It has come to my attention that many a man returns fondly later in life to the things he hated in his youth. My grandfather was an avid gardener, and in his teen-aged years my father was forced to endure many a weeding expedition. He swore he would never be like his father, gardening, tending to roses. A lawn was quite enough to take care of. It was better with many shade trees so the lawn wouldn’t grow as fast. Of course, I heard all of this while I was weeding said lawn, but I was assured that my task was nowhere near as arduous as his had been. Late in my teens, Dad (supervised as I) planted some chrysanthemums beside the house. He still insisted that he would never plant roses. I grew up, got a college degree, got a job, and moved away. Dad retired down to rural Missouri, where he could experience the small-town atmosphere he had grown up in. Within a few years, we were talking on the phone when he told me what he had been doing that week. He had been planting roses, of course.

That job I had gotten was for a computer company, and for awhile my boss’ boss was a character originally from West by-God Virginia. He had grown up poor in a hard-scrabble existence. Back then, nobody would take charity if they could help it. They just grew their own food as best they could up in the thin and poor soil of the mountains. They grew and ate a lot of beans and corn. He hated that growing up. He swore he would get a job where he could afford to just buy food from a store, where he didn’t have to raise crops, and he would never do it again. Well he got a good job, became a manager with decent pay, and bought a house. Before long, he was looking out at his back yard thinking, “I could grow some corn in that corner yonder.” After a few more years, he was buying a new house with a bigger yard so he could have a larger garden.