Jane Edwards?

Bicyclists stopped and watched me momentarily as I cut the weeds from around the mailbox post up at the road, and one told me that she did not know that you could cut grass without a mower or a weedwhacker, and it was the first time she had ever seen it done.

As the bicyclists continued on, the hypnotic rhythm of the swing was broken, and I became aware of the ache in my back, blisters on my hands, and my clothes soaked through with sweat. I decided that a couple of hours of weed cutting for today was enough. As I walked back up the driveway, I thought about the people who did not know that grass could be cut without power equipment.

Childhood for poverty-stricken rural kids in my generation consisted of labor in the garden which was spaded and not plowed or roto-tillered, planting seeds, chopping weeds, and harvesting and then helping with the canning process, as well as taking care of the livestock, mowing the grass (without power mowers), milking, churning butter, painting fences, and doing whatever else there was that needed to be done. My mother had an old treadle sewing machine which is where clothes came from, and hair cuts were done outside with a pair of scissors.

I remember coming home from school, opening the refrigerator for a glass of Kool-Aid, and a decapitated hog head would be staring at me from the refrigerator shelf, waiting to be made into head cheese or scrapple. Wild greens, fish, squirrel, wild rabbit and poached deer kept us going when money was really tight (always) and the garden had failed.

How much life has changed since then. We truly are blessed to be living in a time of such abundance.