by Tonjanita Johnson

Created on: August 12, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

Reminiscing on "The Field of Screams"

From the time that I was eight until I reached 18, many of my childhood mornings began with my grandmother's favorite words, "Wake up, gal. The world is passing you by!"

Although I never had the guts to say it aloud, in my mind, I would always respond with a resounding 'Let it pass!' because I knew that once I got up, I would become the one and only field hand in my grandmother's grossly underestimated reality of what she considered a garden.

This woman didn't have gardens. She had fields. She didn't understand cute little carrot patches, a hill or two of squash, or neatly potted herb gardens. She only knew rows and rows of okra, and peas, and greens (multiple varieties), and potatoes, and watermelons, and cucumbers, and tomatoes, and butter beans....

Surprisingly, she wasn't trying to feed a household of children or grow vegetables to sell at a local farmer's market. Rather, for her, gardening was a main source of exercise and fun, and she wanted to share her love and excitement in that endeavor with the world. Unfortunately, on most days, I was the world.

Despite being a regular overnight resident in my Grandmother's home, my protests related to our early-morning garden escapades rarely seemed to matter much to her. She didn't want to hear about child labor laws or my elementary explanations of the Emancipation Proclamation. Furthermore, she was consistently unimpressed by my overly dramatic orations on the potential for developing childhood arthritis from regularly grasping the hoe or my youthfully eloquent discussions of the health symptoms that could result from my chronic allergy to manual labor.

"I know you, gal!" she would exclaim. "You're a work-dodger like your mother. She used to hide and make mud pies until she was 16. Working in a garden ain't gonna kill you. As a matter of fact, it's just what you young people need-something constructive to do."

She would generally end that sermon by saying, "The idle mind is the devil's workshop, and idle hands are his tools. And, you'd better believe I ain't lettin' no devil build a thing on my property. So, get up and get out yonder!"

My grandmother was convinced that "tending the garden" was good for building character and would help me become a "productive" woman who could survive in a "hard world". She regularly declared, "I have to be the man and the woman around here, gal! You never know, you might have to do the same thing one day. And, there ain't nothin' better than knowing

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