Life on a farm – any farm (whether or not in Humptulips County) – has the capacity to teach many lessons. Take humility, for example.
Since the garbage man usually arrives early, our habit has been for me to take the garbage to its designated pick-up spot on the road upon my customary earlier departure for work. We save a trip to the road and back in that way, with the only down side being my having to handle a usually full garbage can in office dress. The Farm’s garbage days are usually on Fridays, but garbage day falls on a Saturday this week. This week’s garbage pick-up was delayed due to the occurrence of Christmas on Tuesday, last. In rural America, distances are such that routines are altered for holidays and no one would think of complaining.
And so, inevitably, I failed last night to take the garbage to its designated pick-up spot on our road – a fact I recalled last evening only after I was in bed. Therefore, this morning at 4:00 A.M., before ascending to the library to begin writing, I put shoes on my bare feet, donned a coat over my pajamas, and loaded the garbage can into the back of my car. I then drove that car – a Lexus SUV – down to the road to leave the garbage to its destiny and to pick up yesterday’s mail.
If only the Lexus manufacturer could have seen me then!
This morning’s trip was a routine form of humility upon which I have often pondered. Farm life somehow renders the brand of a vehicle irrelevant to the task. You work with the tools you have when need arises, and whatever purpose a tool may have been designed to serve is easily forgotten when you realize it will easily fulfill an alternative need. Succinctly stated, there is no such thing as a “luxury vehicle” on a farm.
But I have “enjoyed” far more humbling garbage moments than this morning’s turn, such as the two or three times our garbage received a free ride to my office because, while musing deeply upon some mesmerizing subject or other, I forgot to leave the garbage can at the road and blithely passed on. You might well think that having to travel the distance of a football field from the house to the road would not be conducive to garbage amnesia, but, if you thought that, you would be wrong.
On those occasions when our garbage hitched a free ride to town, Helen would cheerfully call my office to inquire whether the garbage had traveled well and to remind me that I should take the garbage can out of the car upon returning home and return it to its customary non-garbage day home in our garage – for the simple reason that by the time I finally returned home, the week’s garbage day would be a thing of the past.
Sometimes I remembered to do so; sometimes she had to remind me again.
Well, I will never do it again! That I can unconditionally promise, because last Friday I retired from practicing law and I won’t be going to the office again on any future garbage day. Therefore, the only question remaining for consideration is this: Where will I be going the next time I forget to leave the garbage at the road?
