Papaw the Paratrooper

When I was a little girl, maybe 8 years old, my grandfather (Papaw) decided that he wanted to grow more muscadine vines in the yard. He already had quite a few, and I remember lying under them in the summer, enjoying the cool shade and eating muscadines that grew on the underside of the vines. The expansion project was to be on a huge hill on the side of the yard, so we had to terrace the hill. It was very steep, probably about a 45 degree angle, and Papaw terraced it by hand. He was in his early 70s, I think. He used a shovel to cut flat terraces out of the hill, about 4 of them, 20 feet long. We were working there on the hill one day, digging, and he fell. I watched him roll down the hill and straight up onto his knees. I ran down the hill, terrified, shouting, "Papaw, are you okay?" He stood up, brushed off his pants, gave me a scathing look, and said, "I parachuted into the Pacific. I can roll down a hill." Then, properly chastened and never daring to think of him as feeble again, I followed him back up the hill and started work again.