, but have never seen one. The thrill of finding the fruit takes me back years, to my grandpa’s garden, where picking raspberries was one of the chores that fell to my sisters and me.  Grandpa’s bushes were domestic, and so thick and tangled that only skinny kids could fit in some places to pick the sweet red jewels.

 

            Grandpa’s garden was a wondrous place by South Dakota standards. Of course, the usual practical crops of carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and other vegetables grew there. But around the edges of the garden were plants you didn’t usually find in a place where rainfall was erratic and land was apportioned to more  sure, safe plants. In early summer, we girls crawled through the dense mat of strawberries, picking gallons for Mom and Grandma to put up as jam. In the fall, if we’d had a wet summer, we sometimes had enough luck to pick a crop of apples from the trees planted on the west end of the garden. And always in July, there were the raspberries from the thicket that covered nearly a quarter of the plot.

            This garden, however, was Grandpa’s retirement project. When he and Grandma had lived at their first Dakota farm,  just a mile down the road, she’d tended to the gardening herself, and had grown the crops there that were the most practical and economical. Grandpa had been too busy milking cows and raising field crops to fuss with such work. But when he turned over management of the dairy to my mom’s oldest brother, and he and Grandma moved down the road, the planting and tending became one of Grandpa’s favorite pastimes. Though he still fed out calves, drove the tractor, and helped with whatever farm work was needed, he’d find time to lean over the garden fence at the end of the day.

            Sometimes a relative or neighbor would drive into his yard to find him in the garden, flat on his belly. “Dad, what are you doing?” my mom would always ask, slightly alarmed.

            “Oh, this darn jenny,” he’d spit, pointing to a skinny vine that curled around the tops of the carrots. Besides farming, Grandpa had worked for years for the Soil Conservation Service, and bore an extreme dislike for weeds of any kind. One in particular, creeping jenny, became enemy number one. Rather than spray with herbicide, he would patiently, painstakingly dig away at the ground with a long screwdriver, careful not to chop the roots, until he could tug the entire plant from the ground. These he piled up, then carried out of the garden to the burning barrel. Despite his valiant battles, the jenny seemed to be winning the war, coming back each year without fail.

 

It is probably Grandpa Quinn, of all my ancestors, who endowed me with a storyteller’s voice. Grandpa was famous in three counties for his stories, and his travels for work or pleasure always took him to homes where he would love to visit for hours.

He would preface a story by saying, “Maybe I’ve told you this before, but. . .”, and the listener became a captive audience. Yes, we kids did hear many of those stories over and over again; yes, perhaps we could have been using our time more productively than listening to those words we already knew. But in truth, I remember the hours I spent listening to Grandpa’s stories as some of the most precious of my childhood, and I wish I could give my own kids that same kind of privilege. There was always plenty of work to do around the farm and garden, but Grandpa must have believed that the stories he told were important for people to hear. He gave time to storytelling, the same way he gave time to digging weeds and planting impractical plants. Grandpa knew how to give time to life.