Never Underestimate the Baby Boy

Growing Up on the Farm. My father worked three-hundred miles away and came home twice a month on weekends. My mother didn’t have much advice or many admonitions, but she always told us: don’t lie, steal, cheat, commit adultery, or fornication; and whatever you do, stay out of jail. She may not have been too aware of what went on outside those woods, but she had heard about the treatment Blacks received in jail. I promised her I’d do my best to stay out of jail. This was before we knew anything about Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Civil Rights Movement—where going to jail for the right reasons was considered a badge of honor. I had to learn to take care of myself at an early age. My folks never spent time training me for life. They simply let me learn on my own. My parents basically left me to take care of myself once I was out of diapers. They never showed me how to clean myself, or otherwise take care of myself. Neither my mother nor father provided any preschool training, or even basic information to help me survive. They never supervised my schoolwork or monitored any of my activities. They never said much to me unless they felt I wasn’t doing the chores on the farm to their satisfaction. When it comes down to it, we all must eventually make our separate ways in the world. I simply had to do it sooner. Being virtually on my own helped me to grow into manhood at an earlier age. The way I took a bath was to throw the water up and stand under it. They never gave me advice about life, or taught me anything about the world, except that I could observe their example. My mother’s idea was to be like a mother hen toward her chicks: to scratch for them only until they could scratch for themselves. After that you were on your own; she might even take things from her offspring for herself—just like a mother hen would do. She literally equated making a living with scratching it out of the bare earth. I had to learn most of what I learned by trial-and-error. One thing about this type of learning is that you learn your lessons well, maybe a bit late, but well. The bruises were sometimes bigger and longer lasting. As I got older, I was truly on my own. Growing up I frequently heard relatives say: it’s every man for himself, and you’re born into this world alone and you’ll die alone. In those days I didn’t realize the significance of these sayings in their lives. For the person with a certain personality orientation and background, it seems that these statements can become a reality. With four older brothers and five older sisters, I didn’t know what it was like to get a Christmas present from any of them. I didn’t even consider other relatives. The same went for birthdays. My wife was the first one to get me a birthday present. I knew nothing of having a birthday party or even getting a card for my birthday. I didn’t know what a birthday card was. I did have one brother who supported me in many ways through elementary, junior high, and high school. My father usually bought me something for Christmas. It was usually something I badly needed—like a coat or pair of shoes. The Woods. As soon as I was out of diapers, my mother turned me lose with the other domesticated animals. I think she was happy to get me out of the house. She wanted as few people around to bother her as possible. Keeping me plowing in the fields was in part her way of having peace and tranquility. I plowed from sunup to sundown. My mother and the family situation destroyed the ambition of all my brothers. Only two brothers out of five graduated high school—Jack and me. After Jack left, there was no one left to manage the farm except me. My mother wasn’t going to give up her life-long work; the farm was all she knew. Her father had been a farmer, and she had lived a difficult farming life. She had done all the farming chores, and her father had been hard on her. All she knew was to carry on a farming legacy. Ever since she and my father had been married, she had done the same thing as best as she could. At one time she had worked alongside my father as a sharecropper. Jack had already prepared me for the eventuality of taking over the farm. “Jay, I’m going to leave for the Gulf Coast,” he said, proudly. “Yeah, when?” “Next month. The farm will become your responsibility.” “Is the work hard?” At this point, I had never plowed a day in my life, or even tried to get behind a plow. “It’s not that hard.” I took the notion as kind of a challenge. I didn’t know how difficult it would be. At the time I felt young and indestructible, and that I could take on the challenge. I was only eleven years old. I knew it was what I had to do, so I took the responsibility for the farm. I often looked back on it and felt that I should have just left the farm but had no place to go. I never considered this as a possibility, because in many ways my perspective was limited. It was probably the best plan regardless of all the struggles I endured in carrying out the farm work. I was too immature to make it on my own. Maybe I could have run away and lived with my brother John, but all I could see at the time was taking my responsibility like a man and doing what my mother told me to do, so I stayed and worked the farm. Besides, if I had left and gotten caught up in some big city, my life probably would’ve been worse—but I would never know. From March through July every year, from the time I was eleven until I was eighteen, I would catch the mule and work from early in the morning until late in the evening—from sunrise to sunset. The only thing that interrupted my plowing was rain, changing of the seasons, or nightfall. Check out this and other of my books @ www.willisjay.com, by Jay Thomas Willis. Jay Thomas Willis Richton Park, Illinois