My dad, an uncommunicative self-disciplined farmer, was quite well-known in our hometown area for his skill in cultivating red-bean. Red-bean has been the most important produce in our township since the early 1960s; its annual production here takes over 95% throughout our native country, and above 80% of this harvest has always been graded as the best and exported to Japan; there, people favor various kinds of red-bean products such as dorayaki, sweetened natto, and so on. Red-bean is our pride; consequently, it is imaginable how adorable my dad, who had the best green thumb for red-bean cultivation, was in our township.
Even though my dad was so good at red-bean farming, I didn't learn a bit of this skill from him: I was too young to be considerate to assist him working at the farm field. Nevertheless, I did inherit some of his attitude toward working by squatting down beside and watching while he was maintaining his beloved 50-cc Suzuki motorcycle, which was the time I was most interested in. When maintaining the motorcycle, he would whistle Japanese military songs lightly and detach, wash, then re-assemble each single motor part scrupulously and accurately without saying a single word. Dad must have known each piece of red-bean he grew very well just as he knew his beloved motorcycle.
Even at present, several decades from then, dad’s whistle and his image of washing motorcycle parts still come to my mind from time to time, and somehow, I can also perceive his image and whistle floating at the faraway red-bean field, where I had never been working at, though. 2012/1/30
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