When I first met Fred he was stacking melons into a pyramid in his front yard near a busy street. An Indiana farmer, for whom he was hauling soy bean, had thrown a sack of melons in his direction before he drove off. Later at home, Fred, had put a hand written sign on top of the pile in order that drivers could see the melons and pull over to buy his produce. It was 1979, and the sign said, "three for a quarter."
"Fred, you're not selling those things out here," my wife's grandmother yelled from the front porch. My wife and I were visiting her grandparents in Rushville, a small city outside of Indianapolis, surrounded by farms in all directions. Corn, soy bean and other crops were grown for miles and miles. Fred worked at Perfect Circle, a factory that made piston rings, and other valves and gaskets for engines, and Clarabell, Fred's wife, worked as a part-time butcher at the IGA.
Robin and I weren't married yet. We were both students at Asbury College in nearby Kentucky. The next year, 1980, we would be married and living in Lexington, where, with a degree in Biblical Studies and the economy in the tank, I cleared tables at one of the restaurants in the Lexington Hyatt Regency. After a few months, I was promoted to breakfast and lunch waiter. I wasn't a very good waiter, but the Hyatt paid for our medical benefits none the less.
A few years later, we moved to Chicago, and whenever we could, we would drive from Chicago to visit Fred and Clarabell in Indiana. Grandma Clarabell made the best breakfasts and treated new grandsons-in-laws like princes. I would wake up to the sound of a pound of bacon and a pound of sausage sizzling in the skillet, and the fried mush already cooked and soaking on paper towels. All of this prepared for four people, Fred, Clarabell, Robin, and me. "How da ya like yer eggs?" she said. I know how to play the role of prince when its needed, and sat down, saying, "Over-easy, please." She yelled out the back door, "Fred, get in here, now, before Doug's breakfast gets cold."
During each visit, there would be one night when we went out to eat, and Fred and Clarabell would treat us to chicken dinner. It was always fried chicken, and it was the best fried chicken I have ever eaten. We either drove to Enochsburg or Metamora. Both places had the most delicious fried chicken. Metamora was on the river along the highway that went from Rushville to Cincinnati. Enochsburg is not on the way to anywhere and I don't have any idea how you get there. In the middle of miles of Indiana farms and covered wooden bridges, one finds, all of a sudden, a little tavern by the side of the road. It appears that St. Peter, while operating a giant crane, picked up a Philadelphia Bar and intending to put it down in Chicago, accidentally dropped it on the side of the road in rural Indiana. Inside that dark, pine wood paneled tavern is the best fried chicken I've ever eaten.
Another time, while we were driving towards Metamora, Fred told us about one of the first jobs he had as young man. There was no work to be found he told us. It was the Great Depression, and, the road---the road we were traveling to get chicken that night in the 1980s--was not yet built. Fred, many times, had hitched a ride out that dirt road to ask the road construction supervisor for a job. Each time he was turned down. He went out one more time. But this time, he didn't go to the supervisor. Rather, he grabbed a shovel that was sitting along the side of the road and starting moving dirt with 3 or 4 men who were already working. A crew chief soon asked, "Who are you?" Grandpa said, "Fred." "Who hired you?" the man asked. Fred, pointing to the supervisor a 1/4 mile down the mountain, said, "That man over there." The crew chief said, "Well, no one told me. But, since you're here, go and help those men over there." He worked every day after that getting paid each Friday. No one ever knew who had really hired Fred.
