Kickass and uncle Ralph

Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in noting this “harvest” time of year when threshing crews once dominated the landscape. Uncle Ralph was in charge of the neighborhood crew and at the generous noon dinner he had consumed everything down to the piece of pie on his plate when he was called away from the table to confer with somebody outside. In his absence the rest of the crew loaded Uncle Ralph’s plate with generous dinner items that buried the piece of pie. Upon his return, Uncle Ralph said nothing about his reloaded plate, but sat down and ate everything on it including the buried piece of pie, whereupon he looked up and said, “Please pass the pie.”

It is the stuff of threshing crew legend, and the keeper remembers Uncle Ralph saying much later, “I had a helluva gut ache but it was worth it!”