Sticks and Stones May Break my Bones but Words … Can Kill or Enliven
Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 20, 2016
Words matter. When I was 14, spring time found my father
and me dealing with barbed wire. We
weren’t building a fence; we were “sticking beans.”
My father, a good man who said little unless
the topics were faith, crops, or politics, was a neat-nick. Newspapers, once read, had to be placed back
in order, and magazines - Progressive Farmer, Farm Journal, and U.S. News and
World Report - had to be stacked neatly.
His diaries, in which he faithfully wrote nightly from January of 1943
to only a few months before his death in 1979, were kept at the end of the
mantel. We never touched them except
when he was away from the house.
Occasionally we would peep into the diaries to settle arguments about
dates. Those diaries didn’t lie.
My
father made up words. On the morning
that we gathered up a mall, oak posts, barbed wire, staples, crowbar, and
hammer for the bean sticking, he cautioned me that the job was going to be a
“worriation.” A lover of words, I knew
he didn’t get that one from Noah Webster.
The closest word to “worriation” that I could find in the dictionary was
“worriment” which to this day I have still never seen or heard used.
Anyhow,
on to that spring day of our worriation. When you stick beans “southernly,”
(honestly, I’ve heard him say that one too), you don’t just stick a spindly
sweet gum sapling in the ground beside the bean plant, hoping the runner will
run up the sapling. Oh, no. Even a mild
wind would level such a piddly effort as that.
“Piddly” is in honor of my father.
Mr. Webster lists it, but refers you to “piddling.” I’m with my father on this one. “Piddling” is
too citified, if not … British.
Of
course to do anything “southernly” really meant to do it the “W.E. Hines”
way. But that way always worked and
always made things look pretty, too.
People didn’t drive from town late in the afternoon to pass by and look
at his fields and gardens for nothing.
Ok,
here’s “southernly.” First you drive
posts down at the 2 ends of each row and at every 6 yards in between. Next you unroll and stretch barbed wire from
one end post to the other and hammer staples over the wire and onto the
every-six-yards posts. With barbed wire
stretched taut and stapled down, you can then “stick” a trimmed sapling beside
each bean plant, tie it to the secured wire, and in time, train the bean vine
to grow up the sapling.
With
gloved hands I began to unroll the wire.
Halfway down the row I lost control of the heavy roll, causing it to
whirl swiftly back toward my father at the other end of the row. One of the barbs plowed deep into his
ungloved hand and drew blood. Shaking
his hand and scattering blood, he yelled, “Son, you can’t do anything right.”
For
a few years I believed him. The words
didn’t exactly hurt; they stung and numbed.
They initiated a long period of self-doubt. But even their negative import could not
diminish my respect for my intelligent, hardworking, tenant farmer father who
nobly bore his responsibilities and raised 17 children to adulthood.
Eight
years later on a spring Sunday morning I asked him if he still planned to go
with me that afternoon 90 miles away to my college graduation. The recent death of my mother had turned him
into a sad, non-communicative man. At
age 72 he still worked hard. His answer
made me realize that for eight years I had wrongly and foolishly internalized
his words, allowing them to stymie me, even though they were spoken quickly out
of physical pain, not out of thought or belief.
“Son,
I don’t believe I can make that trip, but I want you to know I love you and I’m
proud of you,” he said. Instantly my
mind flashed back to that “worriation” of sticking beans and the words spoken
on that day.
“Some
say a word is dead once it is said / I say it just begins to live that day,”
wrote the poet. True, but words can also
cancel previously spoken ones when the latter ones are spoken sincerely. My father spoke sincerely.
Words
are the vehicles on which our thoughts ride.
Ill-chosen, those vehicles can hit the ditch and do damage. Luckily my self-imposed damage was
reversed. Many are those whose damage is
not.
Roger
Hines
3/16/16
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