Our President had acted forcefully and the results of his leadership were reflected in the tentative relaxation of the availability of funds to the creditworthy borrowers of the country’s banks. In a small way this rather casual assessment, consideration, decision, and conclusion of Papa’s loan request were a result of President Roosevelt’s efforts and direction. Of course Papa also had an ace.
Papa signed the new note, received the check, walked the short distance across the bank floor to the teller’s cage and deposited it into his account. He withheld fifty dollars in cash for immediate needs.
They departed the bank, but before they left, Papa inquired of Jordan, “First, what is this ‘Lanyap’ you spoke of?”
Jordan laughingly replied, “It means something extra.”
Satisfied, they went to the wagon and the waiting horses and headed home.
As they rode slowly along Papa said to Glen, “We now have the opportunity, and all that we need to do is to grasp and to take the prize. The only ones that can now mark our successes or our failures are ourselves.
We must remember that fact every night when we get home from work and when we have to get out of the bed in the morning. We have to move whether we want to get up or not so that we don’t let anything or anyone stand between us and its completion until all of it is finished.”
They looked at each other, nodded in accord, sealing an unspoken and unwritten contract between themselves that neither would break during the coming weeks and the months thereafter.
The following Tuesday Papa Hailes came back into town and got another lunch for their river picnic. At 12:30, Jordan Peltier arrived and sat down to the lunch that had been prepared. As the lunch proceeded Papa began to speak, “Jordan, we’ve been busy getting everything for planting the farm. I appreciate your contribution regarding the financing, but now we need more of your help. We can buy a few of the jugs and crocks in Meridian and Quitman, but if we get too much the local boys are going to wonder what we’re about. Do you have your contacts lined up to buy what we need and then deliver it to us without a police escort?”
Jordan answered, “Now that I know where the money is coming from and have the complete list of what is needed I’ll call them for delivery. The only remaining problem will be where and how we receive everything when it gets here. It will take a little time to work it all out.”
Papa declared, “We are going to be on a very tight schedule. How much time will you need?”
Jordan replied, “Give me two weeks.” They departed.
Papa bought his supplies in Quitman then rode home. They now were ready to begin the ordeal that they would endure to gain their freedom.
In the mornings they planted and tended to their usual growing routine on the farm. Every day about 2:00 they put their tools in the wagon, and then returned to the woods and to the vines.
The verdant hell of the forest was a hostile host with its protection from the intruders by thorn-laden bushes and irritant secreting leafy plants such as poison ivy and oak and the highly allergenic poison sumac. The simmering heat and moist saturated air in addition to the mosquitoes, flies, blood and seed ticks, and the gnats took their toll on both Uncle Glen and Papa Hailes as the interminable days of July eroded toward and finally passed into August. They both had lost between fifteen and twenty pounds in weight, but they were leaner, more muscular and at their peak in health and well-being.
The only interruption of the tedium of the day’s work would be an occasional thunderstorm that would drive them from their fields of cultivation or the woods into the comfort and security of their home. They would dry themselves and climb into their beds listening to the erratic rhythms of the rain falling upon the tin roof dispelling their weariness into the soporific, hypnotic arms of Morpheus, the god of sleep. The rain would end signifying that the storm had passed, and they would arise again to return to their endeavors.
They worked the farm as they always had, depositing the seeds and young plants into the soil, feeding them with the fertilizer products that they purchased and with the nourishing warm rains that came from the south. They labored and trained their produce into food, raw textile products, and the cattle feed that had supported their families from the time of their arrival in America.
In late August, about the time of my birthday, the cotton bolls erupted upon their stalks yielding their billowy fibers as white as new snow. When picked and deposited into a loading wagon the individual fluffy little dumplings were compacted into a damp, moist, sweet smelling cloud that one could lie upon while being pulled to the gin for weighing and removal for processing into bales. Concurrently the corn and sugar cane crops were brought in from the fields. They also required immediate attention in order to prevent their attrition and loss from decay. These were converted to cash.
The money accumulated, and according to plan was dutifully taken to the Commercial Bank of Quitman to repay the $350 owed plus interest to Jordan Peltier. It had been a good season and there was even a bit left over for consumption at their discretion. Papa used the money to buy a wine press from Jordan’s Louisiana friends.
Uncle Glen and Papa Hailes would frequently sample the largest, ripest grapes that they found upon the vines. They were bitter and sour at first then became tart. Toward the latter days of August their color became darker, richer and more mature yielding the sweetness and flavor for which they had worked so hard and anticipated for so long. Every day as the harvest neared they would take clusters of the ripened grapes, crush and extract the juice into a small cylindrical container, and float a mercury weighted hydrometer upon its surface to test its specific gravity. This measure of the density of the liquid was proportional to the amount of sugar that had accumulated within the grapes; the point at which the wine would taste its richest and most mellow when properly fermented and aged. They knew that veraison was imminent. This is a short duration of time, a period of rapid accumulation of the maximum sugars that the individual grapes can yield before beginning to spontaneously ferment, that is, to rot on the vine.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE HARVEST
After feverish preparations to bring in the grapes for their conversion all was prepared for the harvest. The hopper baskets had been cleaned and were ready to collect the yield from the trees along with the crocks and the rest of the equipment and necessary supplies to complete the first phase.
The second and remaining steps had been carefully planned until the last barrel was ready to deliver and the first siphon of the finished product rested in a dark green fully corked and sealed bottle waiting the day of its sale and the ultimate enjoyment of its purchaser. All was ready except the hydrometer which needed to rise up an additional two marks as it floated suspended in the juice.
Glen was a young man. The unexpected lull in their activities even for two to four days began to create boredom within him, a need for some diversion other than sleep and physical inactivity. Glen was becoming restless and lustful. He waited for the right moment and soon it came. After supper on the Friday before the expected harvest, Papa had gotten up from the table and strolled onto the porch to catch a little early evening breeze. He had brought a hand held fan along just in case the wind didn’t oblige and sat there in his pants and undershirt rocking back and forth working the fan.
Glen carefully observed all of these movements of his father then nonchalantly stood up and slowly followed Papa, but stopped a few minutes in the living room. He didn’t want to appear too anxious about his suggestion to his father so he sat down inside on the couch pretending to look at a book.
Papa knew that he was in there. He also knew that Glen hardly read books at all when they weren’t working and dead tired, and that his interest in such literary pursuits would normally be furthest from his son’s mind this soon after a very hard day’s work and upon finishing a large meal. Papa grinned to himself then began to plan how he would foil the presentation that he knew was to come.
He had been young himself a
nd he perceived the heat that was beginning to percolate within his son. He continued to sit and fan himself waiting for the pitch until Glen opened the door to the porch. Predictably the screen door creaked as it opened allowing the tentative young swain to emerge onto the porch. He took a chair across from Papa and sat down staring out into the yard blankly as though nothing was on his mind while trying to time this so that Papa would think that the coming idea had just occurred to him.
Papa yawned trying to speed up Glen’s making his move. He then leaned forward and placed his hands on the armrests of the chair as though standing up to go back into the house. Before he could get out of the rocker Glen spoke up quickly, “Papa, I want to go into town tomorrow evening. We can’t do anything else until the sugar’s ready in the grapes, and I want get away for a little fun.”
Papa sat back down and began to rock once more. He decided upon the most direct approach in his response and said, “Glen, I know you are very tired. You have done far more than any father can expect of a son. But if anything happens to you between now and the time that those grapes are in the crocks, and then into the bottles then everything we have worked for will be lost. We won’t be able to deliver the wine or sell it, and we’ll sink back into that same lack of everything which we are so determined to escape. There is no possible way that I would be able to climb up into the trees and bring out the clusters or to do any of the rest of all that is necessary without you. I simply cannot do it alone.”
Papa rested a moment took a few more rocks back and forth in the chair and continued, “When the wine is finished and sold I want you to take off and go to New Orleans, to Atlanta, Memphis or wherever you want to go until it’s time to get back to work next year. I can’t let you go now though my heart says ‘Yes.’”
Glen’s expression was obviously one of disappointment, but he could not be angry with his father. His logic could not be refuted. Glen stood and answered, “Alright Papa. I know you are right. Just don’t forget your promise when everything is finished and we have the money.”
As Glen turned to go back into the house, Papa stood up too and stepped across in front of his son. He opened his arms, and Glen took him and held him. Then they went back into the house through the front door together. They would never again know the privation that they shared at this time, but it had drawn them much closer together bonding and reinforcing their unity as a family with a common purpose.
The following weekend for Papa and Glen, like all the rest, was passed in the trees. Glen bent to the work extracting almost a pleasure in the expenditure of his pent up energy and drive into the end of the viticulture and the beginning of their fortune.
The harvest began. My uncle climbed into limbs of the nearest tree carrying the first two baskets to receive the precious clusters. He took one of them and pressed it into the angle of a limb as it emerged from the tree trunk securing it until the first basket was full and could be lowered on a rope to Papa. Glen filled the first quickly and found that the second could not hold all of the grapes remaining on that vine.
Papa sent up two more baskets then one more until all of the wild grapes had been picked and rested in their hoppers in the bed of the wagon to be taken back to the house and the crocks. They continued through the forest collecting all of their natural grapes throughout that day and putting them into washtubs for transport to the barn. They then crushed the grapes and transferred them to two crocks and covered them. It was a Friday when they completed filling the two crocks. Papa and Glen took the weekend off, but Glen didn’t leave the place.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE ELEVATED WINERY
The following Monday the barn had begun to reek from the fermenting grapes rendering a sweet, venous, heady odor that pervaded the stalls and the loft. After breakfast they went into the barn and Papa noted, “This smell is so strong that I’m getting a little high just standing here. We are going to have to relocate after this first batch or everyone in this part of the county will be over here with water dippers looking for a taste. Then it won’t be long before all of the law officers and the revenuers will be here with their dippers too but also with the cuffs.”
“Yes, Papa,” Glen rejoined, “But where on this place can we put it so that no one will be able to see it much less smell it?”
“We’ll come up with something,” Papa responded, “it’s got to be near, but it’s got to be remote, somewhere on the place.” They fell into silent consideration.
Suddenly after a lengthy period of time, Glen said, “High!” Papa, puzzled, looked at his son and asked, “What do you mean?”
Glen pointed up into the foliage of the trees in the distance and declared, “That’s where we’re going to build our winery, up with the grapes! We’ll build tree houses placed on platforms to support the weight then lift the crocks up there. When the grapes are ready for harvest, we’ll collect the clusters, bring them down to the ground and crush them, then lift them back up onto platforms and put them into the crocks in the trees and build little houses around them. Then we’ll cover them with the leaves and limbs until they’re completely hidden.
It can bubble and smell to high hell but the wind will blow it away and no one will know it’s even up there. No one but you and me! No one must know, not even Mama.”
Papa thought upon it a bit then looked at Glen and said, “We’ll try it.” If it worked, this new idea would greatly increase the efficiency of their production. It would take considerably more work in the preparation of the system, but once in place would save much movement of the grapes in the primary fermentation and shield them from the prying eyes of their neighbors, their potential prosecution witnesses.
They had no wood to build the platforms or the houses except for the planks in the barn. The following morning Papa got up and went to the barn and opened the small tool shed on the front of the aisle through to the back barn doors. He extracted a hammer and a crow bar with a cat’s claw on one end, walked slowly through the hallway looking at each two by four and one by six, eight, and ten piece of lumber that was not a structural support of the building. He avoided any piece that was painted that would distract from the general appearance of the woods and that might attract the attention of any observers. That was easy because the barn hadn’t been painted for several years. He began to remove the needed pieces and stack them in the corridor of the barn to be loaded on the wagon for transport to the forest.
Concurrently Glen had ridden to Tom Hailes’ store for nails. Tom greeted Glen from the back of the store and asked, “How many do you need?”
“Give me twenty pounds,” Glen answered.
Tom Junior had a bin of ten-penny nails behind the counter and reached into the bin with a rounded metal dipping shovel and scooped up the nails transferring them onto its scale until it registered five pounds. He noted its weight, and transferred the nails to an open paper sack. He continued to scoop additional nails, filling one sack, then another and another until he had measured out the full twenty pounds of nails.
Glen remembered the time when he had come into the store, had ordered his needs and had been given help and support when they had desperately needed it. Tom had embarrassed him by refusing him in front of people that were not members of their family in that first encounter, but Glen had understood why he had refused him. This time, however, Glen’s pockets were laden with plenty of money to pay for the items in cash, in front, in advance. Tom Junior had not forgotten either.
He said, “That will be seventy cents Glen, but I also have another cold drink in the box in the back that I’d like for you to have. I know it’s hot out there, and there won’t be any extra charge on this one either.”
Glen reached into his pocket and pulled out a ten dollar bill. He said, “Thanks for the drink Tom. I’m going to buy a drink for you, too.”
Glen took the sacks of nails and put them into his saddlebags.
He then said, “Keep the change.” Tom smiled broadly and a slight smile crept into Glen�
��s mouth as well.
Glen turned into the gate to home and brought the nails into the house. Papa had selected and removed the necessary lumber from the framing and the walls of the barn itself and placed it on the wagon for movement into the trees.
Papa said, “I think everything is ready. I took all the tools from the shed in the barn that we need, the hammers, saw, chalk line, saw horses, ladders, ropes and pulleys, and put them in the wagon last night.”
Uncle Glen said, “O.k.,” but did not sit again. He continued saying, “Papa, we know how to do it. All that is left now is just to get out there and get it done. I’m ready when you are.”
Papa took another pensive taste from his cup then stood up, looked at Glen and said, “Let’s go now and do just that.” They went out through the back kitchen door and walked briskly to the barn toward their future.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TREE HOUSES
They had carefully selected the sites for the fermentation crock houses. They had to make a decision whether to have six crocks with two per tree or only one crock in each of twelve trees. With one per tree the houses would be smaller but there would be more of them to be discovered. If there were two, there would be fewer houses to be found but the houses would be larger and more prominent in their positions in the foliage.
They had measured the diameter of the crocks, and then made a mock platform on the ground to see how they would fit. They found that they could place two of them very close, touching one another. When constructing the cover of each tree house they would make the rooftop detachable using half as the platform that they could stand upon while working the crushed fermenting grapes. This method would require only one third more floor space than a single unit per tree and would greatly reduce the work time required in processing the new wine.
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