Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [67]
The air…was…conditioning…us.
As we moved toward midday, the breezes grew stronger, but so did the sun. The wide straw hats we had taken to using provided some relief, but not enough. As I hoed the garden on one still, sweltering day, I began to sweat profusely. I could feel the sweat pouring out and felt helpless to stop the flow. I tried to put the sensation out of my mind. My shirt clung to my back and slithered across my skin. Perspiration trickled down my forehead and into the corners of my eyes, blinding me.
I escaped indoors for relief, and then something strange happened. Under the skin, up and down my arms and legs, I began to feel millions of tiny electric jabs. I’d never felt anything like it. It was like some sort of subcutaneous massage. Staying still heightened the feeling. Perhaps my movements in the garden had prevented me from noticing until now. I paused a while longer, enjoying the strange sensations. My body was finally coming into adjustment. It was learning to sweat.
Mary remained indoors or in the shade more often than I and did not need to undergo quite so dramatic a transformation, but she too gradually acclimatized.
After about five days, I felt completely recovered, and with some trepidation began to wonder whether I might be ready to make another go of threshing. Only one way to find out. I decided to bring a small pocket notebook this time to record my progress and any other details of the occasion as they unfolded. I realized the attempt might draw attention to itself, but I hoped to be discreet.
The event this time was to take place at Alvin’s, brother to Gideon and co-owner of the water mill, and when I arrived I found a half-full wagon and a crew in the midst of work. Surrounding me on all sides, again, were those wheaten Parthenons. Brandishing a pitchfork, I set into demolition, catching an earful of the conversation already under way.
“What, you use insecticide on your potato bugs?” Elbert was saying. “Why, I jus’ let the neighbor’s guinea birds take care of mine. Whomp, whomp, whomp.” He lifted up his nose and chomped like a guinea sucking down a potato bug, his long beard flapping.
“Good year for insects, with all the rain,” came a voice from the other side of the wagon, an invisible thresherman concealed behind the ever-rising mound of sheaves we were creating.
“Yeah,” added Gideon with a groan, as he thrust a sheaf high on the pile. “Last year it didn’t rain and nothing grew. This year it rained and nothing grew. Guess what I got from my blackberries the last two weeks? A big fat zero.”
But then his eyes tilted mischievously. “The weather,” he continued, “it always seems good for something. [Grunt.] This year, it’s strawberries. The children, they’re getting a little tired of them now. Wish the truck folks would take ’em off my hands. They don’t want ’em. They want this other stuff. [Grunt.] The only time I ate it, I had to close my eyes. But it has”—his face lit up—“ ‘shelf-life.’ ” He could see us grinning and knew he now had center stage. “They don’t want our King Crimsons. They want this other stuff. Ours is perishable. Theirs has”—again the bright face—“ ‘shelf-life.’ ”
Gideon had a large and fascinating nose. It was not grotesque, exactly, but somehow beautiful, wending and bending and calling to mind a cornucopia. He turned his head one way and tilted his eyes the other, smiling demurely as he chattered. Thoughts and glances, winks and gestures, were woven together in an intricately