By the late Ed Pittman
Character building is a term tossed around quite a bit, generally used as a constructive term, sometimes with tongue in cheek. When a favorite football team is mired down in last place toward the end of the season we sometimes say that this year we are stressing character building. Character building comes in different forms. It’s not bad for a young sprout to be introduced to it early in life. It sometimes makes a lasting impression.
My dad was a very fair man. He did not lean on me unnecessarily and considering the work load we shared he gave me considerable time off for “play.” When he took off Saturday at noon to make his trip into town to buy provisions (people didn’t “shop” in those days; they bought the necessities of life) he generally let me have the rest of the day off to run and play. And we did. Guys like Edwin Orand, W. C. Day, Alvis McAdams, sometimes Willis Cannon would congregate at the Cottonwood Creek swimming hole near Highway 75 and have a time playing and swimming, “skinny dipping” in that hole of running water. If there were any germs in it we were not affected by them. It beat the stock ponds, “tank” we called them, full of algae, mud and dead water. It’s a wonder swimming in those places didn’t kill us all. There was rabbit hunting and armadillo chasing, and red wasps to fight with cedar limbs. There was the big rock in the bed of the “dugout” which ran through the pasture where most of the pretty girls unknowingly had their initials carved alongside the initials of wistful admirers. There was no end of good things to do on a Saturday afternoon, free of hated chores for awhile. Huck Finn would have liked this stuff.
Once in a while my dad would announce to me as he was getting ready to “go to town” that he thought I ought to spend the afternoon working on those persimmon sprouts in the corn field or watermelon patch. Persimmon sprouts grew faster than the national debt and could take over a field in no time if left unattended. They had to be grubbed out, root and all, with a grubbing hoe, an instrument of torture to a teenager. This punishment usually happened when I had “acted up” or violated one of the big rules, like sassing my mamma. So instead of the blissful pastime I could have been having with the guys, I’m down there in the midst of a swarm of persimmon sprouts, working my way through an oversized chore. There were more than enough to last an afternoon, so I wasn’t about to get through. The bad part was, I knew that my dad would do an inspection the next day and if the results were not favorable I got another dose of the same medicine the next time an afternoon holiday rolled around.
If you know of a patch of persimmon sprouts somewhere and if you know of a kid who needs a little character building, I suggest you look into this type of venture. It works. Believe me. I’ve been there.
