Black Dirt

Growing up my grandfather had a farm. I worked on it from the time I was eight years old. The dirt was black. He grew onions. Lots and lots of onions. On the farm we also had animals. We had dogs. Mostly retrievers like Gibson.

On the farm I almost lost my left middle finger in a belt on some farm equipment. Luckily I still have it. All you can see now is my split finger nail. I almost lost my life while driving a dump truck and the brakes went out. Mostly I weeded until I was old enough to go into the packing house. Then I drove a forklift or any other vehicle that I had to to get the job done. That was by far the best job. Driving. Until I was old enough there was no driving.. just moving onions.

In the winter we would get railroad cars of onions from Texas and Arizona. My job was to dig down to the bottom of the cars and pull one bag from the front of the car, the middle, and the rear. The FDA inspector would then open the bag and slice open a few onions to check for rotten onions or mold. If everything was fine I got to unload the whole car, one bag at a time. Remember that these are 100 pound bags. If I worked late my mother would bring my dinner to the packing house so I didn't starve to death. My grandfather acted like he didn't care if you lived or died. It took me a while to figure out that that was just an act.

I didn't figure out that it was an act until he had a really bad third heart attack. That's when they replaced his heart valves with parts of the veins in his legs. He was back on the farm in one month. He wasn't allowed to lift anything so my uncle sent me my grandfather. I was instructed to make sure that he didn't get into any trouble. Some job. He decided that we should take over the peeled onion deliveries. He would drive and I would .....well...move all the onions. The year before he had purchased a couple of onion peeling machines and wanted them to be used. They peeled the onions and put them into large fifty pound plastic bags. Again...my job was to move all the fifty pound bags. I was twelve. And I was told not to kill Pop. Everyone knew him as Pop.