This essay addresses another parallel that James Earl Jones and I share. We were both highly influenced by living on a farm. Jones was born in Arkabutla, MS, in 1931. His grandparents raised him. To avoid blatant segregation, his grandparents moved to Dublin, MI. His grandfather bought a small farm.

The first winter was spent in a chicken coop fixed up for their temporary home. It was in Dublin that Jones developed his stuttering. However, in high school, my teacher helped Jones deal with stuttering. During his senior year, he coped well with stuttering. As a result, he was the class president, editor of the school’s yearbook, and the best public speaker in the high school.

This video is of James Earl Jones about living on a farm outside Dublin, MI.

The first dozen years of my life were spent on my cousin’s farm during the summers. My Uncle Walter owned a dairy farm outside of Oxford, PA. This is a photo of me as a toddler playing with Green Eyes. I picked this photo for this essay and also for Ti Ti, who asked me for a picture of me. Being a dotting grandfather, she already has a half dozen.

It looks like Green Eyes and I got along quite well. However, a year or two after that photo was taken, Green Eyes would see me arrive and would hide until my family returned to our home. Apparently, Green Eyes was afraid of me.

Uncle Walter had fallen off the barn roof when he was re-shingling it. That accident occurred when he was in his mid-80s. When my parents took me down to the farm, one of my jobs was to play Chinese Checkers with him. Essentially, I was around a five-year-old kid babysitting for Uncle Walter, who was in his 90s. I took that responsibility seriously and tried to explain how to play the game to him.

One day, many summers ago, Uncle Walter put a marble into his mouth while we played Chinese Checkers. I told him that he shouldn’t do that. The next thing I noticed terrified me. I yelled to my parents, “Uncle Walter’s mouth is melting.” It turned out that his mouth wasn’t melting. His upper set of false teeth and the marble fell out of his mouth.

When we visited, my parents gave me free access to the farm. Even as a child, I could go down to the barn while milking or go out in the fields. My cousins had a tenant farmer in charge. His name was George, and he had two sons, Brady and Grover. Brady was in his early 20s, and Grover was in his mid-teens. Grover and I became the best of friends. Apparently, I wanted to learn farming. Grover would show me the daily routine, and I would join in.

After milking the cows in the morning, I would run down the lane and open the wooden gate so that the cows could go into the pasture. The wooden gate consisted of two long 2x10 boards that were 10 feet long. I was around four when this photo was taken.

George and his two sons would milk the cows in the morning and evening. I would help them by changing the paper filters on a milk strainer. They would strain the milk from the milking machine into the large milk. One of them would put the milk cans into the cooler in the milkhouse.

In the morning, I would strain some milk again into a milk pail to take to the house. My cousins drank unpasteurized milk straight from the cow, which was strained twice. Then, I returned to the barn, got into an old pickup truck with Grover, and took the large milk cans to the creamery. We would wait as the creamery tested the milk for fat content, bacteria, and other pathogens. Then, they would give us a receipt for the total gallons of milk, which included the test results. We would return to the farm, and I would give my cousins the receipt.

When George brought the cows from the pasture to the barn in the morning, I’d watch the several dozen cows go through doors on the back of the barn and into their stalls. Somehow, the cows knew which stall was theirs, which fascinated me.

After the milking machines had gotten most of the milk from the cow, George, Grover, and Brady would strip the cow, which would get all of the milk from their udders by hand. I remember that many times, when watching George strip the cow, he turned the teat toward me and would squirt the milk in my face.

The last photo is of me standing in a hay wagon.

I’d go out in the fields when George and his sons were baling hay. I loved watching the baler pick up the hay, form a bale, tie twine around it, and watch it being discharged from the baler.

One day, when I was around ten, Grover and I were resting on the hay wagon after loading bales of hay onto the hay wagon. I noticed that he got something from his porch and ate it. I asked whether it was chewing gum. Grover told me it was chewing tobacco and asked whether I wanted some. I said I did, but he asked whether I was sure. He took a small amount of tobacco and showed me how to put it under my lip. I did as I was instructed.

I don’t have a picture of me attempting to chew tobacco. After upchucking for a few minutes, Grover suggested I wait for a couple of years before chewing again. I’m 81, and I’m still waiting.