photo © bob arnold
FARMER
A beautiful pickup truck with the fanciest side mirrors on both doors. It seemed like 3D. This is the truck the heavy set worker arrived in. The t-shirt was gray and molded over a barrel chest and double barrel gut. The arms the size of my thighs. Something happened along the years because he couldn’t hide the limp. He was coming to measure up a wood pellet furnace. I could tell he didn’t know all that much about the furnace except he burned pellets in his own wood pellet stove. He knew the pellets were shipped to the northeast from the Rockies, Pennsylvania and somewheres in Canada. Canada always gets a “somewheres”. It’s a big place. Since he didn’t know much about pellets, and his body was a steady workers, I asked him what he did before pellets. “Farmer.” One word sufficient. But said with the great tongue of a cow so it sounded like “Fah-mar”. I suddenly loved the word more than ever. He said he once had a farm called River Maple. And I said my wife and I for 35 years have passed the large barn sign for this place and always wondered why it wasn’t Maple River. “Well, which came first”, he asked me, “the river or the maple?” I said, “The river — it feeds the maples to grow.” He smiled at that, as if his grandfather who gave the farm this name once explained it to him this way when he was a boy. Yes, he suddenly looked boyish as we said goodbye when he left.
Bob Arnold likes the fact that every single word in this little yarn is true.
