The Merry Cherry Farm

The green John Deere tractor coughs to life like a prehistoric animal awakening from a dormant winter. Its long, pipe-like nostril sends smoke out the metallic lid, creating a faint ding, ding, ding that can be heard from the sleeping windows of the farmhouse just a few feet away. John Robert Jones sits aloft the spluttering beast as an Arab sits upon his steed, gazing out across the desert, contemplating the long journey ahead.

After a few moments, he stands up and peers into the hazy, early morning mist to survey the rows upon rows of ripe, ready-to-be picked tobacco plants lining the flat farmland like green, waist-high sentries standing at attention. He is pleased. The weather has been kind to him this year, producing just the right amount of moisture from the rain with just the right amount of heat from the sun to make the crop lush and full.

The beast is calm now, purring beneath him, ready for the push toward the barns at the back of the farm. It’s time to put everything in check for the workday ahead. To punctuate the moment, he grasps the steering wheel with one hand, and with the other hand’s index and middle finger pressed to his lips to form a “V,” sends a long, thin stream of tobacco juice onto the dirt path where it splats, creating a hasty puff of smoke. He sits down again, pushes the clutch in, slides the stick easily into gear, and he and his green steed gently lurch forward, leaving a dusty putt, putt, putt in their wake.

Just a few yards away sits a white clapboard house with a corrugated tin roof. Inside the house, Pearl Jones is preparing breakfast for the family and the farmworkers. The aroma of chicory coffee, cheese biscuits, bacon, eggs, and grits wafts through the house, gently stirring its occupants.

In the front yard sits the old weeping willow tree. What hasn’t that weeping willow tree seen? It cries when all the naughty grandchildren have to pluck a switch from its limbs to get a whippin’ for their misbehavior. It sighs in contentment when the ladies sit under it on long, hot summer afternoons, drinking sweet iced tea and shelling peas. And it laughs when the neighborhood kids run around its trunk at dusk, cupping lightning bugs in their tiny hands.

There used to be an outhouse in the backyard a long time ago. It was hard getting used to the indoor…