Home > Gwinnett > Rick Badie / My Opinion > Archives > 2006 > July > 22
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Something’s vaguely familiar about this shade-tree banter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I had a chat with Dad the other day.
It wasn’t really the late Frank Badie, though.
But the man sounded like him, talked like him and enjoyed the kinds of things he enjoyed. It was Winfred Dutton, 75, a lifelong Gwinnettian. He’s lived with the same woman in the same house in Lilburn for more than 50 years.
He’s got a serious green thumb. He has two nice-sized vegetable gardens where he grows tomatoes, okra, peas, butter beans and peppers. Patty, his wife of 56 years, cans or freezes some of the produce.
You may have eaten some his tomatoes. When they’re in season, he posts a “for sale” sign near Five Forks Trickum Road.
Last week I stopped, intrigued by the old-timer. He sat under a big, shady oak. He wore khakis, suspenders, brogue boots and a hat to shield the sun.
Just like Dad.
Despite the weather, his gardens aren’t a complete loss. He may have tomatoes through mid-August.
“The drought got it this time,” he said, taking a seat after watering some of the healthier tomato stalks.
“It got hot quick.”
That sounded like something my dad would say. He knew a thing or two about vegetable gardens, too. He tended to two plots until his death in February 2004. Some neighbors called him the “Turnip Man.” He either gave veggies away or sold them at a pittance.
Just like Dutton.
Dad tried to pass on his gardening skills. It didn’t stick. I balked. This was country living, and it didn’t fit into big-city dreams.
How ignorant.
Dutton laughed when he heard the story.
“When I was 18 or 19, my daddy didn’t know anything, either,” he told me. “But the older I got, the smarter he became. I was born in 1930. If you didn’t grow it, you didn’t eat it.”
He grew up in the area where Brookwood High sits. He left Gwinnett one time, and that was when he was drafted into the Army. It was during the tail end of the Korean War. He was stationed in Europe and spent two years in the military.
Upon his return home, he took a job with Atlanta’s Parks and Recreation Department. Then he did what men of his era always do. He stuck with it. Thirty-three years. He retired in 1984 with the title of maintenance supervisor.
The Duttons have lived on their two-acre spread for 51 years. Five Forks Trickum Road was a dirt road when they built their house there in 1954. They raised three daughters and watched a community sprout around them.
A nearby subdivision advertises houses that start at $400,000. The Duttons sit on prime real estate. Developers covet it. They send letters and occasionally pull in to buy a batch of home-grown tomatoes. The truth eventually seeps out.
“Before it’s over, they’ll talk about wanting to buy,” Dutton told me. “It would take a million dollars for me to set up somewhere else. You need money to relocate. You put 50 years in a place — that’s a long time.”
That sounds familiar, just like something my father would say.
