fields, fields and more fields.
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cheesecakes are my favorite
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31.5.02
tonight i went to a "ball." i think the idea was for it to be very civilized, but it wasn't...mostly. but it was uncivilized in a good way.
when we got there, everyone looked perfect. all the clothes were smooth, every hair was in place and everyone was fresh and beautiful. at the end, the clothes were wrinkled and sweaty, hair had fallen down and curls had come out, feet hurt and backs ached and everyone was tired, but they were still beautiful. everyone was breathless, smiling and happy.
i've had my princess evening, and now it's time to go upstairs and take my hair down and necklace off, then come back downstairs and change into my pyjamas and go back to being just whitney.
but that's ok.
9:41 PM
30.5.02
tonight was absolutely wonderful. it made up for all the crappiness the rest of the day was. tonight was wonderful.
8:48 PM
28.5.02
i'm tired of dealing with things. i wish so desperately that i could change them and there's nothing i can do. nothing.
but i'm not hopeless, i don't think. i'm going to bed now.
6:37 PM
23.5.02
well, we've made it back home safe and sound and have been working our butts off ever since. it's not too bad though. just working on the decks on the new house.
my mother just doesn't seem to understand. when i refer to people by their ethnicity, i'm simply trying to describe the person for her, not trying to draw attention to the fact that they're different from me.
i'm too tired for words.
7:11 PM
15.5.02
today was rough. it was really rough. last night, i got to bed late. i got up early, helped jarrell and uncle joe get moved to another field, then started loading seed. no problems so far. then a lot of little things started going wrong. if it had been one, it would have been all right, but it was a million, not the least of which being that the planter quit planting. a lot of things went wrong that didn't affect me directly, but it affected everyone around me in a bad way, so it got to me too.
we didn't get home from the fields until seven and it just occured to me that i got five and half hours of sleep and worked for twelve and a half hours. whoa. that's a long time.
ok, it wasn't all bad. i did get to take a nap in the tractor between seed loadings.
tuesday, may 14, 2001
it rained last night, so we didn't end up working today. we slept late, and then, later on in the morning, allison and i went out to the fields that glenn and jarrell were harrowing. i rode with jarrell and allison rode with glenn. i actually ended up getting to drive jarrell's tractor all by my lonesome, which is a great honor. i'd say that i got to drive one of the only two 8520's in south georgia, but no one would know what i was talking about.
later that afternoon, we went to albany (pronounced: all-binny) to shop with the money that aunt susan paid us for working. it was wonderful being able to spend whatever i wanted on clothes without worrying about spending too much money or making anyone mad over how much i wanted to spend on one shirt or one pair of jeans.
6:27 PM
13.5.02
today was most definitely monday. you know how it is when it seems like nothing is getting done and everything that can go wrong does go wrong? that was today. because of that, i learned how to run the bedknocker. while we were bedknocking and planting, it started to get all dark and stormy looking. the wind picked up so much dust coming across the field that you could actually watch the wind coming. it looked like mist, but it was coming much to fast to be mist. when the dust cloud hit, i could hear it whistling around the tractor. just when we thought we were going to be able to leave early, the storm parted around our field and went on past us, leaving us blue sky and hot hot hot weather.
but, when we got home, after we got our showers, it started to get stormy around the house. the sky started to get dark and the wind picked up. then everything got really quiet. we went out on the porch and sat on the porch swing and watched it coming. the sky got darker and darker and the wind got even stronger. there was an feeling of expectancy in the air. off in the distance, to the west, it started to lightening. everyone else went in and i stayed on the porch, watching the clouds gather. finally it started sprinkling, so i decided to come in. now, as i'm typing this, it's gotten pitch black and the rain is pouring down. i can hear the wind around the house.
i am so tired. today was rough.
5:48 PM
12.5.02
we went tubing again today. there were times when brett was driving the boat so fast i was terrified to fall out. aunt susan and uncle joe left the lake early, so glenn ended up taking allison and i home. the sunset was gorgeous. it looked like one of those magnificent paintings that makes it look like the sun is resting in some clouds. it was incredible. allison fell asleep and glenn and i had a great conversation on the way home. i'm starting to think of him as an older brother. (for future and previous reference, glenn is 26 and jarrell is 24.)
one of my favorite things about glenn and jarrell and their crew is that they treat allison and i like one of them, not like the little cousins.
i've been away from home for a long time.
6:58 PM
11.5.02
today was almost exactly the same as yesterday. we planted eighty acres today. allison and i decided that the small joy of the day is making forts out of the peanut seed bags. everything i've got is sunburnt, except my face.
i discovered something today, but i've completely forgotten what it was.
i am sick and tired of prejudices.
"as baptists, we had no shortage of sins to haunt us." --luke chandler in a painted house, by john grisham
8:14 PM
10.5.02
i look nice for the first time in over a week. we're going to go see spiderman tonight with glenn and his wife, elandra.
today was almost exactly the same as yesterday. there's something really nice about a routine and knowing exactly what's going to happen when. i like the freedom of spontinaity, but having a routine is almost relief.
i heard fernando laugh for the first time today.
glenn hung out with us more today and we got to go to the bridge. the bridge is a store where you can get lunch, but the guy that cooks it cooks something different every day and you never really know what you're getting. the store is old. really old. it had one of those old "cha-ching" cash registers and everything!
but then again, we were in baker county and that's not really anything new. baker county is about fifty years behind everywhere else in the world. when you cross the border from mitchell county into baker, you feel almost like you've stepped back into the fifties. there's definitely a segregation and the law enforcment there is very odd. ironically though, they elected a black sheriff and he won't mess with the white citizens. glenn told me that he passed the sheriff the other day going seventy in a fiftyfive section and the sheriff just waved at him. i've been told the people have been known to disappear in baker county. someone will die of unnatural causes and you never hear about it, they never find the body, and they're just gone.
allison says "nothing goes on here. it's just hot."
2:40 PM
9.5.02
today was a dusty day. the dirt that fernando and aunt susan were working in was a really fine, silty sort of dirt and it was dry. it was really dry. fernando's tractor is called the bed knocker and it digs more than the planter does and there were clouds of dust in front of and behind his tractor. then the wind caught the dust and started swirling around, making dirt devils. i ended up getting covered in it from head to toe. my hands were pink from the insecticide that's on the peanut seed and i smelled vaguely like the insecticide/peanut combination that i've been working with for the past week. the metal on the trailer got so hot today that you couldn't sit on it, even with jeans on.
there's a lot of communication that goes on in a farm that has nothing to do with words. oftentimes, it doesn't even have to do with eyes. it's very different and you'd have to talk to me in person for me to try to explain it to you. it's almost like you just know what the other person wants or needs without them telling you or even motioning to you. it's really very interesting.
today i got to pull a trailer behind a truck on the highway. up 'til now, i've been pulling the gooseneck with a tractor on fields, but this was the real thing. it wasn't much different than just driving the truck by itself.
oh yes. another thing about around here. everyone drives everyone else's vehicles and no one really cares. i mean, i (who have had my license for all of a month and a half) have driven uncle joe's, aunt susan's, glenn's and someone else's trucks all by myself. they just leave the keys in the truck so that if someone needs the truck or needs move it they can. there's no "that's my truck" or "don't dent it" or anything else. it's like all the trucks are everyone's and no one cares which one they use.
there's a sticker on the door of our tractor that says:
SAFETY
---------
live with it.
6:18 PM
8.5.02
another fact. fifty pound sacks of peanut seed are not heavy the third day, unless you have to lift them across the trailer twentyfive times in a row. it's just really hot the third day. really, really hot. 95 in the shade. much the same as yesterday though, except now it's my back, chest, shoulders and legs that are sunburnt. thank goodness the tractor cab is air conditionered.
our days have come to a routine. get up around 6:50, get ready, eat breakfast as quickly as possible and head to the farm. then, we do the peanut seed thing all day with a twenty minute break for lunch, then around three or four, we quit and go do other things that need doing, like taking a trailer full of fertilizer to another farm, or cleaning jarrell's house, or moving tractors from one farm to another. then we come home, swim in the pool for an hour, take showers and eat supper around eight, then we're off to bed to start the whole thing over again.
fernando grins a lot. he doesn't say much, just grins.
today, allison and i were hot and tired, so aunt susan let us run underneath the pivot as it walked. we got really wet and it was fun.
i have seen lots of angel letters since i've been here. the sky here is very conducive to them. the one i saw today was upside down. instead of there being a hole in the clouds and the sun rays shining down, there was a hole in the clouds and the sun rays were shining up. it was very cool.
me and a tree frog made friends today. aunt susan has two outside shower stalls, so allison and i take our showers out there and there was a tree frog in my shower stall with me. the top of the shower stall is low enough that you can see out the top, so while you're taking a shower, you can look up and see the sky and a house and some fields and a road. it's kinda different.
i'm main and mortal tired, so i'm headed for bed.
6:38 PM
7.5.02
i learned something today. fifty pound sacks of peanut seed aren't heavy until the second day. my hands are hurting from lifting the sacks and my legs are sunburnt and my back and shoulders are still sore from kneeboarding on sunday and i'm so tired i can barely move. as soon as i finish this, i'm headed for bed.
fernando is a cute little mexican guy that works for aunt susan. he's about five foot three with long hair and everything about him is little. he's got little hands, a little smile, a little goatee and a little voice. he leaves off the ends of his words when he talks. it's fun to listen to him talk, but he doesn't talk much. he's a nice little guy.
today was much the same as yesterday, except that we only planted fifty acres instead of sixtyfive. then we moved the planter, plow and trailer to baker county which took about an hour and twenty minutes at twentytwo miles an hour and i was driving the truck behind them. it was pretty boring.
jarrell is the other cousin. he's a sweet guy with a shy smile and blue eyes and streak of mischief in him. he's the sort of guy that when he's grinning at you for no apparent reason, you need to watch your back. i like him.
i think my accent is changing. "ain't" is becoming a regular word in my vocabulary; lots of normally one syllable words are becoming two syllable words and "a'ight" is a word of assent. i'm not really worried about it though. it'll switch back when i get home. in a really strange sort of way, i don't want to leave. i miss the people, but i'm happy here too.
i'm going to sleep now.
may 6,2002
there were waves of heat today. when you look across the field and watch a truck driving down the road that runs parallel to the field, the truck shimmers through all the heat.
people wave. if you don't wave as you're passing someone while you're in the truck, it is taken as a personal offense. you wave.
today i pulled the tractor and trailer up, pulled fifty pound bags of peanut seed off the trailer, opened them, let my cousin glenn and the little mexican named fernando load the seed, back the tractor and twentyeight foot gooseneck trailer up and then wait for the whole process to start again. we did this from about nine o'clock until four and all totaled, we got sixtyfive acres planted. i also got to drive some rather large trucks around too. big farm trucks-- Ford F-350 V8 diesel crew cab trucks. oh yeah. and a planter. i think i'm developing a taste for country music now too. hmm.
vodka with orange juice tastes good.
i could see the sun set completely. it was strange looking because it just sort of hung low in the western sky for a long time. it was so hazy but cloudless, so you could actually watch the sun set and see it's yellow disk fade into orange, and then to purple. and then it was gone.
life is simple around here. i like it. i think i'll just stay here.
may 5, 2002
everywhere you go here there's rows and rows of cotton or peanuts or tobacco, or sometimes just plowed up rows of nothing. sometimes you can see the pivots walking. you know those loooong metal things with wheels that you see in fields sometimes? that's a pivot, and when they're running, there's water coming out of all the pipelines and they're rolling slowly across the field. it's amazing to see something that huge moving without anyone touching it.
we went tubing today. i figured something out today. with this crew, the idea is not to just ride in the tube as they pull it leisurely behind the boat, the idea is to see how long you can stay on before they throw you out. it's really more of a competition to see who's better, the rider or the driver.
aunt susan is currently discussing our work plan for the morning. i'm going to learn how to back a trailer, and i get to drive a stick shift jeep wrangler.
today aunt susan said something that caught my attention. "i don't go to church because i can't deal with people screwing you all week, and then smiling and acting like everything is fine just because they're in church."
people are really direct around here. if they are going to laugh at you, they do it to your face. if they're going to talk about you, they do it in front of you. if they don't like something, or if they do, they say so. it's really nice.
it's going to be an interesting week.
may 4, 2002
we're here. there's land...lots and lots of flat-as-a-pancake land. at 5pm it was 96 degrees, but now it's cooled off to 83.
we're going to have a lot of work to do, but aunt susan is properly spoiling us in the process. an interesting combination. kind of strange, but it works. we've been instructed in the arts of living in south georgia and we've been told that we are going to be more than ready for bed on monday night after work. i'm going to learn how to back a trailer. aunt susan said it's a really good thing that i know how to drive stick.
it's really cool in aunt susan's house, both literally and in the slange sense. it makes up for the temperature outside, and it's all wooden...well, almost all of it. the only part that isn't wooden is the pool room and parts of the kitchen. as my uncle just informed me, the floors are pine, the walls are cypress.
i've got lots and lots of food for stories.
if i let myself, i'm going to come back from here with a strange accent.
6:08 PM
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