Last week, my son texted a picture of asparagus he had picked on our meadow over by Swan Lake. “Just enough for supper,” he wrote. “Someone was here before me.” That’s not unusual. The patch is known to the neighbor whose land joins ours, and whose ancestors planted a garden there a century ago. In my ranching years, I was often late to the picking, what with busy routines of spring and family, and sometimes it had all gone to seed by the time I thought to check. It pays to take a youngster along who’s short enough to spot the stuff among tall grasses, but the youngsters are all grown now.
Lots of memories grow under the big trees that shade the asparagus. It’s where we met the neighbors to dig worms for fishing in the lake. The men usually caught a mess of bullheads for supper, and the moms laid out picnic fare, while us kids ran amuck or tried to hold a cane pole still enough so the bobber could let us know if we had a bite. In summer, I often rode horseback to the visit the Merz kids, and sometimes we drove their old jeep down there to dig worms and try our luck at the lake.
There was a family connection with Merzes; our parents were great friends and we spent a lot of time in one another’s homes. Lou Merz was a quiet, unassuming man, the kind you wouldn’t take for a storyteller. He liked to recall an old rooster who was kind of a pet. Back before any of us kids were born, a tornado ripped through the area and tore some things up. I knew it had taken our barn, because Dad said he was milking the cow when it happened, and the barn where I played growing up had been recently built. Lou claimed the storm did some damage at their place too. Afterward, Lou couldn’t find his rooster. After a while, he looked at the top of their barn and there sat a vinegar jug. The rooster was inside it, with just his head sticking out. As kids, we swallowed the tale whole. We were likely fully grown before realizing we had been had. Lou told the same story to my children, who also took it for gospel. It just never occurred to any of us to question something said by Lou.
After laughing about that old story with my son, I began to wonder about my dad. Was he really in that barn when it blew away, or was he more related to Lou than a brother-in-law by marriage?
A lot of tall tales went around in those days. There was the one about another neighbor who was a bachelor, and known to be tight fisted. One time Ned was dealing for a new car. “Would it be cheaper without a radio?” Yes, it would. “Leave it out then. I don’t need it. How about the back seat; cheaper without that?” The poor salesman probably had never had such a query, but agreed it would. “Take it out then. There’s just one of me.” We never questioned the veracity of that story; everyone knew Ned to be close with money. But you know, I wonder about that lately. Once you’ve been fooled, you start wondering just who you can trust. Politicians taught us that long ago.