James M. Redwine

Garden of Eden

Cabin Fever

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It is official. Peg and I have the fever. No, not that new-fangled COVID fever, but the original fever spoken of in Genesis, Cabin Fever. Why God could not leave well enough alone I do not know. After six days of hard work, He sat back, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Genesis, Chapter 1, verse 31). I guess “very good” was not good enough because after one day of rest God noticed, … “[T]here was no man to till the ground” (Genesis, Chapter 2, verse 5). For all those Biblical scholars, such as my sister, who posit God is actually female, this is strong support for their position. A perfect world could be made more perfect if there were a man to do work around the Garden of Eden.

Of course, Adam could not just lounge around grazing on all but one of Eden’s delights and enjoying eternal life, God had to give him Eve so there would be someone to point out this perfect world needed countless repairs and maintenance, sort of like our little log cabin on the prairie. The week before Christmas brought COVID’s resulting Cabin Fever boiling to the surface at JPeg Osage Ranch.

I do not know how the perfect home Peg fell in love with three years ago magically transformed into a property that constantly requires immediate repair. All I know for sure is I am much more adept at leisure than labor and Peg sees it as her wifely duty to save me from that condition. After all, it was Eve’s sin that brought man’s punishment of work into our lives.

Starting with COVID’s first reported cases in December 2019, Peg and I have gradually adapted from a life of travel, interaction with friends and family, concerts, movies, ball games and dining out to a world with only one other person in it. We have each developed coping skills to handle what may be a life sentence of one-couple isolation. I have reasonably and considerately allowed Peg her own space to do as she pleases such as laundry, housework, juggling family finances via the internet and gardening; there’s that Eve legacy again. Peg on the other hand seems to have a visceral reaction to my approach which is to memorize cable news reports and change sweatsuits occasionally. Hey, I do not concern myself with her choices.

Two years of Cabin Fever finally erupted into full-blown crisis this past weekend when Peg noticed a tiny water leak in the bathroom. It would not have rotted through the floor for quite some time and that is what I politely told her. Well, her reaction was not fit for a column in a family newspaper. She demanded I turn off the fascinating program I was watching on archeological discoveries in the Bermuda Triangle and loudly said, “Do Something!”. Something turned into one full day of me attempting to understand the mysteries of plumbing then another two days of going without the use of the bathroom and waiting for a plumber who told us, “It’s hopeless after your input, now everything will have to be replaced. That will be $100 for analysis of the problem, $200 for parts and $300 for labor. Of course, that’s just an estimate; it will be more if you insist on helping.” When the plumber left, I calmly pointed out to Peg that for the price of a few wet rags we could have saved all the bother for some time. Again, her response was not printable.

So here we are in our own little Garden of Eden waiting for someone to cure COVID and perhaps return us to the halcyon days of yore. One positive thing is, since Peg is not talking to me, I can finish the entertaining program I’m now watching on the mating dances of fruit flies without interruption and without Peg’s demand that something must be fixed, “Right Now!”.

By the way, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that you and yours have a COVID-free New Year. As for Peg and me, I can only wish for at least an occasional maintenance-free week or two during the long dark period between the Super Bowl and the start of the 2022 football season.

A Tale of Two Counties

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Posey County, Indiana
Osage County, Oklahoma

 

 

America is a wonderful country from the amazing amalgam of cultures in cities such as Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Portland to the majesty of Yellowstone and the Mississippi River. We are truly fortunate to have the privilege to live here. As for Peg and me, we are most familiar with two counties in two states, Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma.

Of course, the basic element of all inhabited areas is the same, the inhabitants, and those inhabitants are more alike than unalike wherever we live. I have found this to be true from Russia and Ukraine to Palestine and Bahrain as I have taught judges from several foreign countries and from every state in America. Of course, I have also physically visited a few places around the world. It has been my great pleasure to discover practically everybody I meet is interesting. I understand why Will Rogers who grew up near Osage County, Oklahoma said he’d never met someone he didn’t like.

But just focusing on Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma, the two places Peg and I call home, I find much to admire in both. In Posey County the soil is so rich and the people are so industrious that enough wheat, corn and soybeans are produced to feed much of the world. And Osage County’s Tallgrass Prairie and hardworking cowhands furnish the accompanying beef. One need never go hungry if he or she spends time in either county.

I hope I have made it clear that I truly appreciate the county where I was born and the county where I have earned a living. On the other hand, just as there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden, both Posey and Osage Counties fall a little short of perfection due to the foibles of Mother Nature. I suppose life just requires that we occasionally find half a worm in an apple. Let me explain.

Neither Posey nor Osage County has unbearable weather. Each gets a couple of snows each year and each has a hot July and August along with a rainy spring and fall. Both experience tornadoes. For Posey County, Big Creek and the Ohio and Wabash Rivers occasionally flood as does Bird Creek in Osage County along with the Arkansas and Caney Rivers. But all in all the climate for both counties is fairly salubrious. In fact, the weather in both helps make them more interesting and for Indiana it gives citizens something besides basketball to talk about and for Oklahoma it expands the topics beyond football. Both states used to discuss politics but recently most rational people do not broach that topic.

However, it is not the occasional weather phenomenon that keeps paradise just out of reach for both counties. No, it is Mother Nature’s diabolical sense of humor. Let’s take up spring in Posey County first. You may know that Osage County, Oklahoma has thousands of roaming buffalo (bison). Well, just to make sure Hoosiers remember who dictates what happens in heaven, each April, May and June millions of biting/blood sucking buffalo gnats (flies) descend on Posey County much like the Biblical hordes of locusts. And like beachgoers after the movie Jaws it simply is not fun to be outside.

But Osage County has its own flies and to add to Mother Nature’s amusement She has supplied Osage County with several varieties of scorpions. Gentle Reader, should you never have been stung by a scorpion, as I have in Oklahoma, trust me, it is an experience you do not want. Peg, who is a born Yankee who spent her childhood in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and northern Indiana, has now learned to shake out her boots in the morning to be sure some scorpion has not chosen them as a residence. And the ubiquitous sand rock of Osage County appears to be a scorpion’s version of the Garden of Eden where the scorpions play the serpent’s role.

I guess what it comes down to is both Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma are wonderful places to live. But don’t forget to channel Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen and wear screening over your head and carry a fly swatter in Posey and shake out your boots in The Osage nine months out of the year.

Eden Revisited

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*** Update from Peg: After reading this article please see pictures below along with explanation! ***

The Garden of Eden set a standard no other garden can match. All Adam and Eve had to do was wander around fig leaf-less and enjoy earth’s bounty. Well, there was that small inconvenience of avoiding the fruit of one tree, but even with that tree there was no pruning, no Japanese beetles and no cultivation. Not even the concept of weeding and tilling were mentioned. In sum, neither a hoe nor Roundup were issues. There was no need for Adam to devise strategies to avoid his wife’s complaints that Mother Nature was winning the battle over whether fruits and vegetables or crabgrass would dominate. Adam could simply prop up his feet and, if he could have accessed cable T.V., watch football without guilt. Ah, if only Peg’s garden were the same.

“Jim, have you even looked at the garden recently? I have no idea what that stuff is growing out there but it sure is not the late-season vegetables I planted. It is humiliating to see the neighbors’ weed-free plants. Don’t you care?”

I bit my tongue and suppressed a truthful response. “Would you like for me to till the garden AGAIN?” Then I suggested IGA had a cornucopia of ripe and blemish-free tomatoes and onions. “You know, Peg, grocery stores need our business.We should try to be good community members and help keep those folks employed.” That sounded reasonable, to me.

“We buy plenty of groceries that we can’t grow such as paper products, detergent, peanut butter, and practically everything else we need. The stores won’t close if you weed our garden so we can grow a few fresh tomatoes. Is that stupid football game about over?” I did not tell her it was the third game of the day.

As I put down my iced tea and forced myself off the couch my life flashed through my brain. How did this come to be? Did it go all the way back to Eve? Did her seemingly benign offering of a weed-free apple to Adam determine the fate for all husbands for all time? And if it is not too impertinent to raise this issue, why did God include weeds in His grand scheme anyway? It’s probably as simple as He didn’t have a wife so He wasn’t worried.

Anyway, I slowly went from my cool den to my hot barn and found my two-cycle gas tiller. The tiller was about as reluctant as I was to face the hopelessly entwined non-edible vegetation. I primed the engine. I used starter fluid. I pulled on the cord for what seemed like an hour, so much so I caused a blister, before the tiller gave up and started. Then I trudged through the tangled mess that Peg claims is a garden. I completely understood the poetic analogy of William Cullen Bryant’s poem Thanatopsis in which he cautioned against approaching death (or gardening) like one being “scourged to his dungeon”. What I could not do was conquer my desire to dig out my old container of 2-4D and use the nuclear option. Unfortunately, Peg had anticipated just such a course of action and she had already disposed of it.

Okay, after only two hours and one blister the garden was tilled. Perhaps it will be at least two weeks before the weeds reemerge in all their sardonic evil. Once again, I ask you, would it have been too hard to design the whole thing better?

P.S. From Peg:

Folks, don’t feel too sorry for my hubby. Our neighbor, Chuck Minnette, took pity on him and offered to help as per the pictures below!

What’s It All About?

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When a non-English speaking person appears in an Indiana courtroom the judge can call the Indiana Supreme Court hotline and get access to a certified translator. But what can we do when the words spoken by others do not fit into one of the world’s 6,500 languages?

When one watches mothers with babies it is obvious the babies feel the unquestioned love. However, as we age meanings get fuzzier. Mothers might urge general cautions to young children then threaten unspecified mayhem to teenagers.

Grandmothers may impart gentle lessons on useful crafts while grandfathers might impress grandchildren with stories that could be true.

As to fathers, many children are left to decipher what is meant by a grunt or a pointed index finger.

In elementary school we get direct teachings on such important life lessons as where and how to line up our things and how not to bother the things of others.

In junior high school teachers help us to face the unwelcome realization we are not as cute as we thought. And in high school it slowly begins to sink in that not only are we not cute, but we might even be required to do some work. However, it is in college where we are made to understand that what we say is usually not treasured by others.

Should you have been sentenced to participate in athletics at any level, your coaches most likely considered shouted invective a proper means of communication. And if you ever went through basic training in the military you are probably still laboring under a cloud of expletive ladened non-explanations for completing completely worthless tasks.

Those of you who, as was I, were reared in some religion may have often been mystified by lessons rolled into parables or analogies. Of course, that was more comfortable than the threats of eternal damnation.

In contemporary life we may find it difficult to communicate with other groups. For example, older people may hear gibberish spoken by the young and simply write them off as spoiled. On the other hand, the young may simply write the old off as old.

When politicians speak it is often to portray their opponents as liars or corrupt while the news media makes no effort to analyze any complicated issue. To take guidance from either of these groups is to proceed without a safety net.

I am not sure what advertisers want me to buy. It used to be some normal person would sing a little ditty such as, “You deserve a break today”, and I would pull into McDonald’s. Now when I watch TV I have no clue what I am supposed to waste my money on.

Movies are no longer, “Your best entertainment”. When Dirty Harry said, “Go ahead, make my day”, I got it. However, when the hero or heroine of a movie is a machine run amok, I might as well have saved the twenty bucks it cost for a Coke and popcorn.

But now that you have struggled to almost the end of these examples of non-communication, the ultimate human foreign language must be mentioned, Female Speak. I ask you, why can’t wives simply say what they mean? What occurred in the Garden of Eden to render asunder understanding between the sexes? One example is all I have space left for.

You may have noticed it is spring. Well, so has Peg. And when spring arrives at JPeg Ranch communication between Peg and me exits as the hummingbirds and onion sets appear.

I ask you, Gentle Reader, is it a felony to lie on the couch on Saturday morning? When Peg mumbles under her breath, “The garden looks like it needs tilling”, how am I supposed to gain from that she wants me to immediately drop my coffee and attack the unoffending soil?

How about, “Jim, would you please till the garden?” I would have got that; a daylong period of icy silence would have been unnecessary.