Post by Bureaucratic Model 1-3 on Dec 13, 2004 19:02:03 GMT -5
Okay, I don't do this all the time, in fact this is probably the first and only time, since Halloween isn't the season for this kind of thing, and I'm not about to do it for Easter, but since it's Christmas (almost) and I have a lot of thoughts about this time of year I might as well share one. Now this is a story I was told about two years back, and while it had some religious leanings, it's really just a story about being Christian, or a good person, in general.
Now a many years ago, more than fifty, less than a hundred, there lived a farmer and his family, whom, during the holiday season, lost his wife and three children leaving him with his sole surviving sun. One cold January morning the Farmer and the boy climbed into their wagon and made for their beet farm. It was a long cold ride, and the work wasn't pleasant. Beets were about a foot and a half long, and six inches wide, most of them anyway. They grew in the earth, and were usually uprooted in the autumn, but we can only imagine what ills the family had to endure that delayed their work so that they had to dig them up through frozen soil. Additionally after they were up rooted and stalked by a long blade with a spike at the end, they were left on the earth until a wagon was brought round and the anything 'to be sold' was shoveled into the wagon. The two didn't have much to look forward too, but faced with losing the crops altogether, or starvation, their options were few.
So they made for the fields and as they passed the country roads some of their friends came by, in like-minded wagons filled with sugar beets, smiling and waiving as they made for the factory. "Hey, there! We got almost four hundred beets in this load brother," shouted one as he passed. It was like dropping a stone a lake, the words themselves hit the father in the stomach and started making waves. It wasn't pleasant thinking about digging in the frozen earth, stocking the frozen beets, and finally shoveling them into the wagon so they could lug them to the factory, and maybe stop home long enough to stoke the fire and get some blood flowing again.
Eventually a man passed they knew very well. "That's the last of them Brother!"
The father sighed as the man passed and muttered, "I wish that was the last of ours."
They could see the field a short way off before they arrived. When they first stepped off the wagon they couldn't swallow. The field was barren. Every last beet had been dug up, stocked, shoveled, and barreled off to the factory. They didn't see that the happy smiling faces of people that should have been stark miserable for working in such absolute cold were so happy because they had been helping a friend, when they needed it most. I cannot relate the final part of the story any better than the words I recall from the boy with him that cold day. 'My father, who might not have cried a day in his life, never to my sight to say the least, sat down on a pile of beet tops in that bitter cold and cried like I have rarely seen a man cry in all my years.' To see such love after such absolute loss… This is Christmas, this is Charity. We can only try harder to do better, when so much opportunity to do good is all around us, and yet so much of the year we're focused solely on ourselves, what hope comes from having ONE season to try and think of other people.
I related it as much as I could everybody, I always find this story inspiring.
Merry Christmas everybody!
Now a many years ago, more than fifty, less than a hundred, there lived a farmer and his family, whom, during the holiday season, lost his wife and three children leaving him with his sole surviving sun. One cold January morning the Farmer and the boy climbed into their wagon and made for their beet farm. It was a long cold ride, and the work wasn't pleasant. Beets were about a foot and a half long, and six inches wide, most of them anyway. They grew in the earth, and were usually uprooted in the autumn, but we can only imagine what ills the family had to endure that delayed their work so that they had to dig them up through frozen soil. Additionally after they were up rooted and stalked by a long blade with a spike at the end, they were left on the earth until a wagon was brought round and the anything 'to be sold' was shoveled into the wagon. The two didn't have much to look forward too, but faced with losing the crops altogether, or starvation, their options were few.
So they made for the fields and as they passed the country roads some of their friends came by, in like-minded wagons filled with sugar beets, smiling and waiving as they made for the factory. "Hey, there! We got almost four hundred beets in this load brother," shouted one as he passed. It was like dropping a stone a lake, the words themselves hit the father in the stomach and started making waves. It wasn't pleasant thinking about digging in the frozen earth, stocking the frozen beets, and finally shoveling them into the wagon so they could lug them to the factory, and maybe stop home long enough to stoke the fire and get some blood flowing again.
Eventually a man passed they knew very well. "That's the last of them Brother!"
The father sighed as the man passed and muttered, "I wish that was the last of ours."
They could see the field a short way off before they arrived. When they first stepped off the wagon they couldn't swallow. The field was barren. Every last beet had been dug up, stocked, shoveled, and barreled off to the factory. They didn't see that the happy smiling faces of people that should have been stark miserable for working in such absolute cold were so happy because they had been helping a friend, when they needed it most. I cannot relate the final part of the story any better than the words I recall from the boy with him that cold day. 'My father, who might not have cried a day in his life, never to my sight to say the least, sat down on a pile of beet tops in that bitter cold and cried like I have rarely seen a man cry in all my years.' To see such love after such absolute loss… This is Christmas, this is Charity. We can only try harder to do better, when so much opportunity to do good is all around us, and yet so much of the year we're focused solely on ourselves, what hope comes from having ONE season to try and think of other people.
I related it as much as I could everybody, I always find this story inspiring.
Merry Christmas everybody!
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