Notes from Dr. Sam

Good Day,

I hope this note finds you well.

It’s fall, and I must tell you, I am relieved. 

Many of you will remember I was born and raised on a rice farm in east Arkansas. My father and his extended family were share-cropper rice farmers for the Conner Company on a farm two miles east of Augusta, Arkansas. In my fiction I write about the little town of Gum Ridge, Arkansas. 

Gum Ridge was actually the name of the farm where I was raised. We were four miles from the Cache River to our east and three miles from the White River to our west. The ground water was so high that you could dig a hole two feet deep and, in an hour or so, it would begin to fill up with water. It was a perfect place to raise rice. 

The farm was one mile wide and two miles deep and consisted of about 2,300 acres. When I was born in 1946, only about 300 of the acres were cleared and farmable. Each winter, the men of the family cleared a 50-100 acre plot of land; so by the time I left home at age 17, there were only about 200 acres left to be cleared. 

In the winter, clearing new ground was hard and dangerous work and there was always a backlog of broken equipment needing repair. 

In the spring, rice farmers worked from dawn to dusk, and beyond if need be; there was always the hard task of preparing the land to plant and building the levees that held the water in place. 

Summertime in the White River Delta was hot, humid, and most of the time, it was still. It was perfect for raising rice; the domesticated water grass that was our lifeblood was built for this, but not so we humans. It seemed that there was never just the right amount of rain; most years there was either too much rain or not enough.

Then came the fall of the year. The fall was a wonderful time to be alive on a rice farm. 

In late August, the rice was “laid by.” The rice heads had filled with the white milky substance that would dry to become the grain. The fields were drained of water and soon the mammoth combines crawled over them, cutting the rice. My father was generally a happy man, but in the fall of the year he always seemed at his happiest. The fruits of his labor came to bear in that season. 

Nowadays, I am long since removed from the hard unpredictable life on the rice farm. But, each year as the temperature starts to break, as we have an occasional shower and the mornings begin cooling, I can feel a sense of relief that we have made it through another season.

Have a good journey,

Sam

 Dr. Sam Taggart is a retired doctor/writer/marathon runner who practiced in Benton for 45 years. He recently released For Every Family, A Family Doctor: a history of the modern Family Medicine Movement in Arkansas. His other books include Country Doctors of Arkansas, The Public’s Health, With a Heavy Heart and We All Hear Voices.