Cabbage Thieves

this is what some old men do when no one is looking- they steal our cabbages...and fly away with them...

This is a portrait of one of my good friends Bill. He was a neighbor of ours for about 13 years and for as long as I've known him he would walk around his yard in the middle of the night (and day), shirtless, and with a gun in his hands shooting pests-this is my most early memory of him. he would crouch around the yard, as though he were hunting in the forest, and give justice to the bats and birds that were apparently trespassing. OK really, for those who care what the artist has to say about this piece- read on...

(Note: "Cabbage Thieves" is a mask-title to preserve the telling of this story only to those who really want to know. His story deserves such an audience) ...I would recognize over time his untiring work ethic and sense of responsibility to take command of his own post and be the man who fixed up the place-the trees, the bushes, the lawn and home repairs. even into his eighties he'd just be mowing, clipping, fixing and, yes hunting away through their spacious acre farm lot until the task was complete. eventually he developed prostate cancer which didn't stop him from finishing his daily chores. in the midst of such a debilitating sickness, he fell, probably doing work around the yard, and the poor guy broke his hip.

His manliness and strength of character especially showed through to me when one day, as i drove by his house i noticed that he, with his old age, prostate cancer and broken hip was wheeling his way around a tree holding to a walker with one hand and trimming away (with a saw on a stick) the uneven dangling branches of a tree with the other hand. "Wow! this man is CRAZY!" i thought. "with such old-man-pride he is gonna work himself to death, digging his own grave on his way down perhaps." I just had to pull over and talk some sense in him. sensitive to his assumed pride i began lightly with flattering tones, "Hey Bill, man you LOVE to work..." to that, and whatever else i said after, he responded something like this, I'm sure while scratching his bare belly, "Yep I do that's what life's all about. Some people just pay for other people to do it for them but i never saw much sense in that..." Then through these next words of wisdom i learned a great life lesson which i shall never forget, he continued, "And if there's no work in heaven-I'M NOT INTERESTED!" in an instant my voice against such hard and resolute work lost all posture and i remained speechless, well, "I like that," escaped my lips a few times, but other than that I had nothing to fight with. And that was it, i would forever be a fan of my friend and neighbor Bill. He has since passed on as the cancer took over, but that man lived and died with at least one great virtue-one he appeared to master, and that is the virtue of work ethic and industry. I am sure that he is flying somewhere up in the farmlands of heaven working, tending to the crops in her fields alongside all the other old men who felt as he did about work and it's important role in life, and the life after.