By Roger Barbee

Building Community One Water Meter at a Time

This week the man who maintains our lawn was trimming its edges as he always does before mowing. Nothing unusual about that except when I noticed him he was using his weed eater in an area just off the road and in the middle of our lawn. As if he were trimming around one of our beloved bushes, he carefully walked around the chosen spot to be certain that it was correctly trimmed. But there was nothing there—or so I thought. Seeing me he removed his ear protector, and I asked him what he was trimming. “Oh, it’s the water meter. They get so covered with grass that the town workers can’t find them and read them. I cleared it so the workers could do their job.”                         

Writing of plants reminds me of a corner in town that I frequently pass. It is dominated by a large, black walnut tree that shelters a house and its yard—both near a creek; the house’s grey stone foundation and tree date the house. During the fall, I am more aware of the tree’s presence and size because the street is covered with green husks of the tree’s fallen fruit. Passing that corner you will either step around the abundant husks or if driving hear a steady crunch as car tires crush them, leaving a dark brown mark on the asphalt.

The tree’s presence is an indicator of our area’s historical and pastoral setting nestled in the Shenandoah Valley with a rich agricultural presence. Because of our farming history, there are many walnut trees that remain still in many places and sometimes their presence clashes with modern sensibilities.

Some long-time residents tell me about their grandparents who planted walnut trees on their Valley land because the trees were a source for many needs. They provided nuts for food, dye for cloth, many parts of them, such as the bark, were sources for medicine, they could be tapped for a sap to make  honey, and gave shade for homes and buildings. They also were a source of a fine furniture wood and sheltered animals.  Yet unlike in those days, all of those products can be conveniently purchased today. No more of that intensive labor.  So what is left is for the walnut tree to be derided for its unsightly and even dangerous green hulls that litter current lands. Modern sensibility of ‘why bother when you can buy’ wins the day.

But I suggest that by choosing convenience we miss the opportunity of sharing and building community through a collective task. We miss the doing of a common good, whether the community is of family or neighborhood. We seem to have forgotten values that once served the Valley and all of us well.

While I have never gathered walnuts, I have picked blackberries. When a young boy our paternal grandmother, Alice, would tell us if we picked a quart or more of blackberries she would bake us a cobbler. So we greased our necks and wrists with hardened bacon grease to combat chiggers and looped a pail through our belts so we could use both hands to pick—a quart or more was a lot of berries for such small hands. Marching off to a selected “patch” of berries, we were a ragged army of grandchildren warned to watch for copperheads but determined to pick the berries required for a cobbler. Our slight hands navigated the drooping but prickly canes laden with lush berries as we picked and picked in the stifling August morning. We stomped canes so as to clear a path and scare away the copperheads. When we tired we would eat a few berries and eventually returned to her kitchen with our combined bounty of berries. After supper we shared the fruit of our combined labor-Maw-Maw Alice’s, ours, and the hurtful canes that drooped with delicious berries. We were a small community, but one that was building by sharing in a common cause. We enjoyed the berries, sugar, and dough; we later appreciated the lessons of virtue held in Maw-Maw’s baking dish.

The community of Greenville, Mississippi was also small in 1940. Separated from the river by a levee it had a population of about 15,000 and was the home of the Delta- Times Democrat, a newspaper published by Betty and Hodding Carter and financially supported by William Percy. They saw the paper as a building tool for community and used it for that purpose to improve Greenville.  At one point during their work to that end, Will Percy sent the following note to Hodding Carter when his National Guard Unit was placed on WW II active duty: “You can’t do anything on the grand scale. But when this [WW II] comes to an end, you can work again for your own people in your own town. It isn’t national leaders we need as much as men of good will in each of the little towns of America. So try to keep Greenville a decent place by being a correct citizen yourself. The total of all the Greenvilles will make the kind of country we want or don’t want.”

 Certainly when Percy wrote his note to Carter there were problems in Greenville, the America, and WW II was just beginning. Yet his note, I offer, contains good advice for Americans in 2025—be of good will to try and make “each of the little towns of America” decent places to live and in that way make our country a better place.

Which brings me back to our lawn-man and his meticulous trimming of grass around the water meter. He could have just cut close with the mower, but he wanted the town workers to clearly see the meter.

So go out and find a water meter like task, or a black walnut tree, or stand in your front yard to chat with a neighbor. Be a “correct citizen” and work, in your own way, “for your own people in your own town.”

Trim a water meter and build community.