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Upon Their Hands They Will Carry you
Page 40


“This is the place to settle,” Rod and I believed. Casual days filled with uneventful routine filled our world. I had to get the children to school, clean, be involved with small community projects and attend meetings.

My senses were alert to what was a different world to me. It was nothing to see Mrs. Donahoe flying over the dusty fields in her tractor. True the machine had an air-conditioned cab that protected her but when she was up on the tractor before entering it the wind was tugging and jerking her hair and dress in a wild way. Something about this scene magnified the woman’s spirit the most. I even did a painting of her tractor running determinedly before a storm. The dark clouds and ominous looking clouds told the story.


This is the type of Tractor Mrs. Danahoe was driving

Once in a while, weeds close to the road were missed by the tractor and Mrs. Donahoe could be seen at these edges with a hand held, hoe. I put this on canvas, too. The Dallas skyline in the distance with her in brown made the woman a part of the earth it seemed.

An early morning while breakfast was being readied for my kids I looked up to see Mr. and Mrs. Donahoe stringing a wire fence across the field for a bull pasture. Her clean house dress was always matched with a bonnet with staves in it like the pioneer women wore. The shade of that hat kept the hot sun off her skin, she said and I remembered my grandmother who often told me the same thing. Those were the days when the women worried about keeping their skin from aging. There was no worry about the sun that day because the two finished up the job in what to me was record time. Building fence back home was a big deal and here these two elderly persons were out there pulling up a sturdy looking stretch of barb wire.

On one occasion I had a small coffee party for just the few of us, mostly the Donahoe’s and one other lady. The eighty year old Mrs. Donahoe came in a soft, delicate pink dress. She had arranged her hair in a neat fashion and the beauty of her clear skin made me believe she must have once been a lovely, young woman, as well.

Not a day passed without me sharing time with the woman who was priceless as fine china. She was a wealth of wisdom, too, and had a way of sharing with a person so no offense could be taken nor did she have a preachy way about her. We picked food from the great acreage of her sprawling lands until all my cabinets and freezer was stocked full of wonderful, fresh vegetables.

“We will leave the frontage for the folks who come by on the road so they can pick there.” Mrs. Donahoe told me as we headed to the back of the field. In other ways her deep spiritual side could be seen, too.

“I must apologize for bringing this okra to you on the Sabbath but it was ready and I didn’t want to leave it another day.” She grinned in a secretive way and I knew why. There was no okra in fields that she owned.

The gentle, caring woman grieved over the fact that so much produce was not used because it was unacceptable to the big chain stores either it was too big, too small or not standard shapes. When the vegetables were dumped in the feed lots for the cattle she always called and told me where they were being unloaded. It was incredible to see. One year I went by a stash of cantaloupe, picked them up and brought a trunk load home to Oklahoma. Folks talked about those cantaloupes for years, how sweet and good they were.


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