Christian Civility

Maybe I shouldn’t be telling this story about old Deacon Rupert Sawyer. You know the one I’m talking about, old Rupert Sawyer who lived over in Crisp County? But old Deacon Sawyer’s been dead now these fifteen years or more, so I don’t suppose there’s any harm now. Both the Deacon and his wife have now gone to their heavenly rewards and left little in the way of family behind that I know of. I wished to share this story with others before it’s my own time to make my final journey wherever that may lead, if anywhere. You see, I am not known as a Christian man myself.

But, old Deacon Rupert Sawyer was a strict Christian Man, Southern Baptist of course, as he wanted everyone to know. Rupert Sawyer had worked his way up from Sunday School teacher to senior deacon at his church in town over the years. He wanted everyone to know that too. Sawyer styled himself as a benevolent, God-fearing and Jesus-loving Christian man, which was a bit of a hoax if you knew anything about how he treated his farm hands. I’ve known quite a few like him round here in these parts over the years.

I have it from reliable sources that sometimes when the good deacon got off away from home for a day or three without his wife, and beyond the ken of his church family, to Atlanta say, he wasn’t above having himself a drink or two and more. Rumor also was that he kept several bottles tucked away around his house for ‘medicinal purposes’, but I can’t attest to that from personal knowledge. His wife supposedly didn’t know about those bottles either, but some of Sawyer’s close friends who were the source of those rumors, did.

Seems old man Sawyer enjoyed playing a bit of poker now and again too, regularly, like once a week in a special room fixed up in his barn, with some of his very closest friends. Gambling for Baptists is sinful, so the playing was always for ‘chips only,' although I suppose chips can always represent something else too, can’t they? I can’t personally say as they did in Deacon Sawyer’s case, and am just throwing that out there as a matter of interest. Common rumor was though that old Deacon Sawyer was a hard-drinking, cigar-chomping hard-nosed gambler on Saturday nights. But on Sunday mornings without fail, there he would be singing in the church choir, a little bleary-eyed maybe, but he was there, and beaming out at the congregation and grinning like a possum. I suppose his wife after many years had a pretty good notion about his goings on and Christian failures, but simply chose to remain silent to protect her own reputation, wouldn’t you think? And who really knows what went on in the privacy of their marital home after all?

Anyway, old Deacon Sawyer farmed some tobacco acreage on his place out in the county, a farm of some 500 plus acres I believe, and about thirty acres of that commonly planted in tobacco. That was a lot of tobacco back in the day, although you don’t see much of it grown around here this day and time. Sawyer was my good customer in my job as sales manager for a seed and fertilizer co-op working out of Albany. I used to make ‘field calls’ on my bigger customers from time to time, to maintain personal contacts you might say, and I’d just drop in unannounced, especially during the planting seasons. 

One drippy, moist and misty early spring day I dropped by Deacon Sawyer’s place. Long before I got there I could see a gang of folks way across the field around some farm machinery. It looked like ten or fifteen people all just wandering around. It was ‘backker’ planting time as they called tobacco in the South. Farm hands rode on an apparatus called a ‘tobacco planter’ pulled behind a tractor and the seedlings were inserted one-by-one by hand. The planter then applied a squirt of water from an onboard tank, and small metal vanes gently closed the soil ‘hill’ around the plant as the planter moved along. The process took a whole gang of people to work.

I parked my truck and walked across the muddy field to find Sawyer in a pickle and nearly wild with anger. After several days of rain, the fields were very wet and the huge tractor pulling the tobacco planter was hopelessly mired to the axles, and really, really stuck. Several workers covered in mud were working to free it and Sawyer was apoplectic with rage. But to his credit, he was not actually swearing yet but seemed to be coming awful damned close.

‘Golrammit and be damned!’ he hollered at one of his people, ‘Why’n hellfire’s tarnation did you let that mule-headed fool drive that tractor in that gol-blessed mud hole? Ain’t neither one of you got a damned lick of sense!’

Everyone else was standing back apprehensively while Sawyer dressed down his hapless foreman, who simply hung his head. A couple of people had been sent for shovels and came running across the field with shovels in their hands. These were passed out and the workers began digging around the wheels.

I was hesitant to speak but seeing where the situation lay. I asked, ‘What's the problem, Rupert?’

‘Golramit, cain’t you see? My gol-blessed tractor’s about to sink out o’sight! Hell-damned-fire boy! Cain’t you see that?’

‘Yessir, I can sure see that. Maybe I can help?’ I said.

‘What’n hell can you do?’ Rupert said. ‘Hell, I done done every damned thing I can think of! We been stuck over two hours now and it’s just getting worse ever minute. Hell, for Christ’s sakes, look at all the money I’m a-losing paying these people to just stand around like jackasses, and my tractor’s just getting in deeper.’

‘Well sir, if you’ll let me, I believe I can help get that tractor out for you.’ I said peaceably. I didn’t want to rile him anymore than he already was.

That seems to set him off. 

’Well by God, iffen you ain’t just something! Here you are a fancy-pants fertilizer salesman a-trying to tell a farmer how to get his gol-damned tractor unstuck! What’n hell you know about any by-God tractors anyhow, boy?’ Sawyer sneered.

‘Well, for one thing, I think I know how to get that tractor of yours unstuck if you’ll just let me try. Won’t cost you a dime!’ says I.

That really set him off. ’You gol-damned right it ain’t gonna cost me a damned dime, cause I ain’t by God about to let you mess around with my $200,000 tractor! Now, why’n hell don’t you by God just go on and leave me alone while I get my tractor out?’ he said.

‘Yessir.’ I said quietly. I do know when to shut up.

But I admit his last comment got under my skin a little bit, still, Rupert Sawyer had always been a good and loyal customer and I certainly wasn’t going to show him any disrespect. I quietly moved away and stood by and watched. In a way it was fun, but it also made me agitated to watch all Sawyer’s doomed efforts to get his tractor and planter unstuck. It’s like you’re watching a slow-motion accident and you can’t do a damned thing about it.

Sawyer finally gave up on the day and ordered all his hands home except for three to stay to work on freeing his tractor. 

‘Oh, what the goddamned hell!’ he finally swore outright. ‘I’m going to the frigging house and call me in a wrecker for tomorrow. Hellfire, I’ll lose two whole days of planting just at the wrong time!’

After watching all this, by now I just couldn’t stand it anymore, so I spoke up again,

‘Well sir, if you call in a wrecker, you better call one with about 1000 feet of cable ‘cause ain’t no damned wrecker gonna be able to get close to this tractor without getting stuck itself. Rupert, why don’t you just let me try? Ain’t nothing you’re doing working at all. You’re just getting in deeper all the time. You ain’t got nothing to lose by now anyway.’ I said reasonably.

He looked at me quickly then, his eyes rolling sidewise in his head kind of like a panicky cow.

‘Well, OK then you smart ass! Since you damned well insist, have it your own goddamned way! Let’s just see what you can do then! I’ve tried every other damned thing else.’ Sawyer said. He then climbed in the tractor cab and sat down to light a cigar. He stared off across the field as he seemed to try to cool down. His jaw was clenching and I could see he’d gotten himself dangerously perturbed.

I asked the farm hands standing there to go fetch a couple stout wooden fence posts and two short logging chains. Sawyer just stared at me off and on while he puffed on his cigar while I waited tensely. When the workers returned in a few minutes with the items, I had the men chain one to each of the tractor’s big drive wheels. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sawyer begin to perk up and show some real interest. 

When all was ready I instructed Deacon Sawyer to start the tractor and put it into its lowest forward drive gear range. As the drive wheels slowly began turning, the fence posts chained to the wheels came in contact with the mud surrounding the tractor and acted like paddle wheels, slowly lifting the tractor and moving it a few feet forward each time as they turned over. In less than two minutes the tractor and its planter were back on solid ground again.

‘By God, I ain’t never seen nothing like that in this world in my whole goddamned life!’ Sawyer exulted. ‘Where’n hell you learn how to do that boy?’

I couldn’t resist turning the knife a little then. I said, ‘Well, you might be surprised at what I know Rupert. I grew up on a one-mule farm sir. We always had to manage on our own, and when we finally got us a tractor and got rid of that mule, we still had to manage on our own. We lived so far out in the country my daddy always said we had to pipe in sunshine and used ‘coons for bird dogs. We couldn’t call for help because we didn’t have a telephone. My daddy taught me that fence post trick when I was around ten, and I used it several times as a young lad on the farm I grew up on. I learned all kinds of things by just having to do them, sir.’

‘Well, by God, that’s just about the God-damnedest thing I ever did see!’ Sawyer crowed. ‘I damned sure shoulda listened to you to start with son. How much they paying you over at that seed co-op boy? Hell, I’ll double it if you’ll come be my farm manager!’

There was no way I would ever work for that bible-thumping skinflint sonofabitch for any amount of money, no way, no how, so I politely declined as graciously as I knew how.

‘No sir,’ I said, ‘thank you. I love my job at the co-op and have a good future there. The only thing I’d like from you sir, is your business and your continued fine Christian civility.’

The Deacon's eyes popped a little at that. 

And, Deacon Rupert Sawyer was my very best customer until he died.

(This is a little tale which is largely made up from whole cloth, but with elements of fact in it. My grandfather really did teach me how to extricate a tractor from a hopeless mudhole as in this story, and the 'Deacon Sawyer' character is very strongly based on a deacon in the Southern Baptist church I was forced to attend as a boy. However, I have never (yet) been a seed and fertilizer salesman!)