I'm a pea picking fool

9/5/09 Saturday
I won’t know till we get to the market and start weighing them but I think I may have as much as 150 pounds of blackeyed peas. They came with a cost. The peas next door are about played out and it took forever just to find twenty pounds of them so I went to the farmer’s field that is on the other side of our farm. We met him once before but don’t remember his name, nor do we know how to get a hold of him, so I wasn’t able to get permission to pick. But we know that these farmers aren’t allowed to sell the peas and that generally they allow folks to pick what they want so after much deliberation I decided to go ahead and pick out of his field, hoping I wouldn’t cause offense. The peas are much younger and having been planted later had missed a lot of the July rains so each plant was only twelve inches high, but they were loaded with peas.

I picked yesterday afternoon till about 3:30 when I needed to head into Midland to poop scoop, do my laundry, and hoped to visit my friend. That didn’t work out. I actually didn’t get to Midland till after 4:00, much later than I planed. I took some cantaloupe and peas for Janie as well as her neighbors, who have done a lot for us. They are the ones who rented a trencher and bought the pipe and faucets that are now the integral part of my garden, enabling me to get water to the plants. We visited for a while as they inquired as to how things were going. Cherie called at 5:00 when she got off work. We decided to meet for dinner and went to Logan’s steakhouse. I realized that it gets dark sooner now that winter is approaching and wouldn’t be able to visit my friend and still have time to pick the peas needed for the market so we hurried through our dinner. I called Don and spoke to his wife to let them know I wouldn’t be able to make it. Didn’t feel great about that. And after hitting Walfart, where I bought eggs and picked up some extra bags to package peas in, raced home.


Then it was back to peas and that was a race too as I watched the sun get lower and lower. I took my fisherman’s headlight with me so I could pick after dark. One of the things I learned in prison back in 1975 was how to work through pain. If you do a search of the blog with the word “prison” you should find a description of that. I was nineteen and was in real bad shape having lived on the streets for a while so the hard Texas prison labor was quite a shock to my system. I’ll try and look that up later but have a market to get ready for. In it you can read how there was blood running down the handle of the hoe I was using in a line of about twenty inmates that came from blister that had burst and then what was left of my skin literally wore through as I worked without gloves. Point is bending down to ground level and up to twelve inches high picking peas was excruciating on this back that was broken and damaged multiple times, but I had peas to pick. Could barely walk when I got home. This morning is rough as I expected it to be but I can take a pain pill. I won’t take them after 7:00 at night no matter what cause they keep me awake.

That’s it for now. Have to get things loaded for the market. By the way, my dad didn’t call yesterday. If he was released from the hospital and able to go back to Georgetown he could well have not been up to calling anyone. I waited for the phone to ring all day but when it did it was always someone else. That’s ok, he’s willing to call so when dad’s up to it he will.