Harvest Moon

Once the farmers would gather to help one another harvest their corn, wheat or cotton, and once a year the moon provided enough light for the workers to continue through the night--hence the name, "harvest moon."

The women would gather to help one farm family, carrying their special covered dishes, working all morning in the kitchen, slicing cakes and pies, making last-minute gravy to feed one-hundred or more. Somebody brought the ice in big blocks from town in a wagon, keeping it covered with straw and blankets, 'til it finally melted in a strong glass of iced tea in the workers' freshly-scrubbed hands. The harvest meant plenty--enough to live on for the winter and spring, until planting time came and the life process began again.

Harvest moon. I remember the song of that name, sung a capela on long warm nights when the grown ups would croon together after picnics in summer or early fall. They would sit for hours, crowded atop wooden picnic tables under pine trees in little parks scattered throughout East Texas, laughing and singing old love songs. . . "For Me and My Gal," " September Song," or "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me." The singers lingered late, until we babes finally stopped ripping through the sandy playground to droop onto Mother's lap and Daddy would finally carry us to the large back seat of the Pontiac.

The park was not far from our house, but nothing was too far from anything in the small town. Little square homes glowed with lamplight in the windows framed with diaphanous Priscilla curtains. Golden spots issued forth from night-tinted violet clapboard--I would wonder who was inside, what they were doing. Always at night the homes seemed peaceful, calm, nurturing, the neighborhoods so quiet that one dog's barking would lead to another's uproar, down the block.

To be able to run free as a child at night, hiding among the trees and calling out to one another through the darkened lawns: what a delightful state of being. Now I look at the sky, the harvest moon stunning, its copper toned face astonishingly grand, and I remember how it once shone onto a different world, in which we exhausted ourselves with few worries or cares.

It is the same moon, bathing us in the same light through the same navy blue skies. Only we have changed during all this time.