Unintended consequences

By Ralph Dickerson
As we go through this life, we all have done something that seemed innocent at first, but ended up with some rather complicated unintended consequences. The following story happened to me many years ago, and shows how a small action can have rather big repercussions.
Growing up in a rural area, where so many people made their living off of raising tobacco, my family helped my grandparents with their tobacco crop. By my family, I don’t just mean my immediate family, but aunts, uncles, cousins and even a few who just claimed relationship with us!
Well, one year just before time to start to set the tobacco crop, my grandfather put sodium nitrate (I think) on the plant bed. This fertilizer helped the plants shoot up in size quickly over just a couple of days. But, after putting the nitrate on the plants, you needed to water them well or the fertilizer would “burn up” the plants. Meaning they turned brown and died.
My grandfather had a little ole tractor and small wooden wagon we used for everything from hauling in wood, to hauling bags of feed for the cows from the feed store. We loaded up three 55-gallon barrels into the wagon, headed to the barn and took water from the pond to water the plant bed.
Since the barrels had no tops on them, my grandfather needed to drive as slow as possible from the pond to the plant beds to keep the water from sloshing out of the barrels. My sister hopped up into the wagon and helped steady the barrels on the journey.
With the route to the plant beds being just an old farm path, it was kind of rough. Though my grandfather drove slowly, it was impossible to keep some of the water from sloshing out, which led to an action on my part with hilarious unintended consequences.
As I walked along side the wagon, a piece of wet grass string hanging from the side was swaying with each bump and jolt of the wagon. Every once and awhile, the string would smack me in the face. I finally got tired of the wet string slapping me in the face, so I reached up and cut it with my knife.
When I cut the string, we were about 50 feet from the plant bed, going under a tree. My grandmother and my mother were walking beside the tractor about 15 feet or so in front of me. I twirled the piece of string a few times, then flung it forward, and it was traveling directly toward my mother.
When the string was about two feet or so from hitting my mother, she looked up at the tree as she passed under a high, overhead limb and said to my grandmother, “I sure hope a snake does not fall out of that tree and wrap around my neck!” She had no sooner finished saying those words when the string landed guess where? Around my mother’s neck!
From an early age on, I could easily outrun my mother. In a race pitting my mother against a turtle and snail, I would say there were good odds of the turtle winning, and my mother tying the snail!
When that wet string hit her neck, my mother took off running for her life! In that particular moment my mother could have easily out sprinted Usain Bolt!
When she took off running, my grandmother grabbed a hold of my mother in an effort to reach up and remove the string. Though my grandmother was holding onto my mother, it did not slow her down, and my grandmother was bobbing along behind my mother, pulling on the string.
At the same time, my mother reached up and grabbed the other end of the string and was trying to remove it. So, both my mother and my grandmother were pulling on opposite sides of the string, which made it tighten around my mother’s neck. My mother thought it was a constrictor snake trying to choke her, which scared her even more, leading her to run even faster.
When my mother took off running, she did not pay attention to where she was running, and ran straight through a bunch of underbrush, buck berry bushes and briars located at the end of the plant bed, all while dragging my grandmother along! My grandmother kind of looked like a can on a string being dragged behind a speeding car!
Right as the string landed on my mother’s neck, my grandfather turned to say something to my grandmother, and saw my mother take off running and dragging my grandmother along. My mother running and dragging my grandmother was just the first chain of events that happened.
When my grandfather constructed this particular plant bed it sat in a low lying area, so he dug ditches around it to drain the water from the plant bed. When he saw my mother sprinting away dragging my grandmother, he put the tractor in neutral, and let it roll towards the plant bed because he was leaning over the steering wheel laughing. Though the plant bed sat in a low lying area, the ground going toward it sloped downward, which let the tractor pick up some speed, not much, but just enough.
My poor sister is standing in the wagon trying to steady the now rocking 55-gallon barrels of yucky, slimy pond water, and with each bump water sloshes out onto her. As the tractor gains speed, the barrels start to rock more, splashing her with the water, and the tractor is rolling straight towards the plant bed.
The tractor was approaching the side of the plant bed, about middle ways. The tractor t-boned into the side of the plant bed. Remember I mentioned the ditch my grandfather made? It was deep enough around the plant bed that the tractor’s front tires dropped into the ditch, which brought the tractor and wagon to a screeching halt, which kept the tractor from rolling into the plant bed.
When the wagon stopped, the barrels of water did not! They tipped forward due to the momentum, but then recoiled backward, but did not tip over. Unfortunately, with no tops on the barrels, when the barrels tipped backward forcefully, a large wave of water sloshed out and covered my sister from head to foot, totally drenching her!
So, though I just intended to cut the string and throw it away, the consequences were that my mother, grandmother and sister were furious at me—my grandmother especially since my mom dragged her through briars! On the other hand, my grandfather said it was the funniest thing he had seen in a long time.