That One Time I Nearly Took My Brother’s Toe Off 🥔🦶

When I was a kid, our summers were spent going barefoot and tending taters. And by that, I mean Dad had a huge tater patch—and us kids were in charge of planting, weeding, and picking them up when it came time to dig. We sure had to work for most of our food back then.

The year we moved into our FHA house with barely any land, Dad had to find somewhere else to “do the taters.” A couple of our neighbors had land they weren’t using, and on different years after that, different neighbors let Dad plant taters in their fields.

I don’t know how he went about asking, but all I know is this—us older kids would grab our hoes and walk to whichever neighbor had our tater patch that year, and we’d weed ’em.

One particular summer, my brother (the one closest in age to me) and I went to weed our patch at this old man’s property up the road. He was a bit strange but friendly. Had a lot of dogs, too—all friendly as well—but that might be another story for another time. His property sat next to the cat lady’s house, just to paint the picture.

Anyway, my brother and I were hoeing across from each other, working the same row. I don’t know if we were trying to hurry or just messing around—more than likely a bit of both. I was hoeing away, mostly moving dirt, when out of nowhere… there was my brother’s big toe!

I’d just missed taking it clean off!

To be fair, it was covered in dirt, and I wasn’t paying a lick of attention to where his feet were. I’m pretty sure he hollered at me, and all I could think was—if I had taken off that toe, my daddy would’ve tanned my hide for sure.

Emergency averted, and we went on our merry way.
Pretty sure the next time we hoed taters, my brother stayed in a totally different row than me. 😅

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