As I prepared for my teaching from Joshua 2 &3 I spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I got to this place in my life. The teaching was "How did I get here and where am I going?" I know that I didn't attain anything in my life from my own wisdom, courage, knowledge, power or strength. In fact, most of my own attributes got in the way of God growing me. As I learn to get out of the way, I see God step in and teach me, guide me and grow me. Not for me, but for Him.
I look back and see that God was teaching me things through other people. He broke my heart and pride through the things of life. I thought of this one incident for some reason.
It was sometime in July and somewhere in
During the growing season this was a hectic job with lots of hours. I was outside every day, which was fine with me. This is proof that there was some farm boy in me. As the seed corn grows and begins to tassel that is when the important part of growing seed corn happens. You have to pull the tassels off the female corn so that it is pollinated by the male corn. (If you've never heard this before, it's okay to pause while you ponder that.) Now, you ask yourself, how do you know the male corn from female? Easy, you lift up their leaves and look - No, I threw that in for you city slickers. You leave the tassel on the male corn to provide pollen for the female corn. The female corn is then harvested for seed now that you bred it as the desired hybrid.
The tassels are removed from the female corn through several steps. The first machine comes through the field and cuts the top of the tassel, the second machine plucks the tassel out and then the 3rd pass is a crew of people who walk the field, row by row, and hand pull the tassels. Back in the day, that was one of the jobs fourteen year old kids did during the summer.
As an assistant area foreman, my job was to assist in getting these fields detasseled. I watched the quality and productivity of these crews. A crew was sometimes a group of five or six 14 year olds piled into the foremans truck or car. The foreman was usually sixteen to eighteen years old. Other times these crews were bus loads of fourteen to sixteen year old boys or girls.
One particular day, I had a busload of boys. You can imagine all that goes on when you get a busload of these kids together with another kid just a little older as a foreman. Keeping kids focused on work was no easier then than it is now.
I was visiting the field. Most times I would park in out of the way places so no one knew I was there. It kept them on their toes and helped me know what was really going on. I was inspecting their work and as I came out of the field they were on break.
Breaks were usually an opportunity to rest. Most sat down, found shade under a tree, in the bus or under the bus. Kids cussed, smoked, told foul jokes, played mumbly peg and did a variety of other things. As I walked out of the field this day I saw a mob had formed. One boy was taking a pounding from the dirt clods thrown by at least six to ten others. The victim was a quiet boy that never missed work, was always respectful and didn't take part in all the crude activity that many times was normal. Obviously he was viewed as an outcast and made fun of. It was clear from his clothes and the food he brought that his family was poor. By the time I got close, the foreman arrived. He yelled and the stoning was stopped. By this time the boy was curled up against the front tire of the bus crying. My heart went out to him. I knelt down and lifted his head. He was a mess. He had cuts on his head near his eye. A trickle of blood mixed with the tears and dirt as it ran down his face.
The foreman was mad. Any dirt clod fights were automatic dismissal. He yelled that all involved were fired. The boys that threw the dirtclods said that was fine. The ringleader said he had made enough to buy his bicycle and had planned on quitting anyway. The other agreed they had made enough money and didn't want to work anymore. The boys threw accusations at the other boy and witnesses said the one boy did return fire once the others threw dirt clods at him. He was fired also.
People had lost teeth and eyes from these dirt clod fights. In a dry season with the right mixture of soil, a dirt clod was as hard as any rock. Rules were rules. I hated that this boy was going to get fired when he was the one bleeding.
He was still leaning against the bus tire. He put his face in his hands and began to cry harder even though he was embarrassed crying in front of the other boys. I stood him up, got him some water and tried to settle him down. I pulled him aside, out of earshot from the other boys, and asked him what was wrong.
"I got fired!!" he said and began to cry harder.
"Settle down, it's okay." I said.
"No, it's not. I need it to help my mom buy food."
I was stunned.
I was completely dumbfounded and didn't know what to say. This fourteen year old wasn't out there working to buy himself a shiny bike, motorcycle or minibike. He was working to put food on the table and pay bills. He went on to tell me that his mother was too sick to work. She was home in bed. It was just him and his mom. His dad was gone - he didn't tell me where and I didn't ask. I was already about in tears.
I finally got him to settle down. I told him I'd see what I could do. But he had to go sit on the bus. The bus driver would protect him from the bullies.
I left to go find the area manager. I remember my brain going a hundred miles an hour. I had never missed a meal in my life unless it was one I refused to eat. I had heard of people who didn't have food to eat but I thought that was a long way away. This boy had made hard times very real to me. I had seen him before this incident and knew he was from a poorer family. Most kids brought snack cakes, candy or bags of chips. This boy had none of that. He drank water instead of soda or Gatorade. He ate a simple sandwich from a simple cooler. I felt pretty blessed about now.
I went and found the area manager who referred me to the personnel manager, the guy who did all the hiring and firing. You can imagine what kind of job that was. Entire bus loads of kids were fired every day. A new busload would be hired the next. It took hundreds of kids to get the job done. It's amazing that hybrid seed corn was only made possible by the labor of hundreds of fourteen year old kids.
The personnel manager was an okay guy. I had known him for a while. He was only a few years older than me. I asked him what we could do. We talked for a while and I returned to the bus.
The boy had finally stopped crying. He was clearly sad but had accepted his fate. I called him off the bus and took him around to the front where no one could hear us talking. I explained to him that he was in fact fired, that was the rules. He took a deep breath. Then I told him where to show up the next day, he would be rehired onto another bus crew.
I'm telling you. What a sight it was to see that boy smile through that blood and dirt. He thanked me and thanked me again. I remember thinking to myself that I would never forget him. I think he said he would never forget me.
He got back on that bus. He was smiling. It drove the other boys nuts because they didn't know why. I never saw him again. He was rehired the next day onto another bus working for another area foreman.
That boy found a soft spot in my heart I didn't know I had. I was a farm boy, I'd played football. I took pride in being able to be mean. No one messed with me. I was ashamed at the thought of how many times I was the one throwing the dirt clods. I hoped I had never hurt anyone as bad and deep as that boy had been hurt. I was so thankful that I could help him. Maybe it was an act of penance on my part, I'm not sure.
This boy changed me. I wish I knew his name. I wonder where he is today. He had more maturity and responsibility than a fourteen year old should have to have. But his situation forced him to grow up and he rose to the occasion.
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