Our house abutted against the back of the Crenshaw Muck farm

Our house abutted against the back of the Crenshaw Muck farm

fiction
edward w pritchard

Our  house abutted against the back of the Crenshaw Muck farm. We were Negroes but the Crenshaws were white. Originally they encouraged black folks to move up to Ohio to work on the Muck farm. Our entire street is negro. Only no one works on the muck farm that lives here anymore. The Mexican workers came in the 1970's and drove down wages. They don't work on the muck farm either anymore, but their hard work must have paid off for I see them around town with expensive new trucks and the kids always have new clothes. Of course they still have large families and the women are still very pretty and the men are very proud.

This story is about Grandma Sayles who used to watch me because my Mother was sick a lot. I mention the muck farm because Grandma liked to look at a good looking man. She was a good Christian woman but those men when they worked in the heat at the muck farm would be nearly naked. Grandma would watch both the black and brown men get covered in the black dirt as they worked and sometimes if they were working the section of the Crenshaw farm by our porch Grandma would take them cokes with ice and my Mom would say Grandma always found a reason to put her hands across one of their backs when she handed them something. Later when the Latino men came in Grandma watched them more from afar for they made her a little nervous but I could tell she liked how they looked working out there in the hot sun all day.  

When I stayed with Grandma Sayles she always worked very hard. She told me that when she was five years old down on the farm in the South she started doing all the cleaning around the kitchen and most of the cooking. I never saw anyone who could work as hard as her around the house. Up early and working, working working. She worked all the time unless someone came by with a new baby to show her and for her to hold or unless she was sitting on the front porch taking a break watching the men work in the field near the house.  

When I stayed a few weeks with Grandma Sayles she didn't make me do all the housework or anything like that. But, she did think a young girl should stay busy, to keep her out of trouble. She mostly had me sort buttons. She would buy huge boxes of broken up buttons and unmatched ones at the goodwill and then I would sit on the floor in the living room or on the porch and match them up; sometimes I could find a set of four or five. Grandma would take the five buttons, one good needle and some thread and put it in a small case and sell it in town for one dollar. She did it all the time. I always got a quarter when I was nine or so for my share and we would stop up at McDonald's which was new in town then. Hamburgers were a dime and it's the only time I saw Grandma eat at a restaurant. Mostly she did all the cooking for everyone. It was the best twenty cents I ever spent buying Grandma a hamburger and a coke. She didn't have to cook it or clean up the mess after anyone.

I was away at College when Grandma Sayles died. I had a lot of potential and I got several scholarships. After the funeral everyone came over to her old farm by the Crenshaw Truck farm, they had changed the name of the business. I did the cooking and cleaning for everyone. I had to my Mom was sick and my sister who is also in College couldn't figure out how to take the peels off the potatoes. It took me a long time to cook for twenty three people and then clean the kitchen at Grandma's house immaculately like she used to keep it. It was after six in the evening and I sat on the porch and watched the men working on Crenshaw's farm from Grandma's porch after I got all the cooking and cleaning done. The men over there working are now some kind of Orientals but they still look good without shirts sweating in the hot sun.
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