Retired Raleigh physician Dr. George C. Debnam grew up on a sharecropper's farm -- that's a farm that doesn't belong to you, but the owner lets you keep for yourself some of the food you grow in lieu of paying you.

Thus, it's not surprising to hear much of his conversation sprinkled with talk about planting and working the land.

For instance, when the longtime deacon at Christian Faith Missionary Baptist Church talks in his new book about a church garden, he talks about "planting peas, squash and turnips."

The peas -- actually, the "P's" -- are patience, promptness and perseverance. "You've got to 'squash' gossip and 'turn up' with a smile," he said, reading a passage from his latest book, "Good Clean Humor."

Debnam, 80, practiced medicine in Raleigh from 1955 until he retired seven years ago. As the title of his book suggests, humor is essential in his life. He credits it with helping him through a medical career during which he delivered more than 11,000 babies and performed 4,000 operations.

"Humor is important to everyone of every race and age," he said. "God gave you 72 muscles to frown with, but only 36 to smile with. It's easier to smile."

Debnam smiles a lot, often even when talking about the turbulent times he has lived through.

It was an incident on a farm that propelled the then-13-year-old Debnam into those times. "I was plowing the field with a mule, and the man who owned the farm brought me a ham sandwich and a Mason jar with water. He brought the mule a bucket of water and said, 'George, look at how that mule is sweating. Take him over there under that tree and let him rest a spell. You can go out there and finish pulling up those weeds.'

"That's when I said, 'I need another job.' I knew I had to get an education," he said.

He served in the U.S. Army in Korea during the Korean War and has traveled around the world. His life, though, he said, is "like that Dickens book 'A Tale of Two Cities.' ... If it didn't happen in Raleigh or Nashville, Tenn." -- where he attended Meharry Medical School -- "I might've missed it."

I asked about the changes he has seen since arriving in the Capital City as a 15-year-old country boy from Youngsville to attend Shaw University. He mentioned the downtown skyscrapers in the shadows of which the Debnam Clinic sits on Blount Street, and he talked about the highways that make it easier to travel across the state.

Did he ever, I asked, think he'd live in a Raleigh such as the one in which he now lives and two of his daughters practice medicine?

For one of the few times during our hourlong conversation, the loquacious doctor paused. "Not this," he said. "I didn't anticipate things being the way they are now."

That's when you understand that the biggest changes he has witnessed in more than a half-century have nothing to do with asphalt, mortar and glass.

"The integration of the schools, the integration of the workforce, the integration of living arrangements, you couldn't have seen this," he said.

At an age where he'd be excused for kicking back and chilling, Debnam is still plowing -- figuratively, that is.

After our interview, he rushed off to meet with a printer -- he has two more books coming out soon -- and to prepare for a workshop he's giving for deacons. I guess he'll help them plant peas, squash and turnips, also.