Story Hour
Tater
| Written by Gene B. Williams |
Art by Marci Carrara |
Read by Kathleen McCarthy |
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Click here for the archive page with a list of previous stories. Please remember that all materials on this website are copyrighted. No reproduction without express permission. |
Grandpa loved his garden. All of us did. Peas fresh from the vine are better candy than anything you can get in a store. If the only corn you’ve had is from a can, not plucked from the stalk, you’ve been cheated.
Mom always called him Papa. It stuck. Even the kids thought of him as Papa. Grandma was Grandma, Mom was Mom, Dad was Dad – but grandpa was Papa. Yes, always with a capital letter, even though some will argue the point. Look it up. At least in English, a proper name needs a capital. If you don’t recognize that those names are proper, you’ve missed more than corn from a stalk.
Papa was a farmer. More, he was a gardener. There is a subtle difference. Maybe you’ve experienced it. You and the gardener use the same ground, the same shovel to prepare it, the same fertilizer, the same seeds from the same packet, the same water from the same hose. It’s all the same, but you know what it’s like. My plants grew, sure. Papa’s plants GREW!
I was with him many times when he went for supplies, including those packets of seed, sometimes full bags of seed, or sproutings in flats. It was well known that Papa would also get seeds in the mail from faraway places.
“You’ll never get that to even sprout here,” he was told by other farmers and gardeners. “It won’t sprout, and certainly won’t grow.”
Papa would say, “You’ll see.” His bright blue eyes would sparkle and he would take his new mail order treasure out to the garden, or sometimes to a pot. Whatever it was, he could get it to grow, even if it wasn’t always a huge success.
Grandma had her own expression for it. She would proudly say, “That man could probably grow a rose bush in a snow bank in January.”
As children, my sister and I sometimes wondered if he could. We never actually saw any roses bushes in snow banks. Still, we sometimes wondered.
Another fascination where Papa lived was his cats. They roamed everywhere, free as a cat can be. They loved Papa and would come running at the sound of his voice. Other than Papa, they pretty much ignored people.
My sister, Vicki, loved to watch them play. (So did I.) Again and again, she asked to have a kitty all her own. Again and again she was given the typical answers of “Not now,” and “Maybe some day.”
She had to be content watching the kittens that played around the house, and face the frustration that the cats would run away whenever anyone other than Papa came near. Then one day that changed.
Vicki went by the edge of a garden that Papa had let get weedy. A young kitten poked its nose out from the mixed plants. It was filthy from the play. Dirt and mud were caked all over. It had burrs in the furrs (an old farm expression?). Overall it was a total mess – and looked very pleased with itself.
Of course, Vicki couldn’t resist. She ran for that kitten, no longer even thinking about the weeds and dirt. Her feet slipped in the mud and she nearly fell. Vicki did her best to act prim and proper, but somehow always found some mud to fall into. This time she didn’t fall. Even more amazing, this time the kitten didn’t run. It sat right there and watched her. It watched right up to the moment she picked it up. It didn’t even object when she ran for the house, dangling that dirty kitten from her arms and squealing.
“Look what I got! Look what I got!”
Grandma look at her with a smile and said, “What you got, Vicki, is one of Papa’s tomatoes all trompled on your shoe, and a piece of old green bean vine caught between your nice overalls and about the scroungiest cat I’ve ever seen in all my born days.”
Vicki looked down at herself. Even I would admit, she was a mess. For once, she didn’t seem to mind at all. She held up the kitten and said with a big smile, “It was in the garden. Papa can grow anything!”
Mom, Dad and Grandma all looked at each other. They did their best to keep from laughing. Just then Papa came from around the corner of the house with the pitchfork he used to dig up potatoes. “Looks like our little Vicki has already been doin’ some tater harvestin’ on her own.” Then he said, “Well, c’mon you people. She harvested it, you clean it!”
Mom got the hose, Dad got a big galvanized tub, Grandma pulled a towel off the clothesline. As that little cat got dunked into the water and sprayed and scrubbed, Papa disappeared into the house. Cats don’t care much for water, and this kitten was no exception. Soon they were all soaked – except Vicki. She was busy trying to clean the tomato off her shoe. The kitten looked ridiculous enough coming from the muddy garden. Soaked down, it looked even more silly. It didn’t even look much like a cat. All that fluff around the neck just about disappeared. The cat looked more like a wet weasel than a kitten.
They began to dry it as best they could as it squirmed. Papa came out of the house with a box and an old blanket. The words, “My Kitty” were written on the side of the box. He set it down by Vicki, took the still wet cat from Mom, handed it to Vicki and told the others, “You keep telling her ‘One Day.’ This is the day.”
Papa never named his cats, but Vicki named hers. She called it Tater, and for years told everyone, “My Papa grew her in his garden, right next to a tomato plant.”
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