by Betty Frank
Ohio, USA
For the past 30 something years, my husband and myself, and our children when they were growing up, have had a “truck patch”. We’ve grown sweet corn, potatoes, red beets and assorted other vegetables each summer, and then sold them. This has helped us to pay for college, cars, or whatever was needed.
After the kids grew up, just my husband and I continued on with this task, since he is a true “farm boy” at heart. He just loves the soil and growing things.
In the summer of 2004, I was sorting the last of 200 and some bunches of red beets for market. I must have looked like a drowning soul, I guess, when my neighbor and friend, Dorothy stopped by. Dorothy would have been 70 at the time. She is a petite dark-haired darling of a lady, with snapping sparkly dark eyes, having inherited both her parents’ Italian background.
It was about 2:30 in the afternoon, and we visited a few minutes, while I kept sorting those beets. She asked what I was having for supper and I said I really didn’t know, I had not thought that far, I just needed to get those beets finished, because we had a lot of other vegetables to get ready for market the next day, also.
Dorothy left for her place about a mile up the road, and one half hour later, she came back. She was bearing sandwiches, soup, chips, pickles, cupcakes, two cans of pop, paper products and napkins; everything you would need to feed two people. Dorothy stated that every Thursday for the rest of the summer, she would bring supper for us both, because we had enough to do getting ready for market the next day.
I argued that that wasn’t necessary, thanked her profusely for her wonderful gift of dinner with not much cleanup, except to throw away the disposables. She insisted that the next Thursday she would appear with supper, that it would do me no good to disagree, that she was going to do this and help out.
For the rest of our growing season, every Thursday afternoon, Dorothy came to our house, with everything from homemade pot-roast dinner, to ham sandwiches for us. To fully understand this, you should know that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about five years previously — although she was doing pretty well.
It was one of the most wonderful giving things we have ever received. We truly felt the gift of friendship whenever we ate those wonderful meals. She truly saw a need, and filled it, and our tummies, to overflowing.
My husband and I were fortunate that summer to be the recipient of such an unselfish and caring gift by one of my best friends.
Just exactly what I needed tonight.
What a wonderful story of friendship and giving! And it shows that being someone’s hero often doesn’t require extraordinary means or effort. You can be someone’s hero by recognizing and helping to fill a need.
Thank you for re-cycling my story. What a friend Dorothy was.
She is now in a nursing home.
But, she was the BESTEST.
God Bless Her, and all who try to make our way a little smoother and easier.
Again, thank you.
I am truly humbled by her friendship.
How wonderful to have such a generous neighbor as Dorothy! I’m sure after all the preparations for market, that meal and all the others were fantastic. I imagine that Dorothy also enjoyed preparing them too. A win win for all.