Does anyone out there suffer
from seasonal allergies? When I was just
a little fellow, my dad and granddad went in together and purchased a
Caterpillar. It was a dandy little farm tractor, a 1929, with a blade and disc,
and a spring-tooth harrow, and everything.
And in order to start the thing you had to hand crank it. When I got older, my granddad had emphysema
and lost his breath easily, so I used to turn the crank for him, which made me
feel very important indeed. When they
first brought the tractor home, Dad, determined to make good use of his investment,
tilled up every square inch of our acreage that was remotely susceptible, and some
that wasn’t, and several flower beds too!
And then he seeded and fertilized it exceedingly well, and waited for
the spring rains. By mid May, we had a luxurious stand of four foot high
grass. By June, the seed heads were
bursting with extravagant amounts of pollen, and having never experienced such
a forest of grass on the property before, we kids saw an opportunity for
adventure. We ran like a gaggle of
crazed turkeys through that lush forest, turning flip-flops and doo-dads, and creating
lavish clouds of yellow pollen that filled the air and clogged our eyes and
ears and noses and every orifice of our youthful, naive anatomies with thick, noxious
goo. When I could no longer breathe, or see, or enjoy our antics with impunity,
I felt my way home to Mother. And I
assumed a fetal position on our couch, and moaned inconsolably, and the membranes
of my little eyes turned hemorrhoid blue, and filled with fluid, and they
itched like poison ivy on mosquito bites, and eventually lie panting and
pulsating on my cheeks, like little Vienna sausages in torment. And I’ve never
really enjoyed pollen from that day to this, or frolicking in the high grass,
or Vienna sausages either for that matter. SC
