[AT] Farewell to a country woman

[Dean Vinson]

We laid my grandmother to rest today, next to my grandfather, and it was
good to see them together again.  She turned 100 years old last Thanksgiving
Day and was healthy and in good spirits when I saw her then; I'm surprised
she passed so quickly but am glad she didn't suffer.

I've lived most of my life in the suburbs but grew up on a little farm in
the country, which my dad had bought since he missed the rural surroundings
of his youth.  We'd go to visit Grandma and Grandpa each year on their farm
just south of Mooresville, Indiana, and it was always a place of hard work
but familiar comfort.  I can remember the great big whole-pan-size pancakes
Grandma would make in her black iron skillet on the stove in the kitchen,
and the smell of dog food on the back porch, and picking tomatoes with
Grandpa, and building Grand Coulee Dam with our Tonka trucks and dozers in
the cool dirt beneath the big lilac bush.  I remember playing Rook (Rook was
okay; normal playing cards seemed to be frowned upon), and the wild morning
glory vines in the young corn as we walked between the rows to the creek at
the end of the field, and the stories my dad told of growing up there, a
skinny 10-year-old kid cultivating corn and soybeans with a Farmall F-20
while daydreaming of having a Farmall M like the big farmers (and thereby
helping plant my own longtime lust for M-series tractors).  Throughout it
all, Grandma was a constant:  Always working, always busy, yet always with
time for a smile and kind word for my brothers and sister, my cousins, the
neighbor kid, and me.  Sleep well now, Grandma.

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net