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    The Old Farm
    The Old Farm
    The Old Farm
    Ebook56 pages37 minutes

    The Old Farm

    By Heber Taylor

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Heber Taylor writes a fictional account of East Texas characters who survived the depression of the 1930s. He writes with authenticity about the place and the people of the time. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNarrativeMagic
    Release dateJun 13, 2018
    ISBN9780998641690
    The Old Farm
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      Book preview

      The Old Farm - Heber Taylor

      Acknowledgements

      This story is based on the lives of my grandparents. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand their ability to stand up under hardship.

      1. The Dream

      John Robert first saw the farm when he was 55, but he saw it with the eyes of a young man. He saw the sign saying the property was for sale and killed the engine of the truck. He sat on the side of the road, a narrow, winding trail, topped with oil and asphalt, a far cry from the interstate highways that President Eisenhower was planning. A mist hung over the pastures, which were surrounded by the thick pine forests of East Texas.

      John Robert found his package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and poured a cup of coffee from the Thermos bottle. He sipped the coffee slowly and he smoked slowly, taking in the land with his eyes.

      It was, for the first time in his life, available to him. The feeling that came up was surprisingly strong, so strong it made him cautious, pushing him to the edge of fear. The fear was not of the land but what was inside him, the want, the need to have it, to make it his life’s work.

      For three straight days he drove to the farm and sat beside the road and watched it. Each day, he left enough coffee in the bottle and enough time for a good smoke. At the end of the third day, he told Ruby, although by then she knew he was thinking about something. He had married her when he was 19 and she was 17, and Sally had come a year later. A decade passed before another daughter, Sue, arrived. But at the start, they had raised each other, Ruby would say. Now both daughters were married. Ruby and John Robert were alone.

      Ruby knew when some project was in her husband’s mind. She knew by the way he rationed his coffee and tobacco. He was saving that for an occasion, for time, late in the day, when he could sit and think. She knew he had a plan that he was savoring, but she also knew that she must wait for him to tell her. And so it was as she cooked breakfast, and the kitchen smelled of coffee and sausage and toast, and the soft light poured in through the big east window, that he talked of the farm for sale on Corrine Road. Ruby, whose parents had been sharecroppers, never owning land, was surprised to hear herself say that she thought it would be all right.

      Though he had sworn he would never do it again, John Robert borrowed money from a bank: $7,500 for 65 acres. The land had been cleared, perhaps 50 years ago, but it had been years since it had been tended. The place was covered with wild plum shoots, wiry little saplings that had to be dug out by hand.

      And, to a thoughtful man, wild plums were as

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