Fiery hot July signaled tomato-picking time in the Longenecker family in the 1950s.

Two generations of women in our family worked hard in the fields in torrid temperatures. When I look at a film clip that Aunt Ruthie took of Mom in the tomato rows, I see her body humped over, bending toward a tomato bush flush with fruit. When she faces the camera, her blue and white speckled sunbonnet materializes, headgear much fancier than her everyday prayer covering. Then down she bends again, laboring up and down the tomato rows.

Watch the 39-second video starring our helper Timmy Barnhart and Mother, who looks up and smiles near the end!

Working in our family’s acreage in Bainbridge, I was being groomed to be a hard worker too. In a field of 9.1 acres—1/2 of it field corn and the other ½ tomatoes—I joined my Mother Ruth and Aunt Ruthie planting, hoeing, and harvesting tomatoes from May through August for years.

Aunt Ruthie with a head scarf and me in pigtails hoeing tomato plants in the Bainbridge field, 1950s, I’m probably in the 3rd grade here.

If we had a bumper crop of tomatoes, we’d call in extra help. Timmy Barnhart, ”Barney”—a squat, jaunty farmer in denim overalls would meet us at the field and help with the harvest. That man surely knew how to work but cared too about my feelings. When he joined us, every so often he handed me a Reed’s butterscotch candy twisted into yellow cellophane that he knew a ten-year-old tomato picker like me would savor. Other times with his chunky arms, he pulled out the red licorice packets he had stuffed into his pockets to sweeten the labor. When I looked at a screen shot from Aunt Ruthie’s movies, straw-hatted Barney reminded me of one harnessed like “an ox to a heavy cart,” people who submerge / in the task, who go into the fields to harvest / and work in a row and pass the bags along” as poet Marge Piercy observes in “To Be of Use.”

Mornings were spent in back-breaking labor, but at noon came a bagged lunch under the maple trees, and finally—what I’d been waiting for all day—an ice cream treat late afternoon from Nagel’s Grocery Store, just a short walk down the alley and around the corner on Second Street in Bainbridge Nagel’s store had oiled, wooden floors just like school, and best of all, an oscillating fan breathing out puffs of air to cool us off. Smiley Anna Grace stood behind the counter. Barney, a widower, liked her and they chatted for a while, giving my back, neck, and arms sweet reprieve from the blazing sun, the fan breeze evaporating sweat from my body. Before we left, Barney ordered two pints of Breyers Neapolitan ice cream in a frosty, square box. I watched as Anna Grace cut each in half with a butcher knife. Then she put four flat wooden spoons into a paper bag with the cold treat. Before long, we were back in the field to share a cool late afternoon snack with Mom and Aunt Ruthie.  (Adapted from Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl)

In our family, ice cream came last—delayed gratification: Work before play.

Kandy McKensie “All Things Vintage” Facebook, Feb. 4, 2023

Tomato baskets loaded up on flat-bed truck at the end of the day . . . 

© Cliff Beaman

Melissa Kirsch, in an opinion piece titled “Future Perfect,” asks the question:

“Does taking care of our future selves have to mean sacrifice in the present?” In other words, “Do we deprive ourselves now to enjoy a future benefit? (The New York Times, February 21, 2026).

She cites the phenomenon of drivers increasingly backing their cars into parking spots.

Cars in the Parking Lot at our Neighborhood Publix Grocery Store

Of course, unless you find two empty spots end-to-end and pull through so you’re facing out, you’re going to back up coming or going. Apparently though, backing in makes it easier to get out. “Backers-inners, it seemed, preferred doing the harder maneuver first.” Kirsch continues, “The backer-inners are thinking about their future selves, performing the fussier parking job now” so that when they return to their cars, they can reap the benefits of getting on the road faster.

I had to think about this notion, not just with my driving habits, but in my everyday life.

• Do I open the mail the day it comes in rather than let it pile up on the counter, to avoid over-whelm later?

• Do I clean up the kitchen before going to bed, so I’ll wake up to a tidier house?

• Do I work on a potentially taxing writing project before snuggling into a cozy book or flipping on Netflix?

What do you think?