How I lost my fingertip

I came by my interest in gardening very naturally. Grandma’s flowers are in the foreground. I haven’t found any pictures of her vegetable garden, but she had a big one.

House, yard and garden were my grandmother’s world. Her world smelled of flowers, grass and food.

Grandpa’s world began beyond that fence. Shop, barn and cattle pens, corn, hay and alfalfa fields, were my grandfather’s world.

Shop smelled like dirt and grease and oil. It smelled like solder and acetylene and gasoline. When I go into someone else’s shop and inhale that fragrance, I am instantly transported into Grandpa’s shop.

I hate(d) shoes and insisted on going barefoot even in the shop. My feet were always covered with a tarry substance when I came out, but I didn’t care. I was fascinated by his tools, especially the drill press, the hoist and anything to do with welding. I loved to watch him work and I must have gotten underfoot.

One day when I was about 8, he was welding while I watched. He said, “Do you know how to cut wood?”

I lied and said that I did. I had never used a hatchet or ax in my life. But I was not going to tell Grandpa that I didn’t know how to do something.

Grandpa wasn’t fond of the word “can’t”. He would say, “‘Can’t’ never did anything but fail.”

He pointed out a pile of lath or something like that, gave me a hatchet and told me to chop away.

I did. All was well for a few minutes until I chopped off the tip of my left index finger. I left his shop and went to the house.

I showed my mother and grandmother what had happened. Instead of treating my finger, they scrubbed my tarry feet! Only when my feet were clean did they treat my throbbing, bleeding finger.

I was watching TV in the living room, holding up my injured digit, when Grandpa came in.

“Where did Roxie go?”

“She cut off her fingertip,”, Grandma said.

“Why, she didn’t even cry or say anything about it,” he said.

He never asked me to cut wood again.