I remember the porch

I remember when we would sit on the porch in the summer and shuck peas.  These weren’t any peas.  No, they were the peas my brother grew.  My grandfather was a farmer.  Actually, it was my Dad who was the farmer and my grandfather the gentleman’s farmer.  I guess my grandfather created the strategy and my father the tactics to make his strategy work.

Anyway, the time came in every grandson’s life where he was supposed to grow peas for my grandfather.  My brothers each prepared the soil, planted the seeds, weeded, and harvested their crop.  Well Jeff’s crop supposedly grew in China because those poor peas didn’t grow in NJ.  I hope all the Chinese people liked peas.

Robert’s crop of peas was huge.  It was a huge year for peas.  Unfortunately it also made it a huge year for pea shucking, which was my job.  Granddaughters, it seems, did not grow peas.  No, granddaughters shucked their brother’s peas.  So sitting in the heat of the summer with wooded buckets, our next door neighbor and I shucked peas.  Mountains and mountains of peas. 

I don’t even like peas.  My mother froze bags and bags of peas.  I managed to hide most of mine in an unsuspecting baked potato skin, or napkin. 

Summers when I shucked peas were different than the ones now.  I don’t know if we didn’t have air conditioning, or if we didn’t use air conditioning.  It was hot.  We sat outside because it was cooler and we could at least imagine a breeze.  You could hear the locusts rubbing their legs together making a crick crick sound.  Iced tea was powdered when I was a kid, and you either drank unsweetened, or sweetened.  I drank the sweetened in tall glasses with purple flowers faint from hard water in the dishwasher.

A radio sat next to Linda and I, as we shucked peas.  We listened to AM radio.  I don’t know why, but we thought it was THE station at the time.  After about an hour, we grew tired of shucking peas.  Linda pulled from her pocket a great diversion to pea shucking.

A pea shooter.  Seriously.  Our white porch with green shutters stood in front of our bushels of peas.  We pulled out one pea with the intention of seeing what might happen.  Soon we knew what would happen, and the peas were flying.  Who could possible notice green specks two stories up? 

Linda and I honed our peashooting skills.  We could hit just about anything, until we heard a bang.  Linda quickly hid our peashooter.

It was my mother opening the screen door to see if we needed refills on our sweetened iced tea in the old worn glasses.  She sat down and talked with us.
It didn’t take long for her to look up and squint. 

“Hm, she said, what are those green marks on the porch?”

“Mold?” Linda said, not missing a beat.

I just looked down, nibbled on a pea and then took a sip of my iced tea.