August 14, 2009
The Second Half
Handpicked grapes
BY DEACON JIM AND ANN CAVERA
Last Sunday one of our ushers, Joe, stood inside the church door and greeted people before Mass just as he has for the past twenty years. Joe doesn’t say much. Mostly he stands there smiling, shaking hands and opening the front door. To see him is to see an ordinary 70-year-old man doing something commonly done in churches everywhere on a Sunday morning.
Last Sunday morning one of us happened to ask about his grape crop this year. “Not so good,” he said and went on to explain that a fungus had attacked the grapes before they had ripened. He and a nephew had hand-picked half the crop, about 20 bushels, and thrown away the infected grapes. “I don’t use pesticides,” he explained. The rest of the crop, though small, had been saved and is ripening well.
Joe’s father was an Italian immigrant from Sicily. He planted this vineyard about 1925, even before Joe was born. Joe still faithfully tends the same vines his father planted, just as he has been doing since he was a boy. At Christmas we have been blessed with a bottle of wine from Joe’s vineyard. With no additives, the flavor of the fruit stands out, making Joe’s red wine the best we have ever tasted.
Joe never married but, as an Industrial Arts and Driver Education teacher for 40 years, he taught generations of students how to do things the right way. One mom said he was one of the best teachers her son ever had because he taught with “discipline and a sense of humor.” She said, “His students knew they could get away with some things, but not a lot.”
A few years ago when our parish needed a CCD teacher for a particularly unruly bunch of eighth graders, Joe quietly picked up the reins. Walking past his classroom on a Wednesday evening anyone can still see yet another group of eighth graders growing in faith with a teacher who understands what teens need and knows how to make a connection with them.
In his book, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” author Jerry Mander writes, “We evolve into the images we carry in our minds. We become what we see.” Our children are bombarded with an abundance of images from a culture that values any shortcut that saves time without much care for the methods used or the results. The end results are often something other than young adults with the values we have hoped to pass on to future generations.
Whether tending a vineyard of God’s grapes or unruly students, Joe takes the time to know each plant and teen placed in his care. He watches carefully for anything unhealthy that can cause destruction. Nothing false is used as a quick fix and no additives dilute the final product. Anything harmful is carefully removed on the spot by hand before it can destroy the entire crop. It takes an uncommon amount of time, commitment and patience to bring a crop to harvest this way. In the end, the results are pure, of the finest quality and sometimes spectacular compared to the common wine we have so often come to take for granted.
Deacon Jim and Ann Cavera are former residents of Evansville; their award-winning column is a regular feature of the Message. Contact them at www.catholicseniorspirit.com.