84. Down on the Farm
July 15, 2011
A Man Named Emmett
For over fifty years we knew each other, precious
years of love and respect. We worked together and
fished together. When I was a young boy we walked to
his garden on the creek to check his steel traps for
ground hogs that were robbing his garden. It was
Emmett that Daddy would trust me with when I was a
little boy, to go down on the river after a summer’s
rain to catch catfish and chubs. He loved to squirrel
hunt, and he was a crack shot with his 22 rifle. When
he was around, we always knew he had a sharp pocket
knife if we needed it. In later years he loved to go up
in the mountains to go trout fishing,
Emmett at the sorting grader! Here he
inspected the fruit just before it entered
the packing machine.
Each Sunday he and his wife, Eliza, went to church in his pickup. They sat near the back
of the little country church smiling as we took up the collection. He earned enough
money to buy land adjoining the farm. Eventually he and his brother and some friends
built a house for him, Eliza, and his two young daughters. Later David was born, and
Emmett was so proud. On his farm he cut logs and had them sawn into lumber so he
could build a barn.
Emmett and Eliza were products of the Depression. They both knew so well about living
without, yet I never heard them complain. Emmett did not get a chance to go to school;
he had to stay home to help support his family. He was the fourth child in a family of 16
brothers and sisters, plus 7 half brothers and sisters who were older. His daddy had a
team of horses and hauled soapstone from the mill to the railroad at Arrington, a distance
of about 6 miles. Emmett and three of the older boys spent years cutting pulpwood to
support the ten younger children.
Somehow in this large family he learned valuable lessons in honesty, integrity, politeness
and respect. He learned them well. His parents taught him sharing and love for family.
He was ever so proud of his family, his children, and grandchildren,. His living room was
full of their pictures.
Many years ago, Dad trusted Emmett as a picking foreman to supervise one of the crews
that came from the community to pick the crop . Emmett and his brother Denton knew
so well how to train a peach tree in its young years with selective pruning cuts. In his
later years, it was Emmett whom I chose to sit near the big belt that carried the peaches
through the packing line and by the last check point
before they went to the automatic packing machine.
The peaches then were sent to the refrigerated trailer
and then on to the markets. I wanted a top sorter
there in that last check point, someone who really
knew their stuff, and often my choice was Emmett if
he was available.
He was ever so proud of the fruits of his labor. Often
in summertime he shared his garden with the
neighbors, bringing a bucket of tomatoes, smiling
and pouring them out on a table to show how pretty
they were and then exclaiming, “Look a’here, look
what I brought you.”
Growing tobacco was one of his loves and talents.
Many a day he would spend in the tobacco fields.
Emmett at the “water elevator” checking the
In the fall he would carry his razor-sharp axe and
peaches as they entered the packing line
his lunchbox as he followed the narrow river path
to the tobacco house near the Cutbank Hole. Here was a big, deep fishing hole in the
bend of the river and it was here that one of the old weather-beaten tobacco houses stood,
a vivid reminder of the days when tobacco was King.. Here he split the wood he had
brought earlier for the little fires that cured the tobacco.
He often referred to the peach crop as “our peaches.” This was most appropriate. He had
been with the peaches from the beginning. He had helped plant the trees and helped
build the packing shed in 1940 as well as the several additions to the shed. He was an
excellent carpenter. He was good with horses. He had helped when the ground slide was
the way to haul the bushel boxes to the loading area, and then in later years had driven a
tractor when hauling the four big 20 bushel box-bins to the packing shed. He had pruned
the trees, thinned the fruit, harvested it and so he could surely claim a part of them.
As he got up in years, Tatum often cut his hair. He used to smile and look at the floor
when the haircut was complete, commenting “Looks like opossum hair, doesn’t it?”
His years were certainly lengthened by the care and devotion of his wife, Eliza. No
person could have been more attentive to his needs. He was a self-made man, the salt of
the earth type, the type citizen that was the bedrock of America.
When I shut my eyes and remember back 40-50 years, it seems that I can almost hear his
steady, positive commands to his team of horses, his enthusiasm as he admired the crop
of fruit, and his pride as he prepared his crop of tobacco for market. This world would do
well to have had more Emmetts.
So long for now,
Paul Saunders