OUR STORY
The only lies I ever knew Francine to make came under the heading of white lies. She would fib
to save hurting someone, but I never heard her lie about anything important to save hurting herself.
I wish I could say the same, but that is not the case. I remember someone telling me they
would tell me the truth a hundred different ways before they would tell me a lie. I was never
that kind of liar.
As a small child I never lied that I remember. My first adventure with a lie occurred when
Mama, Daddy and I were living for a week or two at my grandmother’s. Daddy had been to
the store and came back with some bananas. My uncle Fred Chester saw daddy coming in with
the bananas and called me out on the porch. Fred was about eleven and I was three.
Here’s what you are going to do, he told me. Go in and ask for a banana, they will give you one,
crawl under the bed and pretend to eat it. Put it under your shirt and bring it out to me.
I went in and did what he said. As I lay under the bed pretending to eat the banana it suddenly
it occurred to me, I had the banana, why take it out to Fred. So I ate it right there. Then I finally
went out on the porch Fred demanded the banana and I told him they wouldn’t give me one.
When I was about twelve years old we were still living on the farm. I was taking agriculture at
school, it was a mandatory class. I was also a member of the Future Farmers of America and the
4-H club. We were assigned a home project which was to get either a baby pig or a calf and raise it.
There was a book where you entered it’s weight every week, how much the feed cost and other
information. Then when the animal was old enough you were to take it to a sale and sell it. Then
you figured out how much profit or loss you had. We didn’t really farm and had no farm animals.
I knew that there was no way I could buy a pig or ever buy feed. I know I should have told the
teacher the truth but I was much to ashamed to.
So I started filling out the book anyway. I entered my pigs weight and how much feed it ate
every week and showed Mr. James. Then I heard that the County Agent was going around
checking up on the progress of many of the animals. I was so afraid that I decided to kill my
pig off, say that it had died or was struck by lightning. But my pig was doing so well that I
couldn’t bear to lose him. So week by week I kept up the charade. Finally it was time to take
him to the sale, which I did. I wound up with a profit and passed the course.
JACK AND FRANCINE'S BIG LIES
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