Religion Rumination and Remembrance of the Hills & Hollows of Middle Tennessee

There are Cat People and there are Dog People

2011-12-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

There are Cat People and Dog People.
I never owned but one cat and that was for a rather short period of time. The brown eyed girl and I were living in an upstairs apartment on Grandview in Nashville, she working for less than $100.00 per week to support her husband, a college student and to supplement the family income, I was working on Friday and Saturday nights at the Opry and although marriage was supposed to give us oodles of time together, as often is the case, we had slightly miscalculated.
Since I was working late on Second Avenue every night (it was a warehouse district then) and working Friday and Saturday nights at the Ryman, she spent way too much time by herself. I decided what she needed was a pet. Being an inexperienced husband, I foolishly decided to forge ahead with the project without her knowledge or consent. I drove out to where Highway 100 and Highway 70 part ways in Bell Meade and picked out a cat at the Humane Society.
I brought home the cutest, most cuddly kitty you ever saw, bounded up the fire escape stairs, knocked at the door and when she answered I said, “Surprise” and set the cat down in the doorway. At that moment the cat went crazy and began to run wildly through the apartment, climbing curtains, bounding off furniture, running headlong into the footboard of the bed which was covered by a chenil bedspread and knocking itself nearly senseless. Finally, it disappeared under the bed and when I tried to retrieve it, exacted a literal “pound of flesh” for my efforts to liberate it to a good home.
In spite of my attempts to convince the brown eyed girl that better days were ahead, I found myself returning it to the animal shelter, where the cat that had cost me ten dollars to set free, now cost me ten dollars to return. Never owned another cat and never tried to make such momentous decisions without adult supervision again.
It is an important thing to know where your responsibility and authority begin and end and then to work within those boundaries. It is often the difficulty we run into in our relationship with the creator. We keep trying to make decisions and take responsibility that is not ours to take.

The Class of 62 had its dreams

2011-12-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

The Class of 62 had its Dreams.

The Statler Brothers had a hit back in 1973 called “The Class of 57 had It’s Dreams.” The theme of the song is in the Chorus where it goes:

“And the class of '57 had its dreams,
Oh, we all thought we'd change the world
with our great words and deeds.
Or maybe we just thought the world
would change to fit our needs,”

Well, I didn’t belong to the class of 57, but I did belong to SCHS’s Class of 62, a mere 5 years later and like the folks in the Statler Brothers song, we had our dreams. I doubt that any of us were ostentatious enough to believe we’d change the world, and we certainly did not believe the world would change to fit our needs – it was not the way we had been brought up – still we had our dreams.
Some of us went off to college and would not return to Carthage to live for many years, a few of us would never return. Most of us did not venture too far beyond Nashville, or Donaldson but a few, like me, made a career in far away places like New York, Detroit, Atlanta, or Birmingham. We found that like Hank Jr. says in his song, “A Country Boy Can Survive” even in the big city. The problem is, he not likely to feel perfectly at home with that much concrete around, unless it is poured into a hydro power dam, like Cordell Hull or Center Hill, where it serves some useful purpose providing good crappie fishing.
Like the class of 57, some were big in cattle, some were deep in debt, where some ended up, is anybody’s bet, Martha Ann married Sonny, and the brown eyed girl married me, and the class of all of us is just a part of history.
Charlotte worked for the phone company, Pat Married George Bush (well not that George Bush), one was an actuary, another the sheriff’s wife, Bill sold life Insurance, and several faced the knife.
Now as the class of 62 has passed 65 and hardly slowed down, we seem to all be gathering in again to the friendships made so long ago. Many like me have retired and moved within easy reach of Smith County and look forward to the first Tuesday of each month when we meet at the Walton Hotel and have lunch together and bask in the warmth and sunshine of friendships that have lasted over half a century and sometimes longer. I give the credit for keeping us together to Charlotte Beasley Holliman, Pat Kittrell Bush, and Crystal Silcox Hughes who always found time to put together times when we could get reacquainted all over again.
A week or so ago, Bill, former Co-Captain of the football team, stopped by my house to pick up a few books (a mercy purchase I suspect) and as we sat and talked, the years simply fell away. Something about his presence just made me feel younger and I am quite sure we could have talked for twice as long with no danger of running out of conversation.
It is sobering when we gather to realize that some of our friends who had seemed as teenagers to be invincible, under armor, and hardly even touched by the rules that apply to the rest of us, are now gone on ahead, leaving the rest of us to struggle with our own mortality. It is sobering when we gather to realize that those “old people” sitting around the table are us, our age, and just yesterday teenagers with our whole life ahead. It is sobering when we gather to realize that retirement and old age is the great equalizer, that when you have been retired 5 or 10 years, no one really cares whether you were a powerful executive or the “local garbage man” as one of our class likes to refer to himself (not quite and accurate picture, however).
I once was the “bagman” for a GM executive who was in charge of all car manufacturing in General Motors and as he neared the last day of work before he retired, he confided that, “I wish I had treated people better over the years.” I made up my mind then and there that when I retired I might have some regrets but that would not be one of them. I suppose it is the impending end of another year that makes me pensive about these things, but I never remember hearing a single retired executive say, “I really wish I had spent more time at the office and less time with my kids,” or, “I really wish I had be tougher on the people I worked with and gotten just one more promotion.”
No, I think when we come to the “short rows” as we from a farm background as want to say, it is how we treated people, how we served our God, and how we served our family that matters.
I hope this year is a good one for you, and that you see it as an opportunity to treat those that you interact with better than ever.
Happy New Year, Bob bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org

More Christmas in the Upper Cumberland

2011-12-03T19:43:00.000-08:00

More Christmas Memories
In 1950 we opened Community Grocery across from the Smith County Commission Sale Barn and moved into the house on the corner of Dogwood and Jefferson. It was my first Christmas as a “town boy.” Our habit was always to harvest our own Christmas tree by walking around the pastures and finding a nice cedar that had, through some craftiness, managed to avoid the bush hook and attained a height of six feet or so. At first Daddy would go with us to hunt for the perfect tree, but later it became a “bonding” activity for my sister, Donnieta, and me. We were seldom of one mind as to what would make a good Christmas tree. Her feeling was that the tree must be of a perfect height, perfectly round, and full on every side. My feeling was the tree should be of some height between my shoulder and as high as she could reach, somewhat green in color, and full on at least one side, the other side being the one we would turn to the wall anyway. Off we would go, up Jefferson, across the stylus at Clyde and Margret Whites house, and into the front pasture (Now occupied by streets and houses, but then Mr. Hubert Turner’s front pasture.) Donnieta would walk past what I considered a perfectly good tree and spy one in the distance saying, “Let’s go look at that one, I think it is just right.” When we tramped to the tree she had spied, it would look less and less like the perfect tree the closer we got. Upon arrival and close inspection, it would be growing with one side shaded and therefore sparse and bare or would be actually three trees growing together. They were beautiful in the pasture but of course would fall apart when cut for a Christmas tree. On and on this would go, until we arrived somewhere near the Cumberland River, which to my everlasting thankfulness we could not cross, therefore we were at the end of our hunt. Finally, she would be happy with a tree and we (I) would cut it down and together (I ) would drag it the two miles back to the house, thereby doing irreparable damage to the top which had looked so perfect. We would trim off the lower branches (which sometimes reached up into the body of the tree, thereby creating a bare spot that would have to be turned to the wall.) and place the now mortally injured tree into a large brown crock which could be filled with gravel and allowed for watering the severed tree. My mother’s greatest fear was that, “having that tree in the house is like having an open can of gasoline sitting around.” “It better be watered everyday,” she would warn “or it will be out on the burn pile in a week.” Once the tree was finally prepared outside, we tackled the job of bringing the tree into the living room, a pretty formidable job for a 8 year old and a 12 year old. The crock was heavy by nature and the needles of the old cedar would slide mercilessly down your back and stick in your hair. Finally, with a lot of fussing between us and no small amount of direction from my mother, we would manage to get the tree in position. Out of the attic came the ornaments and we would set about the decoration with a will to work. Decorating did not take long for we did not have many decorations. What we did have was “angle hair.” Now angle hair was as sinister a device of torture as ever devised by man. It was made of spun glass and could work its way into your hands, down your back, up your nose, in your hair and make you feel as if a thousand legions of fire ants had attacked. I suspect I has been outlawed by some government bureau by now.
Donnieta and I also were at odds concerning the proper method for applying “Icicles” to the tree. Her method was to carefully select each silver strand and then place it carefully on each single branch. I believed in the more “natural” approach and felt that if you simply stood several feet away and threw the icicles at random they would be divinely directed to the perfect and most natural spot. Considerable angst grew from this disagreement and it remains a subject we cannot discuss civilly to this day.
Now there is a very specific order in which things must be placed on the tree. First comes the electric lights (of the older and larger bulb version, of course), then the “roping” or garland, the round balls came next and finally any specialty ornaments we might possess. To get anything out of order was to risk the ire of your sister, which I did not try to avoid, rather I tried to provoke, being a healthy 8 year old.
The tree was finally finished off by putting red tissue paper around the crock and covering the floor under the tree with that same paper. All the gifts came under the Christmas tree and Santa always came on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Morning. I just figured that someone had to be first and Santa, in his wisdom, had chosen our house to be subject to early arrival. It was actually a great system, except that one was so excited about playing with whatever toys you might have received that you could seldom sleep at all Christmas Eve night.
Everyone in our house got everyone else a gift, however meager you funds available might have been. I generally tried to get Mama and Daddy something together and would spend endless hours at Mr. Glen Sanderson’s Ben Franklin store looking for just the right baking dish, oven mitts, cookie sheet, etc for their combined present. I found that Daddy was usually happy if Mama got something she liked. I usually got Donnieta something that mama suggested, such as a hair barrette. For Adie, (my great aunt who lived with us) I usually got a tin box of King Leo stick candy which I would graciously help her eat prior to next Christmas, being aware of the value of stock rotation.
I remember the time in about 1953 when I began to hear rumors at school concerning the nature of the Santa connection. I considered them carefully and decided to ask Daddy about the truth of the matter. He listened to my cautiously framed question then said, “Son, communists don’t believe in Santa Clause.” Having seen the Televised hearings featuring Senator Joseph McCarthy, I knew that being associated with anything communist was the lowest thing a person could do, so I decided to straighten up and fly right. I never, repeat never, mentioned it again.
The best thing about Christmas was my Uncle Denver who was unmarried and lived in Oak Ridge and “had a big job” by our family standards. He would come home at Christmas and always came bearing gifts, the like of which we were not likely to see from any other source. I will remember forever when he bought me an electric train – a Lionel Steam Locomotive – which was a personal favorite toy from then until I developed an interest in girls, which was fairly late in my teenage life. It was always a thrill to visit Uncle Denver because you had to go to the guard shack outside Oak Ridge, manned by a soldier, and give your name. Your relative then had to come to the guard shack and verify that you were, in fact, you, and that he did, in fact, want to see you. It always occurred to me that I had some relatives which I might be likely to say, “I don’t know this guy,” and just leave him hanging.
I guess the moral here is that like the Christmas trees, some things seem very attractive until you give them a closer inspection then you find they are filled with bare spots and hidden blemishes, and when you try to improve on them by yourself, you generally make them worse. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death. Proverbs 14:12
Have a Merry Christmas, Bob bob.chaffin@tpi.net

When Brer Rabbit was King

2011-10-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

When Brer Rabbit was king,
From the time I can first remember, Thanksgiving Day was about a single event for which we were most thankful. It was not that we had a turkey for dinner, for most often it was a fat hen roasted in the oven; after all we had plenty of hens in the chicken yard and turkeys required cash. It was not that we had a large home cooked meal that day for that was standard fare during the harvest season, particularly during tobacco cutting when we had hired hands and swapped work and more often than not 6 or 7 men and boys would crowd around Ma Ma Maberry’s Formica dinette table at lunch – good food was plentiful.
What it was, was the opening day of rabbit season. These days opening day of deer season is the big deal, but in the 50s there were few, if any, deer in the Upper Cumberland. I remember once seeing a doe that had been hit by a car on old Highway 70N near Crossville. It was a very memorable event and everyone passing pulled to the side of the road to observe the poor creature that had come to an early demise on contact with a busted Chevy Bel air grill. Likewise, there had been no wild turkey in Middle Tennessee for nearly a century at that time. They had gone the way of the Buffalo and Wild Parrots that once inhabited the land. Hunters had ravaged their numbers in a quest to feed their families and hunted them to extinction in these parts.
There were still a respectable bob white quail population, since the introduction of fescue and clean, mechanized, farming had not yet diminished their numbers to current levels. Birds however, were hunted mostly by the well to do who could afford to keep a good bird dog.
Rabbits!! That was what most of us were after and the season opened at noon on Thanksgiving Day. We had started in the rabbit dog business with a pair of pretty good 13 inch Beagle Hounds Daddy bought from Jake Wright down on Lock Seven Road. We had raised and sold or given away a good number of Beagle dogs that were good hunters and their stock was spread around the county. Lots of people from Nashville and other places miles from Carthage would come to hunt with us and get the benefit of seeing a good pair of Beagles work. It is a thing of beauty to watch on one hillside as the dogs carried Mr. Rabbit from one hillside to another, sounding as if they were moving at breakneck speed but actually moving slowly and carefully, noses to the ground, tails beating the now dried blackberry briars until the tips would be blood stained by night. Each dog had a distinct voice and you could tell who was hot and who was “lying” about knowing where the rabbit had gone. You could look across the holler and see the rabbit hopping casually along, often doubling back on his track to confuse his pursuers, most of the time looking as if he too were thoroughly enjoying the chase. Eventually the rabbit would circle and come right back past the place where he had been jumped, if that is, he was not pressed too hard by some young dog who hadn’t yet learned the rules.
After a big Thanksgiving Dinner for all of the men and boys, the women would shoo them out the door, probably thinking “goodbye and good riddance” as they prepared to “redd up” the dishes and spread up the leftovers, then do some serious catching up on local gossip. I can still remember my very first hunt carrying the little single shot Iver Johnson 410 Daddy had bought for me from Frank Paris. I had turned 12 years old in June, had been hunting with Daddy, acting as his dog and rabbit bearer, since I was 5 years old and this was the moment for which I had waited. It was a right of passage in the Upper Cumberland, having your own gun and being able to walk abreast with the other men with the dogs in the lead. Little boys walk behind their daddy and must be sure to not get out in front of the gun line lest they be sent to the house with the women in shame. Being in the gun line made a fuzzy faced little boy of twelve feel like a grown man, and you knew, if you didn’t “mess up”, things would be different from that day on. If you messed up, like my cousin Eddie who shot Aunt Willie Pearl’s rooster by mistake, then you could count on being judged, “not yet ready” and having to wait another season or two walking behind the men. I was very careful not to mess up.
No we didn’t have turkey for thanksgiving but we studied about the Pilgrims and Indians in grade school and made cutouts of turkeys and autumn leaves from orange and yellow construction paper, just the way kids do today; and once in a while I even remember a skit or two in assembly, where the Pilgrims and Indians sat down together for a joyous Thanksgiving meal. I even remember one Thanksgiving meal on Upper Ferry Road where we had a fat juicy groundhog surrounded by sweet potatoes. Boy it was good!
These days, the big thing is bringing down your first buck or getting your first gobbler and Brer Rabbit goes on his way pretty much without fear except for the coyotes, bob cats and other predators that also roam the woods and fields enjoying the bounty that comes from unfarmed and overgrown farmland today. But fifty years ago, the rabbit was king and few things could be better than one stewed, pulled and barbequed the way Mama could fix them and if there was occasionally a number five pellet left in the meat, well, it was just part of the deal and there was no extra charge.
Things change and some things are lost while others are gained, it is the balance of nature, I suppose. The thing I worry about today is the day when men and boys will no longer want to walk through the fields and across the hills on Thanksgiving Day, with their trusty gun in hand looking for the bounty provided for the Good Lord. Somehow, doing a hunt together on the Wii, sitting in front of the giant flat screen TV doesn’t have the same potential for father and son bonding, in my opinion. I also worry about the day when we will contend for the right to “Keep and Bear Arms” but the majority of the population will have no idea how the arms should be either kept or borne. This will be a sad day for America, in my opinion. Of course, these are just my opinions and “everyone is entitled to their own misguided opinion”, as my daddy would say. I wish each of you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day filled with all of the bounty of this land where, “God shed His grace on thee.” Bob, Bob.chaffin@tpi.net

My mother did not raise me that way.

2011-10-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'm not a political person, and although I once though I would like to be, no longer have a great deal of interest in elected office but a few days ago I saw yet another news spot concerning "Cyber bullying" in our schools. This time it involved a Gay Student who had taken his life. While I as a Christian do not condone homosexual acts, neither do I condone hate and meanness to any other human, whether in person or on the internet. You see it nearly every week, either in print or on the airwaves, and the story often ends in tragedy.
Is it any wonder that this kind of verbal abuse goes on when those who are supposed to be our leaders engage in it daily; when a congressman feels it is right to jump to his feet and yell “you lie” to the duly elected President of the United States; or when that same president feels justified in lecturing the highest court in the land in a public forum while they must sit silent like naughty school children. Where have the manners our mother taught us gone?
Daily we are barraged by political leaders on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC who feel that it is in their best interest to be verbally abusive to those who have valid policy disagreements with them.
Daily we are exposed to untruth, misrepresentation, and exaggeration by both sides of the aisle aimed at doing one thing; maintaining their positions of power and influence. On program after program we are inundated with shows which showcase political pundits who specialize in talking over one another and not allowing anyone with a differing view to finish a sentence, much less a thought; not to mention that the internet, which holds so much promise, has become a sewer of blatant lies and untruth which circulate endlessly year after year in minimally altered e mails. More amazingly, otherwise good people feel they can forward these missives of malice with no thought of checking their validity.
We see fear of those who are different from ourselves manifested, first in protest, then in heightened confrontation, and finally in violence reminiscent of the worst days of the Ku Klux Klan. We want freedom for everyone, as long at the "everyone" is just like us and of our particular religious, ethnic, and belief group. I must that remember that religious freedom denied to any man is religious freedom potentially denied to me.
Then there are the worse offenders of all, the radio talk show hosts who specialize in bullying and belittling any caller who would dare interject a view that is different from their own. Who find new and creative ways daily to twist the truth until it is unrecognizable, to torture the slightest innuendo into an accusation of guilt by the wildest association, knowing perfectly well that that is what they are doing; all in the name of “Freedom of Speech” is all for the purpose of ratings and riches. Political pundits daily refer to those who have a different paradigm than themselves as morons or idiots and proclaim in voices of distain and hatefulness their worthlessness as human beings.
So the next time we see some bullied and beleaguered teenage take their own life, because they have decided life is not worth living in view of the daily abuse they must endure from other students, why don’t we just say, “Well, it was their right, Freedom of Speech was a principle set up by our “Founding Fathers.” Founders, who by the way, were less then perfect having condoned slavery, deprived women of suffrage, and many of whom, given their way would have deprived those without land the right to vote.
I love this country and was honored to serve in her military, through which I believe I earned an inalienable right to speak freely. We need to take a deep breath, dial down the rhetoric, step back and look at the real motives of what we say or what we forward on e mails and provide an example for our young people of civility and respect for differing views. My father used to say, “Your rights end where the other fellow’s nose begins,” and our mothers didn’t raise us this way – no they did not – and that is what has really made this country great. Manners and civility are important. My mother said so!!

Everything Old is New Again (or howboutcha good buddy)

2011-09-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

Everything Old is New Again (or howboutcha good buddy)

When one hears the words “social media” today, the mind flashes to Facebook and Twitter but there has been “social media” many years prior to the arrival of these electronic daughters of the internet on the world stage. Who can forget Mr. Pentland’s cry of “United States Mail” when nearing a house in the cove on the wonderful T.V. Series Christy. Or are we not intrigued by the letters of Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett such as this one where he writes, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, -- and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write, --whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems”. But there was a social media not quite as noble in character or noted in prose as was the U.S. Mail or the letters to Elizabeth Barrett.
I first became acquainted with this media by hanging around Sanderson’s Funeral home which at that time also operated an ambulance service for Smith County. I remember yet KDB 2038 which was the Citizen’s Band call letters for Draper Jenkins and Sanderson’s. It happened to also be Daddy’s license plate number which he miraculously seemed to get every year, even though Draper would have paid handsomely to have those plates.
The CB Radio craze hit Carthage like a fire storm about 1960 since solid state technology had allowed the size and cost of personal CB Radios to fit most every car and pocketbook. Carmack Bradley introduced me to real CB fever by allowing me to go with him to the top of “rock crusher hill” where we would listen to “skip” (signal bounced off clouds) from far away and people like the manager of a Coca Cola bottling plant in Latin America, who must have been pushing 500 watts, even though the limit in the U. S. was 5 watts. People from Carthage who were traveling across far away peaks like Monteagle Mountain would make arrangements to contact Carmack at a designated time and he and I would drive up to rock crusher hill at the appointed time to get to hear the familiar voice from “far away.”
As a side story, Carmack had a habit of carrying large amounts of cash in his shirt pocket in the proverbial wad “big enough to gag a goat.” On one particular hot summer night Carmack and I were in his black 1961 Ford Taxi and had the windows rolled down so the “real artificial leather” seats would not burn us up. Carmack was always very cautious and pretty easily spooked, probably due to the large amount of cash he always had on him. Suddenly we heard a sound to the back of the car and we nearly jumped out of our seats. Carmack immediately started the car and we started down the steep gravel road when a real goat, probably an escaped refugee from the Stock Sale Barn, darted in front of us. Thinking back, I am sure the goat had made the sound we heard, but Carmack took us home anyway.
When I started to work for Clyde White, the Western Auto Company had decided to cash in on the CB Craze and were offering Truetone CB radios for sale. I spent one of my first checks from there on a CB radio then had to talk Daddy into letting me put one of those 108 inch “whip” antennas on his car. He was less than thrilled about the idea but soon the old 1961 white Chevrolet Bel Air was sporting an antenna that made us look like Barney Fife had pulled up out front.
Some people were known to “strap over” their CB Radio to gain more power from the set. Now, I’m not saying he did, and I’m not saying he didn’t, but I will note that Farmer Carter had a Johnson CB Radio that would ring like hitting an anvil with a ball pein hammer with each word he sent over the airways. I on the other hand, found my Truetone only moderately functional and it was less than a world beater when it came to “reaching out to touch someone.”
Interestingly enough, the conversation on CB Radio was much like the conversation on cell phones for the first decade or so; “I am here now, and I am going there then, and I will call you when I get there.” But like text messaging today, CB Radio had it’s own lingo. “Breaker, Breaker, Good Buddy” or “That’s a big Ten Four.” Soon, even housewives were asking each other, “what’s your twenty?”
It was after the 1973 oil shortage that CB came into it’s own as social media however, driven there by the truckers and other road warriors. With the highway speed limit reduced to 55 mph, otherwise mild mannered business men were known to announce that, “I’ve got the front door, good buddy,” while some over the road driver would announce that he had the rear and everyone else could “just get in the rocking chair.” Matronly ladies became lookouts for “smoky giving out green stamps,” and inquired “how aboutcha Dusty Duster, are you Ten Ten?”
We were living in New Baltimore, Michigan and I kept a CB in the car since I drove some 35 miles to work in downtown Detroit. My car was a Chevy Vega Hatchback so I just put the radio on the floor pan tunnel and ran a coaxial cable out the rear to one of those magnetic antenna’s that simply stuck up on the hatch lid. It turned out the brown eyed girl liked to drive the Vega since it was small and easily maneuvered and decided to take the car through the wash. She had picked the boys up from school and they were in the back seat. The car wash was one of those that pulled your car through on a rail; “put your car in neutral and take your foot off the brake.” Neither the wash attendant nor any of the three occupants remembered to take the CB antenna of the car and as it was pulled through the wash the antenna became caught in that big rotary brush whirling over the top of the car. The coax began to wind up on the rotary brush like an old level wind fishing reel and soon the CB Radio itself began to inch its way through the passenger compartment, over the seats and was headed out the hatch with two little boys, six and ten, hanging on for dear life. Finally rescue came when the coaxial cable pulled out of the back of the radio in a manner never intended by the designers. It was a little costly to repair, but the numerous good laughs we have had over the years have been worth every penny.
In 1987 we moved to Cleveland, Ohio and the GM plant there installed a phone in my car since I was the Comptroller and everyone wanted to get in touch with me to get authority to spend money – at least that was my theory. It had a battery only slightly smaller than the one on my Toro zero turn mower and must have weighed at least ten pounds. It was the latest thing. Eventually the “bag phone” came out that would allow you to wear the bag like an over-the-shoulder purse and take it with you to meetings. It probably only weighed 6 or 7 pounds – a big improvement. I really wanted a bag phone but was stuck with the old mower battery model since I was the safeguard of judicious spending and needed to maintain the moral high ground, I demurred when they offered to swap out the old phone for a new one. (In those days, mobile phones were in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars) Finally, when I had been issued an IROC Z Convertible as a company car, someone did me the favor of breaking through the convertible top and stealing the ten pounder. I had a hard time keeping a straight face when I turned in the loss report.
Now, I use my iPhone to check my Facebook, answer e mails, take and send photographs, look at pictures of my grandchildren, hear the sound of my children’s voices – in short nothing new that was not accomplished by a combination of the U.S. Mail and Ma Bell, but in a warp-speed time frame. Social Media new, nothing new about it, except the speed with which it takes place.
Some things just seem like they always were and always will be, and communications between one human being and another is one of those things. Man might survive but cannot thrive without communicating with others who are his own kind. Likewise man may survive but will not thrive without communicating with the one who made him, the one who placed within him that God Shaped Hole that longs to be filled and will seem empty until God fills it.
In Eccl. 1:9 the preacher declares, “That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.”
Then the preacher draws the book to an end by pleading, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” Eccl. 12: 13
So “comment” or “Like,” Tweet or Twitter, or even “how aboutcha good-buddy” or engage in whatever new comes down the pike, but don’t forget to fill the God Shaped Hole. bob.chaffin@tpi.net

Confessions of a River Rat

2011-09-02T10:44:00.001-07:00

Confessions of a River Rat

I remember distinctly the first time I was called a “River Rat” by anyone. The Carthage Owls had just tested themselves against the Cookeville Cavaliers on Overall Field in Cookeville. I was a band kid and as we marched out of the gate someone in the crowd who had been humiliated by their gridiron loss to a smaller town like Carthage began to chant, “River Rats, River Rats, River Rats.” The Carthage crowd was not to be outdone however and soon Owls fans began a competing chant of “Ridge Runners, Ridge Runners, Ridge Runners.” It was then that I learned that while as Julius Cesar said, “The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts.” the whole of the Upper Cumberland is divided into only two parts – Ridge Runners and River Rats.
Ridge Runners lived in places like Sparta, Cookeville, and Livingston, while River Rats lived in or around towns like Celina, Gainesboro, and Carthage. River Rats bore allegiance to towns that had been either steamboat towns like Gainesboro, Grandville, and Rome or had been places where the wilderness roads had crossed the Cumberland and its tributaries by ford or by ferry. Gainesboro, where I got my lackluster start, was a steamboat town while Carthage was both a major steamboat landing, a river ford just below the confluence of the Caney Fork, and boasted of both an Upper and Lower Ferry across the Cumberland.
There was no doubt about it, I was a River Rat. I was born in sight of the Roaring River seven miles east of Gainesboro, moving to Upper Ferry Road in Carthage in 1948, and living the greater part of my life within walking distance of one river or another.
I like rivers and have probably never lived further from one than I do right now but I am lucky enough to cross the Cumberland every day I go to my farm and to have a second home in Smith County where I can see the Cumberland from our sunroom.
I grew up with my daddy and other men snatching suckers when the big white fleshed fish rushed up river to “shoal” or spawn and one could only catch them with a treble hook which had a small white piece of cloth attached. The hook was placed six inches below a one ounce lead sinker and the line attached to the longest river cane pole that one could find. Crawling out on a limb that hung over a shoal deep hole and snagging the big fish with the three pronged hook, made visible by the piece of white cloth, was a sure way to produce the goods for a fish fry to which all the neighbors were invited. Crisply fried White Suckers, Corn Bread and plenty of it, sweet tea and coffee, (no milk – Mama said, “sweet milk will make you sick if you eat fish,”) and a couple of quart cans of home canned green beans and sour kraut along with sliced “home-fried” potatoes from down in the cellar made a meal fit for a king.
We also engaged in the sport of “frog gigging;” taking the big croakers from their cozy spots on the banks of the creeks and rivers with three prone gigs on the end of another long river cane or, when no one was looking, with a 22 hollow point to provide frog legs, which were considered a delicacy in many places, including in the kitchens of most River Rats.
If you were a River Rat, there was always something to do when the day’s farm work was done. Catching the big yellow “Cats” that cruised the bottom of the Cumberland looking for some morsel to suck up with their vacuum cleaner mouths, or running a “trot line” or series of “limb lines” tied to willow branches provide something to do in the cool of the night. Last month the brown eyed girl and I were on Guernsey Island in the English Channel and as I stood looking over the side of the dock where we had been tendered to from our ship, I stated with certainty to the group we were with, “Look at that bottle floating right down there, there is a fish on it.” Sure enough, in a few minutes the bottle streaked across the little bay like it had a motor attached. Fish on. Such are the learned skills of a River Rat.
Fishing the swollen creeks for the big black bluegills also provided a wonderful, if difficult to prepare, meal, not to mention an altogether pleasant pastime. Everyone up and down the river had a “johnboat” which had been hand made and pitched with tar as Noah had the ark and it was tied by a long tether to a tree far up the bank. The boat was not locked because some neighbor might need to borrow it to cross the river or check on a calf stranded on the other side but the chain or rope was long and the tree far up the bank to allow for the rise and fall of the river, for we knew with what fury the headwaters and backwaters could come down. I suspect I am not the only true River Rat who drove past the new Wall Mart on the highway 25 bypass in Carthage and shook their head saying, “someday the river will get in there.” Each of us still remembers a particularly high tide or “big river” when the water got to some spot to which no Ridge Runner could ever imagine it rising.
I suppose there are two kinds of people in the world also, and I don’t mean River Rats and Ridge Runners, or even men and women; I mean Believers and Non-believers. There are those of us who cannot imagine that this world with its intricacy of design and balance of ecology, atmosphere, and food chain could be by happenstance. Those of us who know in our heart of hearts that the level of design we witness demands a designer; that it is beyond comprehension that something appeared from nothing or that order came from disorder. Any of us who have ever had a teenager in our home knows with certainty that in our universe or in our home, “left alone, things tend to move from order to disorder.”
I am proud to be a River Rat and I am proud to be a believer and I recognize that while in many respects, “There but for the grace of God go I, (A Ridge Runner) being a Believer is a choice which the Eternal God has given each of to make. I pray that each of us will make the right choice and that you will have a blessed day. bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org

Confessions of a River Rat

2011-09-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

Telling Toxaphene from Kudzu

2011-08-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

Telling Toxaphene from Kudzu--------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was young we raised tobacco, along with most of the rest of the families in Smith County, so we all knew the work required to keep the tobacco plants free of insects. About the time I hit high school a miracle mixture made itself known. It was called Toxaphene and would kill all of the disgusting and damaging members of the insect community who liked to spread their picnic blankets in the tobacco patch. Pretty soon a new ailment became known in our county. It was commonly know as “tobacco poisoning” and it was not uncommon for a half dozen boys in our high school to suffer from it’s ill effects within any given school year. The boy in question would become extremely ill, always after working in the tobacco patch suckering or topping the gummy plants. Turns out it was not the tobacco itself but the substance which entered the skin through the tars clinging to one's body. By 1986 Toxaphene was banned in the United States, it having been proven to be extremely toxic substance which damaged lungs, kidneys, and the nervous system. It was actually a powerful carcinogen. In 2004 Toxaphene was banned in most of the civilized world.
In order to control erosion of certain slopes in the southeastern United States a plant by the name of Kudzu was introduced from Southern Japan. At first it was lauded as a miracle of erosion control. During the 1940s farmers were paid as much as 8 dollars per acre to plant fields of Kudzu to provide protection from erosion by the government.
Now it is not uncommon to pass an old homestead that has been left to nature for a few short years and find that the entire place, house, barn and all, have been consumed by Kudzu. Only the general outline of the buildings and a few bare spots even give any indication that a farm once existed there. I have heard stories of people who went on two week vacations only to find upon their return, their parked car or truck “eaten” by the mile a minute vine. Kudzu vines now consume 150,000 acres of American land each year and it is estimated that Kudzu now covers about 7 million acres of American Soil.
One of the things you learn early on the farm is to distinguish between weeds and garden plants and between Johnson Grass and corn. It is a necessary skill because we know that like Toxaphene, and Kudzu, that which seems at first to be of great value or has the appearance of value, may turn out to be a great treat.
In like manner, we need to endeavor to sharpen these skills of discernment in our daily and spiritual life because that which may initially seem to be good and provide a great blessing may turn out to be that which puts us at risk. A classic example is television, which came upon the American scene with such great promise, but has turned out to be an electronic version of Toxaphene and Kudzu, providing toxic influences and unwanted cultural change rather than meeting its promise of education and enlightenment.
My hope is that like we were taught on the farm to know a cocklebur from a pumpkin plant or sedge grass from silage, we can equip our children with a sense of discernment in order to tell that which bodes good from evil. With God's help we can accomplish the task, for if we fail there is a lot of Toxaphene and Kudzu in our future.
Have a blessed day, Bob

Don't Slam that Screen Door

2011-08-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

Don’t Slam that Screen Door

It is strange what brings memories to one’s mind. All of the senses are actively involved in pushing the play button on our memory DVR, even the ones we would least expect. For instance, one of the men who attends church at Maple Hill is a farmer, not one that employs dozens of immigrant workers, legal or not doesn’t matter, but one who does all the work the old fashioned way, by himself. Every Sunday when I stand at the door and shake hands with him, his rough calloused hands take me back to Pa Maberry. The touch of those hands, so accustomed to work and adapted to the task, feel just like Pa’s hands and it never fails to flash Pa’s face in my mind.
The slightly sour taste of buttermilk, even the cultured kind you can buy in the store, takes me back to the episode I had with Scarlet Fever when I was in “grade school.” My mother believed in the old adage, “Feed a cold and starve a fever.” While Duke University’s medical web site indicates there is probably some basis in fact since refraining from food intake can temporarily increase the immune response, and the ongoing intake of nutrients help sustain one through the longer lasting cycle of a cold virus, they warn not to overdo the application of this principle. My mother had likely not looked at the Duke University Web Site and took the principle seriously and, at least in my mind, did the starving thing to excess.
When the Scarlet Fever had broken, and I was finally ready to “sit up and take nourishment” she served up her standard getting over a sickness fare. It always consisted of two poached eggs stirred to a pale yellow mixture, soda crackers, and buttermilk. Again, although grounded in home remedy the food was scientifically sound. High in protein, pro biotics, nutrients, bicarbonate of soda, and at the same time the buttermilk was low fat. She may not have understood the medical science, but she knew what worked. To this day when buttermilk touches my tongue, it takes me back to that first meal when the fever had broken; a pleasurable sensation indeed.
On one of our trips to Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio which was a favorite of our family, we parked the travel trailer near a dairy farm and what our sons complained about was proverbially music to my olfactory system. The earthy smell of bovine pie took me back and transported me home, while to them it was simply an awful smell.
While most think of the sense of sight as provoking memories, to me it is hearing which is more likely to spark a vision of days gone by. Have you ever noticed that when you meet someone who looks vaguely familiar, it is when they open their mouth that memory kicks into overdrive. It seems to me that while faces suffer the effects of gravity, hair thins, and bodies succumb to the ravages of poor diet and lack of exercise, voices change little. It is often easier to identify a voice when not looking at a face and body that clearly do not belong to anyone you ever have known, or so you think.
I have said all of this to note that when we built our current house we installed screen doors. Not aluminum ones with pneumatic closing devices which work in theory but seldom in fact, but old fashioned white screen doors with gingerbread scrolls in each corner and push bars with spindles through the center section, which my grandchildren never seem the right height to hit. Invariably the push on the screens at top or bottom, depending on their age and accuracy of aim, and the screen itself pooches out further and further year after year. They serve a very useful purpose of letting fresh air that has not been run through a compressor into our house and the brown eyed girl loves them for that purpose. She would keep the doors open all the time if she were able which causes us to have ongoing good natured conversation about our economic inability to air condition or heat the neighborhood. . The unexpected purpose they serve for me however, is as a memory transporter taking me back to the days before regular people had air conditioning and businesses that had it proudly displayed signs saying, “Come On In, It’s Cool Inside.” Screen doors were not only the central element of fly control, they were an ongoing source of conversation between you and your parents, a catalyst for communication, if you will. “I’m going out.” “Where are you going?” “Nowhere” “What are you going to do?” “Nothing,” “Well, DON’T SLAM THAT---….Whap….---screen door.” Or an alternate conversation might go like this: Me, leaning and holding open the screen door: “Mama, can I go down to Lindy’s house?” “Have you got your homework done?” “Most of it.” “What do you mean, most of it?.” “Well, I was supposed to do some stuff for biology, but I forgot my book.” “I guess you can go, but shut that screen door, you’re letting the flies in, and don’t…---WHAP---…slam the door. By the time she had finished, “I guess” I was on my bicycle and passing the Cheese Plant leaving the screen door in free flight.
The screen door also provided a second use for the cotton that was stuffed in a new bottle of Bayer Aspirin. When a hole came in the screen, as it invariably did, you could stuff a little ball of that cotton in the hole and keep out even the most determined of flies. Of course, in those days we threw nothing away and so it was very satisfying to find a use for these cotton balls. You could always save them under the pretense of needing spares on hand when a new hole formed.
Most homes no longer have screen doors, at least not the type I am referring to because we seldom have the doors open. Instead we allow our children to grow up in an environment so devoid of the natural pollens in the air that we compensate by weekly trips to the allergist. A low dose of things often provide an immunity reaction that keeps us from getting the real thing. That is the way small pox, typhoid, and other vaccines work. A low dose now, often of a killed virus, provokes an immune system reaction, and creates an immunity when the real thing happens.
Sometimes I think that may be the case with those of us “raised in the church.” We get a low dose of Christianity early that immunizes us from catching the all consuming passion of those who have not been so immunized and catch the real thing later on. I’m not suggesting you withhold exposure to “pure religion” from your children, only that you don’t expose them to a low dose of “killed virus”. Make sure what they are exposed to is the real thing. Just thinking.

Have a blessed day, Bob bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.net .

Advice Concerning a Small Investment

2011-06-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

It didn’t seem like much of an investment when I made it in “The Land of The Morning Calm” back in September of 1968. An infant achieving 100 days of age in Korean culture was considered the attainment of one year of age. Infant mortality had historically been high there and on a child’s first birthday celebration (at 100 days) it was customary for the friends and relatives of the parents to bring a gold ring as a celebratory gift. Gold was at a fixed price of around 35 dollars per ounce in the United States but could be bought for around $17.00 per ounce in Korea, if I remember correctly. So as my time in Korea drew to a close, I purchased a small pure gold ring, placed it on my pinky finger, and soon afterward boarded the big red tail plane which would carry me home to the brown eyed girl. For a little over four decades that ring has laid in a safety deposit box with my mind occasionally calculating the return on investment. Perhaps one day I will pull it out and sell it to one of those fellows who twirl signs on the street corner, but maybe it will lay there for several more years before one of my boys says to the other, “I wonder where Dad got this.” It has turned out to be one of those small investments which proved to be of great value.
But the fact is, other small investments exceed the return of even the gold ring.
When I was small, our house had only two bedrooms downstairs and my sister and Aunt Ada slept in one of the bedrooms and my mom and dad slept in the big iron bed in the other bedroom. There were two bedrooms upstairs but neither had heat nor air conditioning and thus were not suitable for a small boy to occupy. So for way beyond when I should have been in my own room, I slept on a roll away bed in my parent’s room. It was one of those kind that had to be folded up in a U shape each morning and let out each night. For a number of my early years, even after the “den” had been converted into a bedroom for me, my mother made a small investment each night. She would call, “Buddy, are you ready?” which was really not a question at all but a declaration that “it is time.” On a few occasions I might have begged for a few minutes delay based on some book I was reading or later some T.V. program I was watching but for the most part, I was ready when she was. For the next 15 – 20 minutes we lay across my parent’s bed and read from the bible. A chapter each night. I don’t know exactly how long that continued, but it was several years and we read the bible through a few times in that period. Sometimes one chapter, sometime more if the chapters were small. We even read all the who-begot-who chapters, though I hardly understood the need or necessity, nor why a smart guy like God chose to include those in the book at all.
It seemed like a pretty small investment on her part then (I now realize that it was a rather large investment which demanded considerable commitment on the part of a working mother who toiled in a boiling hot garment factory all day, and cooked, cleaned, and canned garden fare at night – not to mention making the sewing machine hum to late hours.)
I am not totally sure how she would view the return on her investment, for I know I disappointed her numerous times, but from my viewpoint the return was large – huge – gigantic. My life to a great extent was shaped by those fifteen minutes each night, and my love for and opinion of her was molded by the unselfishness of that time.
I am pleased to say, the brown eyed girl invested the same kind of time in our own boys and in the same kind of way. I know that their love for and admiration of their mom in large comes from those types of investments which she also so unselfishly made. Thankfully, the return in terms of our sons’ spiritual, family, and business life is clear and unarguable.
For all of those years that I was a part of the General Motor’s Financial Staff, I was prohibited from giving advice to anyone concerning investments, but now I think it would be ok to give a little free advice. While I can’t necessarily recommend the purchase of gold as still having the potential of the kind of investment I experienced, since the climb in value may have peaked, I can certainly recommend the investment in time made by my mother and my wife and other Godly women I have been privileged to know. And at this time when a good investment in Mutual Funds, Stocks, or Certificates of Deposits is nearly impossible, and even Real Estate is no longer the sure thing that it has been for most of the post war decades, I can recommend an investment of fifteen minutes in bible reading as one that will pay huge returns – both for you and your children. Have a blessed day, Bob bob.chaffin@tpi.net

An Immodest Proposal

2011-05-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

I think the problem with society today is clothes dryers. See that just goes to prove you never know what small thing is going to have a permanent impact on society and slip up on you when you least expect it. While many people deal with the evils of drugs, alcohol, and loose morals, I believe the real and root cause of many of societies ills today is the automatic clothes dryer.
When I was a boy, no one had a clothes dryers; gas or electric. What we had was a Maytag with big old rollers on the top that would squeeze the water out of your sheets and underwear, and the life out of your hand if you were not careful. When the water was squeezed out the clothes were dropped into a clean #2 washtub and eventually carried down into the back yard and hung on the clothes lines that stretched all along the back of our house. Now we lived on a corner and our back yard was clearly visible as one drove up Jefferson Avenue. So, for anyone driving by to see, there they hung in all of their glory, the whole family’s underwear; flapping in the breeze, fluttering in the wind. If there were holes, there they hung. If there were rips, they were exposed. If there were – well you get the idea. We were a family that had literally nothing to hide.
I remember someone giving the advice early, when I began doing public speaking, to just imagine the whole audience in their underwear and it would be a great equalizer. That speaker’s trick didn’t work for me; I found it to distracting and rather disturbing, but I suppose the idea was, it is hard to be high and mighty or haughty and judgmental when your underwear is showing.
Now I know it is not unusual for certain people to appear on national T.V. in their underwear for commercials and not a few entertainers appear in little more than their underwear on a regular basis, but that really doesn’t count. Also, it has not escaped my attention that more than a few teenage boys like to wear their pants at half mast and let the tops of their highly colored boxers show, which incidentally is not something I want to see. None of these troublesome appearances of underwear as outerwear are however of the same impact as your day-to-day whitey-tighties hanging on the line fluttering in the slightest breath of air.
I is hard to be pretentious, uppity, or aggressive with people you know have just driven by and viewed you laundry with all of its, spots, stains and rips there open for inspection. There is just an openness, an honesty about the whole process of hanging out the wash that makes the neighborhood more of a community than we have today.
I’m pretty sure that in the neighborhood I live in today, if we even tried to erect a clothesline and hang out the wash, we would have irate neighbors, clutching copies of the neighborhood covenants, demanding we remove the offending laundry forthwith. Now that is just wrong.
Even in our churches we find ourselves Sunday after Sunday dressed in our Sunday suit, not the one made of polyester but the one made of sanctimonious, pious, appearances; afraid to let what is underneath show for fear our fellow church goers will be repelled by the truth of who we are and likewise we hope to never catch a glimpse beyond the surface of their own, all to human, lives. We see through a glass darkly, but there is one who see us as we are, face-to-face.
So my proposal is, if the government wants to do something to really promote world peace and do away with cyber bullying, hate crimes, and bigotry, they simply pass a law immediately banning clothes dryers and ordering the erecting of clothes lines in our yards. But I’m not holding my breath until it happens. Unless of course, they can find some way to exempt themselves from the directive. I leave you with the words of that country philosopher, Jerry Clower, “Be Yourself.”
Have a blessed day, Bob

And the Wall Fell Down

2011-05-16T15:50:00.001-07:00

The day the wall fell down.

I remember the big tornado of 1952 when the Chevrolet Garage lost the wall between it and Hugh Dixon’s International Harvester dealership. It was a Friday according to the calendar so I know not for what reason Donnieta and I were at Ma Ma and Pa Maberry’s house. It must have been that school was out or perhaps we were instructed to go there for safety since tornados had swept across the southeastern states causing deaths in several states, particularly Arkansas. What ever the reason that is were we were on March 21, 1952 and there was never a living soul more afraid of storms than Ma Ma. When the sky began to darken in the direction of town and lightening started to crackle she began looking for somewhere to stuff her 8 year old grandson and 12 year old granddaughter. While she was suggesting, with a touch of hysteria in her voice, that Donnieta and I get under the bed for safety, the two of us were looking out the windows trying to avoid missing any of the action. As we looked at the trees bending and cracking before the strong straight line winds that preceded the tornado, a sudden blinding flash of lighten immediately accompanied by a deafening boom of thunder, nearly knocked us over backward. We were struck as blind as Saul on the Damascus Road by the brilliance of the lightening. When our eyes cleared enough to gain sight, steam and smoke were rising from an aged apple tree between the house and the 50 or so feet to the upright silo. The tree was split from top to bottom by the lightening strike and every fuse in the house had been burned out by the surge of electricity Mother Nature had sent our way. The actual tornado hit the Chevrolet Dealership knocking out its south most wall and piling up the bricks and lumber like a wrecking ball had been used on the building. I am told that Mr. Roscoe Maggart was standing near the plate glass showroom window and a large shard of glass split his coat down the back but caused him no physical harm.
The tornado is said to have “come over the bluff” and touched down on the dealership destroying the wall in a heartbeat. It apparent continued in a line that would have included the elementary school but apparently had lifted and was not touching ground at the time.
The tornado touched down again on the turner farm where Ma Ma and Pa lived striking our tractor shed, destroying one side and leaving the others in tact. Pieces of galvanized tin roof were removed from the barn and were recovered a mile or so away near the Cumberland River.
Ma Ma never got Donnieta and I under that bed on March 21st of 1952, but she never forgot the incident and Pa, who had been in the barn during the destruction, soon built a concrete block storm cellar which was half buried in the ground and the exposed portion was covered with dirt on three sides and the fourth side sealed by a heavy door. From that day on, approaching storms meant going into the storm cellar which soon became overrun by spiders and creepy crawlers of all shape and description. I considered spending 45 minutes in the storm cellar much more of a danger, based on the creatures inside, than risking being blown away in the storm. In those days however, little boys did not get a vote and the storm cellar is where I went.
Today, Lisa Patton would be telling us that the tornado is expected to drop over the bluff at 5:17 and everyone could run for cover. According to the records I looked at, this day was the third worst day for weather deaths on record with tornados in six or seven southern states and a blizzard striking the Midwest. We would all go to our safe place and expect to escape the wrath of one of the most destructive forces in nature, but as we learned, even with the marvels of computer modeling, Doppler radar, and minute by minute broadcasting, nothing can totally protect us from harm in this world.
I guess the message is that this world truly is not our home and try as we might with high technology and mental knowhow, we cannot shape it into a heaven. With all that being true, we would be smart to prepare our lives as sojourners in the land who are “just a passing through” with an eye to a beautiful place hidden “above the bright blue” or perhaps hidden above a gray and stormy sky.

The Singer Blackhead and Toting Your own Satchel

2011-03-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

The Singer Blackhead and Toting Your own Satchel

When I was growing up, I often slept in what was intended to be the “den” of our house. Family rooms had not yet come into vogue but everyone who was building a new house or converting an old one wanted a den. Ours was on the end of the house that was nearest “The Stock Barn” in Carthage and on nights following a feeder calf sale, calves who were spending their first night away from mama were bawling late into the night as “tractor trailer trucks” were backed into the loading chutes. Drivers and handlers were poking, prodding, and hot sticking the frightened calves to force them into the stock trailers for their trip to the feedlots of the mid west and it sounded as if a thousand banshees had formed a band outside my window.
Because my room was the “den” it contained an “antique” library table and the singer treadle sewing machine. Eventually Mama bought an electric machine but the jury remained out for years whether it was actually any better than the old treadle type Singer blackhead machine.
When the brown eyed girl and I had been married four or five years, she bought an electric singer blackhead which was an exact replica of the treadle model but electrified to eliminate pumping the treadle. It was smooth, efficient, fit into a carrying case, took up little room, had been inexpensive to purchase and in short was perfect. So, we of course, wanted something better. On the first Christmas following my return from active duty in Korea, I took one of my paychecks from GM and purchased a new, automated, updated Singer in a cabinet. It was a hunk of junk. The gears were now made in some foreign country whose name I likely could not pronounce and the whole thing was constantly out of kilter causing no end of frustration to the user.
Now any man who has a wife that is a seamstress knows that if the seamstress ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, so after suffering a decade of the tensions of tension knobs that didn’t work correctly, stitches that were the wrong length, bobbins that wouldn’t insert properly, etc. etc. etc. I finally wised up and said, “Darling, I may have made a mistake purchasing this Singer, perhaps we should just buy you a new machine.” Now admitting he has made a mistake at all is a major step for any man, but admitting he has made a mistake when it is going to cost him big bucks is huge, doing damage to the pocketbook and the ego with a single blow. Nevertheless, the seamstress wasn’t happy…
This time we ditched the cabinet and purchased a portable White-Westinghouse with zigzag stitching built in. I was sure the level of domestic tranquility was about to turn around, but I didn’t count on the degradation of sewing machines in the United States which seemed on an ever steepening slope headed for oblivion. While the White Westinghouse was better, it constantly needed adjustment, which it seemed none other than a factory trained technicians could perform competently. If it was dirty, it had to go in for cleaning, if it needed a tune up, it had to go in for help.
We have finally arrived at the point that the brown eyed girl has a sewing area complete with especially built tables, drawers, and cabinets. She has a Italian sewing machine which cost only slightly less than our first house and I have to say, it seems to work without a flaw. But then, it is the BMW of sewing machines and for the price, a factory representative ought to drop by monthly just to make sure you are happy.
A few years ago, my father-in-law gave the brown eyed girl her mother’s old 1948 model Singer blackhead machine complete with attachments. Her mother, who kept roomers in their large home, had never been one to sew a great deal and generally made a few simple things but had mostly used the blackhead for mending (I will explain mending in another article). When we got it home, my wife asked if I could take a shot at cleaning up and tuning the machine and suffering from a moment of temporary insanity, I said, “Yes.”
“Well,” I though, “I wonder if there are any instructions in this thing.” When I pulled up the lid to the stool which matched the machine cabinet, I found a booklet, “Care, Cleaning and Tuning your Singer Sewing Machine.” Inside the booklet were pictures showing how to do every step and where lubrication was to go and what type. “Ah-ha” I thought, “I will never be able to find the proper oil or gear lubricant.” The booklet said, "tucked under this panel in this drawer you will find a tube of gear lube which looks like this – picture – and in that location will be a can of the proper oil along with a screwdriver and brush.” There they all were, in exactly the place they were supposed to be. I about 6 hours of carefully following the diagrams, pictures and written instructions, I plugged in the Singer blackhead and it turned over and purred like a kitten.
Several differences in assumptions by the designers and manufacturers in 1948 became apparent. First, it was assumed that the owner/operator would be the person providing service and repair and that such person, being of normal intelligence, could follow detailed instructions, provided they were complete and written by someone who actually speaks English. Second, it was assumed that such a major investment would be properly maintained and cared for by the owner/operator and that it would be a long term investment. Therefore, the gears were made of metal and the parts carefully and almost artistically machined. Third, it was assumed that the machine would get heavy and constant use, since most households still had women who could and would make many of the articles of clothing used in the family. Therefore the reliability and quality build into the machine was easy to detect when looking at the manufacturing and product detail. In short, the brown eyed girl, who made many of the clothes she and our children wore, had applied 1948 usage to sewing machines designed for lighter usage, shorter machine life spans, and assuming the owner/operator would never attempt to clean or repair the machine themselves, after all, who do you know who can or will repair their own automobile today?
Assumptions change and I think I detect some of the same changes throughout our society. How many people do you know who mow their own lawn, spread their own mulch, or even attempt to repair their own appliances? We allow someone else to plan our retirement, fertilize our lawn, teach our toddlers, wash our dog, detail our car, and in some cases do our shopping for us. I suspect that attitude has also slipped silently into religion with people demanding more and more services from the church they attend. A youth minister to encourage/entertain our teenagers, children’s minister to teach our children, a preacher to do our visiting and bible study, and on and on it goes. I fear however, that if we do not understand that these paid staff members should be tasked to “prepare the saints for ministry,” we will find that God is less than pleased when we try to hire a substitute to accomplish the good work we were created in Christ Jesus to do. I am not sure God’s Army will accept mercenary substitutes. As Jerry Clower would have said, “Sometimes, you just have to tote your own satchel.”
Have a blessed day as you ponder these points. Bob

A life sketch by James Monroe Chaffin, youngest son of Elizabeth and Abner Chaffin

2011-02-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

2. Louisa “Liza” Chaffin Loftis was born in December of 1841 and married Labin Jasper Loftis. Thus enters the Loftis/Chaffin Cousins Connection as Labin was a brother to Sarah Elizabeth who had married Francis Marion and migrated to Moline, Kansas. Labin Jasper Loftis grew up in Jackson County on Morrison’s Creek, a tributary to Roaring River located some four miles or so upstream from the confluence of the Roaring River into the Cumberland River. In 1874 Labin and Louisa headed west toward California. When the wagons were checked for durability in Joplin Missouri, Labin was turned away as his wagon was not properly equipped for the balance of the journey. They took a house and stayed in Missouri for about a year, probably visiting with a number of the Chaffin and Loftis families in the “west” already. It was during this time that Joshua Lawson Chaffin, Louisa’s younger brother, died at Louisa’s home. He had fallen ill while further west in Iowa and had stopped there while trying to return home to Abner and Elizabeth in Tennessee.
Labin and Louisa were unhappy in Missouri, as had been Louisa’s parents, and subsequently returned to Tennessee in early 1876 with 15 cents to their name and several sick children. When their 8th child, a baby girl, was born in May of that year they decided to name her “Tennessee May” in honor of their safe return to Middle Tennessee. Tennessee May is undoubtedly the baby referred to in the following letter as growing and being fat. Unfortunately, little Tennessee May died in infancy and is buried in the Gallatin Cemetery.
The following letters are in the possession of Geraldine Chaffin Collins who is a descendent of James Monroe Chaffin, Abner and Elizabeth’s youngest son. They include a Letter from Labin (or later Laborn) Jasper Loftis and Louisa Chaffin Loftis to Mrs. Elizabeth Chaffin; written by Labin to his mother-in-law
From L. J. Loftis & liza Loftis
To Mrs. Elizabeth Chaffin
this July the 23 1876

Der mother I seate my self to let you no that we are all on foot
But we are not all well. I have ben sick a bout 2 weeks. I have got about well I think
Louisa hade a harde chil yesterday. She feels tolable well today. My crop looks well but is needing rain myty bad. The Negros is steeling my corn, beans and potatoes & steel my wood out of the yard. I have fell out with town. I am going to the country next year. A man can’t raze nothing here for the Negros. You said liza mite come up & help yew dry apples. Send her word when is the best time to come & I will bring he up. Our baby is pretty & grows fast. I have been trying to rent me a farm. They are hard to get with a house on them. If I can’t rent here I would rent up there if I could get a farm. John if you no of a place to rent send me word

Labin was probably writing because, as he notes, Louisa is ill. Elizabeth Chaffin was 57 years of age at this writing. In 1880 Labin went to Texas to work but Lousia stayed home declaring that she had “done about all the traveling she intended to do.”
Eventually Labin and Lousia ended up on Charlotte Avenue and 1st Street in Nashville. (Although he expresses his love and desire for the country it was the city that offered him work; since he followed the finish carpentry trade.) There Labin worked for the L & N Railroad, building wooden passenger cars, a primary means of transportation at that time. (Picture page 192 of the Loftis Manuscript)
As to Louisa, her daughter later was to write, “Louisa Chaffin Loftis was always a busy woman. She never sat down with idle hands. She made it a habit to try to piece a quilt piece each night after supper through the winter, then in the summer she would make those blocks into quilts thereby always having plenty of cover for her family and some to spare. If there was sickness in the neighborhood she was ready and helped in any way she could. She was a really good nurse and sometimes a doctor. Once a family who had just moved into the neighborhood had a child to die unexpectedly and an Elder from the church came to see her. Lousia was at the wash tub and when he told her she rolled down her sleeves took off her apron and went to give aid and comfort. She loved to go to Church.”
3. Martha Chaffin Brown was born in June of 1843 and married James H. Brown a widower with a large family. Howard’s first wife was Mary “Polly” Chaffin, a double first cousin to Martha, being the daughter of William and Barbara Young Chaffin (She a sister to Elizabeth, he Abner’s brother). Martha had stayed home to help Elizabeth raise her younger brothers and sisters and her brother William Jasper’s orphaned children, and now again at age 45 this strong and giving woman undertook to raise yet a second family which was not her own.
Included with the above letter from Labin is a single sheet of paper written front to back with the letter from 17 year old Mary “Polly” Loftis, the daughter of Labin and Lousia, to her aunt Martha. A second letter on the back was to her uncle James Monroe, the youngest son of Elizabeth and Abner 2nd only one year Polly’s senior.

Gallatin Sumner County Tenn.
July 23 1876

Miss Martha Chaffin
Dear Aunt.
I now seat my self to drop you a few lines to let you know that I am well I hope this may reach you and you all well and doing well. I would like to see you all and bee there to eat apples and help dry them You might all come to see us when you can Tell uncle John I think he might come to see us. You wanted to know if we went to church. We go to Sunday School every Sunday and have preaching once in while there was preaching this morning and there is going to be preaching to night and its time I was fixing to go so I close for this time.

Polly E. Loftis

When this letter was written, Martha was 33 years old and still unmarried, living at home with her widowed mother.

Ma-ma Maberry's Kitchen

2011-02-15T12:02:00.001-08:00

Ma-ma Maberry’s Kitchen

Ma-ma and Pa Maberry lived in the house that stood between the entrance to the Smith County Memorial Gardens and the old concrete upright silo that stands guard to the entrance to the school on the Turner farm. You know, where you turn to go up to the Skyline Manor Apartments there in Carthage. It was a pretty big farmhouse for the day with four big rooms downstairs and two finished attic rooms upstairs but of course had neither central heat nor indoor plumbing. Having no central heat and a big kitchen meant that most of the daylight hour were spent in the kitchen and that is what I remember most.
The fireplace had been mortared up and fitted for a coal grate and big chunks of coal, dumped by Vaden’s in the back yard, were hand carried in the coal scuttle. A few cane bottomed straight chairs sat up around the fire and an iron poker leaned to one side of the grate. On the other side stood Ma-ma’s white churn filled with milk waiting for it to clabber. When the cream had clabbered, it would be churned until the butter came, and the butter strained out of the mixture leaving butter milk (the real thing, not the cultured stuff you buy in the store.
On the north wall of the kitchen a General Electric refrigerator, (always pronounced “refrigewator” by Ma-ma) stood. Inside was where she kept several wide mouth gallon jugs with raw milk, provided by the Guernsey cows in the barn. The jugs contained milk in the various stages of processing country homemade butter. If you skimmed off too much of the cream what you had left was “blue john’ and few Upper Cumberland men were fond of drinking this “pore do” liquid so it was often fed to the hogs. “clabber” was milk that had started to curdle and was ready for churning when warm. Blinky milk was suspect as to its “fit to drink” state but was retained for baking bread or other uses where high heat would be applied. Eventually excess buttermilk and blinky milk would be fed to the hogs and recycled into bacon.
Beside the old refrigerator sat the big console radio where Pa Mabery listened to John McDonald and the farm report at the noon meal (dinner) and to H. T. Kaltenborn give the world news at night.
“Hesh, you chilren hesh, let's listen to Kaltenborn now,” was uttered by him so many times I can still hear it in my mind. On the back wall set Ma-ma’s “meal barrel” which was actually divided into two parts and held meal on one side and flour on the other. Meal had been obtained by taking a “turn of corn” to Smith County Hardware where a gasoline powered grist mill in the basement ground the corn into the veritable staff of life for the country people of the Upper Cumberland. Next to the meal barrel was a rickety little table where the water bucket stood, except when it was cold enough it might freeze that far from the fire. The water bucket was white enameled with a red stripe around the rim of the bucket, and an aluminum dipper rested inside the bucket for all who wished to quench their thirst. A pie safe and the old Roper electric “cook stove” graced the final wall. The stove was white and huge with plenty of room to set pressure cookers when the cans of green beans were ready to come out and give the lids a final tightening.
The house had been built before electricity came to the rural areas and had been wired, after the fact, by running wires outside the wood slatted ceilings to the single porcelain fixture in the center of each room and along the papered walls to one or two outlets in each room. This wiring setup necessitated a copious use of extension cords and outlet expanders in a sinister web of electrical spaghetti. Perhaps that is the reason that during an electrical storm a lightening bolt sent a power surge that sent a ball of glowing electricity flying out of one of the “caps” on the humungous stove. My sister, who was standing nearby, contends to this day that the ball chased her around the room and flew out the door. All I know is that it took three months and at least a quart of Dr. Miles Nervine to settle her down. In the center of the room set a Formica breakfast room table and chairs which Pa often propped up on because it allowed him to keep his great round ash tray handy instead of having to flick ashes in the cuff of his pants.
The kitchen did not have one ounce of granite counter top, if fact, it hardly had counter top of any kind. Ma-ma did not own a blender, or a food processor, an electric can opener, or an automatic percolator of any kind. She washed dishes in a dish pan, not a dishwasher, had a couple of good butcher knives, one of them made from an old hand saw, and cooked nearly everything by frying it in a black iron skillet. There were no maple wood cabinets, no hardwood floors gleaming in the sunlight, no espresso machines, or woks, or microwaves, or convection ovens. No island graced the kitchen, no bay windows, nor a pantry. Occasionally there was a small handful of butter cups or roses placed in a green mason jar but only when the season was right.
What there was though was warmth and love, good family conversation, and sage advice from the older to the younger generation. The sense of safety and caring was palpable, and as bright as the linoleum on the floor. We scooted up around the glowing coal embers breathing in the slight sulfur smell and were not distracted by television, videos, or electronic games. If we did play games like Rook or Monopoly, they required participation, dialogue, and exchange of information between the players.
I believe the thing that strikes me most is the fact that Ma-ma and Pa Maberry did not feel that they were somehow shortchanged by the lack of things. Some of it I suppose, was the fact that they had never had these things so they felt no sense of loss, however I suspect that much of it came from learning contentment. The Apostle Paul said, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. (Phil. 4: 11,12) I think Ma-ma and Pa had lived through the great depression, two world wars, and had learned to be content and, “Rejoice in the Lord.” They were a wonderful, and continuing gift to all of us grandchildren.
May you find the secret of contentment and be blessed to bless others. Bob

The Elder's Wife

2011-02-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

The Elder’s Wife
There is only one person in the church
who knows an elder’s life.
She’s wept, and smiled, and prayed for him
for she’s the elder’s wife.

She knows Your servant’s weakest point
and knows his greatest power.
She has heard him speak in humble voice
of his greatest triumph hour.

She has heard him groaning in his soul
when bitter raged some strife,
As hand in his, she knelt with him –
for she’s the elder’s wife.

The church has seen him in his strength,
as he drew his armor’s sword.
And underneath God’s banner over him
He faced the Devil’s hoard.

But she knows within her own heart
that scarcely an hour before,
together they prayed for strength from God
behind a closet door.

You tell your tales of shepherds brave,
who over streets have trod,
and changed the lives of multitudes
by the lovely words of God.

And I will tell you back again
how some women lived their lives;
They wept with them, and rejoiced with them,
for they were the elders’ wives.

The Brown Blue and Letting the Cutter do the Work

2011-02-01T14:46:00.000-08:00

The Brown Blue and Letting the Cutter do the Work.------------------------------
While I was employed by Clyde White at the Western Auto, he decided that it was time for an upgrade and a modernization. He had the old style yellow brick front which came about knee high before the store front windows extended up to the old striped awning. The old style front was pulled out and replaced with a ceiling-to-floor plate glass front window encased in a gleaming brushed aluminum finish and topped off with a plate glass door to provide entry. What had once been the front windows in which Truetone T.V.’s sat so the public could gaze upon the wonder of a picture being transmitted by air from far away Nashville, now were replaced with showroom as the store’s floor now extended several feet forward toward the sidewalk. The old oiled hardwood floors were replaced with gleaming 12x12 tiles and eventually the final step, replacing the fixtures inside the store.
Western Auto provided assistance for store installing and modernization and our store installer was a guy by the name of Eddie Brown. He showed up one Monday morning from the Nashville area office and immediately brought new life to the store. He was one of life’s characters. He had a joke for every occasion and a glib reply to every inquiry. He was funny, accommodating, and engaging; and I enjoyed every moment he was with us. Eddie was the creator of “the Brown blue.” We were searching for a color to paint the walls that showed above the fixtures; one that would be vibrant and grab the customer as he came through the door. We weren’t able to fine one among our color charts that Clyde and Sadie felt was just right, so Eddie began to mix up some samples, eventually coming up with the brilliant blue that some of you may remember on the Western Auto walls. It was perfect and we called it “the Brown blue.”
The fixtures in Western Auto and Variety Stores in those days had bins for small items such as fishing bobbers, packages of Eagle Claw hooks, and License Plate bolts with orange reflector tops. The glass for these bins came in wooden crates and contained 48 pieces of glass 3 inches wide and 3 feet long. The bins themselves were constructed by measuring and cutting the glass to the desired lengths with a glass cutter. Eddie undertook to teach me to cut glass and he had his work cut out for him. I was trying as hard as I could but breaking as many pieces as I cut. The ones I was finally able to cut, were jagged edged and not presentable of customer viewing.
Finally Eddie put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Lets go down and get a coke.” We walked down to Oldham’s Pharmacy and he told me the secret of glass cutting.
He said, “R.C. the problem is, you are trying too hard.” “Thanks,” I though to myself, but he went on, “You are trying too hard, and pressing too hard, and over thinking what you are doing and the result is you are making too much impression on the glass. It’s like with girls. You like girls don’t you, R.C?”
I confirmed his suspicions that I did indeed like girls and he continued with his fatherly advice, “See it’s no good to try too hard, You end up making an impression alright, but it may be too much or the wrong kind. You understand what I’m telling you?”
I told him I did, which was only partly true, but he said, “Now let’s go back and you just relax and let the glass cutter do the work.”
And I did, and after a couple of false starts, I began to get the hang of it and let the glass cutter do the work to which it was especially adapted. Miracle of miracles, the glass began to cut and snap like butter, clean and smooth. It was a thing of beauty. .
It seems to me we often try too hard in life. The Lord has told us, “My burden is easy and my yoke is light.” but we insist on bearing our burdens alone instead of leaning on Him. The result in that instead of our edges being smooth and the impressions we make being clean and straight, we try to hard to be in charge of our own destiny and shatter what could have been useful. On occasion we need someone to put their arm around our shoulder and remind us to let up and let the cutter do the work.

The Pythagorean Theorem

2011-01-24T04:51:00.000-08:00

The Pythagorean Theorom~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She taught me that in any right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, and that it is called the Pythagorean Theorem. Other than in the occasional game of trivia, I have never found the information itself very useful since when I come in contact with a right triangle I simply whip out a tape measure and determine the length of the hypotenuse by measuring. But she did teach me many, many things that have been infinitely useful.
It has been nearly 50 years since I sat in Mrs. Edwina Oldham’s Plane Geometry Class. It was on the second floor of the old Smith County High School building, east side, at the head of the stairway. I had always been slightly “math challenged” until I took Plane Geometry. I was always slightly suspicious of any discipline that mixed letters and numbers. It seemed to me x ought to equal 24 since it was the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. So, it may have said “Plane Geometry” on the book but there was certainly nothing plain about the class. Mrs. Oldham told us it taught us to think, to reason I believe she said, and for some reason I fell in love with the subject. It all seemed so clear, so logical, so satisfying in the way it was dependable and you could always count on things being just the way you reasoned them to be. Not like algebra where x and y were wishy-washy. My friend Charlie Brown was in the class with me and since Charlie was the resident school “brain,” it was no surprise that he “got it.” He always got stuff, but the surprise was that I got it and made grades nearly as good as his on every test and quiz. It became a game with us, well at least with me. I think he just was being Charlie Brown and doing his usual job of excelling and making the rest of us look bad. At least in this class, however, he was looking over his shoulder a little bit, at least in my imagination.
Mrs. Edwina Key Oldham was an altogether pleasant woman who had a quiet disposition, and a reserved sense of humor, spiced with just a tinge of sarcasm when her scholars rushed past the obvious. She was genuinely a pleasure to be around. By the end of the year, Charlie Brown, along with me and couple of others, had qualified to go to the annual mathematics contest at Tennessee Tech. I couldn’t believe it; I was going to a math contest with Charlie Brown; who would have thunk it?
I was working at the Western Auto Store across the street from the Court House when Gordon Oldham, Mrs. Edwina’s husband, drove their new 1961 blue Oldsmobile to the back of the store, and announce to Clyde White that he wanted fender mirrors put on the new car and that he would like me to do the installing. Clyde was of course quick to respond that he had just what Mr. Gordon needed, but asked why he wanted me to put the on the car. “Because,” he said, “he’s going to be driving this thing to Cookeville, so he might as well start taking care of it now.” What could possible be more daunting than having to drill four holes in the two fenders of your math teacher’s new car. I must have been shaking all over.
Sure enough, Mrs. Oldham announced that we would be driving up on Saturday, and she would expect me to do the driving. She had already cleared it with my parents, who were somewhat discomfited by the notion of me driving anyone else’s new car anywhere, much less out of town.
In addition to her great gift for understanding the mysteries of mathematics, Mrs. Oldham had a flair for the dramatic, and it was she who worked with a group of us to develop a one act play for competition. (As I write this, it occurs to me she also had fairly well developed competitive streak.) She directed and produced a one act play for competition in which several of us “starred,” and eventually went through the competitions to the state tournament at East Tennessee State College in Johnson City. I don’t remember all that much about the play except it was one of those affairs where the only props allowed were two chairs and a table. Again, she allowed me to drive the new Olds to far away Johnson City stuffed to capacity with Mrs. Oldham and me in the front and three other students in the back. I wondered for years if she could have known what placing such trust in an eighteen year old boy meant to his sense of self-worth and his desire to live up to the expectations placed in him. I now am sure she did.
It was a wonderful experience and although I never had occasion to use the Pythagorean Theorem, the things she taught us about thinking, reasoning, logic, responsibility, and the reward of honest effort, have been invaluable to me and I am sure to Charlie Brown, J. L. Watson, Roger McDonald and the other students who sat in the little second floor classroom at the head of the east stairs and on whom she cast her petite but giant shadow.
I pulled out my Year Book, blew the dust off the cover, and looked to see what she wrote by her picture.
“I have enjoyed working with you in class and in the play, and I hope you have a very happy and successful life.” I wonder if she had any idea how much impact she had on making her wish a reality.
In 1972, the Beta Sigma Phi Sorority named Mrs. Edwina Key Oldham First Lady of the Year. I don’t know who the Beta Sigma Phi Sorority is, but they must be some smart women.

Wanting What You Get

2011-01-21T12:57:00.001-08:00

Wanting What You Get.
It was just before 10:00 a.m. in Mr. Homer Lewis’ eighth grade class and the old coal burning stove in the class room was cranking out the heat. I was nursing a sore shoulder because Lewis Roberts had knocked the fire out of me at recess since I wouldn’t let him get a better look at a signal book my Uncle U. L. Mabry had brought home from the Navy at the end of World War II. Our altercation had started with shoving and shirt pulling, and ended with the two of us knocking over a row of iron student desks which were not bolted to the floor as they had been intended, but were now placed on 1 X 4 slats of wood to give them a degree of stability. The old desks still had an ink well hole in the upper right side of the wooden desk top. (No we didn’t use quills, as my grandchildren probably think, or even ink pens. Sometime around 1952 ,a guy by the name of Bick had introduced the Bic Ballpoint, and fountain pens had quickly become a thing of the past.)
Lewis Roberts and I had both gotten the seat of our pants dusted by Mr. Lewis, a testimony that his desire for equity was right up there with his regard for corporal punishment, since he was my next door neighbor and I would have hoped for a little deference on his part. Friendship didn’t seem to go as far as it once did. The common punishment had, of course, quickly forced Lewis and I to again become great friends, having suffered human rights abuse together at the hand of “the man.”
In 1958, the seventh and eighth grade classes were in the “old school building” as was the band room and a few other odd classes. It had only been eight years since Carthage Elementary had been built but the school board had drastically underestimated the impact of the “baby boom” in Carthage (and in most of the rest of the nation) and we were already out of room. The “old school building” had been pressed back into service while the planning and funding for the first of two wings that would be added to the High School were in progress.
But for now, Lewis and I, along with Don Taylor, James Hinsley, Kemper Hailey, George Lankford, Danny Williams, and other unwilling participants, were stuck here in the “old school building” suffering through the rigors of reading writing, and arithmetic under Mr. Lewis’ watchful eye. Next year, we would be introduced to a whole new world when kids from Pleasant Shade, Defeated, Cox Davis, South Carthage, Forks of the River, Union Heights, and other schools in the county came into the Smith County High School fold. They would be from places like Gravel Town, Pea Ridge, Peyton’s Creek, Difficult, Beasley’s Bend, Turkey Creek, and other exotic points on the north side of Smith County and would open up a whole new world for those of us who had only know our own Carthage Elementary School classmates.
About ten minutes after ten, a rustle went through the classroom and the whispering became loud enough that “Homer” (as we bravely called him behind his back) looked up from his desk and wanted to know, “What’s going on back there.”
“It’s snowing,” someone said, “and it’s coming down hard.”
Sure enough it was coming down in big round half dollar flakes that looked like a dozen of the monsters might provide enough material to form a respectable snow ball. Within a few minutes the ground became white, and things started to look serious. In 1958, weather forecasting was much more of an abstract concept, since satellite tracking was not yet possible.
It was February and there had not been a lot of serious snow up to this point in the winter and it was supposed to be warming up in February. After all, tobacco beds needed to be worked and burned in preparation for planting the tiny seeds so there would be plants to set by May.
By noon, Mr. B. Clark Meadows had made the decision that school was going to be “let out early” and the bus drivers had been rounded up to bring the big yellow jobs up on the hill as quickly as possible. The bus kids were loaded with dispatch, and the busses inched their way down the hill to head out for what turned out to be a long trip home for any that lived any distance from town. By the time the busses had descended the hill the wet snow had become packed and “slick as a puppy’s navel,” as Daddy would say, and the teachers generally slid down the hill in their big old rear drive cars which they, and nearly everyone else, drove in those days. A few, ended up in the ditch or left their cars parked on the hill in favor of walking home of having someone pick them up.
For those of us who lived in town, it was the kind of day of which we dreamed. The math test scheduled for the afternoon had been avoided. Mr. Lewis had not had the time and presence of mind to give us homework, and each of us was headed out to get the conveyance of our choice and hit the slopes, which in our case was Fisher Avenue. By two o’clock there must have been a hundred kids of every size and shape, wearing every conceivable type of garb, sliding on anything from a piece of tin to a sure enough, 4 foot long, Western Flyer Sled with steerable runners. Dishpans, coal shovels, wash tubs, inner tubes, you name it, they were all pressed into service and several just used the soles of their shoes or the seat of their pants.
I’m not sure how much it snowed, seems like it might have been five inches, but it got into one of those rhythms where it seemed to snow every few days, just enough to freshen up the snow and make the roads slick enough for school to be out a week or two. I remember that we slid down some snowy hill nearly every day; and I drug my feet behind me until I wore holes in the toes of my boots. Mama was not happy – but every kid in Smith County was happy (and I suspect, not a few teachers also). We roamed the streets looking for slick hills, and we roamed the slick hills looking for rabbits and squirrels to hunt. It was like life had been suspended for a week or two in favor of fun, and all of us given a vacation from the humdrum of life. Now it snows in great quantities up north, but it isn’t so magical as down south, everyone just gets up in the morning, starts their Toro Snow Blower, then drive off to work on the already plowed and salted streets.
So as I see these snowy days outside my window, I try to see beyond the aggravation of this white stuff, beyond the knowledge that falling on ice at my age is not only a possibility, but might be a disaster, and beyond the inconvenience of certain events being cancelled, then try to remember the magical world these days provides for the young and young at heart who are, this very minute, looking at a world transformed by the wonder of snow. I view it all with the knowledge that things seem to even out in this world. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, one man’s hardship is another man’s opportunity, and as Daddy used to say, “Things always equal out in the end, the rich man gets his ice in the summer, and the poor man gets his in the winter.”
Have a blessed day, and if the Lord doesn’t give you what you think you want, may you at least want what He gives you. Bob

Sticks and Stones

2011-01-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

Sticks and Stones
“Sticks and Stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me;” we chanted as children. But they could hurt us, and they did hurt us, and they compelled us to do ugly things that we would never have done otherwise, and to say ugly things we would later regret. None of us know specifically what compelled the shooter in Arizona to walk into a crowd and start pulling the trigger on an automatic handgun. We do know that he was a scary individual who was on a continual rant about the evils of the very government he once sought to serve as a member of the military, but was rejected. We do know that he apparently planned, and executed the assignation attempt point blank, killing a nine year old child in the process.
Now, we the people, have to listen once again to the shrill, angry, hateful voices as one side angrily accuses the other side of angrily accusing them of cultivating a climate of anger. I don’t know how much impact these shrill angry voices, that spill from the publically controlled airways like an open sewer, may have had on the tragedy in Arizona, but my Daddy said, “If you throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the ones that yelp are the ones that got hit.” There seems to be a lot of yelping going on in the last couple of days.
I don’t know about everyone, but those of us that profess a Christian Worldview need to consider again the words of our leader in the sermon delivered on a mountain side. “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” “Blessed are pure in heart,” “Blessed are the meek,” and we need to not only behave in a way that is seemly, but to encourage others to do likewise.
It is ok to be passionate, to speak out for truth, but be sure that in doing so we do it without rancor, bitterness, or without encouraging those who get rich by driving us to disrespect anyone’s opinion but our own. “Be not partakers in other men’s evil.”
Have a blessed day. Bob

Learning to take charge by surrendering the controls

2011-01-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

Learning to Drive (From a story submitted by cousin Barney Smith in TX)
"Back in the fifties, when I was learning to drive, it was a fairly simple process; at least it was for me. I spent time at my grandparent’s home in rural Oklahoma whenever I got the chance, and after about age 14, Grandpa would “require” me to chauffer him around the neighborhood. which was right down my alley. I loved to drive his old truck, a 50 model Chevrolet pickup. We probably never traveled over five miles at one time, he in the passenger seat, getting out occasionally to open a gate so we could get as close as possible to a fishing hole. He was widely known and respected in the neighborhood but everybody knew to get out of the way when they saw him coming down the gravel roads that dominated that area. I don’t recall him ever offering me any advice on driving. He just pretty much let me figure it out. In those days, almost no one attended a driver education class or had any formal instruction in that art. After a lesson or two with Daddy and memorizing the state instruction manual, I was able to get a drivers license at age 16.

My mother, a painfully shy woman, drove around for probably twenty years before she acquired a license. I think she was just intimidated by the prospect of dealing with bureaucrats. She never got a ticket in her life or ever had an accident. I could occasionally talk her into letting me drive but it was always an ordeal for both of us. “Watch out!”, “Don’t pass!”, “you’re gonna kill us!” and her favorite, “You’re going too fast!” I mostly didn’t pay too much attention but I noticed that after these sessions that she would usually sit and not speak to anyone for awhile.

My sister, a year younger than I, was a quiet, intelligent girl with a big old stubborn streak. When she was about 15 years old and wanting to learn to drive, we were visiting our grandparents in rural Oklahoma. It was there that Sis talked Mama into giving her a driving lesson on the back roads. I was a year older and already had my license, but decided it might be entertaining to ride along. Daddy had a new 56 Ford at that time and like most cars of that era it was equipped with a clutch and a “three on the tree” transmission. I got in the back seat, Mama drove us out to one of the most secluded roads in the county, then changed places with Sis. She got behind the wheel, revved the engine to about half throttle, then unintentionally popped the clutch. The Ford engine roared and the monster leaped about thirty feet and died. By this time, Mama had broken into a cold sweat and Sis was beginning to feel the pressure. I was laughing loudly and uncontrollably in the back seat. After a couple false starts Sis got the Ford going about twenty miles an hour but by that time the damage was done, and Mama had lost her nerve. “Watch the ditch!” “Slow down!” “My lord, you’re gon’na kill us!” Sis’s nerves were now as raw and frazzled as possible but Mama’s were worse. It was a dangerous situation for everyone. Finally, Sis let go of the steering wheel, threw up both hands and yelled in an agitated voice, “Well you drive then!” That’s when the car swearved into the right hand ditch and bounced up and back onto the road, but only after losing the radio aerial to a low hanging branch. It was at that precise moment that Mama began to assess the long term wisdom of wearing “depends.” “Driver Education Courses” came to an abrupt halt that day, and to my knowledge Mama never again attempted to teach anyone to drive. I think about those days a lot when I’m hauling one of my grandkids to driving school."
Barney’s story reminds me of our own feeble attempts to stay in control of the car of life. We race the engine, pop the clutch, do the lurching and bucking thing that hurls us to a jack rabbit start, then snaps us to a bug on the windshield stop as we weave into and out of the proper traveling lanes of life. We feel that if we just had more skills in “pulling our own strings,” “The Power of Positive Thinking,” or determining “boundries” we could get the vehicle that propels us down life’s road under control and the ride would be smooth. The truth is, if we are to be at real peace, feel entirely safe, and not be a hazard to ourselves and others, we need to realize we were never meant to be in control of the conveyance. In the vehicle of life, if we will allow God to drive while we simply rest our hands on the wheel and our feet on the controls, then it is He who provides the ultimate guidance. There are likely to be many a buck and a jump, and more than one nasty fender bender before we get this lesson down. Let’s just hope we escape by the grace of God and the courtesy of other people until the lesson is learned.

Have a blessed day, and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN. Bob

A Christmas Memory

2010-12-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

A Christmas Memory--------------------------------------------------------

It was a big old white house that seemed like a mansion to me, since all I had ever known was small unpainted country houses, including the one we had just vacated on Upper Ferry Road just outside of Carthage. That part of Upper Ferry Road no longer exists, having been overlaid by the Highway 25 bypass. I guess I spent a Christmas or two there on Upper Ferry Road but I have no memory of one before that one in 1949. Daddy had just given up on farming, having suffered health problems and little luck as a farmer. These were lean years for us since “The little store” or the Community Grocery (later owned by the Alexanders) was being built as was our house at 400 Jefferson Avenue in Carthage. If one were to endeavor to find 400 Jefferson Ave. today they would be hard pressed to locate such a place since, like Constantinople, one cannot go back there. Rather, in its place you would find 901 Dogwood. For some reason someone decided to change it and I really wish whoever makes those decisions would cease and desist since I am easily confused – but that’s not part of this story.
The big white house I am talking about now is the one directly across Highway 70N from the Gore farm, Mr. Albert’s place not Al’s place on the east side of the Benton McMillian Bridge. I’m not sure to whom it belonged, but Daddy had managed to rent the somewhat fallen lady as a place to shelter our family while Mr. Buck Massey finished our house on Jefferson and Dogwood. The big old Victorian was huge by any standard that I had know, but it had no central heat, no insulation, no storm windows, no weather stripping on the doors, no inside plumbing and was something akin to living in an ornate old barn. Still, it did have a large foyer with a curved staircase which swept up to the second floor where the bedrooms actually had closets, a first in my experience. And wonder of wonders, inside the closets were hidden passage ways that allowed one to go from room to room without going out into the hallway. I have no idea why it was built that way, but I was too young for my imagination to paint lurid pictures, as it might today.

No one in Carthage would have ever considered buying a Christmas tree in those days, since the pastures around were full of cedars which the farmers would gladly have you cut down to save him the trouble. So, as Christmas came closer, we did what everyone in Carthage did in those times. We ventured back through the pastures and found a cedar that was pyramidal in shape and full on all sides. When we found one that fit the bill which was less than six or seven foot tall, Daddy took the axe to it and cut it down. We dragged it home, stood it upright in a pickle crock, poured road gravel into the crock, filled it with water, put it into the entry hall which was unheated, as much of the house was, and decorated it with what ornaments we either had or had made. We had lots of things that could catch the eye of a five year old boy, but none so intriguing as the bubble lights. That was years prior to the use of the tiny little bulbs everyone uses today and the bubble light were the icing on a very pretty cake. It would be a rare thing indeed to talk about Christmas past with someone my age or older and not have bubble lights come into the conversation. Roping, Ornaments (usually colored glass balls), and Icicles were what finished off the work of beauty. It was several years before “Angle Hair” came into vogue which folks placed in a little wisp around each light to cause it to have a gauzy appearance. The main thing I remember about Angle Hair is that sometime about the end of January, those who had come into contact with the angle hair would stop itching since the spun glass had a long lasting effect on bare skin.
Mistletoe grew on lots of the old trees around, and the preferred method of harvesting the mistletoe crop was to take a 12 gage to it. Not many people had outdoor decorations back then and we, of course, had none. But Mama, Daddy, and Daddy’s Aunt Ada, who had just come to live with us, made it a very special Christmas just the same.
I remember that “Old Santie Clause” brought me a metal wind up toy. It was a man on a motorcycle with a side car. The whole thing was made from stamped metal and had a big key on the side to wind it up. We took it out in the big entry hall and wound it up and let it fly. It was probably a “made in Japan” cheepie, but it was worth all the world to me. Daddy went to the Locker Plant and bought a big peppermint stick about a foot long and an inch thick and Mama and Adie made boiled custard, fruit cake, and shelled walnuts and hickory nuts (hick-er-nuts) for us all to have to eat. They shoveled plenty of coal in the big “Warm Morning” parlor stove and we feasted like Lords and were as rich as Kings, or at least we felt we were. I suppose we never had a lot by the standards of the greater world outside of the Upper Cumberland, but we were about as well off as the neighbors around. It was warm inside (so long as you stayed close to the stove) and we had parents and family who made us feel loved and special. All of that brings a combination that is had to beat, and more money, or more things, could hardly have made us feel more blessed than we did already.

May God Bless you and yours with a special Christmas this year and give you freedom from money and things. Bob

Our Christmas Wish ~~~~~

2010-12-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas Wish~~~~

Our Christmas wish for each of you, friends and family alike, is that you will be blessed with happiness (which money can’t buy), with health (for which a rich man would gladly trade his wealth), and with humanity (the love of friends, the hugs of children and grandchildren, and the respect of those with whom you come in contact). Beyond these things there is very little for which one may wish. (Except the 52 inch TV of course.)
Our year has been one of quiet reflection as we were touched by the death of a friend, the wedding of a great nephew, the maturing of our children, and the baptism of two of our grandchildren. We are afflicted with the normal aches and pains of those who are lucky enough to attain the age of 60 plus years, but nothing so severe as to slow us down.
The details include a light stroke for me in May, from which I thankfully quickly recovered, and a stress fracture in Jan’s foot which had her clumping around in a “storm trooper boot” for four months. A friend with whom we were making plans for a cruise vacation, suddenly passed away, and Chris, now 41, left Dell, with whom he had worked for 10 years and took a position as Associate Minister of the church of Christ in Greensboro, NC. He is doing well and loving every day of “kingdom work,” and of course we are very proud. Patrick, a vice president with Gaylord Entertainment, was named among the forty young executives under forty years of age selected by Nashville Business Journal as leaders in Nashville. We were of course very proud, but most moved by the fact that his published interview reflected the Christian values we have tried to impart over the past 37 years of his life. Ben White, my sister’s grandson, married and thus began the march to adult responsibilities of yet another new generation in our family. Both Maggie and Ethan decided the time had come to submit their lives to the Lord in Baptism and we were able to witness one in person and the other by video. Could anything have possibly made us happier?
As for grandchildren, Maggie is 10, Ethan 8, Kai’a nearly 7, John Patrick 6, Ryan 4, and Cameron will soon be 2 years old. They, like your own children, seem to love you whether you deserve it or not, and provide us with entertainment and distraction from daily life.
We survived the “great flood of 2010” here in Middle Tennessee unscathed. The same is not true of many others around us, as the waters neared the 4 foot mark on the square here in Lebanon. But typical of the rugged individualism of the area, the downtown merchants were in there a few days later, drying things out, and were back at work in their shops in less than two weeks.
Our letter is a little late this year as we have just returned from New York City, (NEW YORK CITY!!!). It was a wonderful trip arranged for seniors through Wilson Bank and Trust, a local financial institution. We stayed just off Sixth Avenue on West 46th Street and I learned that “Boutique” when applied to a hotel, means “Little.” We hung out in Times Square, shopped on Fifth Avenue, Visited Lady Liberty, and went to Ground Zero, along with every other tourist in New York. We prepared and prepared, but did not encounter a single bedbug on the whole trip, almost (but not quite) a disappointment. We only got back Friday evening, so that will explain why our, usually prompt, tome is running late this year. We hope that when you open this you will be in the highest of Christmas Spirits, and exclaim, “Oh, look a letter from the Chaffins. What a wonderful holiday surprise.” Then again, if your mail runs late like ours does, you are more likely to look at the return address, say, “It’s from Bob and Jan, I’ll read it after supper.” Then lay it aside and forget it altogether. We love you anyway

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
Bob and Jan Chaffin

Getting more than you deserved and less than you expected

2010-11-23T13:51:00.000-08:00

More than you deserve and less than expected ----------------------

This comes to me by way of Barney Smith, a Texas cousin of roughly my age who also has a good memory and a vivid imagination, and like me is never sure where one ends and the other takes up.
“The first electrical appliance that I recall in my parent’s home was a small refrigerator. Before that, my mother had a small wooden icebox in one corner of her kitchen in which she kept large hunks of ice and stored perishables such as milk and butter. The “iceman” would come through the neighborhood two or three times a week. When my mother needed ice, she would stick a cardboard card in the front window indicating how much ice she needed that day. The iceman was a favorite visitor to the neighborhood children. He drove a small truck with his load of ice in the back covered with a tarp. He was a big stout man who wore a leather apron and handled the ice with a big pair of tongs. He would grab the ice with his tongs and carry the ice right into the kitchen and put it in the “icebox”. The kids would follow him through the streets and he would give us slivers of ice. On a hot day, that was a nice treat. I guess that was the nearest thing that we had to an ice cream truck. Even to this day, the older members of our family still call the refrigerator the “icebox”.

The second electrical appliance that I recall was a pair of barber clippers. My thrifty mother was not going to spend 75 cents to get her boys a haircut. Before she got the electric clippers she used a pair of hand operated clippers that looked a little like a big pair of pliers. She had to squeeze the handles back and forth to operate the cutters on the head of this contraption. Usually on a Saturday morning she would cut Daddy’s hair and then my brother and me. This operation usually took place on the back porch and she would wrap a large towel or sheet around your neck. If her hand got a little tired from working the clippers she might rip out a few hairs by the roots. This caused shrieking and whining and we were always glad when it was over. Life was a lot better after she got her electric clippers but if you jostled or distracted her, you were going to look funny for a few days. But being boys we weren’t real particular about our hair…just glad to get it over with. She cut Daddy’s hair until he was middle aged and it always seemed to be good enough for him. But Elvis Presley appeared on the scene by the time I was 15 and every kid in America wanted to look like Elvis. My greatest ambition at this time was to make enough money to go to the barber shop and escape my mother’s Mortimer Snerd haircuts.

Barber shops in the mid-50s were usually in a storefront building with a barber pole mounted in front and large open front windows. The interior walls were covered with mirrors but might have an animal head or two mounted above a doorway. There would usually be five or six barber chairs all in a line and a shoeshine stand in one corner which was usually operated by a high school kid. The shoeshine boy would sweep hair when he was not otherwise occupied. There was a row of chairs for the patrons and the air was full of cigar smoke and good natured bantering. Reading material usually included “The Police Gazette”, crime magazines and the “Grit”, a tabloid of that time. None of these publications could be found at our house and were a great attraction to me. There would be five or six barbers who all gave about the same haircut to everyone but one barber would specialize in flat top haircuts. He was usually the busiest. Not every barber could give a credible flat top. Most boys and the local farmers got their hair cut on Saturdays and it was always a cheerful bustling place. Women were not barred from barber shops but no respectable woman would enter one.
Nowadays most barber shops seem to be run by oriental women who give perfectly acceptable haircuts at bargain rates but I still miss an old fashioned barber shop. Recently I stopped by a shop that I had not been in for a few years and perched myself up on the middle chair. Not until then did I realize that it had been converted into a shop that specialized in black clientele. The barber was a young fellow who held his cell phone to his ear with his left hand and cut my hair with his right hand. He was talking to a girl friend and it got pretty interesting at times. Finally he laid the phone down and said, “That’s about as good as I can do with that kind of hair but I’m only going to charge you five bucks.” I looked kind of funny for a few days but it was a cheap haircut. I still cling to the belief that getting a haircut the day before payday is a mark of financial success.”

Barney, I guess the moral of this story is the more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a story in “Ridin’ the Blinds” about my father-in-law getting a “cheap” haircut at a barber college in 1926, with results similar to yours. The old saying is, “You get what you pay for,” and the only exception to this rule seems to be that the Creator gives not only more than what we pay for, but more than we expect.
Ephesians 3:19-21 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
By the way, I have an old pair of those hand clippers lying around the house somewhere. My Uncle Charlie brought them back with him from WWII. He was a marine working his way toward Tokyo across the Pacific atolls and the clippers were what the marines used to keep that “high and tight” look on Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Had a couple of haircuts with them too, and remember the fact that what was not cut was ripped out by the roots.

Bob and Barney wish you a blessed day.

Excerpt from Pioneers, Preachers, and Patriots

2010-11-21T20:12:00.000-08:00

Daddy's story as he told it to my son to use in a paper he did at Lipscomb.

We never talked about mama dying, even when she became very sick and, as I can see now, was making plans for her own death. She just seemed to get sicker and sicker and was nearly bed-ridden for a long time. We just continued to pretend this was unreal and that it was somehow wrong or disrespectful for us to talk about what lay ahead. When she passed away, we finally had to come to terms with what had been staring us in the face for a long time. When the funeral was over, people offered to take us home, but all of us knew that if we did that, all of us would be separated from one another and lose all that we had left – each other. So we just went home, four young people who just started a household of our own.
We all did whatever it took to make things work when mamma was gone. I was just a young teenage boy and Thelma, two years older, had just started to school at TPI, as Tennessee Tech was called in those days. Gene and Charlie were pretty little, and still in school at Pacific. I worked what was left of the farm since our uncles had settled Mamma’s estate by selling most of our livestock to pay debts. Things were pretty cheap, shoes were $1.50, overalls were $.75 and a straw hat was a quarter.
People often ask how we made it on that river; how we managed to survive. I guess things were so tough all around us that we didn’t know any better. We hung on through the depression years farming, working, cooking, cleaning, and doing whatever was to be done on our own.
One thing in particular that I know helped us through, was the very thing we were most leery of in the beginning; help from others. Aunt Ada (my daddy’s sister) lived on the next farm with Mr. Thomas Berry, her husband and her two step sons, George and Hugh Berry. She was always a sight for sore eyes coming down that dusty river gravel road. She must have know that things were really rough, and just as Thelma and I would be wondering how we were going to fix supper that night, here she would come down the road with that little basket on her arm. It would have fried chicken or something good to feed the four of us that night and usually enough left over for breakfast the next morning. She was the answer to our prayers manys the time.”

Working Out of Classification.

2010-11-15T15:13:00.000-08:00

I guess my family was pretty “green” growing up, not that we knew what that meant. Pasture was green when the weather was right. Tobacco worms were green if you didn’t use enough poison on your crop. Watermelons were green before it was time to pick them. Beans were green when it was time to pick them. Hired hands that didn’t know what they were doing were green, and the first time or two that you tried smoking or chewing you yourself might be green.
We were green out of necessity, I suppose, since we never threw a co-cola bottle down beside the road; they were worth two cents and every one of them was returnable. Aluminum cans with pop tabs and plastic bottles would not make their appearance for years to come. Milk came from cows and went into a milk bucket, from there into a wide mouth gallon jug, and from there into a boy or girl. Or if you lived in the city it was delivered by the milk man in a bottle with a paper tab on top that you could carry in your pocket and pretend it was a half dollar. He picked the empties up on his next trip, and they had of course been rinsed out by the thoughtful housewife. Nothing wasted there.
All of the table scraps became slop for the hogs or food for the dog, and even the wrappers on a loaf of bread, on the rare occasion we might actually buy “loaf bread,” were saved by Mama to use as one might a zip lock bag today. Groceries came in paper sacks or a pasteboard box and even they were saved for further use. Daddy carried his lunch in a black, dome topped, lunch pail with a small thermos bottle inside. The whole affair came home each day for washing and sending to work the next day. Yes Virginia, there was life before Styrofoam cups. Aerosol spray was not a problem since Wild Root Cream Oil came in a bottle, Brill Cream in a metal tube, a chunk of red cedar was used for aromatic purposes, and paint came in half pint cans, not spray bottles. When the garbage man came by, he picked up your fifty-five gallon drum of trash and heaved the trash into the dump truck or you took it to the burn barrel and set fire to it once a week. By the way, you had used those paper grocery sacks as “paper can” liners so no plastic bags to linger in a landfill for centuries. A dish washer was Bud and/or Kitten after supper with their arms up to the elbows in soapy water, a trash compactor was Mama pushing down the stuff in the paper sack so there would be more room. A dryer was a line stretched from one post to another in the back yard and a furnace was down in the cellar, unless you had a fireplace or a warm morning stove, in which case they were right there in the room you were warming, or at least trying to warm. No one would have considered keeping their house warm all night, that is what the bed and lots of quilts were for.
All in all we didn’t waste much back then, not because we were worried about the planet, but because we didn’t have much to waste. The planet seemed big, with lots of room for expansion, and “getting by” was our worry, not waste. Besides, we firmly believed that God had already declared the fate of the planet, and our scurrying about was like so many ants running around on Battery Hill – of little impact.
Old britches became new patches on other old britches, and old dresses became the cloth from which aprons were made. Shirts were worn in turn by as many kids as could fit into them before they finally disintegrated into rags for the rag bag, which provided fodder for quilt tops pieced on cold winter nights.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think we ought to be responsible stewards of the good earth God has provided. After all, the book says we were put here to “dress and keep the garden.” So, I am in favor of returnable fees on drink containers, sorting our trash for recycling, and nailing those who choose to abuse the atmosphere; after all, Mama taught us to clean up after ourselves and since we made this mess we probably have the responsibility to clean it up. I just find it difficult to worry myself about the eventual outcome of the planet, for as old fashioned as it may seem in this day and time, I still believe has God has already shared with us the final disposition of this plane of existence.
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”
After all, there may be some things that change, and many things that one is foolish to put their trust in, but a few things are constant.
“And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war.
So it seems to me we ought to “dress and keep the garden” and leave the long range planning to the Creator. Anything else would be what my union friends would call “working our of classification.” And you can get a grievance for that.
Have a blessed day, Bob

From Pore Folks, Potlucks, and Parables

2010-11-14T20:12:00.001-08:00

34. Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette

When I was about 12 years old, my crowd at Carthage Elementary began experimenting with smoking. Carthage was a town that had as its core source of income the cash earned by farmers raising tobacco, and the numerous warehouses to which tobacco was brought and auctioned. Many years ago there was one that was owned by Dr. Sloan and his brother Billy Sloan that opened right out on Main Street, just up from the Walton Hotel, if I remember correctly. As a result, smoking was a way of life.
In those days it was common for men to stand around outside the church building smoking until the last minute – and often after the last minute – before coming inside for worship services. It was rare indeed for anyone to hear a sermon or class in which smoking was condemned. (Political correctness is not new, only re-centered.) I remember well that when I was the janitor of the church building there in Carthage, I would weekly have to sweep up the cigarette butts crushed out just before the would-be worshiper entered the side door.
So in short, it was a town where young people learned to smoke early and smoke often. If you were big enough to plunk your quarter on the counter, you were big enough to buy cigarettes. Even my sister, who was an avowed “goody two shoes,” a fact which always served to aggravate the life out of me, experimented with smoking. Yes she did! For I remember after she had a few friends over for the night, finding the cigarette butts in the old crock churn which stood as decoration in her upstairs, Pepto Bismol pink, bedroom. Apparently she and her friends, who shall remain anonymous to protect the guilty, had learned the secrets of ventilation and air control necessary for teenage smoking. It was long before the Surgeon General announced the absolute link between smoking and cancer and the only thing adults told adolescents was, “it will stunt your growth.”
Halloween was coming up in a week or two, and I prepared by going to the little store, now operated by a couple by the name of Alexander, and buying a pack of Kools to increase my smoking pleasure on Halloween night. (I guess I thought I had grown enough.) Well, after puffing away on two or three and starting to feel a little woozy, I decided not to overdo this smoking thing and returned home with the rest of the pack still in my possession. Wanting to make sure I was not caught with the evidence on my person, I crept back into the attic where a big wooden quilt box sat and stuffed the cigarettes down into the bottom of the box, under a couple of old quilts.
What I did not count on was that shortly after October 31st cold weather would come and within a couple of days, Mama announced at supper that she had been back in the attic getting some quilts out for winter and the strangest thing happened. She had discovered a package of cigarettes. She paused after the announcement and looked expectantly around the table for some response. No one said a word and I became intensely interested in the exact makeup of the green beans on my plate. Finally, being unable to stand the silence, I suggested that since my Uncle Billy had been working on the roof a couple of weeks ago, perhaps he had placed them there. Never mind that there was absolutely no access to the attic from the roof without climbing down the ladder and coming through the door of the house, then going upstairs, and back into the attic. When confronted with discovery or lying, I lied – boy no easy way to put that!
“Why on earth would he have put them there?” Mama inquired with apparent wide eyed curiosity.
“Well, he was probably hot and sweaty and didn’t want them to get all wet and soggy,’ was the only semi-logical reply I could muster. I knew I was busted.
I knew she knew – and she knew, that I knew, that she knew – so she never said another word about it.
On at least two other occasions, when I had been smoking, she would say at the supper table, “I think I smell smoke. Does anyone else smell that?”
I generally resorted to, “I was burning some brush out in the back.” Of course, I now know that burning brush and cigarette smoke do not smell anything alike, since nothing is more attuned to the smell of cigarette smoke than an ex-smoker, but she left it at that.
That’s the way Big Bob and Maylean were, once they had brought you face to face with your own failings, they relied on the moral teaching they had carefully given you to convict you. They never saw a need to drive it into the ground, to embarrass you, or to call you a liar. They trusted that the conscience they and the creator had endowed you with would do its job.
I continued to smoke off and on through college and through my years in the U.S. Army, allowing it to be my vice of choice, then quit when my boys were small and the public service spot ran on TV that showed a little boy walking through the woods with his daddy, watching his dad light up, then the little boy himself pulling a cigarette from the pack and pretending to smoke. The caption, “They want to be like you,” convinced me.
As a child I remember my cousin Morris teaching me this little ditty in preparation for a performance for our parents.

Tobacco is a filthy weed,
From the devil it doth proceed,
It blacks you hands and burns your clothes,
And makes a chimney of you nose.

I wish I could have been as good a parent to our boys as my parents were to Donnieta and me. I was sometimes so intent on demonstrating to the boys that they couldn’t fool me, that I only succeeded in “provoking them to wrath.” Rather, I should have allowed them to arrive at their own conviction, and be faced with their own moral compass.
It is a lesson we must learn when dealing with others in the church, God has given all of us free will, the right to make our own bad choices, and the right to follow our own misguided paths, and while we may bring others to the place of confronting their bad choices, they must be convicted by their own conscience.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

On Active Duty with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces

2010-11-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

After the signing of the Armistice on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918, censorship was soon lifted and Mr Great Uncle Encel, brother to my grandfather, again writes “Papa”. The letterhead of the paper used indicates his whereabouts:

On Active Duty with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces
La Mans, France
Sunday, November 24, 1918
Mr. John R. Chaffin
Gainesboro Tennessee

Dear Papa,
Today being set aside as a day for writing Papa a Christmas letter, I shall answer the call with my best effort. There are now so many good things to talk and write of that I hardly know which to write of to make my letter more interesting.
First, our official newspaper tells us that the censor lid is lifted and this leaves open a field which I feel very unable to cover, however, I shall begin by telling you of some of our operations, and my experiences in taking part in them.
As you probably know we sailed from New York May the eleventh. For some port in Europe—we knew not which. We passed a northeastern route for fourteen days, finally landing at Liverpool England. From there we proceeded by train to Foekstone, a port on the English Channel, and it was there that we heard the first rumble of the cannon of the big war. After spending a few days there we crossed the channel landing at a well know old French town, Calais, where we saw the real effects of the war, many of the buildings and churches having been destroyed by air raids. We also saw our first German =planes and first Hun prisoners. The prisoners were exceptionally large, red faced and fat. We at once realized what we had to cope with. However we learned later that they were “fed up” on allied rations, and far better men than those they left holding the German lines. While at Calais we discarded a great portion of our clothing and other equipment, and the first of June, drew new equipment and entered a training camp at Audricq where we remained for about six weeks. July the tenth we crossed the Belgian border and entered the last thirtieth left by the invading Huns. While there we continued training for a while, and at last took up our positions in the lines, between Ypres and Kennule Hill. During this time there existed great fear of a drive by the Germans that would sweep the allied armies into the English channel, but we were to optimistic to believe it, for we were there to go forward not backward. During this time one of our officers entered a tailoring shop and called for an American uniform to which the tailor replied “You don’t want a uniform you want a bathing suit!” While there, our boys experienced their first battle, taking Kennule Hill from the Germans. A minor operation compared to what came later, but then a great deed in our estimation. We left Belgium in August, and after a day and a night in box cars we landed in Arras sector, near St. Paul, France where we spent some very pleasant days, being well back of the lines where we could have lights at night, and go where we pleased without wearing a gas mask. In September we took another move with took us through Albert, a once nice little town, but now completely destroyed having been under fire of both the Allied and the German guns. It was there that the brave little Australian army passed through the retreating British army, and stopped the big German spring drive in March. After traveling for miles and miles through war-wrecked country that looked more like prairie swept barren by storm, we arrived at Hamel just back of St. Quentin and Cambria where we were to take part in the big drive. It was a month before I ever saw a civilian.
On September the eighteenth we took up our positions in the Picardy sector within two thousand yards of the famous Hindenburg Line. Between then and the twelfth we had just two days in rest camp. Then on Sunday morning, September the twelfth at five-fifty, we put over a forty five minute barrage on the canal sector of the Hindenburg line, the strongest fortified position which I have ever seen. This was the most important part which we played in the battle. In this particular sector there were nine hundred extra machine guns firing at the rate of six shots per second, and nine hundred cannon ranging from three to fourteen inches in bore, each of which began firing on the German position at five fifty sharp. Under this barrage, and the cover of smoke and fog our infantry went forward and routed the German forces in hand to hand fighting because it was impossible to see a man twenty paces away. After our fifty five minutes of bad fighting which we spent all the previous night preparing for, we returned to a quieter sector where we were held in reserve, ready to move on a moments notice for two more days and nights while our valiant “dough boys” pressed forward amid shot and shell too fierce to portray. We then had two days rest and returned to the lines. During this battle we had eighteen men and our platoon Lieutenant wounded but none killed. The heavy shells fell thick and fast around us, and it was luck that we came out as well as we did. But we went into battle with all confidence of winning and we won. We were to busily engaged with our part of the battle to think of fear. During the barrage my gun mate said “we are giving them hell for the first time aren’t we?” I said, “Yes, keep it up” and we did, and succeeded in pumping two thousand shots into the Germans. We could hardly shout loud enough to be heard two feet away so we just laughed and carried on.
Then on October the ninth we went over the top with the 118th Infantry and protected their flank in the advance. During this advance we saw the fiercest battle which we have ever witnessed, having lost three men killed and thirty wounded. Our original strength having been 174 men. When night came my corporal and I were the only ones left in the squad which I started out with, and it was supposed to have eight men. We started out with about two thousand rounds of ammunition and that night we had just two hundred left.
We advanced over the crest and down the slope of a hill while a five inch German battery fired at us with open sights, only about three thousand yards away. A number of times I saw the smoke from the cannon firing on us, and we would duck into a shell hole or a “Jerry dugout” only to find ourselves sitting on a dead German, then we had an inclination to move. The dead and wounded lay thick all along and large columns of prisoners came straggling to the rear, often by themselves inquiring the way to the nearest cage. We continued this advance until October the 20th during which time many other things of interest took place, but space does not permit me to relate them now. We reached a rest camp seven miles from Albert, France and on November the first we received news of Austria’s surrender, and then we shouted for joy because we were confident that our efforts had not been spent in vain, and that we would not return to the lines anymore. Then on the eve of November the tenth, we received the news that Germany had signed the Armistice and that the guns would cease at eleven the following day. Then we again shouted with a new joy, more than ever before, for we knew this was the climax to the great historical events which had been in progress for nearly five years.
Thanksgiving Day is now near at hand and we, one and all, are truly thankful beyond all words of expression for the glorious achievements in which we have participated. For the unceasing loyalty of all loved ones at home who have played such a gallant part, and without whom we could never have won. We shall never forget your loyal devotion to the cause of liberty, the dear mothers who gave sons for humanity nor the trust which you confided in us. Your labor, your money, and most of all your prayers have won the day for America and placed a new wreath on the Statue of Liberty which we are now longing to see.
Well Papa, here’s my Christmas letter, I hope that you may find in it something worthwhile or of interest. I close wishing you, Mama, and all homefolk a joyous Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Your Loving Son
Encel
(Note: This letter was lost to our family for many years but was found by the Superintendent of Schools, Huber Heights Ohio in some boxes which he purchased at a garage sale. He took the time and effort to contact some of our family in Tennessee, whom he believed to be Encel’s relatives, and through his kindness the letter was recovered and is included in this writing)
The following is a reprint from the Jackson Co. Sentinel newspaper January 9, 1919.

Band aides on the Big Yellow Jobs

2010-11-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

Bandaids on the Big Yellow Jobs.----------------------------------------------
For five of my teenage years a good part of my life revolved around ten Friday nights in the fall and one night in the spring. Oh there were other things sprinkled in there but these were the big events; ten Friday night foot ball games, usually five at home and five away games, more if we made the playoffs. We started practicing in earnest four or five weeks prior to the start of the school year, but we had intermittent practice throughout the summer vacation. The football team was generally down on the practice field to keep from tearing up the turf, if you could call it that then, and the band practiced on the playing field since few of our trombone or trumpet players wore cleats – at least not in practice. Mr. Stanton (Pappy) had gotten his inspiration over the summer, gone to Hewgley’s Music Shop in Nashville and purchased the four by five inch music sheets that fit in the plastic folders on our Lyre and had tentatively noodled out the formations we were to be in when each song was played. We tried to never have two band shows exactly alike for the sake of the fans, but now that I think back on it, I suspect most of them would not have noticed, not from the concession stands. Emily Sue Kemp was the band announcer and I generally wrote the dialogue, already beginning to show a love, if not a flair for writing, The shows were sometimes wrong and often times long. Once, I gave Emily so much dialogue that our show ran long and the home team band had hardly any performance time left. They took it rather poorly, I must say, and ended up throwing rocks at us as we tried to load our bus. Wouldn’t swear to it, but I think it might have been Sparta, those White County folks get hostile.
The home games were a lot of fun since you were playing to a hometown crowd and all you needed to do was make the music remotely recognizable to get thunderous applause. We would powder white bucks and don our uniforms at home, get to the band room early, clean spit valves, oil slides, check valves, and adjust one another’s shakos. (Don’t worry, nothing risqué there.) After forming up on the gravel parking lot outside the bank room, the Drum Major would blow his “Thunder” whistle, TWEET/ TWEET/ tweet/ tweet/ tweet, two longs and three shorts in the time of the marching cadence and the drummers would be off, banging out the cadence as we marched down the hill, through the big chain link gates, and onto the field, ready to play the National Anthem, then file into our end zone bleacher section.
It was the away games that were really the best though. Depending on where we were bound, we might have to pull out by five or five-thirty. It took two of the big yellow jobs to hold the band and the cheerleaders who always rode with the band. The big question of course was, with whom were you going to sit. If you had a steady girlfriend the matter was settled of course, but if you were a free agent, it was time to make your move for the night. Many a high school romance has had its beginnings of the road to Cookeville, Watertown, Lebanon, or Portland although most of them proved to be somewhat short lived. During my write-the-band-show phase, I generally sat with Emily and we worked on the show dialogue – no really we did. That’s right, the stunning dialogue and witty repartee you heard coming from Emily’s mouth over the speakers was generally less than two hours old when she delivered the goods. But we were professionals and the deadline just made us work harder and perform better, at least in our own minds.
I remember my very first band trip. I was still in the eighth grade and had been invited to march with the high school band. Never mind that I had not one bit of ability to play an instrument then, and gained little more ability by the time five years had passed. Mr. Stanton handed me a pair of Cymbals, and with minimal instruction, I became part of the percussion section; thankfully I had Joan Thomas to do the real playing and all I was required to do was stay in step and get into the right place in the formation. That I could handle.
There were not enough uniforms to go around at the start of that school year and for the first few games several of us younger members had to march in white shirts, white shoes, and uniform pants (Don’t know why there were more pants than tunics, perhaps because there was more variability in bottom sizes than chest sizes in teenagers back then.) As if I was not laden enough with inferiority issues, there I was in size eleven and one half white buck shoes, ill fitting uniform pants, a white shirt, and a flying saucer cap that made my ears look like a taxi cab going down the road with both doors open; an eighth grader trying to get my breath in the rarified air of high school students. I remember that we were bound for Cookeville on the old road, crooked as a politician/s backbone, and high and narrow as a model’s cheekbones. We stopped at Chestnut Mound and picked up Joan Thomas (much to my relief since my heart had nearly gone into arrest when I noted the bus was pulling out without my cover for poor cymbal playing.) We also picked up Eddie Crooks, whom I believe was the drum major that year. There were hardly enough seats and pretty soon Carol Lankford, a pretty blond girl who was one of the majorettes, came and squeezed onto the seat beside me. There definitely was not enough room, but I definitely was not moving. She was George Lankford’s older sister, a Junior, and I saw her fairly often at his house, but there was definitely something transformational about that majorette uniform and white boots. Now I knew that she was only sitting with me because, 1. She knew me. 2. She had a steady boyfriend and I was least likely to raise his jealousy, and 3. She probably decided I was completely harmless, which in fact was the case. I remember that I could not figure out what to do with my hands and arms since the logical thing was to put one around her, but that was not about to happen, so I just folded them over one another like someone about to play here’s the church, and sat on about three inches of seat, in complete happiness. Since I went to the church of Christ, I never went to very many dances but I am told that the hardest thing about attending your first dance is figuring out where to put your hands on the girl. I decided against putting my hands on the girl.
It became the thing to do, probably because they liked to watch my ears turn red, and for the balance of that first year, the majorettes, who mostly had football player steadies, pretty much took turns sitting by the eighth grader and squeezing me into three inches of seat. I know I should have been embarrassed but somehow, one by one, we became friends and I enjoyed getting to know these leaders of the high school social structure who were upper classmen when I entered high school the following year. Boy growing up is difficult, isn’t it?
On the way home from the games, the steadies grabbed the “make-out section in the rear of the bus and we all sang “Heart and Soul,” “Ninety Nine Bottles,” back to Carthage; and when the bus pulled onto the end of the Cordell Hull Bridge, we all stood and sang the Alma Mater, “On old Carthage’s eastern border, reared against the sky, proudly stands my alma mater….” I could not believe how much fun it was, and it remained so for the balance of my time in high school.
As soon as the marching season was over, we began to work on music for the Spring Festival, which would take place at the end of the school year. But we will finish that topic at another time.
If I was asked, “What was it that made those times so special,” I would likely reply, “It was belonging, being accepted, knowing where your place was, and knowing your fellow members would accept you.” I think God created us with a need for community, a need for acceptance, a need to have a place where we feel we belong. If all things work as they should, in the first years, it is one’s family who provides those things, but being our Creator, He also knew we would need community throughout our lives. So he created the church, not for himself, for although we belong to him, it is our needs that are fulfilled through the body of believers, not His, for he has no need of anything we could provide. He desires that we be in relationship with Him, and has provided that we be in relationship with other believers through His Church. What and awesome God we serve!

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN “Mending Hearts and Magnifying Hope.” Bob

"Trick or Treat, Money or Eats"

2010-10-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

Trick or Treat, Money or Eats,-------------------------------------------------

We called them “Hog Punkins” and they grew in the cornfields along with the field peas we planted. They didn’t look much like the big super orange pumpkins we buy at the store or the garden center today, since they tended to be much more pale in complexion and “squatter” in size. But they were hollow and had the “guts” inside along with the seed that stuck to your hand and arm when you hollowed them out just like the big orange ones do. No one seemed to actually buy pumpkins then, since virtually everyone had a friend or relative who lived on a farm and would gladly give one away.
For me, one Halloween started early when I got the bright idea of selling pumpkins door to door in our neighborhood. I loaded as many as our old style metal wheelbarrow would hold at Pa Maberry’s farm and headed out, around Meyers Terrace, across Jackson, and down Jefferson Avenue, stopping at Clyde Whites, Mr. Ed Moore’s, Pat Eatherly’s, Dalton Chaffin’s, Farmer Carter’s, and other houses. Apparently, no one was in dire need of a pumpkin they had to pay for, even though my price was a modest 50 cents. When I pushed the wheelbarrow up the hill to our house on the corner of Jefferson and Dogwood, I still had ever pumpkin that I had left Pa Maberry’s with, and I gracefully brought to a close my door-to-door salesman venture, never to go down that road again.
Most Halloweens, started with a visit to Mr. Glen Sanderson’s Ben Franklin (Dime Store) on the North End of Main Street. There with a quarter in our pockets and candy on our minds, we would agonize over what kind of “false face” we would choose this year. If financial circumstances were particularly demanding, one might only choose a Lone Ranger type black eye mask for a dime and call it quits.
The next step in the process was to organize whom you would be teaming with on Halloween night. There was of course a strict social order and one must stay within the order even on Halloween. In my case it was generally Don Taylor, Walter Booker, Sammy Wilburn and/or David Lollar. With the matter of teammates firmly settled, we were ready to answer the big question of the night; what on earth will I wear?
No one that I know ever had a “store bought” costume, if indeed such things were to be had in Carthage. With our false face in hand we picked through Mama’s rag bag and found suitable attire with Pirates, Clowns (of the Emit Kelly variety), and Bums being the most often chosen costumes. For the girls it was a gypsy dancer generally.
Most years when Halloween fell on a school night, there was a party in the gymnasium of the Carthage Elementary School. There were games of chance such as picking up a duck and winning a prize matching the number on the bottom of your duck, Cake walks where numbers were taped to the gym floor and every person stepped from one number to another until the music stopped and the caller picked a number out of a fish bowl. If your number was called, you won a cake which had been baked by some lady who was a member of the PTA (I don’t believe men found it acceptable to be in the PTA in those days and it was pretty much a sorority.) Bobbing for Apples was always a favorite but I liked to stay away from it because I invariably sucked water up my generous sized nose and ended up with a sinus snort for the rest of the night. Finally came the judging of the costumes to decide what pirate or gypsy girl was the best dressed; no one I know ever won, nor would have wanted to win. When we had absorbed enough of the adult created gym fun designed to keep us off the streets and away from the predicted path of juvenile delinquency, we started out toward home, working our way from house to house trick-or-treating. “Trick or treat, money or eats,” we would offer at each door and each of us had a chunk of soap in the pocket of his britches, determined to bestow due punishment on anyone bold enough to deny our demands for extortion payment.
In those days, no one worried about razor blades in apples. Razor blades cost money and why would anyone waste a perfectly good razor blade on a kid, beside we all threw the apples and other fruit away anyhow. Some families made us more wholesome treats in the form of popcorn balls, which we generally tried to avoid also since to eat one was to risk your false face sticking to your lips the rest of the night.
Sometime along about the time I hit sixth grade, we began to abandon the false face and raggedy clothes idea all together and just go for the candy. A few people gave us hard candy, the kind you see the grandpa and the little boy enjoying in the Werthers commercial, but we did not react like the little boy, we generally tried to avoid those places too and go for the gooshie stuff like Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth Bars, Tootsie Rolls, and other such health foods. (Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that those that dispensed popcorn balls and hard candy may have been working according to a plan?)
I remember one particular Halloween when everyone had dropped off and I was walking on home by myself. As I passed the corner of Jackson and Meyers Terrace, I noticed that the site where Mr. Elisha “Lish” High was building a house was being watched over by an old fellow I often saw around town – didn’t know his name then and don’t now, but I knew he was a friendly. He was insurance that no Halloween pranks would go awry and the building material end up destroyed or damaged. He had a fire going from the scrap ends of the lumber being used to frame the house, and was sitting comfortably on a nail keg warming himself against the bite of the night. I decided to join him and wandered on down and offered him some of my loot from the nights plunder. He began to tell stories and, as you might guess, I have always been a sucker for good stories. The clock ticked and the time passed and I was comfortable until I saw Daddy drive up in the 54 green Buick, roll down the window and inquire as to what I thought I was doing since everyone else was off the streets and, “Your mother is worried to death.” It was at this point that I offered that I was just leaving for home and would walk, but he countered that I, “most certainly” would not and to “get yourself into this car now.” I thought it was much ado about nothing and the uproar lasted for several days which left me feeling rather mistreated and put upon, sulking and surmising that when I died early of some terrible malady, then they would be sorry. Well, obviously I didn’t perish and they didn’t feel bad, and never again did a Halloween come and go without me being reminded of the incident and being instructed to arrive home at a reasonable hour. I thought it was rather dramatic overkill – until I became a parent and sent my boys out down the street to the end of the block alone for the first time.
I think maybe many of us wear false faces at times other than Halloween. We put on a face of our best self when we are out in public but our face comes off when we deal with our children or our spouse. Or perhaps we spend time doing a form of trick or treat with the ones we love. If you treat me the way I want, and do what I want, I will love you and show love to you, if not then you might find I have delivered a trick to you instead of a treat; emotional extortion of sorts. Certainly we spend much time making sure those we choose to partner with are of a like social status, you know, “like us.” But the good news is that like my father, Our Father comes looking for us, inviting us back home, sometimes gently, sometimes with a more stern message.
Yeah, I think Halloween gives us a chance to live out on a single night both the best and the worst of the false faces, mini extortions, and prodigal returns we experience in a lifetime.

Have a blessed day, and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, Bob

An Icon Stands for Something – Do We?

2010-10-26T13:53:00.001-07:00

An Icon Stands for Something – Do We?
In Paris it is the Eiffel Tower, in New York it is Lady Liberty, in San Francisco the Cable Cars, and in Nashville the Ryman. Icons they are called, and the moment someone looks at one they know, not only what it is, but also its location. It is indelibly inked into the fabric of the community, and is a source of pride for everyone who passes that way. In small towns across America the icon is less grand, less imposing, and recognizable by a smaller group. General Hatton stands over Lebanon, forever the local Civil War hero, while in Cookeville the old Tennessee Central Depot is the identifying mark.
In Carthage, the Icon is less imposing, it is functional as well as symbolic – at least it was functional until about a year ago when a team of inspectors showed up and declared that it was no longer fit to do service and ugly concrete barriers at each end stand as an embarrassment to the old structure. When one gazes upon it, it seems to hang its head in shame as if saying, “I have served for so long and have now been found unworthy – I have failed my community.”
By now you surly have guessed that we are talking about the Cordell Hull Bridge, who like the one for whom it was named has served with honor and dignity, has born the weight of the mighty as well as the multitudes. New brides crossed it for the first time to make their homes in Carthage, soldier boys returning from the war crossed it knowing that safety was at last theirs, young men struck out across it to seek their fortune, often to return home years later with hearts gladdened to gaze upon the old structure. Many a Trailway Bus has crossed the structure returning loved ones, taking away college students, bringing parcels for the local merchants.
I remember clearly the days when arriving at the south end of the old bridge meant the end of some long journey for my family. We had at long last arrived home from whatever trek we had embarked upon. When we crossed the Cordell Hull Bridge we could relax, we were among homefolks, and even if our old car died right there, someone would come take us the rest of the way home.
My first years at Lipscomb College, I continued to work for Clyde White at the Western Auto and would take a city bus down to the foot of First Avenue and Broad in Nashville, stick out my thumb and within a hour or an hour and a half, be at the south end of the bridge. “Well, this is where I get out,” I would proclaim, and sometimes the driver would offer to drive me across the bridge. “Oh, no need,” was my reply, “I kind of like walking across the bridge.” Out I would jump and within five to ten minutes be at work, generally on time, with Clyde, Sadie, and Tom. Back in the environment I knew so well. Walking across the bridge was always a pleasant experience, barring rain, snow, or high wind, because the view of both the town and the river is fantastic. You don’t get the full impact by driving across the bridge, it is different when you walk along the belt high crisscrossed barrier and are able to see the mighty Cumberland rolling and boiling beneath you feet. The cars would generally give way when passing unless they happened to be meeting another car at that spot, then the fit got sort of tight and one could not help but inhale just to get that extra inch of passing room.
I remember once when a soldier boy from Fort Campbell picked me up in Nashville and drove me to the end of the bridge. Seems to me there was a stop light there in the days when Highway 70 was a main artery. From somewhere around Tucker’s Crossroads to my getting out place, he tried to convince me to go to Maryland with him. He was bound there to stand up in his sister’s wedding. “You can help me drive,” he said, “and my folks will treat you just like family.” I have to admit, it sounded inviting, but the walk across the old bridge to work at the Western Auto proved to be more pressing business and I wished him well and bailed out. I have always wondered what would have transpired had I gone with him.
Well, my hope is that someone will see the value in the old structure, take pity on its humiliating condition and refurbish it so all of us can cross it with pride and again tell our out of town friends and neighbors, “Yeah, you cross the big old bridge there on 70 and it will put you right in the middle of town,” instead of having to hang our heads a bit and try to explain that you go on up past the Co-op and even though it looks like you are turning in the wrong direction you go to the second turn and take a right and go south even though you want to go north.
That new bridge is alright if all you want to do is get on the other side of the river and by goods from Wal-mart, but it surly is no Icon.
Sometimes we are so anxious to bring in the new that we throw out the old when there is still goody left in the shell, so to speak. Aren’t we glad our Maker doesn’t treat us that way?

Have a blessed day, Bob

"Making Do"

2010-10-22T12:33:00.001-07:00

Making do.

My generation was lucky enough to miss the great depression, but our parents came of age during this decade and learned to live in a time when there was little way to make ends even come close to one another, much less meet.
For those of us born in the heat of World War II, our parents had met and decided that love would not be denied, even though they were facing the unknown of a country that had been plunged into economic despair in 1929 and suffered through the terrible unknown of a jobless economy and dismal farm prices. They had learned in that 10 year period to “make do” with sharing a house with a brother or sister and his family, or living with parents. They accepted homemade clothes, repaired shoes, patched britches and “Making do” became a way of life for them. When someone in the family was sick they “made do” with home remedies of turpentine, coal oil, and “patent medicine.” When a baby came along they “made do” with a local granny woman and had the child at home – no money for doctors or hospitals. They “made do” with flour sack dresses, home made bloomers with “Mertie Ann Flour” across the broad side. All winter, when fresh meat was not to be had, they “made do” with salt pork or an occasional rabbit or squirrel from the woods. No coal for the fire – they made do with wood from behind the house.
So when the passel of us came along, many of us were born at home, in a house with no electricity or running water. Then the war came and along with it rationing, and the “make do” spirit was reinforced as sugar, gasoline, tires, meat and many other things were subject to government control. So they again “made do” with staying at home, putting camel patches on tires as bald a Kojak, and, once again, squirrels and rabbits from the woods.
By the time the war had ended in 1945, our parents had become so steeped in “making do” they couldn’t stop – even when times were good and there was plenty of work and plenty of money for some.
For instance, I can seldom remember my mother buying any kind of meat at the grocery until I was a pretty big boy. They kept chickens and rabbits in back of our house on Jefferson Avenue and until they were big enough to eat we “made do.” It would have been unusual for us to have meat, other than salt pork at breakfast, other than on the weekends, the rest of the week we “made do” with vegetables from our large garden (in town) and white beans (dried beans) for protein. Once we got rid of the milk cows, we forever “made do” with “Red Rose” instant milk. If one of us was sick or hurt, it had to be pretty serious, with lots of blood or a high fever, to be taken to the doctor. In most cases we “made do” with Pepto Bismol for stomach problems, large amounts of iodine, mercurochrome, for cuts, Epsom Salts for sprains and bruises, Milk of Magnesia for – well you know for what – salt water up your nose, or gargled, for a cold, and aspirin and a heating pad for everything else.
Daddy never changed cars until he had to, then it was not to purchase a new car but a used car. His theory was that you looked for someone who took care of their cars and traded every three or four years just because they wanted a new car. That way you wouldn’t be “just buying someone else’s problems.” Daddy’s target was Mr. West who lived just down Jefferson Avenue from us, across from the cheese plant, and when he traded cars Daddy made his move and got a new one. During my years at home, Daddy owned five cars and a pick-up truck, never more than one at a time of course. With the exception of a 1951 Studebaker Commander, all of them were three to four years old. I turned 15 in 1959 and learned to drive in a 1954 Buick Special – about par for our car ownership – we “made do” with an older model.
When we moved into a house in town, it was a new house thanks to my Great Aunt Ada who moved in with us and purchased half of the house. The house was home to the five of us and we “made do” with one bathroom for the five people. My mother worked at the shirt factory and Daddy and I “made do” with whatever shirts she was able to purchase there for the scalding high price of $1.00 each, while she, Aunt Ada, and my sister “made do” with clothes buzzed up on Aunt Ada’s Singer black head treadle model. Later, Mama was able to purchase an electric sewing machine, not zigzag or anything fancy, but at least now they were “making do” with the comfort of an electric. Of course, Aunt Ada pumped the old Singer black head for the rest of her days.
We seldom threw anything away but stored it back with the though that, “one day this will come in handy,” or come back in style, be useful for parts, and we might have to revert to using it in the event of another depression. You see, that was the key to all things. They were convinced that one day, perhaps not too far away, there would be another depression where the source of cash dried up, goods one raised were without value, and goods one wished to purchase were high.
I have to admit, it rubbed off on me and the brown eyed girl also. We find it difficult to throw anything away and today when I moved my long sleeved shirts from a storage area upstairs and moved my short sleeved shirts to the vacated area downstairs, it was obvious there were several shirts in there that ought to be given away. Ones which had not been worn at all this summer, or for that matter, last summer, usually because they are much to snug to be comfortable while wearing. But did I throw them away? No, I set them back because; 1. I really intend to loose some weight and then those will be perfectly good shirts which I will wish I had again and 2. Because you never know what might happen and I would need to “make do” with those shirts.
Sometimes I wonder if God looks at us and thinks, “I really ought to get rid of that one, since it doesn’t look like he will ever be fully useful again.” But then apparently He just looks at us, smiles an indulgent and grace prompted smile and thinks, “Oh, I suppose I’ll just ‘make do’ with him.”
Isn’t grace wonderful and aren’t we blessed that we don’t receive what we deserve?

Enjoy you day, you are already blessed. Bob

ONe Clear Call For Me

2010-10-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

One Clear Call for Me.

Here I was again, assisting 7 other men as we carried Mr. George Summers Senior to his final resting place. He was the father of a good friend and in fact a friend to me. For most of my years of teaching at Maple Hill Church, a fixture in my class, always sitting with Mrs. Gladys, his wife of 67 years in exactly the same spot in the back of the auditorium; never late, in fact they were always early, avoiding the traffic and the push of the crowd as the clock neared the 9 o’clock hour and people streamed from every direction to find a seat before the first lines of the shape note songs began to echo through the cavernous room. Lately though, they had not always been able to come to services and their seat in the east side of the back section sat empty may Sundays. Mr. George, in his mid eighties, had been suffering with the many ailments connected to diabetes in folks his age. He was a veteran of WWII and had spent a lot of time at the Veteran’s Hospital in Nashville, where he confessed they took good care of him, but that didn’t keep him from wanting to be home. I remember once when I went to pick him up from the hospital, I walked in his room and there he sat, his “WWII Veteran” cap pulled down firmly on his head, a shopping bag of personal effects on either side of his ailing feet and his walking cane between them; fully dressed and ready to roll. He tried to convince me that the doctor had said he could go home so we didn’t need to bother with any other paperwork. Being the accountant that I am however, I rooted around until I could get a signed release form before we “bugged out.”

He told me he had spent his war years in Burma, as I remember and then spent a career as plant manager for the Lebanon Democrat. Mr. George was full of fun with a sharp sense of humor and a quick comeback to whatever one might say. He told me a time or two that since his house on Highway 231 could easily become commercial property he was, “just waiting for somebody with more money than sense to come along.”

As we carried Mr. George to the place where we had gone as far as we could go, at least for now, I though about the number of times I had been honored to take part in this final act of service to another friend. My mind went back to the first time I had been called on to be part of this ritual. It was for a gentle and quiet young lady in my high school class whose life had been tragically ended by an automobile accident. I remember the family plot on a country hillside and Draper Jenkins warning us, “Now boys, this hillside is steep and wet and we want to be careful.”

I though about the difference in circumstances for sweet Gail and Mr. George, she young with her life laid out before her, and he having fought the good fight and run the course, ready to go to that eternal home. She had scarcely lived while he had nearly circled the globe and participated in a great conflict that taxed the resolve of a generation. She full of hopes and dreams of what the next day might bring, he knowing the certainty of the coming days and facing them resolutely.

Both, my friends; both, having a kinship with me at the time of their departure, a fact which gave me a sense of my own life’s journey in the near 50 years between their crossing of the bar.

Yes, I have participated in this act of closure numerous time, sometimes as a minister, sometime times as a singer, sometimes as a pall bearer; always with a grateful heart toward the sweetness of life, and the gift of God’s Grace.

Have a blessed day.

Excerpt #1 from Ridin' the Blinds

2010-10-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

My brother, now long since grown grey and retired, goes by the name Ted. But in those days, he was known by his middle name, Gwan and is still Gwan to me even today. In theory at least, he and I walked to school together each day, under a cloud of threat of bodily harm from our mother if we separated. Keating Elementary was only a few blocks away from our home and back then most families had only one car, and the one car was seldom used by moms, or anyone else to deliver kids to school. As my Grandpa, whom we all called Papa said, we arrived by “shanks mare.” In fact, many “housewives”, if not most, were like my own mom and had not yet learned to drive, at least not in the big city. Sitting in the driver’s seat had been considered a man’s job and privilege before the war, but, with the introduction of “Rosy the Riveter” to the workforce, things were changing and would stay forever changed.
By late 1943 the great American war production machine had been geared up to spit out the guns, ammunition, tanks, planes and ships needed to drive the Italians, Germans, and Japanese out of the lands they had taken by force and to put them on the defensive. The war department in concert with Hollywood and the media were not at all subtle in suggesting that if you were an able bodied woman and simply sitting at home doing anything so mundane as raising a family, you were more than a little suspect of being patriotically challenged. All of these working women slid behind the wheel of automobiles to get to work and found the seat to their liking. In the period following the end of World War II, prosperity combined with newly realized “needs” produced a period of automobile production that was phenomenal as families went from one to two to three cars. The irony of this change in society is that the countries that had forced the change, Germany and Japan, became the prime producer of the “second car.” I remember quite clearly a billboard display near downtown Detroit that showed the back end of a Volkswagen Beetle sitting in a two-car garage next to a Detroit “big three” product, fins and all, with the caption “MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER”. It was at least a decade and a half before Detroit took the VW and Datsun seriously. After all, “made in Japan” meant cheap, not quality. It was big mistake – huge, on Detroit’s part.
Being two years older than I, Gwan felt very much “the boss of me,” and was daily compelled to issue copious instructions and loudly announce belittling remarks, to his little sister, mostly for the benefit of his older boy friends. Of course he thought me very ignorant of the ways of the world, other children, and Keating Elementary School – which happily, at five years old, I suppose I was. I vividly remember that it was on one walk to school, when we were passing a horse drawn junk wagon, that he felt compelled to explain to me from where ponies came. I could not have been less interested, was pretty sure what he was telling me was impossible, and generally tried to disregard his detailed instructions. It was not sex education’s finest moment.
Since we lived on the near east side, just south of Jefferson Avenue, the Detroit River was only a few blocks away. On foggy nights, lying in my bed, I could hear the gigantic ocean freighters sound their big horns to warn other vessels passing them in the shipping channel of their presence. After a minute or so the other ship would answer and so the calls and answers would go throughout the night. Somehow it was lonesome sounding, like the mournful sound of a freight train in the night. You always knew that there were people out there, busily working through the mist shrouded night while I was tucked snugly in my warm bed.
I also remember that the army had some sort of installation next to the river and there it kept row upon row of armored tanks. Perhaps it was a storage and shipping point, since both Chrysler and Cadillac had converted their normal production of automobiles to wartime purposes and manufactured Sherman Tanks to supply General Patton’s famous Third Armor. I know that they supplied other Generals also, but General Patton was the one whose name appeared in the Detroit News every day and was best know by little girls like me. There was a constant stream of warnings in Detroit to be on the lookout for sabotage (Sabataurers were the terrorist of our day). A number of army boys, handsome in their uniforms, were stationed there to guard the precious goods which the installation held. Mamma constantly warned us not to “be fooling around down there around those boys.” Although no one could doubt the wisdom of Mamma’s fears, as I think back, I suspect that most of them were barely older that teenage boys, homesick for whatever town in America they had come from, and missing their own kinfolk. Usually soldiers “just want to go home.”
Mamma had grown up in the Hickey Community. Hickey was not really a town, rather it was an area that boasted a crossroads, a couple of small stores, a church building or two and an elementary school, or grade school, as my cousins and aunts in Tennessee called it. Hickey was just east of Silverpoint, Tennessee about seven miles from the town of Baxter and was geographically located about halfway between the towns of Cookeville and Gordonsville. Today it is adjacent to the busy I40 corridor and has its own exit by which folks from Nashville take highway 56 to Center Hill Lake and to Smithville to attend the annual Old Time Fiddlers Contest. But, in the days prior to Center Hill Dam and Interstate Forty the community was rural and isolated, since the only route into the area was via narrow, two lane, mostly gravel roads or by the Tennessee Central Railroad which ran from Nashville to Knoxville and directly through Silver Point. Of course it was not a regular stop, only a flag stop, meaning that you had to set a flag down the tracks if you wanted the train to stop, otherwise it just went right on through hooking the outgoing mail bag and throwing the incoming mail onto the depot platform.

In contrast to this rural life, the dangers of metropolitan Detroit, already teeming with millions of people who had come to get cash paying jobs in the automobile and defense plants, must have seemed enormous indeed to a gentle soul like Mamma. She continually warned us against going near the river, about going near the soldiers at the military installation, against strangers on Jefferson, and about playing in the alley. .......

Wish They All Could Be California Girls

2010-10-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

I Wish They All Could Be California Girls

She just showed up at the beginning of the school year in 1960. Waltzed right into the Sophomore Class at Smith County High School with her blond hair all done up in a tight little bun on top of her head looking so full of smiles and personality that immediately every boy in school lost attention to algebra, history, biology, and in some cases their current girlfriends. She was different; tall, long slender neck, clothes that were different from the other girls, who tended toward skirt and sweater sets. She wore dresses; shirt waists with full skirts tailored to fit her slender waist perfectly. She was also without presupposition of who was cool, who was in the “in crowd,” and who deserved a place at the “A” table in the cafeteria. To make it worse, she had a personality that would melt the iceberg that took down the Titanic. Straight white teeth flashed as she smiled at everything and everyone, regardless of their social status.
The girls, particularly the “in crowd” girls were at their wits end. They were trying not to like her but finding it very difficult in light of her smiles and the cheer she spread everywhere she went. Immediately they began a quest to find some glaring fault but seemingly to no avail. It was clear, the game had changed and the social order of Smith County High School had been rocked to its core. By the time elections for class officers were held she had been named Secretary/Treasurer of the Sophomore Class, to the great distress of those who should have been in contention for that position.
It’s funny how your mind works during the vulnerable time that composes our high school years. Not one of us stopped to consider what she might have been feeling. None of us realized that because of a family crisis back in California, she had been required to pick up her suitcase and move to Middle Tennessee, which must have seemed as foreign to her as another planet. None of us even considered that she had given up her place in the social order of some school in California only to have to earn her way back in Carthage. None of stopped to think that she might have been taken aback by the fact that her clothes were different for ours and that she might have gotten up every morning wishing she had a skirt and sweater set to wear like the rest of the girls. It is difficult to place one’s self in the shoes of another and feel the difficulties they might be facing, since we are all too often obsessed with ourselves and how we are being viewed, or responded to, or catered to by others.
For example, when it was becoming obvious to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ, they began to become concerned, not about possibly working against God’s plan, rather about themselves.
47Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. "What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. 48If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place[a] and our nation." John 11:47-49.
Like us those many years ago, they were focused on them, their place, their power, and not how we might serve others.
Oh well, Just California Dreaming, so stop on by the church and bend down to pray – Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN.

Excerpt #2 from Blackberry Winter (Work in progress)

2010-10-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

A Gulf Station, run by Raymond Cooksey, our next door neighbor on Jefferson and later to become a Tennessee Highway Patrolman, was followed by the Princes Theatre (where I spent many a happy Saturday afternoon catching a Hop-along Cassity Movie, a Tarzan or Flash Gordon Serial, several newsreels and “selected short subjects” – I think the total cost was 10 or 15 cents). The balcony was reserved for the “colored folks” as was common in the south at that time. The Princes burned in the early 1950s and was never rebuilt.
Continuing eastward toward the square, one came to the big old Midtown ESSO (Eastern States Standard Oil) Service Station (note that they are no longer commonly called “service” stations – perhaps for obvious reasons). It had what to me at that time seemed like a gigantic roofed area over the fuel pumps and the service area in front. One could pull under shelter to fill his tank at about 18 cents per gallon. It sat where the late Ray’s Market lately stood and Ray Thomas sold plants, flowers and artificial arrangement with which to grace your loved ones final resting place. The ESSO station blew up a few years after the preceding picture as a result of a gas leak when Coleman Wright, the proprietor, went in and flipped on the lights. Mr. Coleman ended up out at the side of the street, but was not seriously injured, to everyone’s amazement.
In 1950, there was a small frame building next to the ESSO which housed Mr. Sharon’s Shoe Repair Shop. It was replaced by the current brick building which also provided an apartment where Mr. Sharon and his wife lived. I always remember the advertisement in the window of the shoe shop showing a sweet looking girl holding a replacement heel up to her face is sort of a cheek to cheek way, and saying in caption, “I’m in love with America’s greatest heel.” Someone had penciled in below, “Too bad sister, I married him.”
There was another grocery on that side of the street, which became the county library for some period of time. It was one of my favorite hangouts, being a terrible bookworm. I don’t remember the older lady who ran the library’s name but she always had her dog with her in the library and helped me discover the Childhood of Famous Americans series and Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House books which will forever endear her to my heart.

A Coaching in Character

2010-10-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

A Coaching in Character----------------------I truly enjoyed nearly every aspect of working at the Western Auto Store for Clyde White during those high school years. I enjoyed Clyde and his dry sense of humor about nearly everything that happened at the store. He loved the small town merchants life and relished the fact that it made your life about meeting the needs of others. I remember once when Lou Holtz was coaching the Razor Backs, he came to Detroit to speak to the Chevrolet Dealer’s Meeting. After going through what truly was a wonderful motivational talk, he told the dealers, “remember, you can get anything you want in life, as long as you are helping someone else get what they want.” I’m not sure that statement is universally true, but it surly has more than a few grains of truth there. Clyde was all about helping others get what they wanted in life, a freezer (Citation brand), a T.V. (TrueTone brand), a bicycle (Western Flyer), or tools for dad (Wizzard brand). And if the customer wanted one, Clyde was sure going to try to provide it for him.
“Yes Mam, I can get that from my warehouse and have the boy deliver it tomorrow. R.C., Take the van (a snub nose Ford Econoline) and run down to the warehouse and get Mrs. Nollner one of these refrigerators and deliver it tomorrow. “
He made it sound like the warehouse was the little white concrete building out back instead of the company warehouse on Thompson Lane in Nashville.
The other thing that made the job fun was Sadie Gross, who was the acting Chief Operating Office, although her title was, “Sadie.” Sadie was in charge of “the floor.” Ordering, waiting on customers, securing credit for major automotive equipment purchases such as tires (Davis brand), and looking after all the loose ends which Clyde liked to keep untied. She was the straw boss and a model of efficiency. Sadie had a couple of sons in school with me, one of whom was small in stature to the extreme and who we all called “Skull”, including Sadie herself. She understood that a nickname was part of acceptance and that calling Skull, “Skull” was not intended to be mean, only a term of endearment just as many people called me Buddy or R.C., and still do. Sadie knew where every layaway was and when the owners were likely to come fetch them on Christmas Eve. She knew what the bad accounts were and who was likely never to pay their bill, even though Clyde, ever a softie, had extended credit to them. Sadie was the absolute picture of “know more about your job than anybody else” and she did, including the owner, Clyde.
Perhaps the least known but most interesting character in the daily Western Auto drama was Tom. I don’t remember Tom’s last name, if I ever knew it, yet I spent a great deal of time with him. Tom was a black man who drove a school bus morning and evening and filled the time between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. working in the little white building behind the store. Tom knew how to install the myriad of aftermarket automotive products we sold and that had been the main product that drove George Pepperdine’s business to the top in the years following WWII. He could install seat belts, put side view mirrors on your fender or door, assemble bikes, tricycles, and wagons, and deliver freezers, and other heavy and bulky items along with yours truly. Tom was very smart and spoke with the easy language of a moderately educated black man, which was pleasant to hear. He had observations about the various regular customers, both white and black, which were insightful and cleaver and more often than not, pretty funny. He was an observer of human nature and was good enough to share his observations with a high school boy whom he trusted not to reveal his thoughts. Therefore I will not, except to say he helped make me an observer of things around me and a way I had not been prior to spending time with Tom.
I continued to visit the store for years after I had moved away, first to Nashville, and later to Detroit and I enjoyed time with each of them. Clyde, Sadie, and Tom. It was during the 70s that Tom shared with me a delimia which had arisen in his life. Green Hills Country Club had been built on Highway 25, Dixon Springs Highway and the location of Tom’ s house presented something of a conundrum to the officers of the club in that his property cut our a half acre or so bite of the golf club property and Tom didn’t want to sell. He had been offered more than a fair price, but Tom was not interested in the money, he was interested in staying in his home.
“R. C., I don’t want to give em no hard time, you see, I just want to stay where I’m at. They keeps offerin’ me more money and I try to tell them, moneys not the thing, but they just don’t really believe me, I suppose.”
“Lay with em, Tom,” I always encouraged him, “A man ought not have to sell if he don’t want to.”
As far as I know, he “laid with em.”
Lou Holtz ended that talk to the Chevrolet Dealer Network, by encouraging them to win the loyalty of the employee and the customer alike by:
1. Being technically Competent – (as was Sadie)
2. Caring about people personally – (as did Clyde)
3. Being someone worthy of the trust placed in you – (as was Tom)
Jesus said it a little differently, “Love your neighbor", "let your yea be yea and your nay be nay,” and Paul encouraged the church to “work as unto the Lord.” But at the end of the day, these character traits have served me well as learned in a community of faith, demonstrated at the Western Auto, and articulated by Coach Lou Holtz. So they will also serve you well.

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN. Bob

Excerpt #1 from Blackberry Winter

2010-09-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

One of my vivid memories from that time is occasions when my Aunt Gene (before she became Mrs. Tom Ktttrell Sr.) would visit us from school. I don’t remember if she was in TPI at Cookeville at the time or studying Library Science at Peabody, but she was always a welcome visitor who felt more like a big sister than a grown up aunt. My sister Donnieta and I loved Aunt Gene, (still do) who was Daddy’s youngest Sister, and she loved us. Children always know when people really love them, they have a sixth sense about who is real and who is fake. I have a specific picture in my mind of her walking with Donnieta and I to the spring from which our drinking water was drawn. The spring was down Upper Ferry Road about 200 yards from the house, and today is the spring which feeds the pond just below the road on the Turner farm. At that time the pond had not yet been dug and the water simply meandered along a little creed feeding a patch of swampy land between there and the zinc mine property. The three of us walked down the road with a white enameled bucket that had a red stripe around the rim and everyone’s hand was on the handle – though I suspect Aunt Gene was doing all of the carrying. (No, I’m not misspelling her name since she was named for a male friend of her father and has always spelled the name just that way.) We had to carry all of our drinking water from that spring, which meant several trips per day down to the spring and back. Our washing of clothes and other personal hygiene uses, was done with rain water which was shunted from the gutters on the house into a big galvanized tank positioned at the end of the porch, but “not fit to drink” since it often had little wiggly creatures in it, which I now suppose were mosquito larva, but since one routinely heated wash water to boiling in those days, the critters could not withstand 212 degrees Fahrenheit so I suppose it was safe, if unappetizing.

Showers of Blessings

2010-09-26T13:33:00.001-07:00

Showers of Blessings -----------------------------------------------
I went to a book signing the other night at Carthage, TN and was pleased to find a number of people there whom I had known, or known of. Among them was “Buddy” Butler whose father ran the Butler Barber Shop in Carthage when I was a boy. I didn’t really know Buddy, but knew his younger brother, Lewis, very well since we were in school together. I couldn't help remembering thatIt was their grandfather, J. W. Butler, who wrote the law which occasioned the so called “monkey trial” in Dayton, TN. In order to understand J.W. Butler and the drivers for him you must understand the times then.
“In Tennessee, farm folks aware of the eroding moral values that came with the roaring twenties, clung even tighter to the religious beliefs that seemed to create an anchor in a tide sweeping all that they held dear out to sea. Churches like the Baptists, Church of Christ, and other fundamentalist groups, rose in popularity. These groups, which accepted a literal interpretation of the Bible, did not always agree on many points of doctrine, but they all recognized the danger and long term impact of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” and its theory of evolution by the process of “Natural Selection.” Faced with changes to society on every hand, they were determined to take control where they could and set out to eliminate this offensive teaching of Darwin’s theory from their public education systems.
By 1925, many southern states had passed laws prohibiting teaching evolution in public school classrooms. In Tennessee, a Macon County rural farmer/legislator by the name of J. W. Butler, introduced a bill making the teaching of Darwin’s Theory unlawful. The Legislature passed the Butler Law, with many politicians believing that it would not be challenged. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York had other ideas however, and began to devise a way to bring about a court case that would test the constitutionality of the law. Thus came the Scopes trial in Dayton Tennessee.” (from Ridin’ the Blinds)
Buddy Butler told a story last Monday about Slicker Snake and his habits. It seems that the some what unconventional bachelor was less than fastidious about his personal habits and was known to take an annual shower at the facility which Buddy Butler’s father kept at the barber shop in town. Slicker Snake wore sweaters and would simply add a layer of sweaters as the weather got colder in the winter. As the winter was nearing an end on one particular year, Slicker Snake complained that he had lost a sweater somewhere and was unable to locate it anywhere. When he showed up for his annual spring shower at Mr. Butler’s Barber Shop, he came out following the cleansing in a particularly good mood, announcing that he was relieved that he had found the sweater he had lost last year. He had left it in the shower closet on the last annual scrubbing.
Jesus said, “You are clean, but not all.” I don't think this was the kind of clean to which He was referring.

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN. Bob

Remembering the Slicker Snake

2010-09-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

Remembering the Slicker Snake,
Back in the twenties and thirties a fellow by the name of Hugh Lawson Huffines wrote about a mythical place called Yuby Dam, a small town located near a small dam in northern Jackson, or was it Smith, County? It had a diverse citizenry which included a ninety eight year old sheriff whose main activity was pulling the cork out of bottles, and a Mayor referred to as “Slicker Snake.” Slicker Snake was also the publisher of the “Bill Town Whizzer,” the local newspaper in which the Slicker Snake wrote an occasional and sporadic column about anything that happened to come to his mind from the advancing aggression of Japan,
“Their rice won’t go round. Their chop sticks won’t work. They can’t get enough. They have to swarm. They are coming out with guns in their hand, fixing to seize the whole eastern rim of this broad land…..and not long hence they’ll walk down and write their names in the Phillipine (sic) Islands, unless they’re halted.” to bank failures in the 1930s.
“There has been great excitement on the streets of this city for a week. The McNabber Bank shut its doors here last week, and twelve of its branch banks in Fiddlers Green also bursted (sic) instantly, just like so many soap bubbles, with liabilities of $553,000.00 and assets of $13.00 Cash and some stocks. These banks had all of the Yuby Dam road, school, church, and hospital funds in them.”
As one reads through the opining of the Slicker Snake, one is struck with the sameness that exists, even in difference, between those times and these.
Folks in Smith, Jackson, and Trousdale Counties waited anxiously for the next pronouncement from the Slicker Snake and a few years back the mention of his name would bring a smile to many an old face in that area of the Upper Cumberland. It is said that early in the last century the Columbia University Library subscribed to the Jackson County Sentinel just to keep up with the Bill Town Whizzer and The Slicker Snake. His relatives assert that he was once asked to write a syndicated column but his lifestyle did not lend itself to this kind of structure.
In one column he tells the tale of “J. B. Lubberboy,” who was shot and killed in a general brawl on election day, “just as a boodler was leading him up to the ballot box to vote him.” The Slicker Snake reaches the conclusion that, “men should be better protected at the primary, so they can vote their sentiments, and exercise this great American liberty and get their dollar in peace.”
The days of boodlers and a dollar for voting “right” have long sense passed away, perhaps mainly due to inflation, but The Slicker Snake has preserved the terminology for posterity.
In August of 1938, the Slicker Snake issued an opinion about Rural Electrification and the coming of the TVA in a column entitled, “The Yuby Dam Country Folks will Get the TVA Juice.” He notes that while electric lights will be nice it “won’t be needed in the day cause the sun does such a good job” but says that like some little girl said, “the problem is it shines in the daytime when we don’t need it.” All-in-all though, it seemed to me that Slicker Snake was for the power because he though it would save the women folk, while the ninety eight year old sheriff thought the proper way to give some women electricity might be in the chair.
Some variance of opinion between the mayor and the sheriff being healthy, I suppose their opposing views were ok.
The Slicker Snake was often known to entertain the folks in Carthage on the Courthouse steps and is said to once have talked for an afternoon about the glory of the Irish Potato and never have repeated himself even once.
Today, I imagine he would not have been on the Courthouse steps but would have been at home writing witty posts on facebook. Things change Slicker Snake, they did then and they do now.
Have a blessed day, Bob

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN. Bob

A Farmall A Tractor and a Pith Helmet

2010-09-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

A Farmall A Tractor and a Pith Helmet----------------------------
We buried Kermith Lynn on Saturday. We put him in the old Chaffin family cemetery on Roaring River behind the Abner Chaffin home place. He was 83 years old and something of an anomaly in today’s world. Kermith was one of those people who was born in the Roaring River Community of Jackson County Tennessee and lived all of his life within a few miles of the house where he was born. He married my first cousin-once removed, Mary Rachel Lynn and they two eventually moved into the big house on the Albert Lynn family farm. I say the “big house” only in relation to the other houses around for it was a two room log cabin which had been covered with “clap boards” and had a kitchen and dining room framed in and added on at some point in long forgotten history. It was my granddaddy’s sister, Aunt Eva’s, place which had been settled about the time Tennessee became a state.
Kermith farmed the bottom land of Roaring River riding the little A Farmall tractor that his daddy, Mr. Joe, had purchased years before. One could always tell it was Kermith back in the big cornfield because of the trademark pith helmet he always wore. I never knew of another person in the community to wear one except his own daddy. When I was a boy, he would sometimes put it on my head and for a moment I would become Rama of the Jungle, at least in my own mind.
He drove a school bus for the Jackson County School Systems for around thirty years and operated the bus with the same methodical care and deliberateness that he drove his own car.
He must have driven thousands and thousands of miles but never far from home. I suppose the greatest distance from home he ever ventured was when he and Mary Rachel came to Detroit with my parents when the brown eyed girl and I married. We were shocked and honored that they came, I suppose it was to visit his sister Jessie who lived nearby, but we were honored nevertheless.
The events of Kermith’s passing are somewhat unusual even by today’s standards. He had been crippled by old age, hard work, and sickness and had become nearly bed-fast for a few years. Mary Rachel, his wife, had several years before been placed in a nursing home, no longer able to care for herself, but Kermith refused to leave, even though everyone told him it would be best. That front porch with a view of the river was a good enough place for him. He had several people who looked in on him, saw that he had food and medicine, made sure his oxygen machine was working properly, and that the place was heated in the winter and bearably cool in the summer.
On August 18, 2010 when Cookeville and Celina received 12 to 13 inches of rain several weeks ago, all of that water fell of the edge of Tennessee’s highland rim and rushed down Spring Creek, Blackburn’s Fork, and into Roaring River in a flash flood that caused the highest water I can ever remember in my lifetime. As the water rose, several people tried to get to Kermith, but found that the river road (Dodson’s Branch Road) was already flooded and eventually contacted the Emergency Management Folks.
Starting out from somewhere around Seven Knobs, the emergency rescue folks descended an old logging road which was in the head of the old Maxwell Hollow and came down to Kermith who was still lying in his bed. They waded in and told Kermith the river was rising and he would need to leave, but he simply answered, “Ah, it’ll go down.” They told him “no” and insisted that he get dressed. When he reached down to get a shoe from under the bed it was filled with water already. “Well,” said Kermith in his slow and soft spoken way, “I guess I will have to leave.” They fastened him in a special purpose stretcher, strapped him to the back of a 4 wheeler, and ascended the highland rim.
Perhaps the shock was too much for him since he was happy but disoriented in the weeks that followed, or perhaps it was just his time, but on September 8th, Kermith R. Lynn finally slipped away to that “land beyond the river.”
As I neared the funeral home on highway 56 Saturday, I wondered how many people would be there, since he had outlived many of his friends and relatives. I was not shocked but was deeply gratified to find the funeral home filled with people and noted that the funeral procession was long and parking scarce when that long train of cars arrived at the burial site. I was not shocked for I knew that Roaring River is that kind of community, one where people know when you are born and care when you die; one where death takes precedence and daily routines of life are laid aside in favor of neighborliness and compassion.
It occurred to me that Kermith, being the quiet unassuming man he was, would have been shocked to see all of those people stopped and honoring him. At the funeral service they played George Jones’ “These Old Eyes have seen it all.” Kermith would have liked that.
“As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place acknowledges it no longer.”
We have but a short time on this earth, let us use it wisely.

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN. Bob

84. Refugees in Copley Square

2010-09-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

84. Refugees in Copley Square
Like thousands of other Americans I was traveling on 9/11/2001.
I had taken an American Airlines flight from Nashville to Boston’s Logan Airport on the night of the 10th for a company meeting the next day. I grabbed a taxi and headed for the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Copley Square.
Shortly after the meeting began, someone rushed into the conference room and informed us that a plane had hit a tower of the World Trade Center.
Since several of the people in the room were from New York City, and our company currently had a team of employees working at the trade center, we broke the meeting to allow folks to check on the safety and whereabouts of friends and family.
Just as the rest of us regained order and restarted the meeting the 2nd plane struck and the horrible truth dawned on our group that this was an attack – a planned event.
Trying to be good corporate citizens, we soldiered on with the planned agenda of the meeting, while a number of administrative personnel traced the whereabouts of our team is New York as they escaped by water taxi to New Jersey and began a long grueling drive back to Huston, TX.
The next morning the FBI, accompanied by a SWAT team of Boston’s finest, surrounded our hotel, detained three people on the floor below me, and then evacuated all of us into the square as my wife watched the events unfold on CNN. The bomb sniffing dogs that the police had brought in had gotten a “hit” and without any warning we were standing outside wondering what came next.
The account from the Boston Globe read like this:

“In Boston this afternoon, heavily armed law enforcement officers stormed the Westin Hotel in Copley Square and took three people into custody for questioning. The three were not immediately identified, Hotel workers said the F.B.I. had faxed them a list of names connected to the credit card account, and one of the names matched that of a man who had rented two rooms on the 16th floor of the hotel. The man and two companions were later led out of the hotel, surrounded by armed agents with plastic shields, and whisked away for questioning.”

When we returned to the hotel, hours later, the decision had been finalized to not restart the meeting and let folks make their way home the best they could. Rental car companies had closed their doors, but I was lucky enough to make contact with someone who had rented a car on the 10th, and at about 5:00 p.m. three other refugees and I began the drive, away from Boston, toward North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama, our respective places of residence.
The brown eyed girl was kind enough to pick me up at the I 40 Gordonsville exit at 2:00 p.m. the next afternoon.
During the entire ordeal and the days it took to get back to Tennessee, I was most struck with how priorities had changed in such a short period of time.
Safety of friends and family and getting home seemed to be all that was on anyone’s mind now. Believe me no-one cared one whit about sales numbers, business strategy or Financial Forecasts.
I wonder if we don’t often have our priorities messed up. I suspect a time will come, more suddenly even than 9/11 when all priorities will change for eternity.
“51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” I Corinthians 15: 51
Have a blessed day, and may God bless the United States of America.

Mr. Robert, Miss Lucy, and Ed Rollings

2010-08-30T20:41:00.000-07:00

Was Blind but Now I See------------------------------------------------------

The routine was always the same with only minor variations. Church was at 11:00 a.m. which I had assumed was the same for all church of Christ congregations everywhere, since it was considered “the scriptural hour” by most of the brotherhood churches with which I had any connection. Eleven was not when our family arrived however, since we all went to Sunday School, at least we did since we had moved to Carthage. For the first couple of years, Daddy would drive Donnieta and I down to the church building at 10:00, still in his kaki work pants but already wearing his Sunday white shirt. He was delivering the two of us to Sunday School knowing it would be good for our theological training. I had not yet started to school then and my class was in Mrs. Jane Bridgewater Bradley’s room, which was just around the corner from the outside door to the church basement. The most interesting thing was that she had a sandbox play table in the room that stood up on legs about two feet high, just the right size for a five year old boy. Donnieta was already 9 years old, getting ready to go into the fourth grade and was probably under the watchful eye of Miss Clester Huffines.
After two or three years of this routine, Mr. Robert Wright leaned his head in the car and asked if Daddy was bringing his kids to Sunday School. Daddy replied that he was, and Mr. Wright answered gravely that he didn’t much think it was right for a man to bring his children to Sunday School. Daddy immediately protested and offered that he though Sunday School could be of great benefit for children. Mr. Wright had hooked him, he smiled and said, “you have missed the point, I don’t think it is right for a man to bring his children to Sunday School, I think he ought to come to Sunday School with them.”
After that, the average attendance at Sunday School in the Carthage church of Christ rose by two people weekly, and Mama and Daddy never sent us to Sunday School again, they always came with us.
In order to get to the building by 10:00 a.m. our little family of five had to get up about 6:00 or 6:30 since we only had one bathroom for five people. Admittedly, we did not spend as much time in the bathroom per capita as is common today, since the bath routine had taken place the night before with a specific pecking order of sharing bathwater. I know, ick, but I suppose it was a holdover from the days of taking a bath behind the big iron cookstove in a number 5 washtub, besides the little under-counter electric water heater wasn’t able to keep up with five drawings of separate bath water. Vanity sinks were unknown and other than a medicine chest with a mirror there was no space to lay items down, so women applied makeup, what they used, at the dresser. The old veneer bedroom suites from the 30s and 40s had dressers with step down centers that formed a bedroom vanity for my lady. In fact, my mother-in-law had one which even had a little low backed chair to match. It how occupies a place of honor in one of our bedrooms, but I don’t suppose anyone has applied lipstick or rouge while seated thereon for many a day.
About 9:00 a.m. Mr. Ed Rollins would show up at our living room door and I would open the door, smile and motion for him to come in. He always took the same chair but never said a work. Mr. Ed was deaf and knew some sign language but none of us knew even a single word of American sign language.
He and I would, none the less, sit together in the living room and he would look through the morning paper, often finding something he thought would be interesting or funny to me, and pointing it out with a big smile or a laugh. Oddly enough, I found that I rarely was at a loss to know what he was trying to tell me. He was an altogether pleasant man but was often frustrated in his attempts to communicate something to others which they tried to grasp but often failed.
Mr. Ed was ever faithful in attendance at Sunday services and sat in the auditorium feeling the beat of the songs as we sang, and smiling at the preacher as he delivered a message of which Mr. Ed understood not a word, yet every Sunday seemed a treat to him and he was never late and never lax. It was obvious he looked forward to each Sunday worship assembly, never seemed disappointed with the sermon, never complained about the singing, and shook hands and was at one accord with the brethren.
I remember one weekday when Mr. Ed came running over, greatly vexed, making signs and sounds to show his great concern. Carmack Avenue was being extended up to the lot where Hollis Petty would soon build a house and the utility crew was shooting the holes with blast after blast of dynamite. Mr. Ed in his silent world could feel the vibration of the earth but did not know what had befallen his chosen town and I suspect had some worry about his neighbors.
Miss Lucy and Mr. Robert Crenshaw were brother and sister and were each in their eighties when they came to live in Carthage from Hartsville. Their family was quite renowned in that area and indeed throughout Middle Tennessee as horse breeders and trainers. That had been Mr. Robert’s life work and although his body would no longer let him work with the horses, his mind would not let him leave them behind. They lived in a little house just out the street from 901 Dogwood, where we lived, and Mr. Robert would sit on the front porch and watch the traffic pass. He was getting pretty feeble now and his main activity beside talking to me, was painting watercolor pictures of trees, horses, birds, and dogs. I still have one of his painting, a gift of love to me. Mr. Robert had been a horse trainer, not thoroughbreds like run at Churchhill Downs, but trotters, harness racers, like run at Louisville Downs. He would sit and tell me of the great Dan Patch, the greatest harness racer of all times who never lost a race. He would tell that it got so bad that other owners would not enter their horses in a race in which they knew Dan Patch was running. His greatest love however, seemed to be for the famous Midnight Sun, grand champion walking horse. Apparently he either trained or bred a horse in the Midnight Sun line, and anyone who had ever laid eyes on Midnight Sun would never forget the majestic horse and understand the source of his pride.
Miss Lucy kept house and cooked for Mr. Robert and was blind. She had cataracts on both eyes and had almost no vision. Scarcely a problem today but in 1960 there were two problems, first there was the cost of cataract surgery and then there was the fact that the surgery left one without a lens and an external contact had to be used. The two problems combined left Miss Lucy with few options and each Sunday we would stop at the house hand I would go to the door and get Miss Lucy, help her into the church, then lead her to her seat, she holding my arm while I walked slightly ahead.
Eventually I went away to college, married the brown eyed girl, was drafted into the army in 1966 and returned from Korea in 1969. In the interim two things had happened, the inter ocular lens was developed for permanent implanting into the eye making the operation suitable for older people, and the Medicare program had been passed into law in 1965, providing the financial means for Miss Lucy to have the needed surgery. I am told that after she regained her eyesight she told my parents, “I want to see Buddy before I die.” When I came home from the army and Jan and I travled to Tennessee for our first “trip home” daddy announced that we had some place we needed to go. It was to Hartsville, where Miss Lucy had moved when Mr. Robert passed away. There for the first time I saw Miss Lucy in almost ten years and she saw me for the first time ever. She had made a set of drawn work pillow cases for our wedding present. They are beautiful and intricate having had certain threads “drawn” from the material and then used to tie the remaining threads in intricate patterns. What a treasure.
So in the little town of Carthage, my parents had provided us with multicultural and interesting experiences by the simple act of transporting those whom some would have considered less fortunate to Sunday services. I did not then, nor do I now, consider them less fortunate. They had learned like the apostle Paul in whatever state they found themselves, therewith to be content. As for us, there were five of us already and I can only imagine, looking back, that the act of providing transportation for others made for a tight fit for us, but I can't remember it ever being discussed.
What a wonderful lesson to observe at a young age and as for Miss Lucy, I could not help but think of the hymn, “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”

Have a blessed day and if you are lost, I pray you will soon be able to see clearly your new direction. Bob

Making a Difference

2010-08-23T13:41:00.002-07:00

Making a Difference-------------------------------------------------------------
On my first trip to the ocean, we arrived late at night and drove out on Jacksonville beach with the top down on a borrowed convertible. We couldn’t see much but could hear the waves crashing in and smell and taste the salt water in the air. We found a “sleep cheap” motel that night and during the night a formidable storm caused the waves to crash on the dunes closer to the roadway. Then next morning, we walked down to the beach and it was littered with objects, both inanimate and animate. Jelly fish were everywhere and walking barefoot was out of the question. The scene, which remain fresh in my mind even yet, reminds me of a story I heard in chapel at Lipscomb some 48 years ago.
It seems a young man, somewhat like myself, encountered a storm on his first trip to the ocean. As he walked the wave washed beach, he began to see hundreds of starfish washed ashore. Almost without thinking, he picked them up and one by one tossed the doomed creatures back into the sea. An old man walked up to the youngster and asked, “What do you think you are doing?”
“Trying to get some of these poor fish back in the sea,” he replied.
“Young fellow there are hundreds of starfish laying on this section of beach and there are hundreds of miles of beach that were effected by the storm. You might as well give this up; if you are out here all day, there is no way you can make a difference.”
The young fellow looked at the starfish he held in his hand, thought for a moment, then tossed it back into the sea.
“Made a difference to that one, didn’t it?” he asked, moving on to the next starfish.
Satan and Self-Doubt are always around to convince us we cannot make a difference. For if we can be convinced we cannot make a difference, then we will not try; and if we do not try, we will not do; and as predicted, we will not accomplish or make a difference. But, if we determine to make a difference, even if it is only within our own home, or within our own family, or within our little church, or our small community, then we will have lived a live that has meaning. And having meaning to the meager few, is better than being without meaning to the multitudes.

Have a blessed day, and make a difference to that one, today. Bob

Preparation for the Far Journey

2010-08-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Preparation for the Far Journey--------------------------------------------

I lived right by the Livestock Auction Sale barn when I was a child, and after the sale had long ended and into the night big 18 wheelers would be loading the hogs and cattle preparing to haul them to markets far, far away from Carthage, TN. I liked to hang around the trucks being loaded and talk to the drivers, finding out where they were headed. The drivers were generally friendly, talkative guys who were passing the time while their truck was loaded and I assume were somewhat flattered that a ten or twelve year old boy would be interested in where their load was bound. They would reply with things like, “Son tomorrow night, this load of oinkers will be in Chicago, and I will check into a good hotel (which was probably a relative term), have a big juicy steak and hit the night life. Or they might reply with “the Big Apple, Omaha, or Atlanta. Where ever they indicated sounded like a far away and exotic place to a boy’s world to that point had pretty much been bounded by Nashville to the West, Oak Ridge to the East and much more narrow boundaries for north and south. One thing that struck me though was while I slept they would be on the highway with the white line rushing past them. They would see the sun rise in a different place, but all of them knew exactly where they were headed. Never in all of those queries did I find even one who said, “Oh, I don’t know, I will probably just wander around until I find some place that suits me.” They had a destination; they were bound for a specific place.
I decided then and there, I you were going to get somewhere in this world you had to have a destination in mind. Now I grant you, I changed my destination a number of times, but at any given time I had a destination, a short term destination and a long term destination.
The only exception to that rule was perhaps the U.S. Army where my only destination was “out” and other than that, someone else was in charge of worrying about my destination.
It seems strange to me that the same people, who will worry about every detail of a vacation trip, will wander through life without an ounce of preparation for the far journey of life; giving little or no thought given to the final destination and whether they will be happy with the destination at which they arrive.
It seems to me one ought to plan a lifetime at least as well as a vacation.

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church where we specialize in destination planning. Bob

Come Butter Come

2010-08-08T15:38:00.001-07:00

Come Butter Come-----------------------------------------------------------------------

It sits down by the furnace in my basement and seldom sees the light of day unless someone looks into that particular utility closet. It has not been used in years and will never likely be used again, but aside from the fact it has value as an antique, I could never bring myself to throw it way. It is cracked a little around one of the handles and I doubt if it ever was a thing of great cost, although it was of enormous value. The wooden top sits slightly askew and is more than a little dusty – but I’ll get around to dusting it up one day. The wooden handle has been up and down so many times that its onetime ¾ inch thickness is now worn to less than a half inch where it has move up and down within the circular hole in the top. It is made of clay pottery with a grey glaze on the outside and a brown glaze on the outside, so it is no thing of great intrinsic beauty, but there is something in the semetry of the lines put there by the potters fingers as he threw it on the wheel that gives a pleasing line to the eye.
There is something poetic about its place by the furnace, since from my earliest memory it sat by the open fireplace in our home. It was filled with cream that had been skimmed from the raw milk (my northern cousins called it “cows milk”?) which had been left in a wide mouth gallon jug for a night or two in the spring or ice box to allow the cream to separate from the milk. The yellow cream, filled with butter fat, floated to the top and the white milk settled to the bottom. Ma Ma Maberry took a wooden spoon and skimmed the cream off the top leaving the milk at the bottom – thus the term “skimmed milk” since the butter fat had been removed. In Ma Ma Maberry’s case she left a half inch of cream on the top of the milk settled to the bottom to stir up with it, thus making it fit for human consumption. If the cream was all skimmed off, what was left was “blue john” and fit only for feeding to the hogs. Today we purchase it at the grocery as “skimmed milk.”
The cream having been skimmed from the milk was then set out to “clabber” or turn lightly sour and tangy (Note: don’t try this with pasteurized milk since it will simply turn the disgustingly smelly stuff that sour milk is associated with today.) Even then, if the raw cream was left too long it would “blink” which was Ma Ma Maberry’s work for going bad and turning rancid as opposed to clabbering and being ready to churn.
Once the whole thing was ready and had clabbered without blinking, it was poured into the churn and some young boy or girl, usually a girl if one was available but young boys were also fair game. Although the time varied dependant upon the temperature of the cream and the fat in the cream, my memory is that it generally took about an hour to churn. As one churned, moving the dasher up and down, we were taught to say “come butter,” “come butter,” “come butter,” in a rhythm that was guaranteed by our mothers and grandmothers to make the chore end faster. It was probably true because the chant created a rhythm which may have aided the dramatic turning of cream into “unworked” butter.
Suddenly it was over and the churn was now filled with raw unworked butter and a milky only slightly sour substance that looked like milk but in it still had chunks of butter still floating. That was “churned buttermilk” and had little in common with the “cultured buttermilk” one can buy today in a supermarket. The old fashioned buttermilk was poured out and used for drinking and baking and was a totally pleasing and soothing substance having had the lactose in the liquid turned to lactic acid and becoming generally tolerable to the lactose intolerant. It was often give to those who were recovering from stomach ailments since it seemed to be tolerated well.
The raw unworked butter was spooned into a large bowl and “worked” or kneaded like dough until the additional water was worked out of the pale fluffy unworked mixture causing it to become a deeper yellow color and become stiffer in texture. It was lightly salted during the working process and spooned and pressed into molds. The molds were about 4 inches in diameter with a outer shell and a press top with a handle attached. Once the press had been filled with butter it was set on the butter board and the press pushed downward to compress the butter patty and put a design into the top. Ma ma Maberry removed the mold leaving an approximately one pound mold of butter to be sold to the peddler or folks who lived in town and ordered butter and eggs from her regularly. It was how she got her spending money and farm wives in the Upper Cumberland commonly referred to it as “butter and egg money.”
As I think back it seems that the old high cream raw milk which we drank with relish is much like many things we gaze upon in life. They are pleasant to look at, and exciting to contemplate, but they will bring us no good outcome in the end. I suppose our excuse is we were unaware of the damage it could cause and in some way this makes us less culpable, it does not however make the impact on us less damaging. Many of the things we look upon, knowing they are damaging for us, knowing they bring us no joy, and knowing they bring God no glory, yet we choose to indulge in the regardless
So, although the old churn will likely never serve its intended purpose again, I think I will keep it; if only because of the pleasant memories and valuable lessons it brings to mind when I see it there next to the furnace. .
Acts 17:30 tells us that, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”

Have a blessed day, Bob

Is the Longest Way Round, the Shortest Way Home?

2010-08-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

Is the Longest Way Round, the Shortest Way Home?---------------------------------

I learned to read pretty early in the first grade and never looked back. It has been one of the great joys of my life to be able to lose myself in a book. I have gone through all kinds of reading material in 60 years. The Bobsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Big Red, Bomba of the Jungle, a whole series on the younger life of historical figures in our country, Laura Ingles Wilder’s “Little House” books, and at least ten years of Reader’s Digest Magazines provided daily and nightly grist for my reading mill.
One of the earliest stories I remember, however, was one called “The Longest Way Around, Is the Shortest Way Home.” It was about a boy whose school house was on the opposite side of the hill from his house. Each day he would have to take great pains to walk a much extended distance to go around the hill. He often remarked to his mother that it would be shorter just to walk over the top of the hill, and thus get to the school in a shorter distance. His mother would just reply, “The Longest Way Round may be the shortest way home,” leaving him to puzzle about what that meant.
Finally one day he decided to break from the directions he had been given and just go over the top. The next few pages of the story tracked his trials as he pulled the steep grade of the hill, pulled his way through head high weeds, and treaded his often scratched body through briar patches of every description. In short, he did find that, “the longest way around was the shortest way home – not to mention the easiest way home.”
I think that story might have part of my second grade reader, but it obviously made a lasting impression on me, since I am remembering it some 59 years after starting the second grade. I think it became something of a guide post for me in life, realizing that in many of life’s adventures that truth holds.
I remember duck hunting a large swamp in Lapeer, Michigan on a late fall afternoon and deciding that in the face of impending darkness, instead of walking around the swamp to get out and go home, I would simply wade through the swamp and once on the other side take a more direct journey to where my car was parked. After all, I was wearing waders and was pretty sure that directly across the swamp was the path that would take me home. I started through the swamp and found it to be much deeper that I had anticipated with the water coming almost to the belted top of my waders. The bottom was a slimy, sticky muck that tugged at my feet with every step, and finding a way through was much more difficult than I had anticipated. Once into the gloom of the swamp, I lost the direction of the now lowering sun and as I threaded my way through the trees, islands, snakes, and stands of bushes that grew in the swamp, I became less and less sure of in what direction I needed to be headed. As I finally neared the far shore, a pain that had been dully gnawing at my lower back suddenly became the intensity of someone sticking an ice pick into your lower back. Waves of sickness began to flow over me and even in the cool of late autumn, beads of sweat popped out on my forehead. As I struggled to emerge on the far side of the swamp, I realized that I had somehow walked in a semi-circle and was a mere hundred yards down from where I had walked into the darkness.
By this time I was really struggling and found I could no longer negotiate the path and carry my Browning 12 gage. I was pretty sure I would die in the swamp and be found in the following spring when the farmer began to cultivate the fields again. I laid the 12 gage carelessly down beside the path and moved on toward the path I knew lead to the farmer’s house. As I neared the gate I could see that my hunting partner was already waiting for me there as darkness descended on the farmstead. I told him I was probably dying and he drove me to the hospital, after retrieving my Browning, and I found that my body was in the midst of ridding itself of a kidney stone. The first of many I was to experience over the coming years. All through my ordeal my brain kept repeating, “The longest way round is the shortest way home.” It was like one of those jingles the gets in your head and you can’t get it out.
This time it was in reality that the longest way round may have been the shortest way home, but in many situations of life, work, and education, I have found the axiom to be true as well. Doing the job right the first time. Planning you work and working your plan, one thing done and that done well, the right thing done right, and working as unto The Lord are all variations on that theme. It is easy to convince yourself that you ought to take shortcuts at work, in your work for God, or in your relationships. But, more often than not, “the longest way round, is the shortest way home,” because once inside the swamp, it is difficult to maintain your intended direction.

Have a blessed day, Bob

Strong for God

2010-07-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

The brown eyed girl and I have been on a little trip with my youngest son, his wife and their four children. We went to Center Hill Lake in DeKalb County and spent the days getting hot, and sunburned and liked the experience. I was thinking back to the days when my son himself was but a little boy and we would bring him and his brother down to Tennessee to visit his own Granddaddy and Grandmommie, (my parents). It was long before Edgar Evins State Park was even though of by the Corps of Engineers or the State of Tennessee TWRA and our trips were to Standing Stone State Park. Standing Stone is located near Celina Tennessee on Timothy Lake. Timothy Lake was created by the CCC or WPA, or perhaps both working in concert with one another during the great depression. We would get one of the little original log cabins with a great open hearth fireplace and spend the week together, often with my sister and her three children. So there we would be, five of my sister’s family, four of our family, and my mom and dad. Eleven of us in all. My dad would always bring his pickup truck and his gas grill in the back since he and my mom were convinced that eating things grilled on charcoal would surly cause cancer.
The kids would play in the pool, climb around on the trails and nearly every one of them caught their first fish on one of those trips. When night came we would sit around outside the cabin as the cool night breezes whispered through the tall tulip popular trees and the children would nod off to stories of how things were in our family. It was a time of great identity.
Since the park was not too far from Gainesboro, sometime some of the relatives would join us for the sitting and talking about crops, weather, who was related to whom, and whatever became of so and so.
This weekend we had a devotional together as a family and my son told his four children how it is in our family. How we believe in God and how we commit ourselves to His Kingdom and His Work. How this has been passed down from generation to generation, each retelling of our faith in the Creator and his ability to deliver us from the snares of the evil one. It was a particularly precious time since our oldest granddaughter, Maggie, had made the commitment to baptism a few weeks ago at Christian Camp.
As I sat in the old folks spot listening to him talking to them as I once did to he and his brother, I remembered a time when on a family vacation he was but a babe in arms and his four year old brother and I were out for a walk around the motel balcony while his mother got him fed and down for the night. We stood at the rail and I put my foot up on the rail and the four year old tried but his legs were not long enough for that to happen. Finally, he turned to me and said, “Daddy, our family is strong for God, isn’t it.” It was a moment too precious to tell of without my voice quivering even these 36 years later.
It was a time of great identity – and so was this weekend, a time of great identity.

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ. Make your family “Strong for God.” Bob

Christian College First - Remembering DLC

2010-07-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Remembering the late David Lipscomb College--------------------------------------- I remember what it was like the very first time I walked onto the David Lipscomb College campus as a student. It was September and Freshman Week began on Tuesday but we were able to check in to the Dorm on Sunday. The only thing was, I was not checking in to the dorm, I was going to be “rooming” with my sister and her husband. They had been married only a couple of years and were going through the usual struggles of a newly married couple; and my dad had made an arrangement with them to allow me to room with them which would permit them to move out of the tiny apartment they had just off 12th avenue, south of Shelby Park, and into a duplex on Warfield Drive, near Green Hills Mall. The Mall was then what would later be called a “strip mall” since Cain Sloan, the anchor store was not connected with the other stores which shared a common parking spot, except by a covered sidewalk.
So I didn’t go to the campus directly, I went to the house where not only was I moving in, my sister and her husband were moving in also.
It was the beautiful fall of 1962, and John F. Kennedy was president. He had just affirmed to the world that America would put a man on the moon by the end of that decade and Fidel Castro had begun to make deals with the Soviet Union that the world was finding increasingly uncomfortable. Not to be outdone by Fats Domino, an artist by the name of Chubby Checker had introduced a song called “The Twist” and everybody was doing the dance it suggested. Tony Bennett was riding the top of the charts with “I left my heart in San Francisco” and Bobby Vinton was telling the world that “Roses are Red my love.” The Contours were asking,”Do You Love Me?” and Ray Charles was answering with, “I can’t stop loving you.” My personal favorites were “The Duke of Earl” by Gene Chandler and “The Wanderer” by Dion. As I left Carthage, striking out into the world on the new adventure of college, I could indeed picture myself as “The Wanderer.” I suppose it escaped me that I was going to a Christian College with copious rules, to be living with my big sister, her husband and new baby, Jeff. Somewhat limited freedom by today’s standards.
It was not until the next day after move in that I took the first tentative walk over to the campus and discovered that my walk to school was to be some mile and one half each day. But, I was used to walking, had no car nor any hopes of getting one, besides, freshmen were not allowed cars in those days anyway. The first trip was just a recon to see who might be moving in and discover if there were any friendly faces in the crowd. There were plenty of friendly faces, but all of them were strangers looking for some other friendly face, just as was I.
It was not until the next day I began to make some acquaintances in earnest, having discovered that the walk home from campus after dark was very long, especially it rain was falling. Things were beginning to build to the school year in earnest by Tuesday evening and it was then that I discovered that my cousin Morris Mabry had come to school early to “check out the freshman talent,” in his words. He greeted me with the news that Jan Lafever, a mutual friend from Detroit, eventually to be know as the brown eyed girl, had decided to come to Lipscomb as a freshman and was indeed in that very Student Center.
By Thursday of freshman week various upperclassmen were beginning to show up providing familiar faces, and the “Faculty Fireside” that night followed the “Freshman Mixer” earlier in the evening in which we played various renamed versions of hide and seek and red rover. And yes, Red Rover by any other name is just as juvenile. On Friday the freshmen were taken to Percy Warner Park and various games were the order of the day. I passed the girls softball and noted with some surprise that the brown eyed girl was pitching for the home team, or was it the other team, I forget. She didn't seem like the pitcher type, but I was to learn that she was much more rugged than she appeared.
By the weekend, the real college students had all arrived and the campus was jumping and I loved it, I loved every bit of it, because I had never been away from home before, and never been with so many young people who did not already have you pegged into that old high school pigeon hole. All things were new and you were able to get a fresh start. I didn’t join the band, much to everyone’s surprise, but became friends with folks who were in class and with the guys with whom my cousin was running around. I soon didn’t even mind the walk since it gave me time to think and smoke, a nasty habit I had acquired in high school, could not pursue on campus, and would not give up for another ten years or so.. As for the brown eyed girl, she and I were “just friends” and might end up hanging out together on campus, or going with a group somewhere, but she was clearly uninterested in any romantic involvement, with anyone - probably most especially me.
Faculty Fireside was quite an experience since a number of us ended up “left over” and were caught going to the Home Economics, Home Management House to spend fireside with Miss Margret Carter. It was raining a slow drizzle outside and since none of us had a car, we ended up walking in the steady rain. The brown eyed girl was also in that group of leftovers and had on a pair of red flat shoes, which were ruined by the time we got to our destination. That was the first time I noticed her affinity for red shoes. In don’t think since that time she has been without a pair of red shoes, which she claims brightens you day if you are feeling blue.
The following week we all settled into classes and I learned that the competitive field at David Lipscomb College was somewhat more challenging than Smith County High School. Everything was graded on a strict curve, particularly in the freshman year which meant that 20 – 25 percent of the students in a given class were likely to receive a D or an F in that class. Lipscomb had an open enrollment policy which meant anyone could apply and enter, but in your first sessions students were invited to look to their right and their left and note that one of the three of you would not survive beyond the first quarter, and that two of the three of you would not return the following year. I didn’t know if my goose was cooked, but I knew it was pretty warm.
Now that I look back I find myself glad that God does not grade on a curve. With Him we are judged not by the performance or spirituality of others, but by his own standard, highly tempered with Grace and Mercy. And He allows us a fresh start, to escape the pigeonhole into which we have placed ourselves. All things are new.
I survived the first quarter with only a D in Biology and survived the first year with only an additional D in Physics. No more Ds were in my future, thankfully. In spite of the hard work in front of me, it might have been one of the most exciting years of my life. It is a place that holds a special fondness in my heart. "Christian College First" was the phrase our two sons would hear over and over and they both graduated from DLU. One went on to get an MBA from Vanderbilt, but "Christian College First".

God Bless, Bob

Remembering Earl Mabery

2010-07-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

So….How do you spell Mabery? Apparently, any way you want to, since among my numerous friends and relatives with the last name Mabery, each of them seems to spell it differently. (Mayberry, Maberry, Mabery, Mabry…..)
Yesterday I learned that Earl Mabery, the big bother of my long time best friend, had succumbed to the ravages of a fast moving brain cancer. Scarcely two months ago, he had been alive and seemingly well and we were all planning a cruise to the Caribbean together next March. You see, not only was Earl a big brother to Richard, my best friend for some 40 years, he was my friend too. Richard, who passed away a few years back, had been the catalyst that brought Earl and his wife Gladys, into our lives, but it was Earl and Gladys themselves who drew us to them. They couldn’t do enough nice things for people.
After being buds at Lipscomb University, Richard and I were inducted into the U.S. Army on the same day, standing heels to toes in the line. Our service numbers were only one number apart and for the next two years we were never far apart either.
It was Earl who loaned Richard and me his brand new, green Ford Fairlane Convertible so the four of us, Jan, Sandy, Richard, and I could take a first trip to Florida before our induction date. I almost wrecked it on a north Georgia backroad.
It was Earl who drove us to the old Fort Street Train Station and then took the tearful wives home when we departed to Fort Knox for basic training. The brown eyed girl and Sandra, Richard’s wife, lived together much of the time we were gone, at least a portion of the time at the home of Richard and Earl’s parents who were two of the most unique and likable people one could ever know, but that is another whole story.
It was Earl who drove us at a highly illegal speed from Detroit Metro Airport to the Toledo Ohio airport when our flight had been canceled and we were in imminent danger of being AWOL within a few hours.
It was Earl and Gladys who prepared a going away party for us when we left and a welcome home party for us when we returned. It was at the welcome home party that Gladys gave me my most memorable haircut. I had gone by a barber shop near the GM Tech Center to get a trim after just arriving home from overseas and the barber either was drunk, or hated soldiers, (it was Vietnam and we were “baby killers”). I left the shop with a haircut that caused the brown eyed girl to gasp in horror when I picked her up from work. At the welcome home party that night, Gladys decided to remedy the haircut with a gadget she had purchased from K-Tel; she spread a towel around my neck and went to work. It was a little like eating chitterlings, the more she bit off and chewed the bigger the job got. When she was finally through, I can’t say I looked worse, since that was probably not possible, but I can say I am glad the GM was obligated to give me my job back.
After our discharge, we all lived in the little town of East Detroit, Michigan, which has now gone uptown and become East Point, Michigan, and Gladys and Earl were forever doing something nice for us. Gladys would call and ask Jan if she could keep the boys while Jan got her hair fixed of did some shopping, and Earl, who loved the water and outdoors, was always inviting us to the cottage they owned on Rondo Bay in Canada. There we boated, once even crossing Lake Erie and back, skated on the frozen canals in the winter, and dipped smelt and cooked them up right on the beach. Sandy Dean and Crystal, their older teenagers, provided handy and dependable baby sitters at a time when urban myth had babies being cooked in the microwave by a teenager high on LSD. Kim was a little young for babysitting duty but may have snuck in on the tail end of that experience. We were forever moving into and out of town with GM’s Relocation Services being our closest confidants, but when we came back to town Gladys and Earl were always there, always hospitable, and always fun.
In these later years since Richard’s passing, we have caught them annually at St. Augustine, where Sandra lives. They go down each year for a month or three and rent a place close to Sandra. We get down at the tail end of March when I no longer have to feed those big round rolls of hay to the cattle and we all catch up on kids, grandkids, and in their case, great grandkids. We tell old stories, walk on the beach, tell old stories, get coffee and doughnuts from Publix, tell old stories, and play trivia at the local bar and grille. We don’t win, but we like to play. Oh, and did I mention, we tell old stories.
It was always evident to me that Earl was Richard’s biggest hero, and to some degree probably mine also. He was able to argue without losing his temper, find a good thing in everyone, generous to a fault, had a big heart and a great sense of humor. He delighted in egging the girls on, a trait he gained from his father, and watching them rise to the bait.
He was interested in everything and as a resulting interesting at all times. Fun to be with and until the very end, never seemed to have a bad day, although I knew that he had suffered greatly with a neuralgia difficulty. An altogether pleasant fellow whom anyone would be happy to call their friend. Active to his last days, I can only be thankful he did not linger long in an invalid state; he would have wanted nothing to do with any such thing. I said earlier today when talking to my son on the phone, “Earl was a guy who always found the best in people.” He replied, “would that someone could say that about each of us when we are gone.”
Isn’t it just the most surprising thing when your offspring come up with such wise reflections? One day you turn around and life has passed and your children are making sage remarks.
Rest in Peace, Earl. Our Love, Buddy and Jan

Fleeing to the Fraidy-hole

2010-07-12T16:13:00.000-07:00

Fleeing to the Fraidy-Hole-----------------------------------------------------These July days remind me that, in my opinion, every house ought to have a basement. When we moved to 901 Dogwood in Carthage, our house had a basement and it opened up a whole new world for me. Our basement had not been finished when we bought the place. By that I mean that the front wall foundation trench had been dug down to basement level depth but the dirt behind the wall had not been fully excavated and ranged from nearly shoulder high at the front of the house to door sill level in other places. Daddy removed the rest with pick and shovel, moving a wheelbarrow load at a time outside the basement door. Eventually he got it reasonably level and was able to pour an L shaped concrete floor in a part of the basement, leaving the furnace room and coal bin a dirt floor. To the best of my knowledge it remains that way today.
Eventually, he put in a shower with concrete floor, a divider wall to separate the furnace room from the more civilized portion and finally, when I was about a freshman in high school, I divided the floored space into two more rooms by putting up a divider wall between them. It never had a ceiling nor was it ever painted and the floor was always bare concrete, but it was my favorite part of the house.
In the summer, it was a place of escape from the heat which in those days was not abated by air conditioning as it is today. In the middle of the July heat, one could always go to the basement and be assured the temperature was at least 10 to 15 degrees cooler than upstairs. Since the front wall was mostly below ground, all a little boy had to do was lay down on the cool concrete floor to find it at or near 55 degrees. I have spent many a sweltering July night in the cool embrace of the old basement couch, using Mama’s discarded living room drapes as an improvised couch cover.
By the same token, since the huge, coal fired, gravity flow, furnace was located in the basement, it was toasty warm in the winter. There might be snow outside but inside the glowing coal caused the old furnace to radiate heat and make sure the air in even the most remote corner was above 75 degrees. Since there was a back door that walked outside onto the lower level of the steeply sloping lot it was a great place to duck into when playing in the snow. A little boy could avoid frostbite to his feet without coming into the house and either incurring the wrath of an adult for the mess caused by his snowy wet clothes and shoes, or worse yet, being told that he had been out long enough and needed to stay inside the rest of the day.
It was our “party place” and Daddy would rig up games down there and have the kids our age from church (there were only six or eight of us) over to spend the evening in games like rolling a ball at a clothes pin which held a string, which suspended a hat. The idea was to bend over, hit the clothes pin with the ball, release the string, causing the hat to drop, and be sitting straight up when it descended on the player’s head. Not very exciting by Wii standards, but we had fun with it. There was also the favorite trick where Daddy sat on one side of a mirror with his hat on his head and half of his face on one side of the mirror and half on the other, one by one the kids looked into the mirror from the other side and Daddy would simply reach up with the hand behind the mirror, raise the hat from his head, seemingly making it levitate to the kid looking into the mirror. No one was allowed to enter and observe until they had had their turn at the mirror. It was a pretty good trick and still the basis of many professional magic tricks today – besides we were not a sophisticated audience.
The basement was also the definitive storage spot for all un-used, or even occasionally-used things. It held Ball Perfect Mason “fruit jars,” cans of lye soap made decades ago, tools of every shape and description – especially those that were seldom used; there were big pots only used in canning and preserving season, parts of old appliances that had long ago gone to the appliance happy hunting grounds, cans of paint – many of which had now become a solid – and furniture that had been considered elegant three decades ago. Five buckle Arctic overshoes, sleds, and snow shovels vacationed there in the summer, and there was wire of every description, string of all lengths and thicknesses, and tape for every possible use. When Daddy was making some improvised repair on who knows what, he would often just walk around and around in the basement looking. Eventually he would spy just the right thing, then jury rig it to make the Rube Goldberg contraption he was working on function. The only limitation was things stored in the basement had to be reasonably resistant to mold and mildew since the humidity level often hovered just below that of a Brazilian rain forest and all things were prone to take on a dull green hue and a distinctively basement-like smell.
Across the street at our neighbor’s house there was a TV in the basement – talk about luxury. I often stepped over there to watch TV with Linda and Roger who were my closest friends and neighbors in those days. They too, had a side door which allowed me to come and go as I pleased without waking Mrs. Jessie or Mr. Homer when it was too late to be “playing that juke box” at my own house. In the Lewis house, the adults simply went to bed and either forgot or ignored the fact that you were watching TV below them. After all, in those days Lucy and Desi still had single beds and wore full length pajamas. No show would have considered putting even the mildest off color word or joke on air and parents did not worry that their children would learn words only a parrot belonging to a Marine Corps drill sergeant would know.
The nearest thing to off color we might be exposed to was the “True Romance” and “Silver Screen” magazines Linda occasionally sneaked down to read in the privacy of the basement – that is to say the privacy from everyone but Roger, little Kathy, and me – and we really didn’t see it as our concern.
When I think back about what I liked about the basement, I guess it comes down to a place where a child could be themselves, where substance was favored over appearance, and where things that might have been out of place in another venue seemed at home. No one minded if the couch looked like it was covered in curtains, because that old couch sat just right and the fact that a mouse occasionally visited was just a fact of life, not a tragedy of epic proportions. Bare concrete floors were accepted over highly varnished hardwood because they were cool in the summer and besides, no one had a “hissy fit” if you spilled grape juice. Exposed floor joists overhead meant one could nail up walkie-talkie wire, clothes line, string to hold hats, and hooks to hold baskets, buckets, and old pails of every description – no one minded.
Finally, the basement was where one could go when the storms swept in and the heavy dark clouds threatened of tornados. You knew you would be safe there because there was a bulwark against destruction; a safety zone to which escape was possible.
I think the basement of my childhood was just what most people are looking for in life. Somewhere folks can be accepted, be themselves, and not worry about being out-of-place. A place where substance is valued over appearance, function is sought over form and a place to which one can escape to in a moment of disaster and tumult.
The brown eyed girl grew up in a house with a basement too, but our very first home purchase was a home with no basement. We have never wanted a home with no basement since – it just doesn’t seem like home. When the storms blow, you will find us down in the “fraidy-hole” feeling safe from the inclement weather.

Have a blessed day and join us at Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ, where substance is valued over appearance. Bob

Prologue for Pore Folks, Potlucks, and Parables

2010-07-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is the prologue from my latest book, Pore Folks, Potlucks, and Parables. Let me know if you would like a signed and personalized copy. Bob

This Evolving World We Live In-----
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, things were very different than they are in this land in which you and I live, even if perchance your address has remained static. No one I knew could even pronounce Vietnam, nor did they know or care where it was, or who was in charge of it. Harry, Ike, and Jack were our presidents in these times and, unlike the land we now live in, we all wanted to believe that they were true, capable and cared about each of us.
We watched June Clever on TV and did not even question why she wore pearls around her neck, high heels on her feet, and an apron around her waist when Ward came home for dinner – we wanted to believe that world and wanted to be part of it. We watched Uncle Milty perform on the Texaco Hour, dressed in drag every week and did not question his sexual orientation; in fact we would have likely not known what that meant. Watching Red Skelton turn his hat upside down and be a little boy, or get dragged under the curtain every Sunday night never ceased to be funny. Some moms worked outside the home but most stayed home and took care of the kids.
We took our cars to filling stations with big porches for us to drive under and the man who ran it came out in a uniform and filled the tank, checked the oil and water, put air in the tires, and tore off some green stamps which you mother could trade for toasters, and electric skillets. Lots of mothers could not drive and no self respecting man would ride in a car with a woman driving – it was un-manly. A good sized house was 2000 square feet and often less, and a farm could be bought for 7 thousand dollars.
Rock and Roll was just hitting the radio, but Your Hit Parade was what everyone was watching on TV. No one thought Rock and Roll was here to stay, except the teenagers – Frank, Perry, Rosemary, and Dean were where it was at on the music scene, and the other was just a passing fad.
Words were used differently and a hoe was what you used to chop the garden, if you were gay you were only lively and happy, no one thought regular people would ever become dope eaters. Alternate lifestyles, live-ins, and Johnny has Two Mommies were meaningless phrases and most of us were without a clue concerning those things and wished to stay that way. People could be pro-choice and pro-life both then, they were not mutually exclusive term.
When I was growing up in Carthage we went to Prayer Meeting on Wednesday night. Bread came in two distinct groups, that which you made at home which included Corn Pone and Hoe Cakes or Biscuits and yeast rolls or you could eat Loaf bread from the store. We had Arsh (Irish)_ potatoes and sweet potatoes with dried beans – never white beans or great northerns. Adie made teacakes (cookies) every Saturday and we kept the milk cold in the frigidare. When we went to the store we had thing put in a poke, never a bag like now or a sack like up north. Old men wore shoes through the week, but slippers on Sunday. Everyone went to the grocery store to get food, and no one went to a Supermarket. On Halloween we had a punkin and pumpkin seemed pretentious. We got dog tired and my grandmother said you were bilious when your stomach hurt. The few cars that had turn signals we said to have blinkers and I suspect my grandchildren will never know what fender skirts were. Our fathers took a turn of corn to mill and our grandmothers kept flour in the flour barrel. When we were sick we went to the drug store and bought patent medicine.
In those days no one had ever heard of NASA, and the moon just might still be made of green cheese. Cars and homes didn’t have air conditioning and businesses that did advertized “Come inside it’s Cool” Pantyhose was not know as a single word, and women going into public barelegged was as unthinkable as a preacher wearing a Speedo in the pulpit. Church houses in the country did not have pews, they had benches, and a Sanctuary was a place birds were kept. No one had ministers, or pastors, but everyone had preachers and that was their main job description. Businesses had calculators and comptometers and Dell was a valley, Gateway was something you walked through, and Apple was something you ate. People dressed up to go to church and wore ties to go shopping downtown. Women wore white gloves on their hands and girdles on the rest of them.
Everyone read the comic strip every day, and almost everyone could tell you what Mutt and Jeff, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, and Dick Tracy was doing the day before. Sitting in the shade was a favorite pastime and no one ate Cantaloupe but everyone had Mush Mellon. You went down to the cellar to bring up a can of green beans you mother had canned last summer and out to the smokehouse to cut off a slice of middlin for breakfast. No one had bathrooms but everyone had a toilet and people burned their trash in the burn barrel in back of the house or threw it on the trash pile at the end of some country road.
Cokes were 6 cents and came out of a red and white box with water and ice inside and giant Baby Ruth Bars were a dime. If you picked up bottles from Co colas, you could get a penny for them from the store. Milk came in glass bottles, and freezers on the ice box were roughly the size of two shoe boxes, which was ok because not many frozen items were available at the store. People we knew didn’t eat in restaurants except when there was no other choice and they were called Cafes – unless of course it was an automat.
My mama and daddy were masters at finding lessons in everything in life and helping you understand why some things were a bad idea without ever forbidding you to take part in them, and understanding why others were wholesome and good, without ordering you to take them up. They taught in parables, I think it was not expressly to be like Jesus, I think it just happened. Perhaps that is why I have chosen this format for the book; it is Christ like by virtue of personal leaning rather than by intention.
Yep, lots of things have changed, since that land long ago and far away, but a few things remain the same. God still loves us and expects us to show our love for Him by the way we treat other people. We still have but one life to live, and only one shot at getting it right and living to the praise of his glory. (Eph. 1) While the world around evolves, almost daily, He remains a constant rock in a raging sea. I sincerely hope you enjoy these parables from daily life.
Bob

Memories of the HIgh Church of Country Music

2010-06-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

Heartfelt Memories of the High Church ---------------------------------------------------

Eddie Stubbs always calls the Ryman the “High Church of Country Music” and every time I hear it, it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Sometimes you just fall into good luck without really trying or even knowing that it is happening to you. That was true with us and our romance with the old Ryman.
When the brown eyed girl and I married in 1964 and returned to Tennessee at Christmas to finish my education at Lipscomb, I was essentially without funds and in need of employment – any employment. I managed to snag a job with Tennessee Wholesale Drug on 2nd Avenue, packing orders for delivery on the old Trailways Bus Line. Shortly after, a friend graduated and was hired as the properties manager for the Opry working for Ott Devine who had been in radio since going to work for WSM in 1935. Country Music was just starting to make its move and the Opry was moving uptown, at least metaphorically.
My friend Dick called and asked if I would like a job working the concession stands, which were located in the back corners both upstairs and down. So for the first couple of Saturday nights, I drew fountain coke and sold hot dogs to the tourists who liked very much to tell you where they hailed from. By the third week, Dick let me know there was an opening in souvenir sales and that it paid a commission in addition to the standard minimum wage hourly rate. There were only three souvenir sales people in the whole crowd and it was considered a good job that you only got if you had “pull.” The other two were brothers-in-law and had been selling there for years. One of them had the coveted job of selling seat cushions in the crowd, which was the real money job. Seat cushions were a real money maker for both WSM, who owned the Opry at that time, and for the person who hawked them in the crowd. Hal Durham would generally be the opening announcer and would give the seat cushions a little boost by letting the crowd know they would be available and would help your backside endure the full show in comfort.
At 5:00 or 5:30 the crowd had begun to line up down Fifth Avenue and around the corner past Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, sometimes stretching nearly back to Fourth Avenue. Many nights when you arrived, you knew that they were not all going to get inside, and you knew that many of them had traveled for hours to get there for the show. We often began by selling programs on the street to those waiting in line and some of them went home with no more than their program to show for their trip. There were no reserved seats in those days. Also, there was no second show when I first started and if you came through the doors at 6:30 p.m. you could be there until midnight and those benches got mighty hard in 5 ½ hours. Hal was from McMinnville, TN, had an extraordinary radio voice and was a friendly, easy going guy who was liked by everyone. He passed away in 2009 having served in later years as an innovative General Manager of the Opry, following Ott Devine and Bud Wendell in that capacity.
Grant Turner would walk out on stage at 6:30 p.m. and begin the “pre-show” which consisted of him playing country music from two turn tables on either side of him. Then at 7:30 he would announce that, “In the next few minutes you will begin to hear the best country music in America.” and the show would begin, usually with Roy Acuff hosting the first segment of the show. Roy understood that the people had come for a show and he knew how to put one on. He was known to play with his yo-yo onstage while others were performing and balance his fiddle on his bow and the whole affair on his chin to the delight of the crowd, many of whom had traveled for hours and hours on a bus or in a car to see the show.
Hank Snow, Earnest Tubb, and Minnie Pearl also usually hosted at least two segments of the show along with bluegrass favorites like Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Flatt and Scruggs had not yet made the transition to the recognizable voices they were to become as a result of Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies. I can recall one instance when they were practicing in the dressing room and I was rushing around being the general “hey boy” that I had become after a few months. I stopped nearby and sang a little tenor on “Cabin on a Hill” just to be able to say that I had once sung with Flatt and Scruggs.
In those days, the Opry was essentially a radio show and not much attention was paid to what was happening on stage. If you were through with your duties, it was permissible to wander back stage, go out on the stage and sit on a hay bale during any segment. The live audience was incidental and a sound effect for the radio broadcast, which was designed to sell records. Each performer, from the biggest star to side men, received $44.00 dollars per performance and each “member” was required to make 26 appearances in order to retain their member status. It was increasingly becoming a hardship during my years there and requirements began to be relaxed by the time I left. Hal Durham had much influence in relaxing both the appearance requirement and the prohibition against percussion instruments that existed when I started. Buddy Harman, the legendary drummer, appeared on stage several times while I was there but with only a snare drum and brushes. Younger artists were beginning to demand precussion beyond the stand up base.
Lonzo and Oscar, String Bean and Bashful Brother Oswald along with comedian Archie Campbell provided the laughs for the show, while the Stoney Mountain Cloggers provided the visuals. I will forever be indebted to Archie Campbell who, when he learned that my mother and father were in the fifth row center on one particular night, made sure he came out and spoke to them. They never forgot it, and I will never forget him for doing such a gracious thing.
The Ryman of those days was a far cry from the renovated, extended, and air conditioned building of today. It was essentially a fire hazard and we were required to have a cadre of firemen and policemen on duty during each performance. They were off duty and received extra pay for their services. I will always remember Mr. Norris, who was the stage door officer. He would let the brown eyed girl and my friend Dick’s wife in through the stage door (it is off the alley between the Ryman and Tootsie’s) and see that they were seated in the family section that had been reserved for them on Saturday nights. They generally showed up about 10:00 and stayed until the theoretical closing at 12:00 p.m. I say the theoretical closing because Marty Robbins always reserved the last segment for himself since he would drive stock car races at the fairgrounds earlier on Saturday night, come in all full of adrenaline, and then want to sing until 1:00 p.m. even thought he radio show ended at midnight. He was famous for calling for his own applause by doing a come hither motion with his arm and bringing the applause to a crescendo. The staff was weekly geared to getting him shut down and out the door as near to midnight as possible, but it was generally something of a task.
Summer nights were the best when it did not get dark until 9:30 and we would throw open the big windows and the performers would simply compete with the street sounds coming in from outside. Cy, a retired Nashville Fireman, was another favorite of everyone. He seemed to have been there as long as the stain glass windows and was in charge of seeing that the massive crowd was kept safe from fire. By that time my duties ranged from holding female artists` purses while they sang to notifying certain performers in Tootsies that their set was coming up in a few minutes.
Sometime around the middle of my tenure there the executives realized that we had as many people standing outside and not getting in, as were seated. It was then that we went to two shows on Saturday nights amid much trepidation. The only thing that happened was the live audience revenue doubled for WSM and National Life and Casualty.
Although there was not the range of performers in other venues at the Ryman that are there today, we did do a lot of taping of performers like Loretta Lynn, Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer, and Chet Atkins. Also, Jimmy Dean taped some of his TV shows at the Ryman and we worked the limited crowds that provided the live audience feel of the show. I helped escort many, many guests, both performers and non performers. Brenda Lee was a frequent guest, Col. Sanders sponsored a show and frequently showed up to watch, Peter, Paul, and Mary came down after a concert and sang live to the audience because they admired the Opry and wanted to sing in the “Mother Church,” Lee Majors, Jim Nabors (a friend of Mrs. Sarah “Minnie Pearl” Cannon) and others, all of whom I cannot now remember, were frequent and regular guests of the Opry and were all treated with grace and respect by the staff.
It was a great time, Willie Nelson had a crew cut, Dottie West, Connie Smith, and Skeeter Davis provided glamour, and Porter Wagoner, “The Old Wagon Master” had not yet heard of Dolly Parton and was performing with “pretty Miss Norma Jean.” I still have one of the color Grand Ole Opry History Picture books which I sold in the crowds during those days and it is a treasure. It was a pretty good way to make a little extra money when we sorely needed it and it also provided free entertainment for the brown eyed girl and I, albeit we were usually well after midnight getting home. These days we try to be home and in the bed by 10:00 p.m. but the memory of a different time linger pleasantly in our minds.
Have a wonderful and blessed day, Bob

Seaking Northern as a Second Language

2010-06-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

Northern as a Second Language---------------------------------------------------

I speak Northern as a second language; I didn’t mean to, it just happened. I was trying to make a living with General Motors and that required me to spend 35 years in the frozen north. Of course Southern is my native tongue, being born in Jackson County and raised in Smith County, and it comes to me as easy as a lie to a politician. But I read Jack McCall’s piece in the Carthage Courier about “Paying Attention,” and it reminded me to pay attention to the difference in the way we talk Down South and the way things are said up north.
Of course, it is more than just what you say, it is the way you say it and when it is said. For instance, those folks up north like to jump right into business and skip all of the “small talk,” as they call it. I was a face-to-face negotiator for a good part of my career with General Motors, and it would just drive the other side crazy when I wanted to ask about their daughters upcoming wedding, inquire after their granny, whom I had learned was in a nursing home, or tell a little story I had heard that might or might not relate to anything we were going to discuss when the negotiations had begun in earnest. After all, they had often flown in from New Jersey or Plano, TX or Palo Alto, California on the morning flight, or better yet the corporate jet, and felt they needed to get down to business in the first three minutes. Not me, I had learned in the South that it is hard to be nasty to someone who had just inquired about your little boys tonsillectomy, and opined that, “well, kids get through these things, but I sure hope the little fellow will feel better tomorrow. You be sure and let me know.” That kind of conversation is hard to follow-up with red faced yelling and cuss words.
My cousin Marva and I were talking about how much difficulty the folks around Franklin, Spring Hill, and Columbia had adjusting to the brusque manner of the northerners who moved down to work at the Tennessee Saturn facility. Those folks wanted to get right down to business while the southern folks were still wanting to find out how they slept last night, and whether they thought the weather would change or not. It was something of a culture clash for the first few years.
The Northern language is dry, as dry as a bone in the desert, while Down South we try to spice it up with a simile whenever possible. I personally was known for the use of barnyard animals in speech.
“Negotiating with you folks, is like trying to teach a pig to whistle – it don’t accomplish a thing, and it just irritates the pig.”
“Negotiating with this company is like wresting with a pig – you both get nasty, but the pig likes it.”
“What is this, some kind of Goat Rodeo?”
“I’m going to work this bunch like a rented mule.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him take a bath.”
I once was in negotiations with a company in Short Hills, NJ and a great deal of the work was done by conference phone. The leader of the opposing team later told me that they kept a whiteboard in the room for the sole purpose of noting the barnyard animal similes and analogies I used each day.
A Jewish lawyer from Washington D.C. who sometimes supported my side of negotiations, called me a few years after I had retired and told me he had tried to memorize a lot of my saying and use them himself. “It was going pretty good too,” he said, “until I came to the term Goat Rodeo. I lost them there and someone wanted an explanation and I had nothing.” It is one of those sayings that is best delivered with a Southern accent, I guess.
Well, those fellows from New York and New Jersey are pretty slick, “as slick as a puppy’s navel,” my daddy would say, so I figured that it was just fair play to put them a little off guard with a little Southern speak. One of my friends told me when I retired that when I ever started out a sentence with, “Now I’m just a farm boy from Middle Tennessee….;” that everyone in the room automatically put their hand on their wallet. (By the way – that’s Northern for billfold.) Speaking of which, takes me to the next segment of Northern as a second language.
Down South, we go to the grocery store, nearly have a wreck, push the buggy through the store we trade at, have the groceries put in a bag (or poke) and the boy wheels them out to the car for us.
Up North, they drive to the supermarket, narrowly avoiding an accident, push the shopping cart through the store where they shop, have the groceries put in a sack and wheel them out to their vehicle themselves.
We say you all (pronounced Y’all) – they say “you guys.”
We say “ya hear” – they say “huh, or eh.”
We say creek – they say crick, we say aunt (like the bug) – they say aunt (rhymes with want); we say caught (kawt) – they say caught (cot); we have yard sales (focus on where the sale is) – they have rummage sales (focus on what is being sold); we catch crawfish – they eat crayfish.
We drink coke or co cola (no matter that it is orange or grape) – and they drink pop (unless you are from down east and then it is soda) And not one of my Northern friends would even know what a Yoo-hoo is
We travel on interstates – and up north one drives on the freeway. The night before Halloween is Devil’s Night up north and down South it is “the night before Halloween.” By the way, we carve punkins into Jack-o-lanterns and wear false faces; but they use pumpkins that look just like a punkin and wear masks.
Up north if someone were to say “bless her heart” it would mean they are thinking kind thoughts about her, down South it means what the person who says that is thinking is too awful to repeat in polite company. Some Southern words do not translate directly into Northern lingo. For instance, cattywampus, skygogling, whamperjawed, thingamadiger, doohickey, whatchamacallit; and other like, perfectly good but made up words. Other words, like booger means one thing down South but that same thing is called boogie up North. Boogie Man or Booger Man, you decide.
Down South people have conniptions, and pitch hissy fits, while up north they only “have a hemorrhage” when things go wrong. Up North, all of us are considered “crackers,” “briars,” or “hillbillies”, down South we know that a cracker is from “Jawja,” a briar is what blackberry cobbler comes from, and the hillbillies are on TV.
Down south we also like to run words together into a single syllable or to break words into as many syllables as possible. Like “Momenems”. Used in a sentence it would be “After this thing is over we’er going over to Momenems to get something to eat.” Or words which take on their own meaning like “Laisleb” which is a short form of “Well I will be”; or adding syllable as in Mis-ris, for Mrs or Jewl-er-ry for jewelry.
In the Movie “I Remember Mama” Uncle Kris tells his sick and suffering young nephew that he needs a swear word to use when the pain comes but that he must not use one in English, since people will be offended, rather he teaches the boy a swear word in Swedish – whether actually a swear word or not the audience is left to wonder. Southerners are particularly adept at using “light” swear words, For instance, my mother-in-law’s swear word was “well foot.” When she was disappointed, up-set, or surprised, she said, “well foot.” Dang, dog gone, dern it, Goodness Gracious, Gracious Me, well I’ll be _____, dag nab it, this blamed thing, are all euphoniums used by Southerners for swear words – Northerners are generally more direct.
While I noticed a sizeable erosion in the Southern tongue during my 35 years in the North, primarily I suppose, as a result of the man on the six o’clock news, there is still a big difference. As I often told my friends at work, “Yawl talk at 45 and I listen at 33 1/3 – but now no one under 35 would even understand that term anymore. I only know that when I got south of the Ohio River my tongue relaxed.
I never made a conscious effort to lose my Southern accent, since in a company as large as GM being remembered, even for your accent, was a good thing. I remember once being sent to a large meeting at the GM Technical Center in Warren, MI where 22,000 people worked. I was to make a presentation to a group of executives. When I arrived back at the plant, my boss called me in the office chuckling. “Well,” he said, “you made an impression, the Assistant Comptroller called to complement “that guy” who made the presentation. When I asked him, what guy, he replied, “the one who talks like Catfish Hunter.”
I suppose it doesn’t matter whether our speech is Northern or Southern but I do wish it was a little more sprinkled with civility. That we were more careful about the use of our Creators name in vain, that we were a little more polite and kind to one another, that we were less quick to be blunt and hurtful in our comments.
The Apostle Paul admonished us to speak the truth in love, but my granny just said, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Let’s look for those “apples of gold in pitchers of silver.”
Have a blessed day, Bob

Boston's Cream Bar and soft Southern nights

2010-06-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

Boston’s Cream Bar and soft Southern nights.--------------------------------------

Growing up in a small Southern town in the 1950s, means there are a lot of “advantages” to which you did not have access. For instance, in Carthage we did not have a theater, not a drive-in or a walk-in; at least not in 1958. We did not have any video game parlors, no miniature golf, no McDonald’s, or Hardees, and no automatic car wash. Most of us didn’t have a car, even though most of us had a driver’s license, and it was a rare thing for one of us to get to venture far into the outside world beyond Dixon Springs or Elmwood. We were occasionally allowed to drive the family car, or worse yet, station wagon, but seldom allowed to leave the narrow confines of the city limit. If we wanted spending money, we had to get a part-time job after school, since few of us had parents with resources that allowed them to give us allowances, beyond a couple of bucks now and then for a special occasion. No one was ever picked up by a Limo that I know of, to travel to the Junior/Senior Prom, which by-the-way was generally held in the cafeteria or gym at school anyway. Very few of us were without personal responsibility at home with respect to house cleaning, meal preparation, yard mowing, or farm chores. Cell phones were not invented and if you had a phone at home, it was often a party line which limited your ability to hold lengthy silent conversations with your significant other on the other end of the line. Saturday night was date night, which often entailed sitting on the front porch, the back steps, or watching TV with you current heart throb and many of us had to be home by 11:00 p.m. anyway.
I would however, venture to say that few of us felt deprived by our upbringing, then or now. Then, we had little basis of comparison since we were pretty much all in the same boat and “normal” is in the eye of the beholder. Now, as we look back we recognize that the times were not only innocent and safe, they were interesting.
Not having a theater in town meant that when you actually did go to a movie, it was generally in Lebanon, 20 miles away. That meant it was a real event and one only went for special movies of great interest. For instance, I remember going to see Elvis in Blue Hawaii at the theater off the square in Lebanon. The very fact that I can remember it tells you how special an event it was. Although we did not have a McDonalds, or Chili’s, or even a Taco Bell, we did have a “Cream Bar” operated by Mr. Harry Boston and wife, and the place was packed every summer night. You could exchange pleasantries with your friends, and it was not uncommon to arrive in one car and leave in another. But one never worried about being caught in a drive by shooting, or caught up in a gang war. People we knew didn’t do those things. Having chores and being involved in the general effort of the survival of the family, we now know provides young people with a sense of involvement and importance, establishes their place in the family, and gives them self respect, which is important to them growing up to be responsible adults. Not having an excess of money to spend, meant that drugs were not a part of our temptation, because we could scarcely afford to “save time.” There were no Limos in our experience and the Junior/Senior “Prom” (banquet) may have been cheesy by today’s standards, but a lot of hard work and cooperation between students and teachers had transformed the sweaty old Gym into a fairy land of crape paper and twinkling lights, and the process of arriving at that night had forged relationships between teenagers and adults that were destined to last a lifetime.
Date nights were perhaps dull by today’s standards, but the thrill of spending time with the one who made your heart beat faster, was no less thrilling then than now and besides you could always go roller skating under the big tent down by the swimming pool and listen to Phil and Don Everly belting out “Wake Up Little Suzie” as you circled the tent poles on the hardwood floor at breakneck speed. Sometimes a summer evening was as simple as putting five cars in a circle, tuning all the radios to WLS in Chicago and listening to Dick Biondi play “On Top of A Pizza, All Covered With Cheese, I saw my first meatball, till somebody sneezed.” It was a 1959 version of surround sound.
As I look back at those days, it becomes clear to me that God provides for us just the experience we need. That He allows each of us to go through a set of trials and disappointments, and through unexpected joys and triumphs and that in spite of these, He provides a way that we can be transformed into the image of His Son.
I am thankful for the era that I was privileged to grow up in, but I think it is no less true today that each of us is given just the right set of experiences, with the variable being how we allow those experiences to impact our life. In Romans 8:28-29, the apostle tells us “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” And then explains what working together for good is, in His frame of reference, “God planned that those he had chosen would become like his Son.” What we often miss is that from God’s frame of reference, things that “work together for good” are things that make us more like Jesus. Like my father before me, I have to say, “I don’t think I would change a thing that came my way in life, for fear of messing something up.”
Wonder what I ever did with that copy of “On Top of A Pizza”?

Have a blessed day, and visit us a Maple Hill Church, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN. Bob

Signs and Wonders

2010-06-22T14:01:00.001-07:00

Signs and Wonders.------------------------------------------------

I passed the Rome church of Christ today and noticed the sign said, “Be sure you don’t mistake Pleasure for Happiness.” I thought the sign was pretty appropriate as a punctuation mark to the conversation the brown eyed girl and I had been having for the previous couple of miles. She had noted that in nearly every yard, there was a motorcycle, a bass boat with a huge motor on the back, or a Skidoo of some description or another.
A couple of days ago a young fellow had passed us on I 40 as if we were sitting still. We were going near 70 mph so he must have been exceeding 85 or 90. The scary part was that he was on a motorcycle, It was one of those Japanese racing models that sounds as if a couple of brigades of soldiers were in a chainsaw fight. One loose pebble on the road and that young man would have been standing face to face with Saint Peter, or at lease face to face with someone.
I assume that part if it is that I am getting older. but there seems to be an obsession with speed and danger these days. Everyone wants the fastest boat, the highest roller coaster, the steepest rock climb, the most powerful motorcycle, the most dangerous bungee jump (which is just about any bungee jump, in my opinion). They want to live on the edge, experience danger close=up, get the newest adrenaline high.
It has always been my theory that man is put onto this earth with a big God shaped hole in him, and until he fills himself with God, he feels empty and incomplete. So you can dance as fast as you can, drink as much as you can, live on the edge with motorcycles, skidoos, bungee jumps, and roller coasters, but until the God shaped hole is filled, one still feels empty and incomplete. You can buy the most expensive homes and cars, take the most exotic vacations, wear $400.00 designer jeans and snake skin boots, but none of these will fill the hole. Only the God of the Universe fits in this hole and nothing else will plug the leak that leaves one feeling empty and alone.
Now a lot of times when I read those church marquees it is truly a matter of Signs and Wonders. I Wonder why they think that Sign is cleaver. But the sign at Rome today, well, it just hit the sweet spot.
“Be sure you don’t mistake Pleasure for Happiness.”

Have a blessed day and visit us at the Maple Hill church of Christ. Bob

Little things really do mean a lot.

2010-06-17T20:13:00.001-07:00

Ground hogs and Grits--------------------------------
There are some things in the world which I feel are highly underrated; things that should be held in high esteem but through ignorance and apathy are misunderstood and ignored.
One example is the ground hog, also known as the wood chuck or the whistle pig, depending on where in the United States you are calling one. The ground hog is, after all, the only animal that has a day named after him on your calendar. As highly regarded as the dog and cat are there is no dog day or cat day on you calendar. Oh, we refer to the “dog days of summer” but that is simply an expression, and holds no sway on the official calendar. But check February 2nd and there it is; the whistle pig’s very own day.
It’s not surprising when you think about all the things the little fellow can do. He makes a pretty good dish, baked up with sweet potatoes on each side of him, and that ground hog hide makes the best shoe laces you ever tied in your life. He is a weather forecaster, a hole digger, and is as clean as a whistle, why he eats only the best grass and corn from your patch. He even has a song about him;

Yonder comes Sal with a snigger and a grin
Yonder comes Sal with a snigger and a grin
Yonder comes Sal with a snigger and a grin
Ground hog grease all over her chin.

Bring a long pole and twist him out
Bring a long pole and twist him out
Bring a long pole and twist him out
Oh my, ain’t a Ground Hog stout.

Grits, well there is just no end to the usefulness of that commodity and most Yankees I met up north didn’t have a clue what they were all about.
The fact is though, that grits are the most useful in the North, not the South at all. It was a real good thing to carry a big sack in the back of your car. Not only did they add weight to the back end (of the car) to keep you from sliding around on all that snow and Ice, if you really got stuck, you could open that sack, sprinkle some on the ground in front of your tire and they acted just like sand, giving you enough traction to get out of that hole. Grits also make a great cleanser for your hands when the Lava Soap is all gone. If you had oil and grease on you hands from working on the tractor, Mama would just pour some grits in your hands, all lathered up with regular soap, and those hands would soon be pink and shiny.
Not only did the Yankees not have any clue about the many uses of grits they had no idea how to eat them. They thought they were cream of wheat or something. They would sprinkle sugar on them, pour milk over them, and then complain because they didn’t taste good. Well, I guess not, everybody knows grits are eaten hot, with a ¼ inch pat of butter in the middle and a little salt and pepper on the top. It doesn’t hurt if there is a little red eye gravy to drizzle on top either.
Ground hogs and grits are just a couple of those little things of which people overlook the value; and that is the real point of this story. (You knew there would be one, didn’t you?) It is the everyday things that we come to take for granted that make our life the color, taste, and flavor that it is. It is these small things, like rainbows from angry skies, butterflies that light on, and light up, our flowers, and red birds that sit in our Crape Myrtle and look smack in the bay window at us, for which we ought to remember to give God thanks. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to mention groundhogs and grits now and then either.

Have a blessed day, Bob

Thoughts on attaining the age of 66

2010-06-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

The force of Gravity and UV Rays----------------------------------------
Well, I just passed another birthday and it always amazes me how quickly they come from year to year – especially these days. This one was the 66 years mark and it seemed like barely yesterday that I was a spritely, boyish, 65 years old. Now here I am in my “late 60s” and wondering exactly how it happened. Not that I doubt the date from a bodily standpoint since my feet hurt from the plantar fasciitis, my right knee aches at night, my back aches in the morning, my hiatal hernia makes my stomach hurt if I stay in bed thirty minutes too long, the cornea dystrophy that affects my eyesight means I will hardly be able to recognize your face before 10:00 a.m., I take a handful of pills that look like someone knocked over a Walgreens, but if I drop a pill, no worry, my stomach will provide a catch basin. (It is our little dog, Toby’s, favorite perch)
The funny thing is though, I don’t feel any different in my heart of hearts. I still look in the mirror expecting to find a young man, only to discover my dad looking back at me. I jump up every morning with the agenda of a 20 year old but the stamina of a refugee from a concentration camp. When it comes to the jobs jar, my eyes are bigger than my stomach, or perhaps my expectations are greater than my realizations.
I have begun to notice that the one thing that seems to remain much the same over the years is one’s voice. When I go to high school reunions, I may not immediately recognize the face, but when the person opens their mouth, the voice is usually a dead giveaway. Seems strange, doesn’t it, given the amount of stress and strain most of us put on that faculty daily. All of us seem better at playing “remember when” looking in the mirror, but less adapt when we see photographs of ourselves. Wow! Who is that old man – oh wait, it’s me.
The brown eyed girl tries to get me to tell her that she is looking old, but I have been happily married for nearly 46 years and even if I though it --- I am much too smart to say it. The truth is, however, when I look at her I still see the same 26 year old that I married – it is grand how love works, isn’t it? I always accuse her of being a secret sister of Dick Clark or getting a “lifestyle lift” when I wasn’t looking. When I hear of couples splitting up after 40 years, as we have seen in the news this week, I wonder why anyone would want to dismiss someone who looks at you with those charitable eyes. It is a puzzlement to me.
I suppose at the end of the day, it is the spirit of a man (or woman) that does not weary, that is not subject to the ravages of the force of gravity, that does not wither under UV rays, or that will not find itself filled with aches and pains due to age. Indeed, our spirit can be filled with pain, but it is not the effect of age, nor physical ailment, but the effect of failing to make highest and best use His Spirit that lives within us to mature our own spirit and bring glory to our maker that brings us grief. After all, the Apostle Paul tells us that, His Spirit is our only link to the thoughts of God Himself.
“Who can know the thoughts of another person? Only a person’s own spirit can know them. In the same way, only the Spirit of God knows God’s thoughts.” 1 Corinthians 2:11
May your spirit be lifted by the knowledge of the love of God and the fact that His Spirit can live within you.
Have a blessed day, Bob

Unto the Least of These

2010-06-08T12:37:00.001-07:00

The Least of These------------------------------------------------------------------
The brown eyed girl and I decided to get away for a couple of days and ended up at the Smokey Mountains. After a ride in the mountains, we stopped at Taco Bell and promised to do better at dinner time. We had been riding along discussing spiritual things since she had been reading “Who is My Brother” by Lagard Smith. When I stopped at Taco Bell, we were in the middle of a spirited theological discussion and I jumped out of the van suggesting that she, “hold that thought and I will be right back.”
Standing in line waiting to order my Burrito Supreme, I noticed a fairly nice looking young man, plainly dressed and wearing a backpack approach the manager and announce in a heavy accent that seemed to be from a former Soviet Block country, “I am looking for a job, do you have any openings?” The manager explained that they were taking applications, but not hiring at that time. The young man took the application and noted that he did not currently have an address that he could put down. The manager replied that this would be ok but that he would need a phone number, to which the young man quietly replied, “I haff no phone.” “I sorry,” the manager said in a seemingly sincere way, “but without an address or phone number, I cannot take your application.”
The young man nodded, then ask if he could bother the manager for a cup of water. The manager smiled, drew a cup of water and handed to the wanderer who walked near the door and slowly drank the cold water. My mind was racing checking to see how much cash I had in my pocket, when the lady in front of me in line walked to the young man and handed him a ten dollar bill, saying, “Here, I want you to have this.”
“Why do you do this for me?” the young man asked with a genuinely puzzled look on his face. “I just want you to have it,” she replied quietly. He lowered his head, nodded slightly and folded the bill and stuck it into the pocket of his rolled up jeans. She smiled back, and walked out the door, got in her car and drove away. He also immediately exited and rode away on his bike, pack still on his back.
When the brown eyed girl and I drove past a nearby Kroger Store, the young man was looking at a large sign that said, “NOW HIRING.” I pray that his luck was better than at the Taco Bell.
Somehow the theological conversation we were engaged in, now seemed much less important than before and we simply sat quietly as I shared the story with my bride.
Matthew 25: 34-40 34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
Seeing the precepts of The King put in action is a humbling experience.

Visit us at Maple Hill, a church of Christ in Lebanon, TN as we learn together to be children of the King. Bob

Call Me Johnny Boy from Pore Folks, Potlucks and Parables

2010-05-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

71. Call Me Johnny Boy------------------------------------------

Call Me Johnny Boy was written for a Veteran's Day Program at Maple Hill Church of Christ, 2008.

You know me, I first made my appearance at the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and they called us the minutemen. It took a few years to wrap up that little scuffle with King George’s regulars - them in their shinny red coats, but we kept at it and had that job wrapped up by 1782 – a free country at last – or so we thought.
But those pesky Brits popped back up again in 1812, and we had to convince them all over again that we weren’t joking – All men had indeed been created equal and these United States are and of rights ought to be free and independent States.
Then there was that little misunderstanding with Mexico concerning Texas in 1846, and we demonstrated to our neighbors down south that the lone star really was going to be “one among many” other stars, on that field of blue on the old Stars and Stripes. We do like to do a job up right though, and we ended up not only with Texas, but with California and the whole southwest thrown in for good measure.
Our next job came in 1861 and it might have been the saddest and hardest of all. They called us Johnny Reb or Billy Yank, and we had to fight brother against brother and brave men on both sides sacrificed and died for hearth and home. Five Aprils that job dragged on – from 1861 to 1865 and no war has ever been more costly. The first battle was just off Charleston Harbor at a place called Fort Sumter and the Last one – Well, it was right here, over in Nashville.
Some say that as many as 700,000 of us didn’t come home from that one and a lot of those that did would never be the same. But the Union – it lived on.
For our next little frickkas they hung the name of Rough Riders on us and we sailed off to Cuba in 1898 with old Teddy Roosevelt himself. It wasn’t much of a war unless you were one of he ones there. But to the soldiers who are there, every war is the biggest war – the only war – To them it was the war in which they gave the last full measure of their devotion.
By 1917, we were called on to go help our friends in Europe as German aggression threatened freedom all around this old world. Doughboys – that’s what they called us for this one, and we fought and suffered in a whole new way as our enemies gassed us in the mud filled trenches where we huddled. Between the Hun’s 88s, the wretched trenches, and the Spanish flu – we suffered terribly, but we Yanks went over the top on command. We didn’t start it, but we sure ended it, and by 1918 it was over, over there. In fact it was over 90 years ago this very day. On the eleventh month, the eleventh day, and at the eleventh hour, those big guns stopped, there was silence, and a new wreath of freedom was laid at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.
That last one had been the war to end all wars, the Great War, we called it, but Hitler and His Nazi cronies didn’t play by our rules and by 1941 we were called on again. This time the Japanese had attacked our fleet in Pearl. Dog Faces, Leathernecks, fly boys and swabbies, we were, and we were on the move around the globe. On Normandy Beach, and on the sands of Iwo Jima; we fought for the things we held dear, and for the loved ones we left back home. Finally it was over when President Truman dropped the big one and convinced Emperor Hiro Hito to stand down..
In 1950 we had a little job over in places like Wiejombu, Pusan, and at the Chosan Resovior, and even though thousands of us never came home – the politicians didn’t want to call it a war, so they said it was a police action. 169 Thousand Casualties – some police action.
In 1962 we got involved in a little country in Southeast Asia none of us had ever heard of, and most of us couldn’t pronounce – Vietnam they called it – that one was the big winner as far as time goes because it drug on for 13 years. We didn’t have any pet names for that one – in fact most people stateside didn’t seem to like us for the job we had to do. But like always, we just went and did what we had to do, then came home and quietly went back to work in the world – just thankful we were not one of the 58,000 that got shipped home in a bag.
Now we have a whole new part of the world to worry about – a place called Iraq and we are in the middle of our second war, where sunglasses and desert battle fatigues are the uniform of the day. Oh, and by the way there is a little side job in Afghanistan thrown in just for good measure. I guess we don’t have all of the outcome pegged on this one yet, but we have always done the job before – even when the politicians didn’t exactly cooperate. You see, a soldier’s job has never been to consider the politics of the matter, just to do what we were sent to do, and let the politicians, the professors and the civilians ponder the right of it.
We are American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, and we have fought, suffered, sacrificed, and died for your freedom. Our families have waited with dread, fear, and loneliness for our return – sometimes waited in vain. It is the price of freedom and we are proud to have served –
I guess it doesn’t much matter what you called us, because whatever you called us, we always answered the call.

Remembering Private Ryan

2010-05-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Remembering Private Ryan-----------------------------------------------------------
I was thinking to myself, what would I have been doing this weekend in May of 1958? The answer that came back to me was that this was pretty much like any other weekend in 1958. Tobacco setting was almost, if not altogether, finished, summer was full on us, the garden was all put out, but few of the vegetables were at a stage of even early harvest, and frying chickens would not be of size for another week or two yet. Watermelons were not yet ripe, and “brought on” melons were not a common commodity in the grocery stores in Carthage.
In 1958 Memorial Day was not a holiday, at least not one that we recognized. Oh we remembered the day and Daddy always bought one of the “buddy poppies” that the VFW guys sold at the red light in town, but it would be twenty years before someone invented the term “Memorial Day Celebrated” and created a three day weekend in its honor. Before that, Memorial day was May 30th and many southern states did not recognize the day as official. It seems the day had originally been a creation of the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) which was a veterans organization of the northern army which had fought the civil war. The GAR thought it would be right to commemorate the “last full measure of their devotion” given by those in the Yankee army with a day in which the graves were cleaned and decorated.
For instance, Tennessee celebrated “Decoration Day” on June 3rd which eventually morphed into the first Sunday in June. It is altogether common, even these days, for “decoration day” to be held on the first Sunday in June. For instance, I am speaking at a decoration day in Silver Point Tennessee on June 6th which has extend back for many years.
What did happen on that weekend, on Friday to be exact, is that several unidentified bodies of U. S. soldiers form WWII and Korea were placed at the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Cemetery and it was broadcast on television. Only two weeks before that the Russians had launched Sputnik 3 and Americans were in general, feeling uneasy as one was able to go out and look into the night sky and watch the booster rocket from Sputnik tumble end over end in its orbit above the United States.
A Federal Law which took effect in 1971 changed Memorial Day to be observed as a federal holiday on the last Monday in May, there by creating a three day weekend, and also cheapening the holiday and obscuring its real meaning in the mind of many.
Today many do no know that the flag is to be flown at half staff, it is traditional to decorate the graves of veterans with flags, and it is specifically to honor those KIA (killed in action) or who had died as a result of their wounds received in battle.
The VFW sold the “buddy poppies” in tribute to the poem that achieved note in World War I In Flanders Fields.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Enjoy the long weekend, celebrate the start of summer, renew your family relationships, but don’t fail to remember folks like my friend PFC Frank Ryan, a young soldier from West Virginia who wore his Baptist Sunday school metals on the breast of his uniform and left a young widow and twins when he failed to return from his first mission in Vietnam. Freedom is indeed not free, but purchased with a price.

Have a blessed day, Bob

Miss Sarah's Little Silver Beau - Faithful Companion

2010-05-26T14:14:00.000-07:00

Faithful Companion-------------------------------------------------------------
He was just a little sausage of a thing the first time we ever saw him; no more than 4 or 5 inches long looking for all the world like a black, fat, knockwurst with fur. We weren’t allowed to touch him, only look at him. Miss Jean, who ran Foxcroft Kennels, had strict rules about such things, and the fact that you had already paid a healthy sum of money for the little spud did not change anything.
We counted the days until he became six weeks old and drove out to the kennels in Lapeer Michigan to pick up our new “baby.” With the help of Patrick, who always referred to him as his little brother, we named him Beau after General Beauregard of Confederate Army fame. His full kennel name was Miss Sarah’s Little Silver Beau. Miss Sarah had been “with puppy” when we had gone to Jean Buchard looking for an addition to our family, and we could not resist her shy and gentle nature.
Beau turned out to be everything we could have hoped for; regal in appearance, carriage of a champion, and gentle to a near fault. He was smart and trained easily and performed willingly and with enthusiasm on command. Not surprising given that he was from a line of champions – after all, his daddy, Rambo, was a Canadian Grand Champion Toy Poodle.
The thing that stood out the most about Beau however, was that he was never demanding. He never was a dog who pushed in front of others, even when the others were newer dogs to the household. He would stand back, let them have their fill, then eat his food leisurely, as if knowing that there would always be an adequate supply. He endured the foolishness of a couple of puppies appearing on the scene with good nature and never offered to bully them, though he was several times their size. Groomers loved him, for he never offered to be ill and stood with stoic silence in the face of the shampoo, the clippers, the blow dryer and other indignities.
It was perhaps three years ago that he, then at 12 years old, began to fall into declining health. His eyes went dim, then near complete blindness overtook him. Finally one eye simply shrank away. His hearing had gone a year or so before leaving him in a world of his own except for smell, touch, and taste.
The joys of life had nearly gone for Beau when I cleaned the shriveled eye last night, but he was still able to sniff out a jar of peanut butter which stood nearby. He loved peanut butter, and I fingered our a big swab of the stuff and let him eat his fill. Such chewing and smacking you never heard.
Today we allowed him to go to sleep for the last time, and to rest for the ages in the back yard garden under the shade of an althea bush. He was again snuggled up next to Buttons, his companion of ten years, and although there is a giant hole in our hearts and home, we are somehow at peace knowing that he is at rest. The marker reads Faithful Companion.
There are many lessons that could be learned from Beau concerning selflessness, gentleness, self control, and trust. But most of all, the lesson that one could learn from Beau is faithfulness. One could never come through the door or enter the room in which he resided without seeing a frantically wagging tail – saying, “boy I’m glad your home, you are my person and no one else fills my heart like you.”
Patrick had been home from college the summer Beau came to live at our house and the two “brothers” played a game whereby Beau would wiggle underneath Patrick’s tee shirt and work his way up to stick his furry little head our the neck of the shirt. He never forgot and years later when Patrick was married and had kids, Beau would still try to wiggle under his shirt, completely missing the fact that he was now way to big to make that crawl to the neck.
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” If heaven went by merit, I’m sure there would be a place for Beau – “Faithful Companion."
Have a blessed day, Bob

A Stroke of Luck

2010-05-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

A Stroke of Luck----------------------------------------------------------------------
It was 2:00 a.m. and for some reason I came wide awake. Being a nearly 66 year old man, I decided that since I was awake, and since the bathroom was only a few feet away, I might as well get up. At my age one never misses an opportunity. As I began to sit up, I noticed that my right arm had fallen asleep and was not doing its part in the effort to raise my body to an upright position. Must have slept on it wrong, I though, then it hit me – I was not sleeping on the arm, it was lying stretched out by my side. From shoulder to finger tips, there was nothing but a wooden feeling, someone else’s arm swinging heavily at my side. “Can’t be any really big deal,” I thought, “probably it just needs to be moved around a little.” I began to move it around and there was some sensation, but certainly nothing like I had ever felt before. Every nerve in my body seemed to be vested in the hairs on my arm and alternate sensations of cold and hot rushed through my arm, caused by nothing more than touching the arm with my other hand. It was when I actually got to the bathroom and the arm crashed into the raised toilet seat, causing it to come slamming down that reality began to slam down. I was having, or perhaps more accurately, had already experienced, a stroke.
“What in the world are you doing in there, is something wrong,” came the sleepy voice of the brown eyed girl from the bedroom.
How exactly does one go about telling your wife you have had a stroke, was the question of the moment.
“Honey, the funniest thing happened while I was sleeping….” Or
“You know how you have been wanting me to slow down a little…..” Perhap,
“Hey, do you remember Matt Surdurski? The guy I worked with we all called lefty….”
The fact is, there is no good way to break that kind of news to your wife, so I just said, “I think I may have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I think I may have had a stroke.”
Well, if you are ever looking for a way to get your wife out of bed really fast …. I don’t recommend that one. Oh, it will get her out of bed fast but you need to be ready to deal with what comes next.
In her case it was hardly a word, she just began getting her clothes on and discussing to where she should drive me. We settled on heading west on 70 highway and deciding on the way if our destination was St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, where all my doctors are located, or UMC in Lebanon, which was closer.
In the interim, I was struggling in a one armed way to get my own clothes on and for some reason felt incredibly calm. My mind was making a list of things I could and could not do with one arm that would not work.
I could probably still drive the tractor on the farm but shifting gears would be a challenge.
I could probably not use my zero turn mower.
I could probably not play my guitar any longer – although that was probably no great loss to the musical world, it is like an old friend to me.
I would have to learn to sign my name with my left hand.
Using a keyboard for writing would be torturously slow.
Taking assessment, I discovered that I had a little movement in my wrist, and made a few practice strokes but decided that I was not likely to be invited to join Ricky Skaggs’ Kentucky Thunder.
Somewhere in the midst of all of this assessment, I had the presence of mind to go to the medicine cabinet and chew up and swallow without water, three whole full strength aspirin – not the kiddy kind the big boy stuff. I knew that somewhere deep within my cerebral cortex was what my neurologist called a “puny” artery, underdeveloped at birth, which had caused me to have a TIA in 2004 and I knew that blood had a tough time passing freely through its punyness.
I had been placed on Plavix, a medication which makes one’s platelets slippery, and a daily aspirin following the TIA and had remained continuously on the medication for 6 years until being taken off a few days prior in preparation for a mildly invasive medical test. I took two of the aspirin, then thought, man like, if two are good, three would be better. As we roared down 70 highway, we came upon the Round Lick Creek Bridge, which had been closed to all but one lane and a stop light at each end controlled the traffic flow though the single lane. I knew that in the daytime the sign read, “Maximum time Red, Three Minutes.” The brown eyed girl did not wait the three minutes much to my consternation. Instead she took the law into her own hands and roared across the bridge in spite of my protests. She was firmly in charge and I knew it. I wondered if it was a harbinger of things to come.
Well to make a long story short, I was transported to St. Thomas Hospital by ambulance from UMC enduring a harrowing 27 minute ride in morning rush hour traffic arriving at the destination just before 7:00 a.m. Somewhere on the way the arm began to regain feeling and some movement and by the evening of the first day, I was able to have limited usage of the limb.
It is now 6 days later and most of the paralysis is gone, with the exception of a shade of fine motor skills that will likely return in time, according to the doctor. “Miss Daisy” is still driving and I am reluctantly sitting in the passenger seat. A neighbor and his two sons showed up this morning and cut my lawn while I sat and watched – grateful but somewhat embarrassed, I must admit.
When I went to bed the night before, I had thought through the next day‘s agenda;
1. Ride out to Defeated Creek Campground and see if it was water damaged. (I still don’t know the answer to that.)
2. Pick up the shirts in Main Street Laundry at Carthage. (They are still there waiting for me – at least I hope so.
3. Check out the rest of the fence line on the farm to see if any tree tops twisted out on the fence. (They had but Randy found them and sawed them off – not me.)
4. Have breakfast at Timberloft with the brown eyed girl. (I finally got something to eat after noon, which was snatched away by a stern nurse who said I was having tests and shouldn’t have gotten a tray.)
5. Check on getting a new roof on the Carthage house. (The old patches will have to last a while longer)
All of life’s priorities can be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye and it can come slamming home to us exactly how fragile we are, and how fragile is life. When the ambulance carrying me to St. Thomas Hospital turned onto Interstate 40, we passed the white Chevy Trail Blazer with the brown eyed girl driving, looking fearfully at the disappearing back of the paramedic vehicle, and it hit me. This is real, this is serious, and all of my plans of yesterday have no further meaning or importance in light of new developments.
“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, all such boasting is evil.” James 4:14-16

If my life is like a vapor, Lord, let it be like the steam that drives a useful engine, not like the fog that obscures the vision of others.

Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill church of Christ. Bob

The Waiting Room

2010-05-18T14:16:00.001-07:00

The Waiting Room ----------------------------------------------------
Sunday the brown eyed girl and I, along with our son Patrick and his sweet family, went to the homecoming at Morrison’s Creek Church of Christ in Jackson County, Tennessee. It was the eighth such event and it was an overcast day with lots of rain in the forecast. Since it has only been two weeks since the flood of the century hit Middle Tennessee, most of us are still a little skittish when the dark clouds descend, the lightening flashes and the thunder rolls. The river road had been closed twice during the flood and the creek had been out of banks as was obvious by the driftwood washed up on the roadside. Still 129 brave souls showed up to worship together in a style reminiscent of a hundred years ago in a little brick building that has neither indoor toilet nor running water. Quite a crowd for a congregation that usually has 18 to 20 in attendance.
My cousin Roy at age 85 was in charge of the worship service and he simply called on those who were to participate in leading the worship. As the singing started, he moved silently around the room and whispered in your ear that you would be called on for prayer or to serve at the Lord’s table. Three songs, a prayer, two songs, the Lord’s Supper, a song, preaching, an invitation song, announcements and dismissal. No confusion, no surprises, just people doing what they had done for a lifetime – raising their voices to God and worshiping Him while encouraging each other to “walk worthy of their calling.”
Afterwards, plenty of fried chicken and banana pudding under the tent outside, served up with an abundance of love and good will towards one another and our Creator. Not much different than what I can remember from my childhood, except that cars were parked where mule and wagons were tied long ago, and we didn’t carry the homemade benches outside and turn them together to create a table to hold the “dinner on the ground.”
At 2:30 in the afternoon several of us gathered under the shelter of Gwen Lynn’s carport, just down from the old family cemetery and spoke of the reason for gathering together. It was to remember those who had gone before us and lay waiting in the cemetery.
The folks in this little family cemetery were not famous, they were not celebrities, and I am certain that most of the world did not long remember them, but we know something of them and that for which they stood. Over in one corner rested Abner and Elizabeth Chaffin who had purchased this home-place farm in 1858 and moved to their new home around Christmas that same year. It was a good sturdy yellow poplar log house but in 1869 Abner had become the first recorded resident of the cemetery. Over in that corner was Bailey Peyton McClellan, brother-in-law to Abner who had joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and having served out his year of enlistment had simply walked away in 1862 and returned home to tend to his farm, his family, and his own business. According to the army records, he deserted but in his own mind he had fulfilled his commitment and had a family that needed care.
My grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents lie in this little plot of ground adjacent to the, now falling down, house in which I was born on the kitchen table. They were honest hard working folks who forged a life and a living out of a wilderness. Most importantly they are family, and to those of us standing around sheltered from the rain, they are our people and this is our place. There is something compelling about roots and we are fortunate that ours run deep. We are planted with our toes deep in this soil just like the big sycamore trees down by the river.
When those who lie in this plot died, those who could afford it carved the names of their children, their brothers and sisters, or their parents in stone and went back to their daily life – coming here periodically to tend these graves, to clean them and to put flowers on them. Oh, I suspect they knew that only the mortal dust lingered in this spot but they did it out of respect, as a way of saying, I remember that you were, I know you existed and I am thankful for the part you played in my own life.
Sunday, 141 years after Abner was lowered into his final resting place, we came one more time – because our roots compelled us; because we realized that these people who lay around us played an important role in shaping our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, and through this linage, ultimately in shaping us. By our presence and our actions we say, “thank you.”
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that "For as in Adam all die, thus also in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22).
Therefore, this cemetery is not just a place of rest, but it is also a place of expectation, a kind of waiting room for those who trust that God will open these graves and waken these dead, and they, having been found faithful, will have nothing to fear from God’s judgment.
In a letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul says, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 1 Corinthians 15: 51-53
Yes, it was a good day of remembering, of worshiping, of reflecting on the brevity of our own lives, and of resolve to “walk worthy of that to which we were called.”
Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill, a church of Christ in Lebanon, Tennessee. Bob

Remembering the Queen of the Hill

2010-04-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Walk Worthy of the Calling -------------------------------------------------------
One of my small pleasures of life is sending “old folks” e mails to my sister. She is four years older than I and will be as long as we both remain on this earth. She was born in 1940 and was the first child in the family, not just our family, but “the family” in the larger context. Our cousin Marva did not come along until a year later, so for one whole year Donnieta got to be queen of the hill – the chosen one – the apple of the collective family eye. By 1941 the war had become the focus of all America and the draft, together with a strong wave of patriotism, caused a great bulk of American young men to enter the service of their country. My uncle, U. L. Mabry, was one of those who chose to join up and was soon on his way to U. S. Navy boot camp. Daddy’s sister, Aunt Thelma, moved into the Jackson County ancestral manor, along with Marva Jean and her brother Morris soon followed. Daddy’s younger brother joined the Marine Corps and was soon sending letters from islands with strange sounding names in the South Pacific. Gene, his youngest sister, went to Detroit and became a “Rosie the riveter” in a defense plant. She was a materials expediter, making sure that enough components were in place to avoid interruption of production. She always says that to this day she cannot see more than three of anything without wanting to mark down a count.
I didn’t make my appearance until June 6,1944. While the beaches of Normandy were being stormed by the Allied Forces, Bob and Maylene Chaffin were facing a little storm of their own in the person of yours truly. So the war was over by the time I began to have cognizant knowledge of my own existence and Donnieta and I were again alone with Mama and Daddy in the big house on Roaring River.
I was a bit of an accident prone little fellow, either due to excessive exuberance or excessive awkwardness, which I do not know. One of the earliest memories was swinging on the screen door to our kitchen, feet on the bottom wood panel and homemade door hook in my mouth. My feet slipped off the panel and I was strung up like a catfish out of water. Daddy ran to my aid but was unable to remove the crudely fashioned hook, so he sent 6 year old Donnieta to get a hammer. She simply ran to the barn crying and that incident pretty much defined our relationship for the next 40 years or so.
Strangely enough, after years of good natured sibling rivalry, our relationship changed when my mother became terminally ill. I was working in Cleveland, OH and the task of seeing to Mama and Daddy fell primarily to her. I think it was admiration for how she approached the task that forever altered my perspective of her, perhaps admiration coupled with dependence. I had seen the brown eyed girl struggle through caring for her own mother suffering from the same brand of cancer and was keenly aware of the difficulties involved with both the physical and emotional struggles that come when the parent becomes the child.
God put us here on earth to provide love, care and support for others, just as he has provide love, care and support for us. When Jesus speaks to the disciples of laying down you life for others, I am suspicious it is on two planes. He was obviously going to lay down his physical life for the believers and was calling the believers to lay down their day to day lives for others. Seldom is that more keenly demonstrated when one sees a daughter leave her family and home affairs to the dubious care of a husband, and become the primary care giver for an ailing parent. As difficult as it is, it is a thing of great beauty, and I never remember, even one time, hearing someone say at a funeral, “well, I really wish I had done less.”
One of the greatest blessings of the faith of a believer is the way it calls us to that which is greater than ourselves – that which is only able to be accomplished by Him within us. The abundant life of promise.

Have a blessed day, Bob

Blowing in the Wind

2010-04-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

Just Act like you know what you are doing---------

There was a credo by which we operated when I was in college at David Lipscomb in Nashville, and it was “just act like you know what you are doing and no one will question you.” Using this theory, we were able to do a number of foolish things that college students engage in just to make sure the world knows you are alive. For instance, once a friend of mine and myself removed a Grecian column from the stage of Alumni Auditorium posing as workmen and relocated in the center of my room, because we thought it gave the room a nice mediterranian flavor. We also had heard that priests were allowed to ride city busses without the standard fare and turned our shirts and vests backward, put the suit on the right way and simply walked around Nashville posing as priests not because we wanted to acomplish anything, just because we wanted to know if it would work. I suspect it did not!
It was in Nashville that I learned about race relations outside of the sheltered environment of Carthage. By early 1964 sit ins, and freedom marches were beginning to occur all over the south and Nashville was no exception. I had developed a keen interest in photography by that time and when we heard on campus that a freedom march was scheduled down by Vanderbilt, I loaded up my trusty camera and headed that way. I was stationed at the old Holiday Inn on West End where it forks off from broad and it was the epicenter of the action that day. I watched as the nicely dressed young “negro” marchers came down Broadway and out to the Holiday Inn where they began to sit down in the roadway. The Nashville Police moved in quickly, first telling them that they had to keep moving and could not block the street, and then announcing over a bull horn that they would be arrested if they failed to disperse in short order. When no movement was evident, the police began to arrest them, tossing the passive resisters roughhly into paddy wagons for the ride downtown. It was one of those near out of body experiences for me, like it was not I who was there and watching this, but that I was simply watching someone who looked like me watching the show in front of me. I kept trying to sort out how I was feeling about this whole thing. My emotions ranged from “how dare they act like this, they are breaking the law?” to “they aren’t doing anything wrong and besides what is the big deal of eating at a lunch counter anyway?” My guess is that most young people were like me - and not sure how to sort out how they felt, or even how they were supposed to feel.
I found out from a policeman what was going to happen next and made my way down to the Davidson county courthouse where those arrested were herded inside a large courtroom. With my trusty camera as my entrance pass and the newly learned college motto of “just act like you know what you are doing,” I marched into the courtroom along with real reporters and photographers. Once inside someone must have taken a good look at this kid with a cheap camera and decided a few questions were in order. A court bailiff approached me and asked, “who are you representing?’ Since I couldn’t summon up a lie that quickly, I simply said, “I’m a freelance guy.” “Alright, kid out of here” and I was unceremoniously escorted into the hallway with the masses. That marked the end of my journalistic career. But to this day I wonder about the young people my age that I watched that day. Where are they and how do they remember the event? It was a turning point of some kind in my own life and for the first time I began to feel a part of the sixties, with all of the turbulence that entailed. Not that I grew my hair long and started wearing sandals, but I did understand the words of folk music like Peter, Paul and Mary in a different way.

How many times can a man turn his head
and pretend that he just doesn’t see?
And how many years must some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
The answer my friend is Blowing in the Wind.

And it was. What do you remember about that time???

Have a blessed day. Bob

On Finding Fads Funny

2010-04-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

Finding Fads Facetious ---------------------------------------------------------
Isn’t it funny how things become a fad among kids? My grandchildren are currently wearing “silly bands” around their wrists in copious quantities. For the uninitiated, silly bands are assorted colors of rubber bands which are shaped like various mammals and fish, among other things. It seems to me they are appropriately named since wearing a rubber band in the shape of anything around your wrist causes it to lose anything but the shape of your wrist? The question I have is, “who is authorized to start a fad?” Are there folks who have that particular job description and are stationed throughout the country for that purpose?
For instance, who started the fad of tattoos covering the body of otherwise normal appearing middle class young people. Tattoos were once reserved for those on the wild side who rode Harley Hogs and were sailors. For that matter, who made it a fad for middle class, middle aged folks with spreading middles to ride Harleys all over the country in the middle of the road?
I remember when wearing letter sweaters and letter jackets, was the “in” thing to do and anyone who was anyone in high school had one. They were properly worn with black slacks, pointed toe shoes, a tee shirt, and hair slicked back with “cream oil charley.” One could get away with jeans, but black, skinny legged, corduroys were really the proper dress.
Then of course, there was the fad of wearing blue jeans with at least 8 inches of cuff turned up. Since I rode my bicycle to David Lollar’s house across from the school and left it in his yard for the day, the turned up cuffs allowed me to tuck my thin spelling book into the cuff for the ride to and from school. After all, one was required to bring a book home and the spelling book was the least obtrusive to a person’s riding ability. Today, young people wear jeans that are more worn out the first time they put them on than mine were when Mama relegated them to the rag bin, having been patched numerous times. How did it get to be a fad to have the seat of your britches revealing the hue of your underwear? In fact, when did it get to be a fad to have your underwear have hues?
I remember in the 80s it was a fad to wear safety pins on your jeans jacket. Eighth and ninth grade girls showed up at school with enough safety pins on their jeans jacket to double the weight of the garment. I suspect many of them, now thirty something, are suffering from back conditions brought about by toting excess weight around in junior high. The safety pins, complimented by scrunchies around their wrist and metallic braces on their teeth completed, “the look.” For boys it was parachute pants and the ability to “break dance” that labeled you as one who knew what was “rad.”
Bobby Socks, saddle shoes, pencil skirts, and can-can petticoats on girls were answered by white tee shirts, preferably with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve, fruit boots, and watch bands two or more inches wide, on guys in the late 50s and early 60s.
It was in the 1970 though, that fad became the coin of the realm. Otherwise serious men showed up at work with ties wide enough to allow them to cover their entire chest with the loud, paisley print affairs, and men’s shirts, which had traditionally been white became flowered prints with wide cuff, wide collars, and rows of buttons on the sleeves. High heeled shoes were no longer reserved for women and many men, including yours truly, wore “platform” shoes to the office. Leisure suits completed the height of the ridiculous and I remember one instance in which I had bought a light kaki colored leisure suit with military cut in Michigan and worn it back to Tennessee to impress the locals. When I walked up to my sisters door she remarked that I looked just like “Ramah of the Jungle going on a safari,” – leave it to a sister to take the wind out of your sails.
Perhaps the most offensive of all of the fads is the current one of wearing your pants down around your knees. Don’t those folks know we are not interested in seeing their BVDs? Why would anyone want to wear their pants that way? Given my considerable waist line which makes it difficult to keep my pants at the proper place, I am only too aware of how uncomfortable it is having your pants at low mast.
Well, I could go on and on with this and perhaps have, but it brings to mind the trends in “worship style.” It has moved from the informal style of the thousands of small congregations which met at 10:00 a.m. every Sunday morning and five minutes before worship the song leader could be seen picking out the song selections on the front seat, to the mega churches of today where every “service” is a choreographed show designed to draw the emotions of the congregants to a crescendo at several peak moments of the exactly one hour performance. Every move is planned today versus the old days when every move was extemporaneous. Even churches of Christ, once all firmly dedicated to acapella singing, that is without instruments, have bowed to the fad of the day to the point that I recently saw one with an article dedicated to the introduction of their “praise band” complete with drums, lead guitars, flashing strobe lights, and electronic piano.
While the church is, and in fact must be, set in the culture of the day, it is important that we recognize that fad is not to dictate what we do, either on Sunday or the other six days of the week. It is important that we realize that the order of things in the assembly must be:
1. Pleasing God
2. Teaching and encouraging others
3. If we work toward the first two, grace will dictate that we ourselves are lifted up.
I am not smart enough to sort out whether the haphazard worship style of the 1940s or the choreographed style of the new century is that which will please The Living God, but I do know that it is the heart of the worshiper He seeks and having that heart directed toward pleasing Him first and providing encouragement to others as a secondary goal is at least one step to worshiping “in spirit and in truth.” In fact, if I read the scripture right, admonishing others IS pleasing God.
“speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:19

Have a blessed day, and visit us at Maple Hill church of Christ where we make every effort to find a balance acceptable to God. Bob

The Side Show vs. The Main Show

2010-04-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Snow Cones, Baloney Sandwiches, and Double Colas--------------------------------
Do you remember when snow cones first made their appearance in Carthage. The first I remember is when Mr. Dennis opened a snow cone stand out at the stock sale barn across the lot from where I lived. Boy were they good. You could get a cherry, grape, orange, strawberry, or Lime flavor, but mostly they all tasted pretty much the same – sweet!
The stock sale barn was the source of constant amusement for me growing up – well not the sale barn itself but the happenings attendant to the stock sales. There was the bowling alley with two lanes, five pins, and little bowling balls about the size of a really big grapefruit. They had no holes for thumb and fingers and several of us were able to get a small part time job setting pins by hand. There was a padded board behind the pins that was on hinges and the balls hit the backstop with force enough to knock out a mule when those old farmers let fly of the ball. Most of us who sat pens perched on top of the swinging board watching the projectile come cannon balling down the alley. We sat the pins, then returned the ball by placing it manually on the center runway.
The little long white building had not always been a five pin bowling alley of course, it was a feed store run by Mr. Stone, who was the father of Mrs. Minnie Francis Rankin originally and the farmers could come to sale and load their trucks with sacks of feed from out the many “load windows” on each side of the little long white building.
There was also a fair amount of “politicking” taking place at the stock sale and local candidates were easily spotted working various sections of the parking area, handing out bumper stickers and posters to be nailed up on the nearest telephone pole in your neighborhood.
On the side where the trucks lined up were the “pin hookers” who were anxious to buy your livestock right there in the truck and save you the time and anxiety required to send them through the auction ring. Their intent was to pay you a little less than they would be able to get in the ring and there by make a profit from doing nothing but betting on what the auction price would be. I suppose it was an early version of the futures market.
It was the big show in town on Tuesdays and Thursdays and everyone tried to get in on the act – even me. I remember that one year I prepared a sweet potato bed and raised sweet potato “slips” which I sold to farmers coming to sale day. I don’t recommend it as a way to make your first million.
A lot of the farmers would come early and leave late, using that day as an excuse to get away from the hum-drum of farm life. A reason to have a baloney sandwich which Daddy would slice by hand from the big stick of baloney and a can of pork-n-beans in one of the paper cups Daddy provided at the little table in the back of the store. That along with a Double Cola provided nourishment to see one through the day till a real meal was available for supper.
There were so many “side shows” going on at the sale barn, it was easy to miss the main purpose for the gathering. I am quite sure that many men came and spent the day without actually seeing a single head of livestock auctioned. Between snow cones, chairs for sale, bowling alleys, baloney sandwiches, knife trading, and lie swapping, the day was easily spent and the main event completely ignored.
It is easy to be like that in life, to become so consumed with the side shows that we forget the purpose of the gathering, the main event. For us in the church, the main event is to glorify God, but we often get so involved in the various social functions of the church that we forget to focus, to keep the main thing, the main thing. As to the world, well just drive by a golf course or a driving range on a sunny Sunday morning and look at the crowd. A friend noted that his six year old daughter observed the crush of cars at a golf course one Sunday morning and declared, “Those people must be Jewish.” It was beyond her comprehension that anyone would just not be going to be part of the main event, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
Have a blessed day, Bob

Don't Worry, Just Be Happy

2010-04-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

High School Worry Warts-------------------------------------------------------
The brown eyed girl and I went to Panarea Bread to have a bite the other night and ran into our back door neighbor and his daughter. Candice was saying how anxious, or “so ready to be out of high school” she was which started me to thinking.
Did you ever wish your life was still as simple as is was when you were in high school? Do you remember the things that troubled you then and how trivial they seem today?
Here is a sample of the things that topped my list: I wonder how they would compare with your own.
1. Which teacher will I get for English Lit next year, will it be Mrs. “Tough as Nails” or Mrs. “I’ll let you slide through and catch up on the sleep you missed last night, but you won’t learn a thing.”
2. Do you suppose Mr. Dickerson will allow me to write the periodic tables on paper and make up the bad grade I got on that last test? And closely related to that one, can I master the art of holding two pencils in my hand and writing two lines at once like another boy, who shall remain unnamed, could?
3. Will my pay envelope from Western Auto be large enough to get those pointy toed shoes from Waggoner-Maggart and still be able to afford a decent Valentine’s Day gift for my girlfriend, or will she have to do with less this year?
4. Will I be able to get my locker, which is next to the band room, open and still have time to get to my third period Algebra II class with Mrs. Oldham, which is on the far end of the second floor, or will I have to carry that stupid Algebra book around all morning?
5. Today is the day we must dress out for P.E. basketball, do you think anyone will notice the hole in my tighty-whities where the Maytag chewed up the seat of them last week?
6. What is the combination to my locker anyway?
7. Do you suppose Daddy will let me use the car to go to the basketball game in Gordonsville, and if I can work that out, how about Watertown?
8. I wonder if I did my homework, or will the dog have eaten it again? I know I started, but did I finish?
9. Why is Mr. McDonald looking at me? Do you think he knows who threw the rocks from the water tower?
10. Why does the order of the universe demand that you like some girl, who likes some other boy, who likes some other girl, and so on until you finally find a steady girlfriend?
11. If I sit at the cafeteria table with all of those popular kids, do you suppose anyone will actually ask me to leave, or just make me wish I had by how they treat me?

Now all of these things certainly seem trivial today from a perspective of nearly 50 years hindsight, but they were the things that made high school something to be feared in the years between 14 and 18, and probably are some of the same things that are bothering the neighbor girl and making her be “so ready to be out of high school.” One would lie awake at night trying to arrive at some knowledge or wisdom which would yield at least one answer, all to no avail.
That which is important moves as our life evolves and I remember complaining to an older friend about the trials of raising young children. This one would not eat his peas; that one would hook his toes into the side of the baby bed and crawl out like an expert mountain climber. This one wanted a bike which I couldn’t afford, and that one had a doctor bill, which I certainly couldn’t afford.
My friend, who had grown children, listened patiently then said, “Bob, little kids – little problems, big kids – big problems.”
In the final analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the problem I am facing today is the most important problem in the world, at least to me, at least today.
I remember taking one of those self improvement classes that GM sometimes wasted money to provide for me that was called, “Be Here Now” and the premise was that we need to live in the moment – to be here now. I suppose there is some wisdom to that, since scripture tells us that, “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” and to “not worry about tomorrow” but most of us who put our trust in Jesus live on two planes; the here and now; and the world to come.
The great paradox of, “I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop” and He came “that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
My dad often opined that if he were given the chance to change things in his life, he would be afraid to do so for fear of what good thing he might mess up or miss out on. I suppose I got that philosophy from him since I seldom think of little on my own initiative, but I think it is a good hook to hang your hat on, don’t you? In the mean time, don’t worry, be happy.
And, have a blessed day, Bob

Doing the Drive-in on Date Night

2010-04-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

Heavy Chevys, Drive-inns, and Keep the Change-------------------------------
To the best of my recollection, the first time I ever went to a drive-in movie was with a bunch of guys from Lipscomb. The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen, was playing at the old Crescent Drive Inn on Murfreesboro Road and five of us went with three in the car and two in the trunk, since you paid by the person.
I don’t think I ever took a date to a drive-in movie though, since there wasn’t one in Carthage, I was not allowed to drive out of town (my world was bounded by South Carthage and Dixon Springs), it is doubtful that my girlfriend’s mother would have allowed her to go to a “passion pit,” and my parents would have had a fit if they caught me in such a place. Lipscomb girls were not allowed to frequent drive-in movies, so I was married before I had much experience with a drive-in. Pretty much when you go to the drive-in with your wife you watch the movie, although a little heavy snuggling was not out of the question.
Eventually Carthage did get a drive-in movie down on highway 25 by the golf course, along with just about every other town in America. From the mid sixties to the mid seventies, America was having a love affair with speed, big block engines, and land yachts like the 1975 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham we owned. Power adjustable front bench seats, faux leather upholstery, a marshmallow ride, and air conditioning as a standard in these behemoths was a counter point to Heavy Chevys, Four-Four-Two Oldsmobiles (400 cubic inch engine, Four on the floor, and dual exhaust), and Pontiac GTOs with wide blackwall tires and baby moon hubs. Motown was pumping out both the cars and the music America loved and everyone was looking for new things to both utilize and to show off their “ride.”
There were dive-in restaurants, Drive in Laundries, Drive-in weddings, Drive-in movies, and even Drive-in churches and funeral home viewing.
Since our oldest son Christopher was born in November of 1969, followed by Patrick in 1973, the boom hit right in the middle of their “got to have a babysitter” years, and our “ran out of money before we ran out of month” years. The drive-in movie provided a perfect solution to both problems, it was cheap to get in, there was no charge for the boys, and we could put our collapsible mesh net playpen (the latest thing) in the back seat. The leg lengths were adjustable to allow the playpen to be erected in the back seat of the big old Bonneville and the boys could watch a cartoon then lay down and go to sleep while mom and dad watched the main feature. There were not only speakers which came off the post and inside the car; there were also electric heaters on the post which would keep the car moderately warm in all but the coldest weather. A shared large drink and a medium box of popcorn from the concession stand, or in some cases treats brought from home at much reduced prices, created a perfect “date night” with no need to pay a babysitter. I would venture to say that most of the movies we saw during the period from 1969 – 1978 were at the drive in with two little boys snoozing peacefully in the back while mom and dad watched the movie and occasionally did a little smooching just for fun. Many families did the same thing, often arriving early so the children could the utilize the playground with swings and jungle gyms that often were located in the space just in front of the screen which was unsuitable for parking patron’s cars. If one went to the concession stand and did not get through the massive line before the intermission was over and the lights were cut, finding your car again could be a formidable challenge. I took to memorizing the number of rows forward or back and the number of lanes over to avoid peeking and poking into cars that ought not to have been peeked and poked into.
In 1973 the first oil embargo struck when the NATO decision to resupply Israel after the Yom Kipper War prompted OAPEC to drastically reduce oil shipments to the U.S. as punishment. This launched an avalanche of second guessing as to why carmakers had not foreseen the coming event and made smaller cars. The fact that we had and nobody bought them escaped everybody’s attention. Soon it was unfashionable to own a “gas guzzler” and the great love affair with “real cars” began to grind to a halt. Americans were buying Volkswagen Beetles, Datsuns, and Vespa Scooters and President Gerald Ford was encouraging Americans to WIN (Whip Inflation Now) as economists were forced to invent a new term, stagflation as both inflation rates and unemployment soared, forcing interest rates rocketing toward high water marks for modern times. The glory days were gone, predictably gone forever.
With the demise of the American love affair with the personal automobile and the rise of the concept of it as simply a means of transportation that needed only to be dependable, came also the demise of the search for a place to showcase your particular work of Detroit Art. Drive-in everything, including drive-in movies began to close in droves and today they are mostly as extinct as the U. S. Carrier Pigeon, although a few exist as a novelty here and there. As inflation drove the value of the land they sat on up by double digit increases yearly, and the cost of electricity, gasoline, and hot dogs shot up, the joy of sitting in a small car equipped with bucket seats seemed less than a fading memory and soon only a big screen carcass punctuated the landscape here and there, the cost of demolition being greater than the value of the small parcel of land on which it sat.
The old Crescent Drive-inn in Nashville was replaced long ago by a giant Kroger and attendant businesses, but if you are on Murfreesboro Road and are interested one day, stop in and view the great aerial shot of the glory days of the Crescent.
All things change and cultural icons disappear but one thing only remains constant. “Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bids the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep, Oh hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril of the sea.”
Have a blessed day, Bob

Oklahoma Baptists with Middle Tennessee Roots.

2010-04-10T20:55:00.001-07:00

More Cousin Barney on Hughes County Oklahoma Baptists-------------------
Ever so often I get a story from someone who gives me permission to pass it on to you. This one is from Barney Smith a distant cousin of the Gentry persuasion whose family went to Oklahoma and then on to Texas. He tell about country life as a Baptist Boy and except for the name “Baptist” and the piano in the corner could have been any rural church of Christ in the Upper Cumberland of Tennessee.
Hughes County Baptists-------
Since I am an old dude nearly seventy years old, I hope no one will hold any inaccuracies or well meaning prevarications against me as I relate this minor piece of history concerning Hughes County, Oklahoma. My earliest recollections of this area was about 1945 and the country was still finishing up World War II. My ancestors on both sides of my family migrated to Oklahoma almost immediately after it (the “Indian Territory”) was opened up to whites in the last two decades of the 19th century. They came from Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana and Texas and most of them were escaping the conditions of the aftermath of the civil war. Some of them participated in the Land Runs and all of them came with the hope of cheap land. They were all poor and they were all Baptists of one stripe or another. Most of them were “tenant farmers” and would get upset if someone referred to them as a “sharecropper”. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers both rented farms on a percentage basis, usually from a bank or wealthy landowner. Tenant farmers owned their own equipment and a couple of mules or draft horses and the equipment was very primitive, usually consisting of a middle buster, harrow, cultivator, wagon , and cotton planter. All of these devices were horse drawn. A Sharecropper had no equipment and was therefore more at the mercy of his landlord. Truth to tell, there was very little difference in a sharecropper and a tenant farmer. Most of the farms were 40 acres and very seldom exceeded 80 acres. Most of the families that existed on theses farms had eight or nine kids and all were expected to contribute to the well being of the family. Today they would be referred to as “subsistence” farmers but in rural Oklahoma it was a way of life.
They lived in seven or eight hundred square foot houses that were plenty cold and drafty with no lights or heat except a wood stove. They mostly ate & slept there with all of their daylight hours being taken up by farm chores. A boy that hung around the house all the time was generally considered sissified. A girl could get away with it if she helped her mother. By 1930, the “okies” had pretty much worn out the land with their poor farming practices. On top of that, it didn’t rain much in the thirties and the dust bowl and depression were in full force. Electricity did not come to rural Hughes County until about 1946 and at the same time Hughes County sons were returning from World War II. My father and several uncles and cousins were all involved in that great struggle and blessedly all returned home unscathed and the resulting reunions stand out in my mind. But things changed in a big way after that as they all found jobs and opportunities in larger cities. Almost none of them stayed in Hughes County but my grandparents on both sides of my family stayed there for the rest of their lives.
As rural and backward as it sometimes was, rural life in Hughes County boasted communities that were real and caring places. Each community was dominated by a Baptist Church and everyone attended. One side of my family was Missionary Baptist and another side was Freewill Baptist and some of them had Primitive Baptist leanings. None of these churches had a full time preacher and Sunday services were usually performed by itinerant preachers. Some of these preachers returned from time to time and were well known in a lot of the communities. Some of their preaching was pretty good and some of it would scare the daylights out of you. I recall Brother Riley Simpson who preached at Prairie View Baptist once in awhile and affected an English accent. He began every service in the same manner. “I am indeed happy to be here”. When he said it, it sounded like he was “hoppy” to be here and it would cause suppressed giggling among the younger set. I recall him telling about Balaam and his talking donkey. Balaam was beating this recalcitrant beast when God had an angel speak to Balaam through the donkey. Brother Simpson who of course had no public address system was warming to the story and he thundered, “God did not speak directly to Balaam.” Then he said it, “God was speaking through Balaam's (donkey, only he didn't say donkey)”. Well!! It was mighty quiet for a minute or two and it seemed to me that for some reason everyone had to cough. One or two were “coughing” so hard that they had to leave the building. Most of these churches purchased Sunday School materials from the Southern Baptist Convention but otherwise had little to do with them. They would have been appalled at having any organization telling them how to run their church or what to believe. Except for a piano, they for some reason, did not countenance musical instruments at church. They would have been dumbfounded at the idea of building a gymnasium or buying a fleet of buses. They had outdoor segregated restrooms and the church property had no fancy landscaping. The church building and grounds were kept in immaculate condition by the members of the congregation. My grandfather mowed the grass every Saturday so it would look presentable Sunday morning. Most of the community attended church twice on Sunday and again on Wednesday evening (prayer meeting). Nobody loves ice cream more than a Baptist so there was an “ice cream social” usually about once a month at someone’s home. These were wonderful affairs where there would be several different kinds of homemade ice cream and if it was late summer, someone would bring four or five 50 or 60 pound watermelons. Everyone would be outside and the kids would be all sugared up and going nuts.
Anti alcohol pledges were part and parcel of all these communities. My Grandpa & Grandma Smith attended Big Spring Missionary Baptist Church and their parents helped found this church. Grandpa was a deacon and Grandma played the piano and led the singing for 40 years. Grandma put together a quartet with her friends and for awhile played 15 minutes a week on McAlester radio. This little show was of course sponsored by a funeral home. I loved spending weeks in the summer when we would travel to churches all over the county to “singings”. Unfortunately none of this talent rubbed off on me but I have had a love for gospel and traditional music all my life. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t believe in working on Sunday. Grandpa told me that he plowed on a Sunday one year and his crop failed. Grandma would get up about 5am on Sunday and fix breakfast while Grandpa did the barn chores. After breakfast she started on Sunday dinner. All on a wood burning stove. Seemed like working to me. She was usually the congregant that enticed the preacher home for Sunday dinner and was always pleased if she could feed the preacher. Nobody ever heard of lunch. We ate breakfast, dinner & supper. Grandma was a wonderful cook and always fixed fried chicken on Sunday. Chicken was not an everyday affair like it is now. Chicken was reserved for Sunday and any preacher that ever had my grandma’s fried chicken would be back. Daddy told of coming home late on Saturday nights and finding a preacher in his bed. He knew what Jimmy Dickens was singing about when he sang “Sleeping at the foot of the bed”. It was a way of life that is gone for good now. All The churches are gone and the little farms have been absorbed into cattle ranches.
Barney Smith
4/2010
Barney, I would have thought they taught those preachers how to love fried chicken in preacher school, but in those days most Baptist Preachers around here didn’t go to preacher school. They were “called to preach” and my dad in a most politically incorrect way, opined that “seems like those Baptists always get called during tobacco cutting season.” He like to tell the story of one young fellow down in west Tennessee who came in and told his Daddy, “Pap, I think I just got the call to preach.”
“Why’s that?” the old man inquired.
“I saw a sign up in the sky, clouds that formed the letters GPC, and I figured it meant “Go Preach Christ.”
“Well, see that is where you are ignorant of the facts, that meant Go Plow Cotton, now get back out there.”
Appreciate the story Barney, keep them coming. Bob