Hello, my name is Larry. Larry is not a high-profile or glamorous name that conjures up images in the mind of great adventure, nobility, or famous deeds. It is the name that my parents liked and they gave it to me. It’s my choice as to how I make my name memorable.
From my perspective as a child growing up in rural central Kentucky and the son of a tenant farmer, life was predictable. Summer days were as hot as winter days were cold. Homework was assigned and lessons were taken without too much fuss. I played with the dogs and cats that they kept as pets and also with the puppies that arrived in the spring and were a source of income for my parents. There was an occasional lamb that was orphaned and kept in the kennel until he was old enough to be driven out with the flock. I remember thinking how terribly long and boring some days were.
The routine of life at that time revolved around school work, church activities, helping with chores around the house and farm, and family gatherings. Game time was sprinkled in there as the opportunity arose. I never thought about missing a meal or where I would sleep at night nor did I worry about what the future would hold. My parents did a good job making provisions for the family. He didn’t know how little money they had to live on.
My first lessons in lawn care began when I learned how to mow with a gas-powered walk-behind mower and edge the sidewalk with a pair of shears. I also learned how to paint the outside of the house, paint the picket fence around the yard, feed the chickens and collect eggs, pick strawberries to keep and sell, weed the tobacco fields, clean the house, and clean the church. from my mother before I was nine years old.
The art of finding tobacco worms and decapitating them (so they couldn’t eat any more tobacco leaves) I learned from my Papaw Patrick (Mama’s father) along with a host of cousins, both boys and girls. He also taught the male cousins how to be hunting dogs that would drive the birds out of the fields so he could shoot them from where he sat in wait. When he had real hunting dogs or rabbit dogs, he made it very clear that they were working dogs and we were not to play with them. If a dog didn’t hunt in the field or if he hid with guns, he didn’t come home. Sometimes he would ask me what would happen if he didn’t hunt correctly.
I spent a lot of time at Mammaw and Papaw Patrick’s where some of the cousins were probably there too. Uncle Kenny (he was 3 years older than me) was the man. He could milk a cow and he was an athlete, he could sing bass in the church choir and he had girls who liked him. Kenny taught me to ride my bike on the paved road, to play basketball on a dirt court under the huge water maple tree that grew halfway between his house and the barns (I always had to shoot a few hoops passing by). to another). from the milking barn), and how to play baseball and softball under the pure giant trees in the front field.
Once, while playing a game of softball (we were enough to make two or three on a team), I learned a memorable lesson. “Hermana” (my mother’s sister) was mowing the grass with a gas-powered lawn mower in the area across the gravel driveway that separated the front field where we played softball. Kenny had hit another home run and was heading to third base when something flew out from under the lawn mower, across the driveway and into his shoulder. It looked like he was shot with a .22 caliber rifle. I bet he still has the scar. Anyway, it was a piece of fence wire. The lesson here was to stay out of an area while mowing.
It was Uncle Jackie (another of my mother’s brothers) who taught me, my brother Gary and Kenny a very useful skill. It seems that Kenny was also an avid fisherman (like his father I guess). If Kenny fished, I wanted to fish. Collecting bait was one of the problems we encountered in the heat of summer, fishing worms would be harder to find. There was a watering hole in the cow pasture that was too small to be called a pond, but it contained prolific amounts of catfish and bream, and we were determined to catch and provide food for the whole family. This is where Uncle Jackie helped us. He headed for the part of the path that runs past the house and continues toward the barns. He had each get a sprout of dried “crow’s foot” seed and then showed us how to “scribble” for the scribble bugs that had bored a small hole in the hot, bare soil. That was almost as much fun as fishing for a bucket full of yellow bellied catfish.
The church life was a big part of our family experience. We never missed a service unless you were very, very sick. Everything important I know and any social skills I possess can be traced back to the church at Boone’s Creek. That is where I learned that God loves me and how to love people. The learning continues. My best experience at Boone’s Creek Church was when I met Karen, now my wife.
Uncle Bud (my mother’s older brother) made an unforgettable impression on me growing up in a large and diverse family. He was the most polite person I knew at the time. He was in my “rich” mindset. He was a professional “CPA” and drove a Cadillac car and lived in a big old house in Fort Thomas with lots of flowers, bushes and gardens. Uncle Bud loved to work in the gardens. He often came home to visit and worked on landscaping and maintaining the shrubs, trees and flowers at Mammaw and Papaw Patrick’s home. He was patient enough to show me how to prune, prune, and care for many of the plantings there. I once asked him, how do you know which flowers to plant in the gardens so that they are always blooming? His method made perfect sense to me. I would go to garden centers and nurseries and if I saw a plant that was blooming at the time, I would know what to expect next season. Therefore, his method was to continually search for the right candidate that he wanted to have in his garden for the upcoming season. To paraphrase it If you find something you like… Plant it, If you later change your mind and don’t like it… It’s a Weed… Get rid of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a weed.
Uncle Bud was the inspiration for my first gardening project. Whenever Mom, Dad, my brother, and I would visit him in Fort Thomas, he would always send you over with the things he had in excess. For my brother and I it was a jar of coins that he saved. There was always a car full of pots and things to plant when we got home. One of these trips included a fountain that I used as a focal point in a raised three-tiered flowerbed. It turned out very well, I guess. Mom and Dad let him stay for several years.
Dad was not lazy about anything related to work and he instilled in me the importance of doing chores on time and to as much perfection as I could muster. If he gave me a task, I also received detailed instructions on how to complete the task. He wore me out when he reminded me of the same instructions over and over again throughout the day. If it failed to produce the results he wanted, he had to start all over again. That didn’t happen very often. My dad is the best I’ve ever seen at setting goals and going after them. Whatever his goal is, he would stick to it to make it come true.
Well, those are some of the important things I learned before I was 13 years old. Since then, the importance of what I know is yet to be decided.
larry