As I sat on the back porch my legs dangled off the side, swinging a few inches above the red Georgia clay. Next to me, in tattered blue overalls, sat my Grandpa Jesse. Grandpa’s once light hair had turned much darker with the passage of time. His steel blue eyes offered a sense of strength. With his Case pocketknife he was whittling on a piece of maple he had cut from a tree.
As I watched him working I wondered what he was carving out of the wood.
“Grandpa, what is it going to be,” I asked.
In his booming voice he said, “Boy, its all inside the wood. You just have to keep cutting until it jumps out at you.”
“What do you think it might be?” he asked.
“A dog,” I said.
He told me it might be a dog like my black and tan beagle mix, Track, or a rooster like my chicken, Roscoe, or even a deer like Bambi.
I sat there looking up at him as he quietly worked. I asked him a million questions.
“When are we going to town?” I asked.
“When we get around to it,” he replied.
“When are you going to paint the house,” I asked.
“When we get around to it,” he replied.
I asked about his vibrantly red and white roses that he loved to cross breed.
“When can we pick a rose,” I asked.
“When we get around to it,” he replied.
When he tired of carving, he slipped the stick into his vest pocket, and he said, “Let’s take a walk.” We walked side by side down the old dirt drive past his roses towards the vegetable garden where he stopped to admire his tomatoes.
“They have been real good this year,” he said. “Look how big it is. It’s all in how you work the dirt.”
He picked a large red fruit off the vine, cut a big slice off, took a small salt shaker from his side pocket and sprinkled it before handing it to me. I was always amazed how he could pull just about anything out of his overall pockets.
“Just try that, you won’t find a better one,” he said.
As I tried it, he cut a slice for himself.
“When are we going to pick the rest of the tomatoes,” I asked.
“When we get around to it,” he replied.
It was one of the best tomatoes I have ever eaten. Not because of the taste but because it was my grandpa who grew it, picked it and cut it for me.
As I savored the time, we walked a little further down the row of corn and beans. He picked a couple of green beans and handed me one to eat.
“When are we going to cook them,” I asked.
“When we get around to it,” he replied.
As we ate, we walked on down the dusty road to the railroad, which shook grandpa’s
old house each time the train steamed by. We walked a ways down the track as grandpa took the maple wood from his pocket. He began whittling away as we walked, working almost feverishly to complete his work of art.
When he was done he presented it to me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A roundtoit.” he replied.
Randall Franks is an award-winning musician, singer and actor. He is best known for his role as “Officer Randy Goode” on TV’s “In the Heat of the Night” now on WGN America. His latest CD release, “An Appalachian Musical Revival,” is by www.shareamericafoundation.org. He is a member of the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame. He is a syndicated columnist for http://randallfranks.com/ and can be reached at rfrankscatoosa@gmail.com.