Mom, Dad and I were working in the garden one morning.  Dad was hoeing sweet corn, I was staking up tomato’s and Mom was picking green beans.  I was walking over to the side of the garden to pick up some more stakes when Mon started yelling at Dad.

“Steve!  Come quick,  there is a snake in the bean row.”

Dad came running thru the corn patch and into the bean rows.  “Where is the snake?” he yelled.

“Right there,” and she started pointing in front of her.

Dad walked over to her so he could see what she was pointing at.  “It’s just a black snake.  It isn’t going to hurt you.  He’s just looking for bugs.  You can go ahead and pick beans.  He will move on over to another row.”  Dad started laughing.

Mom yelled, “kill that snake.  I’m not about to pick any more beans while there is a snake in the garden!”  She picked up her bucket of picked beans and headed for the house.  She was mad.

Dad went ahead and killed the snake and I threw it over the fence into the pasture.  He told me to go ahead and pick the rest of the beans for mother.  I went over to the edge of the garden and picked up a bag that mom left there.  It took me about an hour to finish picking the rest of the bean batch.  When I had finished it was about time for lunch so dad and I carried the beans to the house and put them on the back porch.

After we ate lunch mom asked me to snap all the beans she and I had picked so she could can them.

I didn’t mind snapping beans, although I had hoped to go swimming in the pond in the afternoon.  The good thing was that I could snap the beans on the back porch where there was a good breeze and I didn’t have to be out in the hot sun helping dad hoe the corn.

Now, snapping beans can be boring after awhile but it is not all that bad a job.  You just have to pay attention and throw out the wormy ones and put the snapped beans in the big kettle so mom could wash them and put them in the jars.  She liked to can them in the pressure cooker.

Even though I would liked to have done other things during the afternoon, snapping bean was not all that bad.  It gave me time to think of other things.  One of the things I was thinking was how good the beans would be when mom put the beans in a kettle, chopped up bacon and put a big spoonful of homemade butter on them and cooked them for supper.  They are so good to eat and it makes all the work worthwhile.

I’m not sure we will get mom to pick beans again.  I’m sure it will be my job next time.

The End