Seventy-five years ago, my beloved grandmother married into a wealthy (in name only, at that point) family with only her bridal money, wedding clothes and her wedding ring. Her father-in-law, a landowner, had gambled away the family fortune, and the clock was ticking on the call date from his last throw of the die. At the time of their wedding, he had less than three years to pay the price of the final debt or forfeit thousands of acres of unworked lands.  His children despaired and gave up the land as lost.

Armed with no more than an 8th-grade education and the instinctive determination to reclaim her new family’s property, she rolled up her sleeves and set about creating wealth from the lands. She directed my grandfather in his new duties, walking out the land each day until she was fully satisfied that she knew the terrain down to the last bit of soil, and made her plans.

She contracted out one-half of the land to farmers who could only afford to rent the use of the land, third world sharecropping, with specific terms – they were responsible for their own equipment and maintenance and in return for the use of the land, pay a set percentage of their yield.  Her personal cash was strictly budgeted for her own operations on the rest of the land and storage facilities.  Not only did she intend to make an income from the land, she meant to keep the entire operation a secret from the debt-holder hundreds of miles away.  Her family knew but expected little result. “Too much work, too little time,” they said. 

She didn’t just pay people to work the land, she worked it herself every single day.  Growing, processing and storing rice over the course of multiple growing seasons, she guarded against word getting out that she would have rice to sell, and sent Grandpa to keep up the ruse by asking for short extensions on the final loan due date whenever he paid an installment.

When the deadline loomed, she sold all the stored and newly harvested rice. 

On the final day, my grandpa’s eldest brother sat down with the banker to whom they owed the debt for the formal title transfer.  Instead, Great-Uncle unpacked a suitcase of cash.  The man was stunned.  After his departure, she turned around and handed the title and deed to her equally shocked father-in-law.

To his credit, he tried to make her take the title. As far as he was concerned, she had rightfully earned every penny that bought back the land, and he insisted she was the new owner.  And as was typical of her, she refused, agreeing only to take an appropriate fraction of the land if the rest was parceled out evenly among all his children.

Honor, Duty, Family, Birthright.

She lived her entire life by those watchwords.  She raised nine children, fostered dozens of relatives, stood firm when her family and neighbors were caught in the middle of the war, buried a son, supported a son-in-law imprisoned for 15 years after the war, buried her husband, and continued to farm well into her 80s.  The woman never blinked in the face of adversity; she served it hot tea and a freshly cooked meal. And a well deserved lecture, if need be.

Fun side note: when she was 82, she ambushed the wildcat who’d been raiding her outdoor kitchen in the middle of the night. She might have been 80 pounds soaking wet, but that never stopped discipline in her house. A whack across the nose, a firm tie-up in the corner of the kitchen so he’d keep until morning, and her poor housekeeper nearly had a heart attack when she inspected the “stray dog” that Grandma had captured. So her eyesight wasn’t great anymore at that age, but is it any wonder no one ever sassed her twice?

Sometimes I wonder what she would have been like in our modern world.