Georgia farmer Bob Walker confirmed last Wednesday that his turnip crop is doing well this year. Walker, who owns a 300-acre plot ninety miles southeast of Atlanta, has experienced no significant disruptions or boons to his farm in the past few months. “Everything’s pretty much how it was same time last year, and the year before that,” he added. “Maybe a little less rain, but not so little that I’m beginnin’ to worry.
”
When asked, farmer Bob guessed that his neighbors, whom he mostly sees at church on Sundays and at the market on Fridays, were going about business more or less as usual. “Phillip—he has some cows over yonder,” he said, gesturing to the west, “and he had a calf born last week.
Was tough goin’ for the mama at first, but last I heard she pulled through.” But apart from events like these, Bob could not recall if anything out of the ordinary had happened recently.
“I mean, the missus died, what, eight years back?
If that’s the kinda thing you’re askin’ after. But ‘tweren’t nothing unusual ‘bout that, either, just a heart problem of some kind or another. We’re getting up in years, y’know, and her family had a history of it.
” He paused to chew on a stalk of wheat. “Might be something goin’ on with the kids? They’ll be telephoning in next Saturday, though, and I’ll find out then.
They’re up yonder in the big city.”
At press time, Bob was washing up the dinner plates, and planned on seeing what was on the old tube TV in his living room that hasn’t been working for the last few years. He fixed the antenna today, and hopes to see Johnny Carson deliver another zinger to his adoring audience.
