CHAPTER 6
PEACH SEEDS
One time when I was a youngster my dad came home from work one evening. He had picked up a peck-sized basket of peaches from some roadside vendor on his way home. They were delicious! The whole family (ten kids: 6 boys and 4 girls) "dug in" and immediately started enjoying the heck out of those peaches.
For no good reason at all as the first peach got eaten and I saw my older brother about to throw away his peach seed, I said, "Wait a minute, Mike*, let me have that!" and I started collecting everyone's peach seeds in a bowl. Those peaches were so good, we all ate a couple each, and then did the same thing the next morning at breakfast. Well, by then, I had collected "a-whole-mess-a-peach-seeds."
*My family siblings, by age: Beau, MIKE, Kay, Sibyl, Bobby, Tim, Emily, John, Andy, Monica
Picture of my younger brother, and best friend as youngsters, Timmy (L), Tommy Olivier (Middle), and me (R). Tommy was our childhood friend and next door neighbor when we lived on Claireborne Ave, near where it intersects with Esplanade Ave in New Orleans, LA.
On Saturday morning I was "foolin' around" in the back yard and I got the idea to plant my collection of peach seeds I had gathered and saved. I found a sturdy stick about an inch thick in diameter and 18 inches long. I held it in my hands and stood above it with my body weight leaning on it as I started poking a whole bunch of holes in a straight downward direction about two inches deep into the soft ground all around the back yard. When I had enough holes to satisfy me, I ran inside to get my bowl of peach seeds out of the kitchen where I had left them.
I explained to mama that I was going to go plant 'em and grow me a whole bunch of peach trees in the back yard and make plenty more of those delicious peaches we all liked so much that daddy had brought home the other day.
When she realized that I was not up to anything harmful, dangerous or sneaky, Mama backed off on her threatening tone and in a more gentle voice said, "Son, you can't just throw those peach seeds in a hole like that and think they are going to grow. That's not how it works!" She tried to explain why. She went into a lengthy explanation of how those hard, thick peach seeds were really not the part of the seed that takes root and grows. The growing-part of the peach seed is really inside that hard covering.
The hard-covering part is just a shell-like covering, sorta like that of an oyster shell that protects the growing part of the seed. "Peaches fall out of a tree," she explained. "The peach itself lays on the ground and over time rots or gets eaten by bugs and animals. The hard shell of the seed in some cases protects the growing-part of the seed, until a long period of time passes and then the hard shell eventually cracks and breaks open from weather, shrinkage, deterioration, dehydration and stuff like that. Birds and animals and bugs eat a lot of the growing parts of the seed after the shell cracks open. Most of the growing parts of the peach seeds never get to grow. Shucks, a lot of 'em don't get to grow just because they lay there and don't do anything but rot or just dry up and shrivel away to become nothing but food from which something else, like another bush or tree or insects can nourish themselves and grow. Some of those seeds never get buried under the dirt so they can't grow. Some get buried too deep. Only a very small number of seeds, after the shell breaks apart and frees them to get buried, get buried at just the right time and just the right depth in the dirt and get enough food and water to finally start growing. You can't just throw 'em down a hole like that and bury 'em.
"THERE'S A CYCLE THAT THEY HAVE TO GO THROUGH, SEE?...,
… A CYCLE, SON.
A CYCLE!"
I listened and said, "Well, they're jus' gonna go to waste. I bet I can get some of 'em to grow!" Mama, knowing me pretty well by now, said, "O.K., go ahead if you want to plant 'em, 'Rum Dum’, you'll see!" And I did see! I planted 'em and none of 'em ever grew into peach trees!
But, a little later that morning, while I was poking holes in the ground and dropping a peach seed in each hole, my dad stuck his head out of the half-opened back door to the kitchen and asked what I was doing? I explained about my seed-plantin' expedition. Dad started to respond to my game plan and make some loud-type comments to me from the back door across the yard similar to what Mama had told me earlier when I was in the kitchen about how "That was not gonna work to do it that way." I heard Mama interrupt him from inside the kitchen and sarcastically say,
"BEAU, DON'T WASTE YOUR BREATH!
I TOLD THAT HARD-HEADED S.O.B. THAT PLANTING THOSE SEEDS LIKE THAT WOULD NOT WORK.
BUT, YOU KNOW HIM, ONCE HE MAKES UP HIS MIND ABOUT SOMETHING YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE TALKING TO THAT WALL…
LET HIM GO AHEAD 'CAUSE HE'S GONNA DO IT ANYWAY
NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!"
Daddy stopped wasting his breath!
I actually thought at that point that they were both correct about those seeds not growing, after they had explained "why." It actually made sense.
BUT I STILL WANTED TO TRY AND SEE FOR MYSELF!
Heck, I had already collected that whole bowl of peach seeds. And, I already had a bunch of holes punched in the ground.
WHAT WOULD IT HURT TO TRY?
MAMA WAS RIGHT THOUGH…
NONE OF 'EM EVER CAME UP!