We were placed at a table with Mack and Helen, who upon first impression looked like Florida lounger types-- something about the quality of tanness and their cleanliness and trim, delicate features. Mack had shiny steel-rim glasses and wavy hair that looked like he still went to the salon. Florida lounger types they were not: they told me they were both farmers who ran an industrial farm for fifty years. "Gee," I said. "Gee" is my go-to response to this kind of thing, which sounds as stupid as it is, because it's just a letter. "Yep," Mack said with a vacant glance around the room. "Farming is all I've done all my life."
As far as Mack knows, his entire family has been in farming, from the first guy who fled Ireland to escape the religious riots and famine, arriving with nothing more than the proverbial stick and bundle tied to the end of it. Helen had a farming background, too, but was raised in a larger town in Wisconsin-- a city girl by Mack's standards. They both grew up with small-scale, traditional farming practices, and together, on Mack's family farm, learned how to expand big time.
I asked how much machinery they had on their farm. Too much was the answer. They said in the '80s they began to require monster machines and herbicides that could cover 100 square feet of crops in one swipe. Helen ran some numbers: something about something going 8-10 mph, with 1,200 gallons, and thus spraying 60-70 acres in one filling. In one filling, Mack emphasized. I wasn't quite sure what a filling was and couldn't even imagine 60-70 acres and the conversation reminded me too much of those speed/rate problems in Algebra for me to visualize anything clearly so I stopped trying and instead just ran a mental screensaver of the more brutal moments of Watership Down. "Gee," I said again. I am rendered stupid before the unfathomable.
Amidst all the farming terms and numbers I can remember the following string of dialogue:
Me: "Coming from cities, I can tell you, this kind of intelligence of the land is superhuman to urban people."
Mack: "Yes! We see some of these kids coming out of Chicago...they hardly know a cow from a...a hawk."
Me: "Or a cow from themselves."
Helen: "That's right" she said, serious, as if this was a problem she'd heard about on the news.
Another string of conversation as we parted ways:
"What's your name again?" Helen asked me. She'd never heard the name Mira before, and looked genuinely delighted at the new word. I told her it's an Indian name, from my mother.
"That explains your dark eyes," she said.
"Guess so! And you...you get your blue eyes from the Illinois skies," I said. I had said a number of other corny things like this throughout the meal, perhaps fitting for a conversation largely about cornfields. Mack's eyes were a striking shade of blue, but more striking than the blue was how Helen's were the same exact color.
"We-he-he-ll," Helen said. The chuckle encased inside the Well. "I suppose you're right."
"I suppose you're right," repeated Mack. Mack told me I could remember his name easily: "Just think Mack truck," he said.
They still hold a little plot in the CLV community garden. From hundreds of acres to square measuring about 10X10, I guess it's their dollhouse. Still, they were matter-of-fact about what they're growing there: green beans in the summer, sweet potatoes in the fall. Even this plot is getting more difficult to manage because of their age, but they won't stop anytime soon.
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In the evening Grandma and I go see the Temperley singers give a concert in the lounge after dinner. Grandma remembers their longstanding association in the neighborhood. Four women and four men, one being an older guy who had such vocal chops that he could really do whatever he wanted, which I guess he did, by being the only one of the eight to perform sitting down (and thus, in pic, blocked by man's head. Grandma in foreground).
The concert is under half an hour, including the encore. There are cookies and punch. One CLV resident was so moved by the performance that she stood up while we clapped our final claps and said, as if we were all waiting for her to represent us, Thank you ever so much, this is a real treat for everyone; you brought much-needed joy, much-needed cheer, into our lives." I recognized her as the same lady who has made several announcements during dinnertimes already. I look around the room at the disgruntled faces. A sort of "Oh brother, here we go again" feeling all around. We were in the back by the table of punch and cookies, and I pocketed several before we left. Where's Maxine with my ziploc...
