9.3 Jerry

by Eric Chaet

Jerry’s getting frail & stooped
he’s lost maybe half his teeth
one eye doesn’t work too well.

When he says she isn’t feeling well
he means his wife.

He wears a baseball cap
& when he looks at you, he beams.

He rents out land—
bought 80 acres from his mother & father
later a third of someone else’s 80—
to a farmer who treats it well, fertilizes
so Jerry charges him less than the going rate.
With the recent inflation, the farmer came
& said he’d pay $10 more—per acre, I suppose.

For decades Jerry drove a truck full of lumber
into Milwaukee, then back
used to stop to help people along the way
word came from the insurance company
Don’t stop for anybody.

We talk about his garden.
He says he tills 3 times
plants potatoes
doesn’t build hills around them
til they’re about this high
maybe 6 inches—
that way
he tears the weeds up doing it
the potatoes are blossoming now
he gives cucumbers to everyone
who’ll take them
every year.

His kids live here & there
he told me once of a gathering
kids, grandkids, great grandkids filled the house.
They gave him a police scanner:
he keeps it on all night,
says, You wouldn’t believe what’s going on—
he gets Sheboygan, Green Bay, Abrams—
when it’s close, it’s loud, & wakes him up.
Once he looked out the window,
& saw the police car lights.

He reads the Bible every day
says he wouldn’t want to live thru
what the kids will have to face.

///

///

Top picture: Dept. of Horticultural Science,
North Carolina State University
Lower picture: St. Johns County, Florida, IFAS Extension