by Pettus Read

The summer heat was making its presence known on the top of my hair-thinning head as I moved from Uncle Sid and Aunt Sadie's graveled driveway, where I had parked my car, to the wide shady back porch of their farm house. I was looking forward to a summer afternoon's visit with the couple and sure enough, there they sat breaking beans into a green crock bowl. Across their laps were spread newspaper pages from today's edition of the local paper. Each of their laps held heaping mounds of freshly picked green beans from their own garden and with expert regimentation they were snapping the bean pods into inch pieces with the skill of a surgeon. Breaking beans on the back porch has always been a part of summer at their house.

While picking up a handful of green beans and sitting down in a straight-back wooden chair near the couple, I started breaking beans alongside them. With the snap of each bean I could almost feel the stress and tension of the busy day from back in the city leak from my finger tips like water from a garden hose hooked to a bad faucet. And to think, many people pay fortunes to get professional help to relieve stress like this when all they need is a back porch and a newspaper page full of beans.

"How has things been going with you two the
last few weeks?" I asked as I dropped my broken bean portions into Aunt Sadie's bowl.

- Pettus L. Read is editor of the Tennessee Farm Bureau News and Director of Communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation.  He may be contacted by e-mail at pread@tfbf.com

"Things have been pretty normal around here except for when your Uncle Sid got lost in 'Wall Marks' the other day," she said with a grin while dropping more beans in the bowl.

The conversation then fell quiet and the only thing you could hear was the snapping of beans and the humming of dry flies in the maple trees around the backyard of the old farmhouse. There was no way I was going to let it end here and I'm sure Uncle Sid knew I wouldn't either.

"Uncle Sid, how in the world did you get lost in the super center?" I asked also with a grin on my face.

The old farmer stopped breaking beans and leaned back in his chair. Pushing back his free chemical company cap to the back of his head and while slinging a misformed bean out into the yard he said, "Boy, (and yes, I'm turning 60, but he still calls me Boy) there are some places that a man can get confused in and that big old store is one place that this farmer finds a little bit confusing. I went looking for tractor grease and ended up in their camera and compact disc section. I was as lost as last year's Easter egg in tall grass."

By now Aunt Sadie was starting to cry from holding too much laugher inside. "Tell him who you got to help you, Sid," Aunt Sadie said.

"I asked some kid with his ball cap on sideways where I might find tractor grease and he said he never heard of such a thing," Uncle Sid said as he went on with his story. "He then pulled out his telephone from his pants, that had slipped down a little too much as far as I'm concerned, and started doing that "text'n" stuff with his thumbs. After just a few seconds he told me that grease was on aisle 12 and maybe I should call my sitter to take me over there."

Aunt Sadie was now in full laugh mode and I was trying to hold my composure as well. Uncle Sid was not seeing all the humor in his adventure but went on to explain his response. "I told him maybe he needed to turn his hat around straight because it didn't look like to me his head was on crooked and while he was at it, pull his britches up as well. I thanked him for his help and told him I didn't have a sitter but I still respect my elders," he went on to say.

Uncle Sid then picked up some more beans and got back to work, but stopped long enough to say, "There is just too much communication these days. Kids don't talk, but instead do this "text'n." They spend all their time "gogglin" for answers. If they don't learn how to talk to folks, in a few generations, everybody will be mute and have overgrown thumbs."

You know, Uncle Sid may just have something here. The art of conversation with the family is becoming a thing of the past. Maybe it is time to put away the cell phone for a while and just talk over a session of green bean breaking. It would sure beat "gogglin."

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