Hoopty-Doo

Bill and I get asked all kinds of questions at the markets: "How do you do this?; Where do you find the time?; How do I cook this?; What does eggplant taste like?" Most of the answers are fairly easy and can be quickly answered. One question that I find difficult to answer without taking up someone's entire Saturday morning is "How did you get started growing everything?"

Bill's answer is easy: he grew up on a farm and growing vegetables was just part of what they did. It's second nature for him. I, however, am a town kid, but had a special person in my life that has inspired me every day that I work with produce.

My brother and I had a special name for him: Hoopty. He loved to play with us kids, especially roughhousing and general goofing around. When we were small punks, he would let us ride on his back, cowboy-style, and try to buck us off. He always made a "hoop-hoop" sound while discharging us to the floor; hence the name "Hoopty".

Actually, my grandfather was just a very large kid and usually the one to think up things to get us a good scolding from my grandmother and aunts. He would encourage us to play loudly inside, then chuckle when we were unceremoniously put outside or told to play in the basement. He always got a kick out of what ever imaginary game we thought up and usually would lend string, pocket knife or tin can to our game. Looking back, he worked hard all his life and now could, through his grandchildren, be a child.

Besides being a staunch St. Louis Cardinal fan, he loved to garden. His vegetable garden was an amazing place and I could kick myself for never having gotten a photo of any sort. Weeds were afraid to grow. The garden was as wide as the yard in Gridley, probably about 40' or so, with a path of pavers in the center, giving way to a few planks toward the end. The last board was warped and would tip easily. I remember him coming home from working at the post office (he was the Postmaster), changing into "work clothes" and slippers (?) and going out to see

He grew everything in his garden: tomatoes, sweet corn (Illini Super Sweet!), carrots, green beans, cabbage. My memories are of summer dinners that consisted of sliced beefsteak tomatoes (served on a lovely turquoise platter), cottage cheese, sweet corn and baloney sandwiches. Yeah, even as a kid, I ate pretty locally. His garden produced quart after quart after quart of green beans that Grandma canned and put on shelves in the basement. I would spend time with her during the summer, watching TV, drinking Pepsi from a glass (!) bottle and snapping crisper drawer after drawer of beans. I am an expert bean snapper due to my early training!

Strawberries were also put up, thousands at a time, frozen into quart containers to be used throughout the year on ice cream or over shortcake. Grandma and my aunts would be in the house removing the green caps, slicing berries and prepping them for the freezer. Hoopty and us kids (my brother & cousin) would be picking out in the hot sun. He always considered berry picking as "dollar-a-minute work" (the Uncle Remus stories were favorites he shared with us) and would "pay" us a dollar a minute...if we didn't eat the berries. Needless to say, I never made much picking strawberries.

Always looking to find a better way to do something, he would pull you aside to show you his newest way of tackling a problem, always using items he had on hand or re-fashioned. You never knew what you would be lead to see when he approached you uttering the words, "Come here, I want to show you somethin' " and smiling mysteriously, would lead you to the basement, garage or garden to show his new invention. My favorite was the T stool. Hoopty devised a way to comfortably (relatively speaking) pick strawberries without stooping or crawling on your knees.

Taking a length of 2' x 4', he cut two pieces; one about 18" long, the other about 12". The longer piece was placed perpendicularly on top of the shorter one, making a 'T'. He nailed them together and --voila! The T stool was born. To use, place the short end on the ground and place your bottom on the long part of the T. Gently bend forward and pick/eat your strawberries. Simply lift and move to next location. It was corny; but it worked. We got a lot of mileage out of gently razzing him about those stools.

We always got a tour of the garden when we visited; we had to be shown what was new, where the tomatoes were going to be that year, where he found baby bunnies in a nest. The tour started before you even got to the house, it was that important. One summer was very hot and dry and rather than waste water by sprinkling it over the top of his tomatoes and corn, he carefully dug trenches throughout his garden and irrigated everything at the roots. He would love what we do with drip tape.

He has been gone for 16 years today. I miss hearing him say "wait once, wait once" as I impatiently tried to pick something that wasn't quite ripe, seeing the look of surprise on his face when I would find quarters and dollar coins in the box of sweet corn we were shucking, listening to Jack Buck call a Cardinal game and telling me that Mr. Buck was a great man or laughing at the horrible green & fuschia striped "Christmas" shirt he wore every year.

My last visit with him was two weeks before he died. I had been in Chicago at a training seminar and was meeting Bill in our hometown of Pekin. I stopped in Gridley for a bathroom break and to see if I could snag a snack off one of my two grandmother.

My first stop was my mother's parents. This was a slam dunk; Grandma ALWAYS had homemade cookies. No one was home. Forgot, it was Friday and 5:00 pm! Early bird special night. Of course they weren't there. No worries, just a few blocks over to the other grandparents; definitely would be able to get a Pepsi (in a glass bottle!) here. No hope of cookies, but maybe bean salad (sorry, family joke). Hoopty was the only one home (figures-4 grandparents, only one available). He let me have a Pepsi, reminding me to replace the one I took with a warm one or Grandma would let me have it.

We had a great visit. I don't really remember what we talked about. Bill & I had just bought a new house and were planning an open house for right after the Fourth. There was a bare spot in the yard from the previous owner's pool and we planned to put a garden in there. I don't remember any great words of advice or what to plant or not to plant, but I do remember him telling me that I would enjoy every minute of it, but it was also hard work. He was excited for me and had he lived, I know he would have pulled up to our new house, brought out a shovel and spade from the car and gotten right to work spading up our new garden space. That's the kind of guy he was.