Found Food

I put myself thru my MA in English by working for the Physical Plant at Southern Mississippi, where I got my undergrad degree as well. It was a wild job, largely because of the guys I worked with. The first job every day was for me and my crew to pick up trash outside of buildings on the north side. Anyway, in one dorm there was a guy who would crap and throw it out the window. We’d have our trash picker and think we were picking up whatever and bam, there it was. Made us so mad. So we stopped, and I guess it got to stinking or he got mad he wasn’t screwing with us anymore so he began to hide it in all kinds of things—paper cup, bag, anything, even the plastic case an electric razor came in. We were about to lose it.

I wasn’t a Christian in those days, and so when Charlie suggested we get a case of beer and our bb guns and sit and watch the dorm one night, I was all in. I mean we were surely going to pop this guy in the tail and maybe, hopefully, get to beat the tar out of him. It was going to end badly one way or the other. He never showed up any of the nights (yes, there was more than one). Good thing, I guess. By midnight, we wouldn’t have hit anything we aimed at…

Ok, so there was no redeeming point to that story, except it’s funny, my near-miss with extreme violence…

We also had this game or something going. We would try to find fruit trees on campus and not let anyone know about it. So Larry had a plum tree somewhere. He would spray it and prune it, but he’d always give you the shake if you followed him. Ernest had something else, I forget now, maybe a pear tree. I had to get in on this action, because it was too much fun for Larry to come in with a bag of fresh plums, make us watch as he ate them. What a jerk. I learned some of my best expressions from Larry. He was like Larry the Cable Guy and Donnie Baker rolled into one.

I was also into what I called "guerilla landscaping." I had tried to convince my bosses that we should plant vegetables instead of annual flowers. So we could put in peas or corn, tomatoes, maybe carrots and turnip greens. It's all pretty and serves the same function. It's crazy to plant ornamental kale, but not spinach. They weren't buying it. My boss really lost it when he found corn growing outside the business office. "I wonder how this got here?" he asked coyly. He pulled it out. Watched him do it and almost cried. Those were my babies, y'all. But I had the last say. I planted tomatoes in between the boxwoods at the Alumni House. The ladies in there loved it! So the boss man comes by to pull them out and they were on him like a hawk. He got his tail chewed good. Nice guy that I am, I even gave him some tomatoes as a peace offering.

One day I was sent to spray fence-rows with a cocktail that even Nixon’s EPA would have arrested me for. (We had this big spray rig, but the off switch didn’t work, so you had to shut it down by pulling the plug wire off. Shocked heck out of you everytime. My boss used to get mad because I would leave it running all the time…) So there I am spraying the fence-row behind the motor pool and I see them: blackberries. Right under everyone’s nose. I come back covered in blackberry juice, and the boys knew something was up. They all wanted in, but I was taking all of them to my cousin so she could make cobbler. It was all “Hey old buddy, old pal,” but I wasn’t sharing.

But then one day I found the Holy Grail. I think I also discovered Larry’s secret: the best place to hide is in plain sight. In an alcove of the Art Department’s building a spindly tree was poking over the wall. I went in there looking for a faucet and found an apple tree! In Mississippi, of all places. There aren’t many varieties that grow in MS, much less in South MS. But it was in bad shape. Huge hole at the base of the trunk, termites.

So I get back to Physical Plant and liberated some supplies: cement mix, malathion, pruning seal, some tools. I lived across the street from the campus, so I came back after work and dug out the termite queen and squished her… yes, like a bug. I sprayed malathion and then got after filling in the hole with concrete. After it set a few days, I covered the whole thing in pruning seal. Then I waited. Apples came in the summer. Small, but golden and sweet and juicy. They all came undone when I strutted in with my bag of apples. Even the bossman was putting pressure on me to give up the location. This was 93. I ate apples from there as long as I was in MS. When I went back in 2000 for my homeboy’s wedding, I had to stop and see. Tree still there! Fruit on it, but not ready. The trunk had more or less repaired itself.

There is something mysterious about stumbling on a fruit tree or bush in an unexpected place. It’s makes you feel close to God and His Providence. There’s just stuff everywhere if you know or care to look. One day John Mynhier and I were doing some evangelism on Pine Ridge Rd. We were walking down a long driveway and spotted some blackberries the birds hadn’t found yet. We just walked and ate, and talked about our good fortune. See, you can teach a young boy with a hard life a lot about grace when God does things like that…

On Mill Street, just south of Maxwell, by Rotary Connection (go there for all your car repair needs. Chip, the service manager, is THE MAN), there’s an apple tree growing in a 2 foot gap between houses. Very good apples. There’s another at Maxwell and Madison. And two on Avon. Five-finger discount makes it taste sweeter…

So Thursday, Jim Embry (my garden co-conspirator) and I are in the garden behind Arlington School. He starts showing me all the stuff growing in the grass. We picked some young purple hull peas from the garden and plucked a salad from the grass. Talk about a sweet moment.

I think I understand why Jesus was hacked off at the fig tree that bore no fruit. He made it to bear fruit! Just so people walking by could get some and thank God for a small and unexpected blessing. A simple thing along the way, but not so simple after all.