Sometimes when I am outside in the garden or doing yard work, especially if I’m planting something new, or digging out something old, I think about this certain man I never knew. His name was George and he lived a long time ago somewhere in northern Indiana. He had a farm and a wife named Ellen and a dog and rifle and a horse, and wooden porch on the front of his house where at least once in his life he posed with friend, and at least once posed by himself, and few times posed with Ellen and their daughter Ethel. I only know who he is because there are photographs of him (and Ellen, Ethel, the dog, the horse and the rifle), standing on that wooden porch. He looks proud. Content. Weathered. Tough. He looks a lot like my grandfather. He was, after my grandfather’s grandfather.

I think about him when I’m gardening and planting because most of those pictures were taken outside, sometimes with the rifle and sometime with the dog, and sometimes with the horse. He posed in his fields and on his porch for reasons unknown. We don’t know who took the photos of George and Ellen and Ethel. What did he plan to do with the photos? They ended up in a box in the basement of my parents house 100 years or more after they were taken. I wonder if he imagined that’s where his memory would go to rest one day, and I wonder if he would have worn something nicer if he had known that these photos are how he would be remembered.

I think about George and wonder what his life must have been like on that farm. Tilling, planting and harvesting, before modern machinery was affordable to a farmer like him. I wonder what kept him up at night. It doesn’t seem like it would be anything like what keeps me up at night. What does a farmer born in the late 19th century worry about? The weather. The harvest. The winter. Sickness. Spoiled food. Vermin. Maybe that’s why he had the dog. That’s almost certainly why he had the rifle. Dgos and rifles are excellent deterrents for rats, raccoons, opossums, moles, groundhogs, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and mice.

I don’t ever worry about vermin. Or spoiled food. I sometimes worry about sickness, especially after 2020, but I never worry about the harvest or the weather. I don’t like the winter, but I know I’ll survive it. I’ll have enough, and if I run out, there’s always more at the store.

Maybe George worried about different things: Ellen, when she was pregnant. Maybe he worried about the baby, Ethel. I can understand that worry. I’ve been through the uncertainty, and even with midwives and hospitals, it’s still unnerving. He must have worried about his son-in-law in 1917, when he went to Europe, to war. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that worry, but even if I do have a child in the armed forces one day, that’s a long way off. That kind of worry is farvremoved from me, just like the worry about the harvest,

I think about George (and his dog and his horse and his rifle) when I’m gardening because it’s the closest I’ll ever get to living the same kind of life he lived. I think about him being dirty and sweaty, sore from laboring, standing over a wood fire stove when it’s cold, or on the porch in his rocking chair if it’s hot. I think about him ending his day in the field usually around the time I’m just heading outside. I think about him because he’s a mystery and he’s familiar, and he’s a part of me. I think about what he must have sounded like, how he laughed, if he sang. I think about him and wonder what he would say if he knew I was thinking of him.

My mom never knew George, but my grandpa did. I never knew George’s daughter Ethel, and my mom has few memories of her (she died when my mom was very young). I know a few stories about Ethel, and her husband Fred, but I don’t know any stories about George. I know my grandpa’s brother was named after George, but I never knew him either. The only memories that have come down to me of Geroge are the photographs which Mom and I sifted through one recent afternoon. One day soon I’ll take them out of that box and I’ll put them into an album for safekeeping. And maybe when my kids look through the pictures one day, they’ll think “I wonder what his story is.” And George’s memory will live on.