“Be careful you don’t cut your foot,” said the old farmer in a Tidewater, Virginia, accent. I was eight or nine years old, and my brother and I were about to set off to wander around his farm property while our parents stayed and talked to him in the large kitchen of the big white clapboard farmhouse.
I don’t remember the reason for our family’s visit to his farm; at eight I was content to go where my parents took me. As with other big cities, in those days it didn’t take long driving out of Washington, D.C. to be in the real countryside. In both Maryland and Virginia, older working farms raised horses, pigs, chickens and crops. Some had a lonely, abandoned feeling, with overgrown equipment in the fields, as if they hadn’t changed in decades and we were looking through a window directly into a forgotten past.
Several old blues men, famous among folk musicians, lived in rural cabins on dirt roads less than an hour’s drive from the city center. During one of his campaign swings, President John F. Kennedy had shaken hands with one farmer in the area, commenting on the enormous size of his hands—an event that was commemorated on a small sign by the side of one rural road.
I remember being puzzled at the friendly warning. Don’t cut my foot? What was he talking about? Were there sharp objects lying around in the tall grass? I was wearing Keds.
I don’t know how old he actually was. He had thick white hair, a seamed face and a quiet, reserved, dignified manner that somehow compelled respect.
My parents’ friend Nornie—whom we called “Aunt” Nornie, who knew the farmer and who was responsible for our visit—must have seen my puzzled expression. She took me aside and whispered that what he really meant was, “Don’t step in manure.” She made sure to be out of his sight when she set me straight.
For some reason that small incident has stuck with me from all those years ago. That farmer’s generation was more formal. They used euphemisms like that, especially when they wanted to avoid offending the “city folks.” It was another era of reserved manners and speech that reflected the farm life of an earlier time.
David Murray can be reached at [email protected].
PHOTO: Cow dung (Hans from Pixabay)