Keep Looking

My grandfather had a small farm where he raised beef and some grain for
feed. He also worked diligently as a factory laborer and country
pastor. He was a good neighbor and well respected for honoring his word.

When harvest-time came, he'd piece together his old one-row corn picker
and oil it up for the season. He pulled it behind a little Ford 9-N
tractor with a wagon hooked on the back. It was a noisy contraption
unlike the modern machines you see these days devouring the golden
armies of grain in wide gulps.

His whole operation was like that. Basic. In fact, his life was like
that, too. He worked hard, helped others and you could count on him to
keep his promises. That's what made it so hard one autumn when
difficult circumstances closed in on him.

He had promised to harvest a few ribbons of corn that wound around the
hills on a friend's farm, but after harvesting his own corn, Grandpa's
little corn picker coughed, sputtered and quit. It would be out of
commission until a particular part could be ordered, but that would take
far too long to help this year. Then the odds of being able to help out
his neighbor got even worse; the factory where grandpa worked began to
require overtime. In order to keep his job there he had to leave the
farm before dawn and didn't get home until well after sunset.

One autumn night, while harvest time was running out, he and his wife
sat at the kitchen table sipping bitter black coffee trying to figure a
way out of their dilemma.

"There's nothing you can do," said my grandma. "You'll just have to
tell him that you can't help with the corn this year."

"Well that just doesn't sit well with me," said my grandpa. "My friend
is depending on me. I can't exactly let my neighbor's harvest rot in
the field, can I?"

"If you don't have the equipment, you just can't do it," she said.

"Well, I could do it the way we used to do it. I could harvest it by
hand," he said.

"When do you think you'd have time to do it?" she asked. "With the
overtime you've been working you'd be up all night...besides it'd be too
dark."

"I know one night that I could do it!" he said running to the
bookshelf. He grabbed the Farmer's Almanac and started flipping through
the pages until he found what he was looking for. "Aha! There's still
one more full moon in October." As it happened, the harvest moon had
yet to pass. They say it's called the harvest moon because it gives
farmers more light and more time to collect their crops. "If the Lord
gives us clear weather, I think I can do it," he said.

And so a few days later, after a long shift at the factory, my grandpa
made his way to the field where my grandma met him in the truck with
dinner and a steaming thermos of strong, black coffee. The weather was
cold but clear, and the moon was brilliant. He worked through the night
to keep his word.

I know this story well, because I've spent hours on that old tractor's
fender talking with my grandpa. We've even suffered through some of that
same bitter coffee together. I'm proud to say that my parents named me
after him.

Sometimes, when I'm tempted to cut corners or to put off
responsibilities, I think of my grandfather with his scythe cutting wide
arcs of corn in the light of the harvest moon. I hear the ears of corn
hit the floor of the wagon and the music of geese crossing the cold
October sky. The chill autumn morning darkness envelopes my mind and I
see my grandpa, his work finally done, crawling into the seat of the old
tractor and making his way home. Behind him in the pale moonlight, row
after row of corn shocks stand at attention in respect for a man who
keeps his word.

From: Chicken Soup for the Grandparent's Soul: 101 Stories to Open the
Hearts and Rekindle the Spirits of Grandparents, By Canfield, Jack
(editor); Canfield, Jack; Hansen, Mark Victor; McCarty, Henoch; McCarty,
Meladee, Published by Health Communications (Mar 1, 2002), ISBN:
1558749748, http://isbn.nu/1558749748

Source: Christian Voices, http://www.christianvoices.org