Beech Tree News Network

Sometimes, when I’m channel surfing, I’ll land on one of those KET shows where people are sewing or wood working or gathering mushrooms or something else mother-earthy.  I watch as they make tidy stitches (their words, not mine) and precision cuts with just the right tools that are always in their proper place, not strewn about the floor or table.
    Even if it’s a “Victory Garden” edition, and the gardeners are growing cilantro and parsley in raised beds or tomatoes in cultivated rows or walking along a path through the woods to gather mushrooms, everything around them cooperates in the kind of harmony that conjures up images of blue birds singing and circling about, like Cinderella’s little friends.
    It is at these times I ask myself, “Who are these people?”  I don’t know these people or anybody remotely like them.  Granted, they are in front of the camera, so it would make sense that they would put the best foot forward; but still, wouldn’t the wear and tear of everyday life show somewhere—a twitch of the eye, a nick on the hand, manure on the boot?  But, no, there’s not so much as a Band-Aid on anybody.    
    Maybe it’s just the result of good film editing, but wouldn’t the stress of it all, even if it’s just being in front of the camera, make you raise your voice occasionally?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing these people, I want to be them.  Even as I’m writing this column, in a room with the door shut and the fan on for background noise, I can hear my daughter and granddaughter arguing over the Netflix remote from two rooms away.  Any inspiration that might strike in my house is always tempered with the chaos going on around me.
    Once, when Garey and I were in Pigeon Forge, I misread a sign.  The sign said Vacational Rentals.  I read it as Vocational Rentals.  Before my mind could make the necessary correction to the vowel, I was inspired to think along the lines of the world of opportunity that would be opened up to me if I could rent a vocation, even if for a short period of time.
    I would start with the vocation of a KET craft person then move from there to KET gardener.  I could make tidy stitches with the best of them on my state-of-the-art sewing machine.  My scissors would always be where they were supposed to be, no matter where I left them last; and there would be a director and film crew on hand to bring me coffee and help Garey find his work shoes and my granddaughter find her Queen Elsa doll, so as not to interrupt my work on the production.
    As a KET gardener, I would emerge from my potting shed carrying a gleaming metal pail with which to pick tomatoes that were arranged in neatly cultivated rows.  I would then head down a leaf-strewn path to pick mushrooms beneath a growth of trees with minimal underbrush.  Of course, there would be assistants to run interference back at the house.  No one would be yelling out the back door to ask me where the remote got off to, and one of the underlings would be baking cookies and surfing Netflix for the most recent episode of “Ever After High,” in order to keep my granddaughter happy.
    The vocational rental concept could catch on.  It could even be morphed into a program in which it was possible to trade vocations, you know, like in the TV show “Wife Swap.” The only problem being, I’m not sure anyone would want to swap vocations with me.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’d have to pay the full price for my vocational rental.