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The ADVANCE, February 24,2021 /Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
New Potatoes
After a season
of afternoons in the
forties, yesterday,
the thermometer hit
58 degrees, and the
By Amber Nagle sun cast its golden
glaze upon our yard
and garden spot.
“I’m going to plant our potatoes to
day,” I announced around noon. “Mom says
potato-planting time is always around Aunt
Sybol’s birthday, and her birthday was last
weekend, so today’s the day.”
A week ago, I bought two sacks of seed
potatoes from Tractor Supply and carved
them into smaller chunks bearing several
eyes each. I spread out some newspaper in
front of a window and set the potatoes on
the paper so they could sprout and form
callouses over their flesh.
By one o’clock yesterday, I was already
in the garden turning the soil with our
twenty-year-old, walk-behind tiller, being
careful not to chop off a foot. As I tilled, my
thoughts ran wild. Every time I find myself
in my garden planting things, I think about
my grandparents and great-grandparents
and how they plowed their corners of the
world with horses, mules, and manpower
before they had engine-powered tractors
and equipment. I come from a long line of
farmers who loved the land, and the land
loved them back.
When I was growing up, my family
tended a large garden in our backyard. We,
too, planted potatoes in rows, and when
they were mature, we turned the soil with
a pitchfork to reveal little pinkish-red po
tatoes hiding in the rich middle Georgia
soil. We called them new potatoes, and my
mouth started watering the moment I saw
them peeking through the dark brown dirt.
For many years, we scraped off the dirt
and skins using a bowl of water and either
a paring knife or the edge of a spoon. But
at some point, one of us realized we could
blast off the dirt and skins using the high-
pressure nozzle connected to the water
hose. That revelation was a game changer.
In the kitchen, Mom boiled the new
potatoes until they became tender. She
drained the water, slathered them with lots
of creamy butter, poured a little milk into
the pot, sprinkled salt and pepper onto
them, and stirred it all together until a silky
potato gravy formed in the pot. Voila!
As for the taste? Well, I think it’s safe to
assume that boiled new potatoes are on the
menu in Heaven.
But back to yesterday. With every step I
took behind the tiller, I felt so hopeful — so
damn hopeful. Indeed, at its core, garden
ing is an act of hope — hope that the tiny
seeds I carefully distribute, cover with dirt,
and care for, will bear fruit one day. After a
year of being held hostage by a pandemic, it
sure felt wonderful to hope yesterday.
By three o’clock, I was dropping potato
plugs into deep trenches while I listened
to the audiobook, “Shoeless Joe,” on my
phone.
By 3:30, I was covering my potato
chunks with three inches of loose soil.
By four o’clock, I was stowing my shov
el, hoe and the tiller in the corner of the
shop.
By five o’clock, I was on the porch beat
ing dirt clods out of the treads of my shoes
and cleaning dirt out of my fingernails with
a nail brush.
By 5:30,1 was inside the house, sitting
with my feet elevated in the recliner, drink
ing a glass of sweet tea.
At six o’clock, I gazed over at my hus
band and said, “My back and arms hurt. I
think I may have overdone it out in the gar
den today. What about you?”
He nodded. He had spent the afternoon
with the chainsaw and commented that he
didn’t have any feeling in his left hand.
At 3 a.m., I woke to the sound of rain
drops falling on our roof. I thought about
my thirsty potatoes in the garden trench
and smiled in the darkness. As I shifted in
the sheets, I felt a familiar jolt of pain in my
upper back and shoulders — a reminder
that most worthwhile things in this world
come with a price, but aches and pains are
a small price to pay for the delicious new
potatoes we will eat in three months and
the hopefulness I felt while planting them
yesterday.
I’ll watch my potatoes grow and add
dirt to the hills. Most of all, I’ll continue to
be hopeful, because hope is a good thing,
perhaps the best of things.
-rom the Porch
The Butter Mold
She's still full of ques
tions.
“Little Miss Phil
lips” was fingering a
round wooden object
that looked like a
bowl with a plunger
in the middle. She
turned it over and
tried to reason it out before asking, “What’s
this?”
“What does it look like?” I responded,
sounding like the Baron of Bear Creek who
answers questions with a question.
“It looks like something to do with mod
eling clay because you could pack it full and
push it out.”
“Yes, but that
belonged to your
great-great-grand-
mother, and she
didn’t play with
clay”
She turned it
over and finally
looked up grinning,
“butter mold.”
This butter
mold was probably
machine turned out of poplar and served our
Phillips family well. It’s a quarter pound
mold with the design of acorns on the
plunger, which were impressed into the
mound of butter.
My grandmother used this to mold but
ter for household use.
LMP pulled out two more molds. Both
are rectangular in shape but of different sizes.
These are the molds my grandmother used
for butter she sold; they are for half-pound
and one-pound blocks of butter.
My grandmother Lois Milam Phillips
was fifteen years old when she married in
1892 and used the butter molds.
In those days there were two “peddlers”
who visited families in our community buy
ing eggs and butter then taking those items
to sell to Atlanta housewives.
Mr. Ed Wood lived across the river in the
Boyd Settlement and traveled the country
side in a wagon before he bought a truck.
The other peddler was a Mr. High, whose
family would become prosperous and build
the High Museum in Atlanta.
Atlanta was an all-day trip in those days.
Before a state farmer’s market was created,
rural people set up in Mr. Souder’s wagon
yard near downtown Atlanta. They left their
rig and belongings guarded by a family dog
while they attended
to whatever busi
ness required the
trip.
Mr. Wood was ac-
commodating
about special or
ders. My grand
mother ordered a
treadle sewing ma
chine, which Mr.
Wood picked up
and delivered to her
in his wagon. I’d love to have it.
The treadle-sewing machine, along with
many other family items were stolen and
sold out of a truck in the employee parking
lot at Lockheed. The thieves took more than
“things” from the house. They took connec
tions to the history of the county, pictures,
letters, journals.
Justice ground slowly, sputtered and
Please see Dear page 8A
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
A Conversation on
Politics With Junior E. Lee
I called Ju
nior E. Lee,
general man
ager of the
Yarbrough
Worldwide
Media and
Pest Control
Company, lo
cated in
Greater Gar
field, Georgia,
to see if he could help me make sense
of the strange political world in which
we find ourselves these days.
Junior is not only one of the most
highly-respected political analysts in
the nation, he is also a pest control
professional. That is a unique combi
nation. Try calling the snoots in the
newsroom at the New York Times and
see if anybody there can tell you how
to keep flea beetles from eating holes
in your collard greens.
Junior had just returned from
Arveen Ridley’s place, where he had
been spraying for cow ticks. He was
headed over to Aunt Flossie Fulmer’s,
where he intends to take a peek in
side her drawers. I hope he is talking
about looking for carpenter ants, but
I have to be careful how I deal with
Junior. Pest control professionals
tend to be very temperamental.
I told Junior I had gotten a lot of
mail about my columns on Donald
Trump. I was surprised how many
people who say they are Republicans
agreed with me that the presidential
election was over and that it was time
to move on. And then there were
those who claim that the election was
a fraud and seemed to want to blame
me for having brought the subject up.
One even accused me of being a lib
eral. While I accepted the criticism
with equanimity, I am sure a lot of
Chardonnay-sipping. left-leaning
weenies would feel otherwise.
Junior cautioned me to be careful
what I say about Trump these days. If
his supporters tore up the United
States Capitol and talked about tak
ing Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi
hostage, what would keep them from
storming the headquarters of the Yar
brough Worldwide Media and Pest
Control Company in Greater Gar
field, Georgia, and taking him or our
trusted colleague, Figby, hostage?
He was particularly concerned
about the guy wearing the buffalo
head running loose in Greater Gar
field. Buffaloes are known as a haven
for lice, and the last thing the town
needs besides a mob attacking our
headquarters is a lice infestation. Ju
nior says he has stashed away a con
siderable amount of malathion just to
be on the safe side. It not only works
on lice, it has shown to be effective
on fruit flies, too. Leave it to Junior E.
Lee to cover all the bases.
I told Junior that while several
readers admitted that the Capitol ri
ots went too far, they wanted to know
why nobody seems upset with a
bunch of young hooligans looting
and burning down buildings, turning
over police cars and barricading
By Dick Yarbrough
roads.
Junior said that the riots have oc
curred in cities with liberal mayors.
Also, the goons are treated with kid
gloves by the media which are in
fested with more liberals than lace
wing larvae in a cotton patch. (Junior
and his pest control analogies again!)
He said since I am a liberal, I should
have been able to answer my own
question. I told him that was just
what one reader thought and that I
didn’t appreciate his sarcasm.
Junior said he was just joshing.
He says he knows some liberals and
that I have got a long way to go before
I could ever qualify as one. I’d have to
refuse to recite the Pledge of Alle
giance, kneel during the National An
them and demand that North Dakota
be given back to the Chippewas. I
hope that reader sees this.
In closing, I asked Junior E. Lee if
things were ever going to get back to
normal or was this the way life was
going to be - Republicans fighting
with Republicans; Democrats
spending money faster than they can
print it; a pandemic that won’t seem
to go away; QAnon conspiracies;
calls to defund the police. It is all so
depressing.
Junior said not to worry. NASA
has told him there is a chance that a
giant asteroid headed this way could
hit us in 2068. That would take care
of the Proud Boys, global warming
and all the other stuff.
I don’t know where he hears
these things, but I would suggest that
we take it seriously. To be on the safe
side, I am going to pray for forgiveness
for all my many transgressions. Junior
says the only thing he plans to do is to
take a long look inside Aunt Flossie
Felmer’s drawers. There is only one
Junior E. Lee. Thank goodness.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at
dick@dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box
725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139 or on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/
dickyarb.
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