Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
There once was a simple farmer who lived on a small piece of land with his family. His wife was a kind and beautiful soul and everyone that knew her spoke well of her and admired her pleasant nature. She gave the farmer three children of exceptional grace and each was clever and loving and together the Farmer’s family lived on their small homestead, working together and sharing what they had with each other in harmony. Their home was a humble cottage though it was never in need of a shingle, nor it’s clapboards a coat of paint and they all took pride in the fields and gardens that they worked each day, season after season. Their herds, while small, were well cared for and gave them plenty to eat all of their lives.
One day the Farmer took his children, when they were very small, into the barn and bade them to gather round. He took an old bucket from it’s hook on the wall and had them each take a turn picking it up by the bail. It was extraordinarily heavy for it’s size and the Farmer leaned in close to whisper to them a secret, saying-
“This bucket is no ordinary thing, it is made of gold and has been painted so that no one can recognize it’s value.”
The children’s eyes went wide at the thought.
“I am telling you this today because I want to make a promise to you that if you do as I ask I will one day pass my fortune on to you and you will be able to enjoy lives that are rich indeed.”
The children leaned in closer as he lowered his voice-
“I must ask of you a simple promise in return.”
They nodded their heads as one.
“No one must know what I have told you about this bucket. It’s value must be kept a secret until I am on my death bed and only then will you be able to understand it’s true worth.”
Their mouth hung open as he went on-
“Whenever you take this bucket to water the animals or to milk the goats, you must treat it with reverence, clean it, carry it with purpose, always return it to it’s place of hiding in the open where any one else will miss it’s true value for it’s common appearance. Never leave it behind, never allow it to drop on the ground, always handle it as if it is worth more than anything else in the world and one day you will ALL be wealthy indeed.”
And so his children did. Every time they carried water from the well to the calves and the lambs, they held the bucket so that not a drop of clear water should spill from it’s lip and when they carried the sweet warm milk to their Mother so that she could make them cheese and butter they handled the bucket with great care. As heavy as it was, made heavier still when it was full, their tender arms took the weight and as they grew up strong and straight their muscles made the weight seem as if it were but a feather. Each of them dreamed to themselves of what lay beneath the layer of dark paint and no matter the weather or the time of day they carried that bucket with smiles upon their faces understanding the value it contained, hidden to all but the Farmer and themselves.
The children grew up loved and well fed and they spent their happiest hours at the side of their Mother and Father helping with the work on their farm with gladness and joy. No chore was too arduous, no task beneath them. They watched as their labors helped to expand the flocks and herds and as their parents added acres to their holding one little bit at a time and never was any of them tempted to dip into their inheritance for they knew that their Father’s word, like the bucket, was golden. In time they became adults and took spouses to spend their lives with and they remained close by to help with their parent’s farm always offering to carry the bucket and wipe it clean before returning it to the hook in the well kept barn. Eventually they had children of their own and as much as they wished to share the story their Father had told them, they kept their word as they had promised, but showed their children how to carry the bucket with care and to treat it as if it were valuable beyond it’s simple purpose.
By and by the years passed and the Farmer, an old man now, took a fall in his field one day and was taken to his bed. His wife called the children to come and bid their farewells because the doctor had told her that his time had come and he would soon depart this world. His family came to the house, a stately place in it’s simplicity, surrounded by well kept fields and thriving herds and orchards ripe with fruit. The bedroom was filled, with children and grand-children and his loving wife, sitting at his side, held his gnarled hand in hers.
The Farmer cleared his throat and spoke-
“You have been a blessing to me throughout my life, your love has given me wealth beyond measure and I promised you long ago that upon my deathbed I would share with you my fortune.”
He nodded to his children and asked that they go to the barn and bring him the bucket from it’s hook. A candle flickered at the bedside table and the Farmer closed his eyes for a moment with a smile upon his face. When they returned to the room they brought the bucket, burnished by age and well worn with care, but heavy still with the hidden weight of it’s true value and placed it on the bed beside him. He beckoned towards his Barlow knife upon the table and when they handed it to him he opened it with great care and looking at his family with eye’s as clear as day and said-
“All these years you have done as I asked. You have worked hard, you have given us no trouble, you have treated each tool and possession with respect and care, been good to each other and fair in all your dealings. You have wonderful families of your own that make you proud as well and your own children are much like you were to me, and they have brought us the greatest joy. And each of you has made their own fortune in life through the work of their hands, the sweat of their brows and the goodness in your hearts.”
As he spoke he scraped the blade of the knife against the side of the bucket, peeling away the years of paint that concealed what lay beneath. And in the dim light of the bedside candle they saw that instead of gold it was only lead.
“I have given you my fortune, hidden in this bucket, far more valuable than gold.”
TRUE WEALTH IS GIVEN TO THOSE WHO EARN IT.
I bet those kids, at one point or another, scraped away the bottom and took a small shaving of the underlying metal and somehow determined that it was not gold.
very cool, HSF,
The value of a life well lived is not rooted in a golden bucket,
but in the experience of love and kindness…and hard work.
Suzanna
Fascinating Captain. Simply fascinating.
The true value was not the bucket or what was carried within, but rather, that which the bucket required from them and paid them back in return.
Ahhhhh…. I love a good parable in the early afternoon from a fictional farmer‘s final farewell. It spells like valedictory.
In other words, the father was a frickin’ liar.
I knew that was coming.
Yep, I wouldn’t care if it was made of lead, but to pull a cheap trick like that? I would be pissed. I already handle my tools with care and bust my ass on the farm, I don’t need lies to top it off.
And I saw the bucket being made out of lead a mile away, just a fact of life with these old stories.
I totally agree with you, Rdawg. What’s the fable about? Deceiving your family over the course of decades for some Fortune Cookie horseshit? I would have taken that bucket and shoved it up the farmer’s ass before he died.
As always Stucky, you are able to put a finer point on it than any of us possibly could!
I also couldn’t help wondering if it was lead-based paint covering that lead bucket, thereby poisoning the farmer’s children and causing birth defects in his grandchildren.
But that’s just me.
I would be prying up the floorboards trying to find the money. (I am billing myself as deplorable these days)
Great story HSF – Unfortunately I had that figured out right from the start, mainly because most farmers that smart, even if they have accumulated the $100,000’s of dollars for the gold bucket would have invested those funds in their farm and family. Lead is almost as heavy as gold, a lot less expensive, more malleable than gold and easily made into a bucket with available farming tools. Besides paint doesn’t stick to gold very good. Of course I had to read your article all the way to the suspenseful end to find out whether I was right or not.
The author makes no mention of the farmer’s other daughter who ran off with the traveling salesman after he promised to restore her family’s situation to its former glory. The salesman left her high and dry in a Hollywood hovel turning tricks for a few pennies. He used her until she got too fat, too disgusting by his standards, then he bullied her and when that failed, he kicked her out into the cold night.
Sometimes, when she got lonely or she had nothing to eat except for some olives she filched from the open deli case in the supermarket, she would think of that golden bucket her dad made all the kids wash every night. She thought of the discarded vegetables and table scraps that now seemed to her like a banquet. That bucket was heavy but the old man insisted it was because it was made of gold.
She had believed it for a long time but then began to question it during the lean times, wondering why her dad didn’t just sell the gold and give each of his kids a portion of their inheritance. She would daydream of the money she would get as her share. Then the salesman showed up and because she didn’t want to wait like a vulture for her dad to die, she let herself be seduced away from the aromatic farm by the mellifluous words the man of the world spoke.
She didn’t understand half of the things he said, he spoke so rapidly and changed topics halfway through each sentence that she felt as if somehow it was her fault she didn’t understand. She just kept hearing how things would be great, amazing, huge and terrific. Such words as she had never heard her own father use. He had usually spoken in short utterances that sounded more like the grunts that the hogs made. He’d grunt to one girl, slop them hogs, Oholah or fetch them shears, ‘Olibah to her.
And the salesman smelled good. Dad smelled like the sheep during shearing time and other times he smelled like horse piss. This man had a sweet aroma all about him. Mama disliked him immediately, she said no honest god-fearing man smelled better than a woman in her Sunday best and certainly would not have manicured nails and tiny soft hands that ‘parently never did a lick of work. ‘Libah felt a little embarrassed when he took her hand. It was true, his hands were smooth as a freshly killed lamb’s guts.
‘Libah wrote home often but Mama only wrote to her one single time to say Dad say he didn’t have but one daughter now. Told how daddy whup Oholah after church one time when she dared to look at that no count Sage boy in the face. Acted like a whoor, daddy say. Say she not going to run off with no worthless city dandy, nothing good ever come out of Atlanta after the war, he say and he cussed some carpetbagger he say come through here once and ruined him more than he was ruined before. Then he made her clean up the bloody mess she made on the floor, throwing up after he beat her with a switch. She used the golden bucket to carry water and wipe the vomit and blood from the wood floor slats.
Eventually, ‘Olibah decided that she had to go back. Stucky, her new pimp, had beaten her so often that she no longer felt the blows. Sometimes it helped if he knocked her senseless because then she didn’t have to drink to fall asleep. Even if daddy beats me to within an inch of my life, I know he will not kill me. But this life will be the end of me.
The old man looked up at the familiar figure coming down the road. Here come that Maggie woman once again, he fretted. Ma had chided him often about his talk. I heard she rubbed elbows with A-rabs once, she even wore face paint. If she wasn’t with ol’ Nick up the way, why, I’d never have nothing to say toward that woman. Hezekiah, you hush! She brought you that hasn’t pepper rabbit stew one time, remember? You told her it was mighty tasty. I didn’t want to tell her I give it to the dog, I couldn’t stand the little feller looking at me with them bitty eyes.
‘Olibah saw the scowl on her father’s face and almost froze, her legs went weak and she fell on her knee. Daddy, she said. The old man recognized her voice instantly. Ma! Ma! Libby’s here! Libby’s here! She was dead to me but now I’m alive again!
Oholah ran to her father’s side thinking he had lost his marbles, maybe he got snake-bit or something.
Lahla, go get Ma! O how often I have longed to gather you in my arms together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, am I dreaming or are you really my daughter?
Daddy, I don’t deserve to be called daughter but only let me stay and carry that bucket of slop and I will eat out of it with the pigs as I have done all this time in Hollywood.
Ma, wash up Libby and put your Sunday dress on her with a bit of that rose water and your chain of pearls. Grab that piglet and the jar of hasn’t pepper, let’s have a feast and celebrate!
Oholah was angry and wouldn’t speak to ‘Olibah. She told her father, so many times you beat me and wouldn’t let me marry that Sage boy what finally ran off with another man, and now my sister comes back from the dead where you said she was and you are going to kill the only piglet you didn’t sell at the market just to celebrate her return?
Lahla, you hush, girl. I told you already that all I have is yours now. You still a pretty girl and will have no trouble getting married with a family farm to boot. Your sister and you were always pretty like two precious pearls and what man doesn’t feel the loss of but one of his legs?
I had to go back and finish my little parable. It is a transparent tale of America’s growth and transformation from a productive agricultural country to a financially oriented urban nation and subsequent decline. The heroine is used and abused by a fast-talking city slicker.
After 10 years living la vida loca, she finally admits her failure and decides to return to her origins and seek redemption. There is no mention of the fine living she had enjoyed, the big money she once commanded, the fancy dinners with beautiful people, the designer dresses and custom jewelry worth $millions. We only see the simple beginnings to which she returns in an effort to survive in a world that no longer requires her special services.
In a reversal of fortune, her former mentor turns into her tormentor and he is soon replaced by more vicious, sadistic rulers. In the end, her violent father forgives her and instead of punishment, he comforts her. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, said the sage. After all her getting, she finally has wisdom. She has lost her inheritance, squandered away in her quest for a life of luxury that wouldn’t last no matter how much she tried to hold on to her last marketable assets near the end. Her portion of the land goes to her sister. All she has left is her life to live out in near poverty. Her memories merely a dream gone sour.
Conveniently, there are two songs that record this dark decade which is not covered in the parable. Both songs make reference to America’s glory days at the height of power. Don McLean calls her a beauty queen. Bob Dylan likens her to a society woman fallen from grace. “American Pie” wistfully recalls the years of her life among the rich and famous. “Like a Rolling Stone” needles her about her hubris and sneers at her fallen state.
You can almost hear Red Buttons’ snarky comment that Don McLean never got a Nobel, yet when the Nobel committee finally decided to award a prize for popular music, they picked Dylan. Sure, they give peace prizes to community organizers, why not a reality tv star or a rock star? Reality TV wouldn’t be the same without the Kardashian ambassadors of world peace. Modern music, if there is still such a thing among the rap heap, wouldn’t be the same without Bob Dylan. (Never mind that without Woody Guthrie, there would not be a Bob Dylan, shhh..)
What were the Nobel folks thinking? Here’s the thing: “American Pie” glorified the halcyon decade of America in a way that Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA – never could (is there a way to wipe our memory of that horrible verse about “the yellow man”?). It was a lament for a beauty queen with pink carnations, big creamy thighs and glorious breasts. Cadillac bumpers known as Dagmars paid homage to her post-war fertility (manufacturing) and the consequent baby boom (exports) emphasized the point.
But the Nobel committee is not into nostalgia, they want to become the independent commentators of world affairs. They thought Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” is appropriate as it captures the current state of affairs for Americans caught in the rapids of denial (Make america Great Again). “Stone,” is about a rich and pampered young woman suddenly forced to fend for herself. It was pronounced the greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.
American hubris deserves some cutting down (You used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out). The once proud Lady Libertine now seeks the solace and kindness of a lecher who promises to bring her johns back and make her great again (Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse) Her other choice is to sell what remains of herself to the whore of Wall Street (when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose).
Today she is laughed at like a celebrity after a robbery, the world can now sing Dylan’s song to America and laugh at her for being so stupid as to assume that due to her fame and popularity, nobody would dare invade her room, kidnap and rob her and adding insult to injury, refuse to rape her; unwilling to spill their pure-white French seed on her tainted mixed-race soil (You used to be so amused at Napoleon in rags and the language that he used).
“Like a Rolling Stone” captures the world’s reaction perfectly. (People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’. You thought they were all kidding you). Look at her now, reeling and regretting living her life in the public eye twenty four hours a day; tweeting her every move and thought, with even more damaging revelations published by professional or government spies (you’ve got no secrets to conceal).
Now that you know the truth about that Nobel prize, how does it feel?
Give them books and they eat the covers.
[img
[/img]
Buy them books, send them to school and what do they do?
C’mon hardscrabble … what did you really expect from this motley cast of ne’er do wells? I expected a much more savage skewering of your ‘Rockwellesque’ story. El Coyote … that was pretty freakin’ funnee !! I must say.
I only had a few minutes to do a variation on the theme. Someday I might catch up to Unattainable. I will never reach HF’s strata.
Obviously, I have been influenced by current events.
There is no way to write something and keep it untouched. The author is in the work and his environment is reflected. I apologize for tainting TBP, I should not be anywhere near this sacred blog because I’m not white.
No wonder tortured writers kill themselves trying to write stuff that is sublime and not mundane.
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
“I apologize for tainting TBP, I should not be anywhere near this sacred blog because I’m not white.”
Now you are being melodramatic.
You underestimate yourself with regularity. Your comments are often among the most insightful on this blog and that’s saying a lot.
That is very true. I read every El Coyote post, without exception. His intelligence, wit and humor run deep … sometimes I have to read it more than once just to “get it”. That says more about me, than him. I love the guy.
Yet, recently (past couple months) it seems to me he flipped the switch and is becoming anti-white …. or at least, showing more animosity.
On one level, I understand it perfectly. There are more than a few comments here against Beaners and Mexicans in general — often without distinction between illegals vs legal — and it must be difficult to read that all the time without becoming sick and tired of such shit .
On the other hand, comments such as — I should not be anywhere near this sacred blog because I’m not white.” — — throw me for a loop. I really don’t understand his motive for writing that or, even what it really means.
Maybe after the election he’ll calm down. I know I will.
Another suburb story HS. ‘Tis a pity too few truly understand the meaning and value of it.
Me? I’d do the same thing. And have some gold and silver buried out by the creek in a second lead container with the location well preserved and passed down generation by generation. Just in case.
Another gold star for you..
Muck
You guys are cool, I have no idea where you decided I suddenly am become a common racist. I was being snide in regards to this:
Southern Sage says: October 10, 2016 at 4:57 pm
You know what, El Coyote, I suspect you are not a white man and I believe you do not belong anywhere near TBP. Well, I am a white man, a former Marine officer, and a guy who has spent plenty of time in real shitholes, including Afghanistan. So you think the author is some kid sitting around in his underwear fantasizing about a race war, do you? Maybe. But if you were a white man you would know that he is spot on. White men are waking up all over the country, and so are surprising numbers of white women. They are law-abiding and non-violent -for now. If Trump is cheated out of the presidency you are going to see in fairly short order just how mean and ugly otherwise decent, orderly, Christian folks can be. Guys like you who sneer at the people who at least can imagine what needs to be done to save this country, have no place in it. GTFO of America. I am sick of you naysayers and Progressive Enablers. If you had been in Lexington in 1775 you would have sat on your fat ass in a tavern swsilling a beer and telling the militiamen to just go home and let the Brits seize their weapons. Your kind have always existed and they have always been the same.
49 1
I imagine the 49 upvotes were from fellow jarheads giving Lt Sage a high five, SF and nothing more. Old Sage misunderstood my concern for white folks. I imagine if I was at Lexington, I would not have been the only pacifist and would have joined them up in Canada.
Wonderful allegory!