The one that comes to mind (among many) was when I was about 10 or 11. My dad grew up on a farm and there was a lot of farmer left in the man that became a doctor. We had gardens all over town. Besides the one in the backyard, all 3 of us kids had to sign up for 4H and get a plot every year. When all of the 4H plots had been allocated, Dad would take any "acreage" left over and we would plant, water and weed all summer. Anyway, this particular year we had a bumper crop of onions. I have no idea how many bushels, but I remember that we had many tables piled with onions in our two stall garage and more piled on the floor. Each day, all of us kids were given a task list that was required to be finished by the time our parents got home from work. I was tasked with "cutting the tops off all of the onions". (I put that in quotes because that phrase was a point of contention the rest of my life). So, a friend and I got the biggest kitchen knives we could find and hacked away at the onions, severing the tops and throwing them in the garbage. After a while the tears started to flow as the garage filled with onion vapor, and I am guessing that it probably took us a couple of hours to finish. Then, task completed, we went on with our day. I remember getting home that evening shortly after my Dad got home from work and it was obvious that he was really pissed. Apparently his version of the instructions were that the tops were supposed to be cut off at a sufficient length so that the onions could be hung in batches to dry and used as needed. Well, that wasn't the version I heard and I will go to my grave remembering what I was told. It mattered not, as now we had bushels and bushels of onions that had to be used immediately or they would rot. I cannot remember if I got a few swats during the pre-sentencing hearing following the discovery phase of a very short trial, but I do remember that I peeled onions the rest of that night and the following days and nights until they were all used up. We made pickled onions, onion rings, salsa and anything else there was that contained onions and could be canned or frozen until every one of the thousands of onions was used up. To this day I cannot stand anything that contains onions, though I will force myself to eat onions in order to be polite if someone else has cooked a dish or a meal.
