Pop's Farm

My grandfather, "Pop," was born to a family with 13 children in 1879.
By the time he was nine years old both parents had died and the family was
split up. Children were parceled out amongst various relatives. Pop went to
a bachelor uncle who put him to work in the fields to earn his keep. He
never went to school again. From then on, he did a man's work, putting in 12
to 14 hour days.
It was hard work but Pop was good at it. He liked farming. He liked
the feel and the smell of the earth. And he loved the plants. Nothing made
him happier than putting in seeds, tending them and harvesting the crops. It
gave him a sense of accomplishment, and it made him feel close to God.
After his uncle died, Pop began looking for a farm of his own. He was
in his early twenties and engaged to my grandmother, and he desperately
wanted to farm. For a few years he worked at jobs and tried to save the
money to buy his own farm. But progress was slow, and my grandmother's
patience was wearing thin. Finally, he gave up his dream. He went to Chicago
and took a job at Pullman making railroad cars. He rented an apartment and
married my grandmother.
I was born in 1944. By then Pop was retired; he'd worked at Pullman
for 30 years. He'd raised two children, my mother and my aunt, and he'd
built and paid for his own house. World War II was dragging on. My father
was overseas, so my mother and I had moved in with my grandparents. Times
were hard. Food was rationed and a lot of people were just getting by.
Pop mulled it over, and decided what to do. There was no land to farm
on the South Side of Chicago, but there were plenty of vacant lots. So,
without bothering to ask anybody's permission, he started planting. We were
a strange pair, the toddler and the old man, with our hoes and shovels.
Every day we went from one vacant-lot garden to the next until all four or
five had been tended. We planted potatoes, corn, cabbage, squash, and
carrots: food to eat fresh and for my grandmother to can.
Every day, as we worked in the gardens, people came by. Food was
scarce for everyone and people with small children often had a hard time
feeding them. Pop shared with them all. Anyone who needed food got some.
Families of all sizes and backgrounds, men who didn't speak English, old
people. They all got fed from those vacant lots. For years, until the war
was over and rationing ended, Pop fed everyone who came.
Pop passed away in 1972. He was 93 years old. My grandmother had died
nine years earlier, the house had been sold, and he had come to live with us
way over in a different neighborhood. We knew Pop was old-fashioned and
would want a wake, so we held one. But we never thought anybody would come.
It had been years since he had lived in the old neighborhood. Besides, all
his friends had died. Who would still remember him?
The evening of his wake was one we would never forget. People came and
kept coming and the family didn't know any of them. Over two hundred people
came, of all races, religions, and backgrounds. As we stood, stunned, in the
receiving line, every person who shook our hands said the same thing. "I saw
his name in the paper and I just had to come and pay my respects."
All the people Pop had fed during those difficult war years had never
forgotten. Twenty-five years later they still remembered him. His gardens
and generosity had changed their lives. Pop never saw the differences
between people. For him, the food that comes from the earth belonged to
everyone equally. On that night, I realized that the man who had wanted his
whole life to be a farmer had finally fulfilled his dream.

by Meredith Hodges