Randy Eubanks - My Dad: The Smartest 7th Grader on Earth

Two Years Too Late

Disappointment: The feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of ones hopes or expectations.

Hope: A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

Growing up on a farm, we always had plenty of food to eat, and all our needs were met; however, we didnt have a lot of money. I would still consider us a middle-class family, but with a twist.

In my younger days, we had no indoor bathroom, so I took a bath in a metal washtub. When you finished bathing, you carried it outside and emptied it. Fortunately, we didnt have to go far as our bathroom was a small wooden building in our backyard. The building was what you called an outhouse. When you walked in, you looked around for spiders and snakes before you sat down to take care of business. Luckily, we didnt have to go outside to urinate. We urinated in a white metal pot located inside of our house. One of my jobs when I came home from school was to take the white urinal pot across the dirt road and dump it into the hogpen. You had to be careful in how fast you walked carrying the urinal pot. You didnt want the urine to splash on your legs.

Let me tell you why we didnt have an indoor bathroom. To start with, it had nothing to do with money or the lack thereof. It was a family issue. And its complicated.

Years earlier, my granddaddy entertained some of his relatives visiting from Michigan. According to my dad, back in the day when he was growing up, one of their cousins had to use the bathroom while visiting my granddaddy. The relative stopped up the toilet and didnt let my granddaddy know what had happened. Upon them leaving to go back to Michigan, my granddaddy discovered what had happened. He was so upset that he disconnected the indoor toilet and made my dad and his siblings start using the outhouse again and the urinal pot. Since we lived in one of Granddaddys farmhouses when I was a little boy, we had no indoor bathroom. Even though my family lived in the house, Granddaddy refused to allow my dad to put in a bathroom. What a silly reason for not having an indoor toilet, but it was motivation for my dad to build his own home.

In a few years, my dad was able to save up $2,500. He went to the bank and borrowed $2,500 more. With $5,000, he built a new home with an indoor bathroom. Finally, at the age of ten, I took my first shower. That was a great day.

Now, looking back, I think dumping that urinal pot was a disgusting job, but it paled in comparison to the very first job I had at the ripe young age of six. I will never forget that cool Monday morning on June 28, 1965. My dad walked into my bedroom and asked me if I wanted to work today picking up leaves behind the tobacco harvester. I said sure, why not.

I had no idea of what I was volunteering for.

I looked at the clock; it was 6:00 a.m. My eyes were open, but my brain asleep as per my answer to my dads question. I went to work that day. I thought I was going through hell.

The big tobacco leaves hit me in the face. The smell of tobacco gum on my face and body was nauseating. The leaves were half as tall as I was. It seemed like the tobacco clipswhich hold the picked leaves together in a bundlewere dropping more leaves on the ground than were staying in the clips. The tobacco harvester kept moving down the tobacco rows, and I was struggling walking behind the harvester, trying to keep up and at the same time picking up the leaves that were falling out of the clips. I would put the leaves under my arms, and when I had all the leaves I could tote, I would run up to the moving harvester and drop them in the basket of the croppers so they could send them back up in the tobacco harvester clips.

Thank God for my dad. He made an effort while he was riding the tobacco harvester, picking up some of the leaves that fell out of the clips onto the ground. He would reach over and grab some leaves to put back in his basket. My uncle, cousin, and my brother werent concerned about my workload. At least my dad had some compassion for his six-year-old son.

His compassion ended the next morning when he came into my bedroom at 6:00 a.m. and said it was time to get up and go pick up more leaves.

I dont want to go, I said.

He said, The first day is voluntary, the second day, mandatory.

I wondered what would happen if my dad had met Mr. Long earlier. Would my life have been easier in that tobacco field? My family could have been wealthy, and I wouldnt have had to pick up leaves at 6:00 a.m. Who knows? I do know this: I would not have had as many tobacco leaves to pick up that day and many days to follow because my dads invention worked.

These thoughts, combined with my dread of another day of picking up tobacco leaves in the dark, were my first experience with disappointment. My dad must have felt the same way nine years earlier after his meeting with Mr. Long.

It was Friday morning in late June of 1956, which was three years before I was born, my dad sat on the doorsteps of Long Manufacturing with his invention in a brown paper bag, waiting for the president of the company to drive up in his white Cadillac.

Dad saw a need to redesign a tobacco harvester clip that wouldnt let go of any of the leaves. The clip was attached to a chain and sprocket system that transported the tobacco leaves upstairs on the tobacco harvester to be removed by the looper, a person who tied the leaves around a five-foot stick. Each harvester clip held four to five leaves of tobacco. One stick would hold several clips of tobacco. Once the stick was full, it was removed from the looping horsea wooden rack that held the stick while the looper workedand hung on a metal rack toward the back of the harvester, and then the process started over again. The problem was the clips would frequently let one or more of the leaves fall out and onto the ground as they were being transported up the chain.

One Thursday in late June during lunch break, my dad designed a new clip that didnt drop any of the leaves. In thirty minutes he had a clip that was a better design than what the college-educated engineers at Long Manufacturing had created. With only a seventh-grade education, and a lot of common sense and intelligence, my father had outdone the pros.

They had finished putting in tobacco that late Thursday evening. The next morning, my dad drove the two hours to Tarboro, North Carolina, to get there around 8:00 a.m., starting time for any good business. He went inside in hopes of talking to the president of Long Manufacturing about his new tobacco harvester clip.

Mr. Longs secretary told my dad that her boss wasnt in and it wouldnt be possible to see him.

He is a busy man, she said. Once hes in the office you can forget seeing him. There are appointments scheduled all day.

But there was a solution. The best way to talk to him was to catch him as soon as he drove up and got out of his car before he entered the building. Mr. Long usually drives up around 8:30 a.m. in his white Cadillac.

My dad took her advice. He went outside and sat on the steps to wait on Mr. Long. Soon, Dad noticed a white Cadillac pulling into the parking lot. He headed toward the vehicle as Mr. Long was parking into his marked parking space, and as soon as Mr. Long got out of the car, my dad approached him.

Daddy introduced himself as a farmer and told Mr. Long that he had designed a tobacco harvester clip that was more efficient than the ones they designed and installed on their Long tobacco harvesters.

Take it out of the bag and show it to me, Mr. Long said.

My dad handed it over, and he took a look at it while they were walking toward his office. He told Daddy by looking at his design, he saw the mistake his engineers had made. He asked Daddy to come in. As they walked by his secretary, he told her to cancel all his appointments for the morning. Over the next four hours, the pair discussed this new design of the tobacco clip.