LESSON NUMBER TWELVE
"Work Hard, Play Harder" from Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road
A philosopher once said that no man is an island. The people of Melbourne Community taught
me how special it was to be a part of something bigger than yourself...
Reading about today's latchkey kids makes my heart ache. For many of these children, adults are only shadowy figures on the perimeter of their lives. These kids move in parallel lines with their busy parents who are working longer and harder just to make ends meet. At school, they are faces in the crowd and in the afternoons they come home to empty houses, spending most of their time alone or with other children. I don't believe most parents are choosing this lifestyle. I think they're caught up in a tug of war between a desire to spend more time with their kids and a need to keep their job. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the hard facts. More and more children are set adrift in an adult world long before they have their bearings.
There was a time when I wouldn't have seen this as a problem; the people of Melbourne took the concept of community involvement to a whole new level. Growing up in that tight knit group of families on Highway 65 meant having a network of adults attending to our "learning". We were taught respect for our elders--all of them. There were aunts, uncles, Sunday School teachers, preachers and family friends, an endless supply of grownups with our best interests at heart. My sisters and I considered this a major liability.
Mama knew everything we did before we did it, and she'd never reveal her source, telling us only that a "little bird" told her. This galled us more than the spankings. You could count on it--if we got in trouble at school, that anonymous bird was signing to Mama before we got off the bus. We girls used to fantasize about clipping that bird's beak!
As frustrating as all this togetherness could be, it had its good points; I never knew lonely as a child. At any time of any day I could find an available lap for loving or a ready ear for listening. But in my memory, one of the biggest benefits of having this overextended "family" were the trips we took together during the summer. By "we" I mean practically the whole community. Think of it as double the people, double the pleasure and double the fun.
These vacations were well deserved. With very few exceptions our daddies all made their living farming. My Uncle Byron said it best with a poem he once wrote called, "The Gambling Man". This poem didn't have anything to do with casinos. Instead it told how Papa and the other men would hold their breath and roll the dice each year, hoping against hope that their fortunes were about to change, regardless of how Lady Luck had cheated them in the past. And each spring they'd turn their backs on their past losses to plant a little more of their hearts along with their seed.
The land is a hard taskmaster. By summer's end, when the crops were tall and independent, and whatever was going to happen had already been written in the ground, and our mamas had planned and pleaded--our daddies could be talked into taking a break. They knew how to work hard; and they knew how to play hard.
A destination would be chosen in advance, though reservations were seldom made, and early on the appointed morning we'd all pull out together in one big convoy: cars and trucks, station-wagons and campers. Over the years we saw the mountains and the beaches and everything in between.
At lunchtime our caravan would stop at a rest area and pull out the hampers and coolers stocked with bread and lunchmeat, sodas and chips. After lunch we kids were allowed to run around and stretch our legs. We rarely finished a full meal; the fuel from our pent up excitement charged our batteries and kept us in constant motion. They say times have changed and this could be a good example. Odds are, if we were kids today, most of us would be medicated.
We kids used these rest stops as an opportunity to play musical cars. So long as the head count was correct, no one paid much attention to who had whose children. Hours later we'' descended on an unsuspecting hotel like a band of gypsies in a bad western. I don't know how they ever found a place willing to take us all. We kids would bounce around inside the cars while a couple of men would go "check out" the place. A tour of the pool area was always a top priority as it was destined to be the main casualty of our assault. (It has just occurred to me that there could have been another reason we were left in the car--to increase the chance of getting the rooms.)
One time we were leaving Texas with Papa guiding the caravan down the interstate, when a radio spot about Freddy Fender came on--the singer was appearing at the Texas Stadium that very evening and there were tickets at the door. Papa loved Mr. Fender's hit song, "I'll be There Before the Next Teardrop Falls." A quick poll on the CB garnered enough support for an itinerary change. Neither the caravan headed in the wrong direction, nor the absence of an exit proved a strong deterrent for Papa. He took a U-turn through he medium and out into the lanes of traffic traveling in the opposite direction with Mama hollering all the while,
"Ed, you're gonna get everybody killed!"
I remember turning around in the back seat and watching seven or eight vehicles follow the leader.
Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he takes under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him: for this is his portion. Ecclesiastes 5: 18-19
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