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Can't appreciate home until you're away
Pritchard House Tales
By Ludford Creef
A big part of the military experience was meeting new people from homes very different from my own. It was an education to learn how people from Texas, Alabama or New York react to problems they have never encountered. It was often comical to listen to the city boys from New York whine about sleeping on the ground. The cowboy from Texas griped when he had to use blanks for portions of the simulated close combat course. The drill instructor asked him if he wanted the city boys to be behind him with live ammunition. The boy from Alabama had two serious problems as he had never seen a dentist and his feet were different sizes, so he had to be measured for new teeth and special boots.
As you progress through all the individual differences that comprise group dynamics, you start to believe you are the only normal one.
However, it is the duty of the drill instructor to find flaws in every trainee while hiding his own. Sooner or later everyone gets his chance to "shine" and display his flaw for the edification of all the other "Les Miserables" in green. Actually, until your flaw is revealed you feel like an outsider, a perfect among the misfits.
One big red-headed boy from Rhode Island was a college graduate with a degree in chemical engineering. The drill instructors hated him because he constantly corrected their broken English and he knew formulas for salt (NACL) and water (H2O). After 12 weeks of adjustments, you graduate to another place and group where the cycle starts again with new instructors and new faces and new idiosyncrasies to learn. After as many as perhaps four graduations, you are deployed to practice all your new skills with all the other guys in Army green.
During war time, the training never stops as the seasoned veterans eagerly pass along lessons learned the hard way. The primary goals of combat are to terminate and defeat all enemy efforts to kill you and your fellow soldiers, with maximum economy of resources. If anybody has to go to a funeral, let it be the bad guy and his mom.
Strong friendships are developed and after the war, reunions help the old teammates remember events and celebrate life. One such friendship was my father and a shipmate from Hertford, N.C. We exchanged visits a couple times each year and I loved to visit their beautiful farm located on the Perquimans River. Since I had revealed my possible career goals to be either a farmer or a state trooper, it was an honor to be invited to their farm for a few summer weeks in July.
I was not prepared for real farm work. I had no idea farmers walked so many miles in their relentless war on the weeds which chose to infiltrate the peanut and corn rows. We gathered at the breakfast table in the dark, then climbed into the pickup bed for a chilly ride to the fields, all before the big red eye ever peeked over the eastern horizon. We were handed garden hoes and assigned a row of peanuts to walk and purge of everything except peanuts. The rows were long and seemed to disappear over the horizon. As I surveyed my challenge, the family of five were moving rapidly down their rows leaving weeds in the isles to bake and die in the hot sun. I had to run to keep up with the "peanut infantry" and by dark I was more tired than I could ever remember during my previous 11 years.
It was July and the old house had one bathroom and no air conditioning, unless you count the huge oak tree that covered the house like an umbrella. Sleeping in sweltering heat is a good way to learn to appreciate the cool breezes of fall but still no relief. The occasional nightly rain storms were fierce, often with high winds, hail and lightning like a welder's rod. We were glad to trade the heat for a little more humidity and the cannon booms of thunder which accompanied the cool breeze.
Each day as we loaded onto the pickup for our ride to the fields I wondered why we were leaving the tractor in the barn. Finally I asked what they were saving the tractor for and they explained that the John Deere was for the heavy work. One of the kids said, "If we could pull the plow and disk the John Deere would already be gone." I had no idea farmers walked so much!
On Friday evening after supper, I was surprised to see my family drive up in our familiar yellow and white 1957 Ford station wagon. Everybody yelled happy birthday. I had forgotten. Funny what farm fatigue will do to your mind. It was my first time away from home and some really hard work but a great wake up call about how other people live. I was so anxious to be a teenager that I always referred to this summer as my twelve-teenth birthday.
Appreciation for home sometimes requires a stay away from home. My lumpy mattress in the attic never felt so good. Honest to goodness, I never knew farmers walked so much.
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