MAKING HAY
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

     As a blind child growing up on a farm in the hills of Middle
Tennessee in the late 1920's and early 1930's, I did a lot of
thinking. This is not surprising since there wasn't much else to
do. We lived in a four-room house on a gravel road, and I doubt
that an automobile a week passed our door. We had no radio, no
telephone, no newspaper, no magazines, and no books except the
Bible and the textbooks my brother (four years older than I)
brought home from school.
     The world of the late '20's and early '30's in rural
Tennessee was a totally different place from what we know today.
Nobody thought about atom bombs, pollution, or jet planes. About
the hottest topic I heard discussed by my elders was whether it
was a sin for a woman to bob her hair and what the likelihood was
that you would go to hell if you played cards. I had better
explain that last remark. I am not referring to playing cards for
money, just ordinary games around the family table. And while we
are on the subject, there was no question at all about whether
you would go to hell if you danced or played pool. You would.
     The difference between the world of then and there and the
one of here and now was not limited to the rural areas. Let me
give you an example. When I went off to the Tennessee School for
the Blind in Nashville at the age of six (that would have been
January of 1933), one of the more charming customs of the place
was a Saturday morning ritual involving the Scriptures. Shortly
after breakfast the small boys (I don't know what happened to the
girls since there was strict segregation) were plopped down on a
bench and given the task of memorizing a chapter from the Bible.
It didn't do any good to protest, object, or try to resist. You
sat there until you memorized it, after which you were free to go
play.
     One's religion had nothing to do with it, nor did one's
interest or aptitude. When you got the task done, you could
(within limits) go where you pleased and do what you liked.
Meanwhile you couldn't. And whatever time you spent trying to
beat the system was just that much of the morning gone. I suppose
I need not tell you that I quickly concluded to learn my chapter
with minimum delay, which I religiously (no play on words
intended) did. As a result, I have been a devout Bible quoter
ever since--and much, I might add, to my benefit and long-range
satisfaction. Ah, well, children are not always in the best
position to know what will stand them in good stead.
     I don't want to leave you with the impression that
everything in that Tennessee world of the '20's and '30's
concerned the Bible or religious matters. It didn't. We popped
corn in a pan of bacon grease on the wood stove in the kitchen or
in a long-handled popper at the fireplace in one or the other of
the two bedrooms. (The house had a kitchen, a dining room, and
two bedrooms.) We visited our neighbors and relatives, either
walking or (if the distance was too far) riding in a wagon drawn
by two mules; we gathered hickory nuts and walnuts; and now and
again the family sang songs or listened to a neighbor play a
banjo. At Christmas time there was a great deal of cooking, but
no convenience foods, of course, and as little as possible bought
from the store. For instance, we didn't make fruitcake. That
would have cost too much. Instead, we made jam cake. The black
walnuts, the homemade blackberry jam, and most of the other
ingredients came from our farm and required no outlay of cash.
     As to my personal situation, it was (if you want to be
high-toned about it) what you might call anomalous. Nobody in the
neighborhood had ever known a blind person, so there was no one
to give advice. My parents loved me, but they didn't know what to
do. This led to some strange inconsistencies. For instance, my
mother and dad didn't want me to carry wood for the fireplace or
stove or water from the spring, which was only a few feet from
the house. They didn't want me to play in the yard or go any
farther than the porch. They were afraid I might get hurt. Yet,
they had no objection at all to my shooting firecrackers at
Christmas time.
     It was regarded as a natural thing for boys in that part of
the country to shoot firecrackers, and I suppose my parents just
never thought about it. One of my earliest memories is of me
standing on the front porch with a match and a firecracker in my
hand and of my father, saying as he went past me into the house,
"You'd better be careful, or you'll blow your hand off with that
thing." Young as I was, I knew that he was right and that nobody
would stop me if I was careless--so I wasn't careless. I
developed a technique of holding the match just below the head
and pressing the firecracker fuse against it. Match and fuse were
held between my thumb and index finger, so there was no
possibility of the firecracker's exploding in my hand since my
fingers were between it and the flame. Never once did I get hurt,
and I think the experience helped me learn something about risk
taking and proper caution.
     As I have already said, I did a lot of thinking as I was
growing up. I also did a lot of planning, for I didn't want to
spend the rest of my life in close confinement in that four-room
house on the farm. As I reasoned it, I needed to read all the
books I could, and I needed to go to college. Therefore, as
Braille and recorded books became available to me through the
books for the blind program of the Library of Congress, I
followed through on the matter and crammed my head as full of
book learning as I could. Later I went to college and put the
limited environment of the farm behind me. 
     Meanwhile, I wanted to do productive work and make some
money. This wasn't easy since my family (though loving me)
thought I was virtually helpless. My first effort (caning chairs
at the School for the Blind) brought more labor than cash, but I
had to start where I could. Also, we had cows on the farm, and we
sold their milk to a nearby cheese factory. During summer
vacations I milked cows night and morning and got ten cents a
week for it. At the time I was probably eleven or twelve.
     During the first part of the Second World War (I would have
been fourteen or fifteen), I made a little money collecting peach
seeds. I sold them to a man who came by twice a week in a truck.
I was told that the kernels were used for filters in gas masks,
but I don't know whether that was true or not. What I do know is
that I got a penny a pound for them and that there were a
tremendous number of peaches eaten in the neighborhood.
     Then, there was the NYA (the National Youth Administration),
one of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Beginning in 1943
I washed windows, scrubbed floors, shined the small boys' shoes,
and did other chores at the School for the Blind for three
dollars a month--fifteen hours at twenty cents an hour. I thought
I was rich.
     And there was even an extra dividend. I was not the only boy
at the School for the Blind who got three dollars a month for
working for the NYA. There were quite a number, which meant that
we now had a cash economy, with more money in circulation than
the boys at the School for the Blind had ever known. It
stimulated business. I was one of those who profited. I
established a relationship with a local wholesale house and
walked there once or twice a week to carry large boxes of candy
and chewing gum back to the School. I bought the candy for three
cents a bar and sold it for a nickel. Going for the candy was not
only good exercise but also good profit. My roommate and I did a
thriving business. It helped me get some of the money to start to
college.
     There was also my broom-making project. A neighbor in the
country raised broom corn, and I took it with me to the School
for the Blind and made it into brooms. (All blind boys in those
days were taught chair caning and broom making regardless of
their aptitudes or wishes, and I think I could still do a
creditable job at either task.) My neighbor supplied the broom
corn, and I made and sold the brooms. We split the profits.
     During the latter part of the Second World War (by this time
I was sixteen or seventeen) I got a chance during the school year
to make some money by sorting aircraft rivets. The Vultee
Aircraft Company established a plant near Nashville to make dive
bombers, and there were many thousands of rivets in each plane.
The workers would drop rivets on the floor; and when the dirt,
cigarette stubs, and other leavings were swept up, the assorted
mixture was brought to the students at the School for the Blind
for sorting. We separated the rivets from the trash, sorted them
into sizes and types, discarded any with rough spots on them, and
sent them back to the aircraft plant. It was a messy job, but it
was a way to make some money. I think I got two and a half cents
a pound for it.
     But all of these various jobs were preliminary to my first
truly big opportunity. It happened like this: In the summer of
1944 (I was seventeen) I wanted to expand my horizons. Farm
laborers in our neighborhood made $1.25 per day, working from
sunrise to sunset, and I wanted to join their ranks. The pivotal
event occurred when they began making hay. We had no power
machinery. There was a mule-drawn mower, and after the hay was
cut, there was a mule-drawn rake. The men would follow the rake
with pitchforks, putting the hay into shocks and then tossing it
into the mule-drawn wagon. Then it would be taken to the barn and
put into the loft.
     I tried to get my dad and the other decision makers to let
me try my hand at making hay. They were not only unwilling but
didn't even want to talk about it. In fact when I insisted, they
indicated to me that they were busy and had work to do and that I
should stop bothering them.
     Since I was unwilling to spend the summer doing nothing, I
looked around for other opportunities. It occurred to me that I
might try my hand at making furniture. Lumber was cheap in those
days, and I also had the idea of using spools. At that time
thread was wound on wooden spools, plastic not yet having come
into use, and almost everybody sewed. Spools were throw-aways,
and I got all my relatives, plus department stores in surrounding
towns, to save them for me. I got them in every conceivable size
and then sorted them and strung them on iron rods to make table
legs.
     The design was simple, but the product was both durable and
graceful. I could make a table in a day and could sell it for
$10. It cost me $1.75 in materials, so I had a profit of $8.25.
My rejection became a triumph. While the men did back-breaking
labor in the hay fields for $1.25 a day, I stayed in my workshop,
listened to recorded books, and produced tables for a profit of
$8.25. No matter how fast I made them, I could never keep up with
demand. It was as regular as clock work--$8.25 net profit day
after day, not the $1.25 I would have made in the hay field.
     I also designed and made floor lamps from spools. The lamp
had an old steering wheel for a base with a pipe running up the
center, surrounded by four columns of spools, with a fixture and
shade on top. I could make it in a day, and I sold it for $25,
with a cost for materials of a little over $8. This was twice as
much profit as I made from a table. The trouble was that the
lamps were harder to sell, so I got relatively few orders.
     By the end of the summer I had more money than I had ever
seen, and I did it again the following year. I went to college in
1945 and never returned to the furniture business, but it taught
me a valuable lesson, as did the other jobs I have described.
There are many ways to make hay, and if you lose $1.25, you may
make $8.25 if you put your mind to it. As I have already said,
the world of fifty years ago was a different place from the world
of today--but many of the lessons still hold. They probably
always will, and one of them is that making hay is a lifelong
process.