Pickin' and Grinnin'

Lots of picking. We got 5 gallons of beans yesterday, plus some cukes and okra. Tomatoes are slow to come on. Picked 5 gallons more of beans today at the Price Avenue garden, and I have another crew headed out there this evening to get the beans growing up the corn. Pulled 5 gallons more of bell peppers there, too.

I had some beans and yellow tomatoes. I headed up 12^th Street to pass them out. Peter not home, Meg not home. You snooze you lose. Left a pile with Jessica and them. And then the meant to be part of the day: Mike, chick drummer’s husband is home. He was really happy to get some garden food. And he was really happy to see me. We’ve only met in passing, but we stopped and had a good conversation about things going on and his sense that the answers are going to be spiritual. Talk about a conversation with a stranger getting deep within 2 minutes! This is the joy of being a pastor. Anyway, we get to talking about music and how he’s going to some bluegrass get together. I share a bit with him of my idea to have bluegrass pickin’ here as often as we can. I think he’s going to hook us up.

He said, “Well, it’s the people’s music. You don’t need no drums or amps. Just open your case and go. And anyone can learn it really.” I am toying with getting a mandolin—I like the sound, have wanted to learn, and bluegrass is going to be huge here if we play our cards right. Brittany Peel has my old mandolin, and I am trying to steal it back.

I have been lamenting that as a preacher no one tells you any jokes, because they think preachers don’t laugh or something. Well, as I was picking beans, an older black man was in his yard behind the garden. We got to talking. He had been a barber and when he found out I was a preacher, he said, “Oh! I have to tell you a preacher joke!” Well, you never know where something like that is headed, except it’s going to be good.

“A long time ago, there was a church in the rural. Preachers in those days rode mules, tied up alongside the church. And they called a mule an ass in those days, too. The preacher’s preaching and the church catches on fire. Everyone runs to the front door, the only way out. Preacher can’t get out and he jumps out the side window. But he didn’t land on his ass, to make his getaway. The church was digging a new outhouse and he fell right in. They tried to find him and then looked down on pitiful old preacher. One of the deacons said, ‘I told you we shoulda never called him to preach—he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground!’” With that he just chuckled and walked away.