The Whoop - June 23, 2020

The farmer came to spray the fields and plant the soybeans this weekend.  My heart just sank when I saw the tractor with its big rig.  Since we're more than halfway through June, I was kind of hoping that maybe the farmer had gotten some government subsidy to NOT plant this year, and maybe my vegetable garden would be safe.

I haven't been down to the garden to look.  It has rained every day since he sprayed.  Maybe if my garden did get some drift, the rain washed it off.  Will the damage have already been done?  We'll see.

The other thing I hate about the herbicide is this:  Aunt B across the road, who has battled cancer multiple times in her 80+ years, is convinced that the farmer is giving her cancer with the spraying.  Regardless of whether or not she's correct, Nanny agonizes about it every year.

I have been keeping an eye out for ways to grow something that won't require poisons but would still make enough money to pay the land taxes.  Most of them are so labor-intensive as to be impossible for us right now.

This morning, I saw a Facebook post from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency about the animal habitat program.  I knew that this program existed; I've sat in on court hearings in which farms were in that program.  I also knew that in front of a house on my path to work, every year there grows a big patch of what looks like echinacea, black-eyed Susans, and daisies, and someone told me that this patch of wild flowers is the result of some governmental conservation program.   I've been meaning to find out about this program.

Why couldn't we have that on our farm?

I'm looking into it.

The real reason I started this post was not to tell you about the habitat program; the real reason was to tell you about Cousin Roger's whoop.

You've seen a story or two about Cousin Roger.  My favorite one is about the time he came over here with a can of beer in his hand, complaining about having heartburn, and I gave him a big glass of kefir to cure it.  He didn't want to drink it, but I called him a sissy and shamed him into it, and he knocked back the whole glass and chased it with a swig of beer.  He shat his pants on the way back across the road.  Now, that's funny, I don't care who you are.  ;)

Cousin Roger, like his older brother, does a whoop when he sees you.  He does it as a long-distance greeting, as well as to announce his presence.  I heard him let go with one just before I started this post.  He was over in his mother's yard.  His 90-year-old father was on the riding mower.

This whoop has always mystified me, to some extent.   I mean, who does this?  Is it a family thing?  A local thing?  Perhaps a relic of days gone by?

Both my family and my husband's family were early settlers in this county, and neither of us knows anyone else who does this.

But today I got to thinking . . . .

Cousin Roger's grandmother, or maybe his great-grandmother, was reportedly a "full-blood Cherokee Indian."   (They're not claiming she was a "Cherokee princess.")  ;)  I have been reading about the early settling of west Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi - first-hand accounts, when I can find them - and these books quite often mention the Native American whoop.  It seems to have been the pre-electronic-age equivalent of a walkie-talkie.   If Cousin Roger's purported genealogical background is true, it seems logical that this whoop could be something passed down through his family for generations.

Which would be kind of cool, if you ask me.