By Tacit Agreement

I feel like this expression presents regularly in books, but not so much in real life conversation.  Perhaps that’s due to the basic nature of the meaning.

tacit agreement:  silent agreement; understood without being openly expressed; implied

Can you call it an agreement if the other party hasn’t said that they agree?  My dad would probably say he had a tacit agreement with ‘the man’ on Dutton Road.  Actually, we don’t know it was a man, we never saw him, but somebody on Dutton Road used to put produce on a picnic table and my dad used to buy it.

Often on a Saturday when Dad was running errands, or sometimes when we were just out for a spin, he would stop at ‘the picnic table’ on Dutton Road.  There was no sign announcing Fresh Produce; no container for our payment.  As a kid this made me uncomfortable.

“How do you know its for sale?” I asked him. “There’s no sign.”

“Well, its out here by the side of the road,” he would shrug.  Whether the picnic table was by the side of the road, or actually in the person’s front yard, was debatable.  The house was pretty close to the road as country houses go.

Also questionable to me was the suspiciously small amount of produce on the table.  It certainly did not look like other farm stands in the area.  It was not unusual for there to be just two melons, half a dozen cucumbers and three or four tomatoes.  As we were people that had a garden and used our picnic table as a ‘resting place’ for our harvest before we took it in the house, I continued to be perplexed by Dad’s assuming practice.

Sometimes when we were out and about, I was caught unaware of my dad’s intent to swing by the table.  When he took a turn down Dutton, I would duck down in the backseat.  He would pull off to the side of the road and walk boldly to the picnic table.  With no sign to indicate the cost, as a businessman he determined his own fair price using a combination of the going rate and the condition of the offering.  He just left coins laying there on the picnic table, and when he left bills he would tuck them under a rock on the table that he believed was there for just such an occasion.  The musk melons were his favorite and he would make special trips during melon season. 

“What if you’re taking his dinner?”  I challenged one time.  “Then he wouldn’t keep putting it there,” my father reasoned.

Looking back, I realize I had my own tacit agreement with our next door neighbor, old Mr. Byerly.  (As an adult myself, I realize he wasn’t particularly old, maybe late sixties or early 70s.  At the time I thought we were describing him, but I’ve come to realize the descriptor must have been to differentiate him from his son, also Mr. Byerly, who was an educator and counselor at the school.  Its one of those things you assume as a child, but process differently as an adult.)

In any case, I thought of old Mr. Byerly as my good friend.  I don’t remember any specific interaction I had with him other than a greeting called across the lawn or an occasional friendly wave, but he did let me swing on the swing in his backyard.  I never asked him if I could, but like the man on Dutton Road, he never chased me away either.  He had a wonderfully large flat bench swing in his backyard.  It must have measured 30 x 48 inches. If it had once had a back, it was long gone by the time I discovered it lonely and unused by old Mr. Byerly. I would push it and then hop on, laying flat out on my back, swinging back and forth in the shady quiet of his backyard.

While I was over there in what would clearly be considered trespassing if he and I didn’t have a tacit agreement, I would pick up all the sticks in his backyard and stack them in a tidy pile next to his driveway.  The next day the little pile would be gone and I took this to mean that I was welcome to come back another time.

On Saturday mornings as I drink coffee and ponder what I might blog about, I sometimes send an inquiring text message to family members.  Today I texted…

Do you have a tacit agreement with anyone?  Do you hear the term tacit agreement anywhere besides in books?  Do we have a tacit agreement that if you answer a text question from me on a Saturday morning that its okay if you see something about it in my blog for the week?

Although I did receive one response, it didn’t answer my question.  Does that mean we have a tacit agreement?   Hmmm…