My Mother is a woman of many talents. Her oldest Son is a Convict and her youngest one is a Preacher. I try not to talk about him much because I don’t want to make life difficult for him for those times when he has to go looking for a job. By the Grace of God he has one now in a farming community in North Carolina.

The congregation at his new church is very much old school and my Brother is eight years younger than me, so he wondered if he would really be the right flavor. The older congregation has said that a younger Minister with his children was just what they needed to liven things up. The oldest of his children, my Nephew has taken an interest in farming and gets the opportunity to go to work in the fields with the men of his Church every day. It has been an incredible character building experience for a ten year old boy and he can’t get enough of it. Working the dirt is a spiritual experience that imparts many lessons.

Because the people of the congregation understand where the good fortune in their fields comes from, whenever harvest time comes the Preacher Man gets bushel after bushel of whatever folks who are stopping by bring to share with him. In a very short period of time his basement is full of harvest which his children are learning to store and preserve but the abundance is such that he has to find ways to give it away.

My Mother was recently visiting, spending time with her brand new Granddaughter. The recent harvest was Sweet Potato and she volunteered to haul as many of them as she could back to Florida to share with the congregation at her church. For the past several weeks now I have been getting bags of Sweet Potatoes every time I see her, but these are no ordinary Sweet Potatoes.

“I just couldn’t take some of these up to the Church. I got to looking at them and realized that they just looked too nasty to be giving away to church people”. I had no idea what my Mother was talking about. Sweet Potatoes grow in the dirt; all you have to do is wash them off. My Mother can sometimes phrase things strangely or act strangely and both were the case in this instance. “The worse part is knowing that Abby (her eight year old Granddaughter) was handling them when she bagged them up for me”.

By this time I was wondering just what horror awaited me when I got my first bag of Sweet Potatoes home. Upon opening the bag I was shocked at what my Mother found to be so nasty. Granted, in many instances I do see why some of the potatoes could become a source of conversation. Other of the potatoes that were deemed “Nasty” make me wonder if my Mother sees such nastiness in anything that remotely resembles anything that remains of her distant memories. I DO understand why she would be so upset about the fact that it was her Granddaughter who picked out the batch she took home with her. None of us want to envision my Niece as the stereotypical Preachers Daughter and this isn’t the first indicator that she is headed that way.

From the looks of these Sweet Potatoes the soil in North Carolina appears to be quite fertile.

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