A Tough Little Knot
My father’s parents passed away when he was but a boy and so my mother’s parents were the only grandparents I knew. He was Edgar Monroe Maberry and she was Lola Betsey (Gentry) Maberry. They were from the Morrison’s Creek area of Jackson County which is about 7 miles east of the town of Gainesboro. About 1940, they had moved out of Jackson County to farm Dr. Sloan’s big place in Sullivan’s Bend. Then in 1946 they had gone further from home to farm Judge Hubert Turner’s farm, which lies just north of the new Wal-Mart on the Highway 25 bypass around Carthage. It was a much bigger farm in those days and was bounded by the high school football field on the south, running along the creek and up to the big oak that stood at Clyde White’s house. From there it ran along the Ed Reynolds’ property line to the Cumberland River and probably contained considerably in excess of 500 acres.
Ma Ma and Pa Maberry were an interesting couple, but I’ll tell you about him first. He was smart and crafty, if uneducated. Although he was the son of a teacher, he could not so much as write his name when I first remember. I could never understand the dynamic which led to that, unless it was due to the fact that today he would undoubtedly have been diagnosed as being ADHD. He was often loud, boisterous, could not keep his mind on a single task for more than an hour, but was full of fun and loved pulling a prank on someone.
He believed that hard work, not cleanliness, was next to Godliness and he filled his life with backbreaking, sweat producing, body debilitating, work and it seemed to me that he often sought out the hardest way to accomplish a task.
I remember that we had an old army surplus jeep of the variety with no windshield, no top and canvass seats that we drove back and forth to the fields when we were working in the “bottom land.” It was probably about 3 miles from their house, which stood near the entrance to Smith County Memorial Gardens, to the fields nearest the river, so walking was a formidable task. Many times my Uncle Billy Maberry and I would linger over lunch longer than Pa thought necessary, so he would say, “Well, I’m gonna git started back to the field, you’ns can come on when yer done.” With that he would walk out the door, only to be picked up about a mile down the road as we too started back to the field. It may not have been progress, but it certainly was motion and he seemed to value one as much as the other. Now days, looking back, I suspect it was management by infliction of guilt.
He walked with what we all called a “hippty-hop” since years ago, he had his foot broken by a falling railroad cross tie. (He often carried and loaded crossties for the railroad during the depression to get a little cash money, walking miles each way to the job.) There was no money for a doctor, so the foot was never set and healed with a decided hump which made his foot look somewhat like a claw. He wore high top shoes for both field and Sunday wear, although the Sunday pair was finished and shiny like “slippers” as he called regular dress shoes. His walk was reminiscent of Walter Brennan’s look in “The Real McCoys” television program so we often called him “Grand pappy Amos” with no disrespect intended.
He could not stand to be other than in front of the pack when doing any kind of work, so when we were chopping corn or tobacco, it was not uncommon for him to skip long sections of a row to stay ahead of the group of us who were hoeing adjoining rows and engaging in a little light banter to break the monotony.
Pa never learned to drive, primarily because he could never keep his mind from wandering off the task at hand. While trying to learn, he would spy a cow in the field, or a particularly weedy patch of corn or tobacco and soon would be driving off the road toward the item which had captured his attention. Finally, Mama and Daddy decided that in the interest of curtsey and public safety they would stop trying to give Pa driving lessons. That suited him just fine since he could “catch a ride” from Billy or at last resort from me on the tractor. I have many times driven him to town before I reached the age of 12 with him standing on the drawbar giving me unneeded and unwanted instructions. His objective was the old City Café and a daily meeting of his coffee buddies to discuss the latest in politics – usually only county and state races were of interest to them.
He was what people used to call, “a tough little knot of a man” and he provided for his family in spite of his physical disabilities and lack of education. He always worked and always did the best he could for my mama and her two brothers. He was different, would ask you how much money you made, talk about politics and religion, and had no idea what politically correct meant. As far as he was concerned, it was being on the correct side politically – and that was, of course, his side.
I don’t think a single person would think of him when thinking of patience, for he was seldom patient with the mules he was plowing, me when I was not doing something quite right, or Ma Ma Maberry when he wanted her to come help with what ever he was working on. But he was patient in the way that all farmers are forced to be patient. No weekly paycheck, no monthly paycheck. The tobacco was started in February and the returns came just before Christmas – maybe. The calves came in the spring but didn’t go to market until November. The hay that was cut in June and August, was not of any use until December and January. The corn was planted in April or May and it was weeks before the first green shoots appeared, but the harvest did not come until November. So it was the farmer’s lot to be patient and wait for the early and late rain as the Bible says and Pa Maberry was no different. Although he was not patient by nature, he was patient by calling, and perhaps that is what counts.
“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.” James 5:7
We like Pa Maberry are called to be patient through the excesses of this world we live in, waiting for the reward which will surely come.
Have a blessed day, Bob bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Having the Last Laugh
The Last Laugh
His name was Ed Lafever and when I first met him he told me he was 95 years old and that he had lived in the Cherry Hill Community nearly all of his 95 years. Cherry Hill is one of those communities where little remains to indicate it was a community. At one time there were as many as three general stores and a school there. Not just a one room school, but all twelve grades through high school. It is located on highway 56 just where the road exits at Silver Point to run from I40 to Smithville. As one crosses the Putnam/Dekalb County line near Center Hill Lake, you pass through what once was the epicenter of Cherry Hill. His house was small but clean and neat, I am sure due to the loving attention of his daughters who looked in on him regularly. They and his grandchildren were the light of his life, since his wife Helen had long since been laid to rest in the little family plot a little to the north and east of his house.
The brown eyed girl and I visited him because he was a first cousin to her daddy who had passed away a number of years before. When we began working on “Ridin’ the Blinds,” which told her daddy’s story. we became frequent visitors. Orphaned at the age of 5, George Lafever, my father-in-law, had been raised by his grandparents on the old Lafever home place which sits just to the north of Ed’s house. Ed’s father was Oziar Lafever whom everyone called Ode. He was a brother to George’s father, and George and Ed and the other cousins grew up pretty much like brothers there in the cosmopolitan climes of Cherry Hill. To look at Ed was to see George, and no one could miss the impact of the common DNA on looks and mannerisms.
Ed was an interviewer’s dream. You could simply prime his pump with a few appropriate questions such as: “Were you old enough to go into the service in World War II?” and off he would go with a detailed and interesting story about how he rode the train from the west coast across the country guarding POW’s bound for prison camps and all of the interesting things that happened along the way. Or perhaps I would ask if he remembered what the Caney Fork was like before Center Hill Dam was built and for the next hour we would learn about summer fish camps where cool cave springs provided natural air conditioning, and hear about the Maynard “Holler” and the people that lived there before the icy waters of the Caney plunged it into the kingdom of Neptune.
We must have visited a dozen or more times prior to publishing the book in 2008, and it is difficult to determine who enjoyed the visits more, the brown eyed girl and I, or Ed. We all had a wonderful time laughing and remembering with me trying to keep that wonderful pump of memories primed.
On one trip he announced that he had purchased a 4 wheeler, and walking with the unsure gait of one his age, he took us down to the shed behind his house to show us an enormous 4 wheeler that dwarfed his now frail frame. At first we were alarmed at the thought of him riding the monster, but as the conversation continued, it became clear the purchase had been made to accommodate and entice his grandchildren, who came there on the weekends. He spoke of Possum hunting with Fowler Stanton who had been his lifelong friend and my former band director, and trying to score “shine” with his teenage buddies. Once, he walked us carefully down to the blacksmith shop where he told the story of how his grandmother, upon discovering his “Uncle Joe’s” pistol, had taken it down there and beat it to pieces on “that very anvil”.
Toward the end of the interviews, we had gone in to find that he had his single barrel shot gun propped up against the couch, ready for business. He explained that a stranger had showed up at his door and told him he was from the government and that he was going to measure his house to see if it was small enough to be eligible for exemption from taxes. The stranger had given Ed the end of a tape measure and told him he was to hold it by the end while the stranger went into the other rooms of the house to “measure.” Ed was old but not dumb and he knew something was up and that the stranger was likely searching for money or valuables while Ed stood holding the end of the tape measure. He was also sharp enough to realize that to confront the stranger was to invite being beaten senseless or killed. Thinking quickly, he managed to hook the tape measure to a door knob and maneuver himself to the couch where the shot gun lay hidden. When he had secured and cocked the old single barrel, he simply let the end of the tape measure drop. The stranger began to swear and curse Ed for letting go saying he was “messing up the measurements” but when he appeared in the doorway of the front room again he was shocked to find the 95 year old had the drop on him and told him in no uncertain terms what would happen if he did not leave in a dead run and keep on going. The stranger accepted the invitation to evacuate. “After that,” Ed declared, “I promised myself I would keep that thing loaded.”
Finally one morning the call which we had been dreading came, Ed had crossed the bar and I found myself being thankful for every hour we had spent listening and collecting the stories he had shared with us.
One of his son-in-laws conducted the funeral service and did a wonderful job of telling of this person of Joy. He told of the Joy with which Ed received them each time they came to visit, of the exuberance he felt toward life in general. How, even in his declining years, he was interesting and interested in life and living. I suppose some would have found his life bleak and joyless, but to Ed that never appeared to be the case. He found joy in his friends who sat on the front porch in the cool of the evening and talked with him, he found joy in his daughter’s great salsa made from tomatoes in his garden, he found joy in just looking at the big red 4 wheeler, he found joy in giving and we never left his home without a can of tomato juice or some other gift that he insisted we take. One Christmas Eve, we took our son and daughter-in-law and two of our grandchildren to visit him, brought with us fruit, candy and other small gifts reminiscent of Christmas gone by, but he would not let the children leave empty handed. He pulled from his wallet two crisp one dollar bills and pressed them in their chubby little palms.
His needs were simple and family and friends were everything. When once we witnessed a daughter tenderly ministering to him by washing his feet and then rubbing them with lotion, or when we listened to another speak of him adoringly, there could be little doubt in our minds that he was a rich man indeed.
As we sat together through the funeral service, holding hands for comfort against a day of gray skies and drizzle, I was shocked to hear his son-in-law say that Ed was 93 years old! “Dave”, I asked, “did I misunderstand, I though Ed told me several years ago that he was 95?” “Oh,” Dave said, “he has been telling everyone that since before he was 90. He thought it sounded better.”
Well Ed, as always, you had the last laugh and I will always remember you as a man of great Joy.
Matthew 6:34 says, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself;” and I never saw it lived out better than the life of Ed Lafever. Have a blessed day,
Bob Robert.r.chaffin@gmail.com
His name was Ed Lafever and when I first met him he told me he was 95 years old and that he had lived in the Cherry Hill Community nearly all of his 95 years. Cherry Hill is one of those communities where little remains to indicate it was a community. At one time there were as many as three general stores and a school there. Not just a one room school, but all twelve grades through high school. It is located on highway 56 just where the road exits at Silver Point to run from I40 to Smithville. As one crosses the Putnam/Dekalb County line near Center Hill Lake, you pass through what once was the epicenter of Cherry Hill. His house was small but clean and neat, I am sure due to the loving attention of his daughters who looked in on him regularly. They and his grandchildren were the light of his life, since his wife Helen had long since been laid to rest in the little family plot a little to the north and east of his house.
The brown eyed girl and I visited him because he was a first cousin to her daddy who had passed away a number of years before. When we began working on “Ridin’ the Blinds,” which told her daddy’s story. we became frequent visitors. Orphaned at the age of 5, George Lafever, my father-in-law, had been raised by his grandparents on the old Lafever home place which sits just to the north of Ed’s house. Ed’s father was Oziar Lafever whom everyone called Ode. He was a brother to George’s father, and George and Ed and the other cousins grew up pretty much like brothers there in the cosmopolitan climes of Cherry Hill. To look at Ed was to see George, and no one could miss the impact of the common DNA on looks and mannerisms.
Ed was an interviewer’s dream. You could simply prime his pump with a few appropriate questions such as: “Were you old enough to go into the service in World War II?” and off he would go with a detailed and interesting story about how he rode the train from the west coast across the country guarding POW’s bound for prison camps and all of the interesting things that happened along the way. Or perhaps I would ask if he remembered what the Caney Fork was like before Center Hill Dam was built and for the next hour we would learn about summer fish camps where cool cave springs provided natural air conditioning, and hear about the Maynard “Holler” and the people that lived there before the icy waters of the Caney plunged it into the kingdom of Neptune.
We must have visited a dozen or more times prior to publishing the book in 2008, and it is difficult to determine who enjoyed the visits more, the brown eyed girl and I, or Ed. We all had a wonderful time laughing and remembering with me trying to keep that wonderful pump of memories primed.
On one trip he announced that he had purchased a 4 wheeler, and walking with the unsure gait of one his age, he took us down to the shed behind his house to show us an enormous 4 wheeler that dwarfed his now frail frame. At first we were alarmed at the thought of him riding the monster, but as the conversation continued, it became clear the purchase had been made to accommodate and entice his grandchildren, who came there on the weekends. He spoke of Possum hunting with Fowler Stanton who had been his lifelong friend and my former band director, and trying to score “shine” with his teenage buddies. Once, he walked us carefully down to the blacksmith shop where he told the story of how his grandmother, upon discovering his “Uncle Joe’s” pistol, had taken it down there and beat it to pieces on “that very anvil”.
Toward the end of the interviews, we had gone in to find that he had his single barrel shot gun propped up against the couch, ready for business. He explained that a stranger had showed up at his door and told him he was from the government and that he was going to measure his house to see if it was small enough to be eligible for exemption from taxes. The stranger had given Ed the end of a tape measure and told him he was to hold it by the end while the stranger went into the other rooms of the house to “measure.” Ed was old but not dumb and he knew something was up and that the stranger was likely searching for money or valuables while Ed stood holding the end of the tape measure. He was also sharp enough to realize that to confront the stranger was to invite being beaten senseless or killed. Thinking quickly, he managed to hook the tape measure to a door knob and maneuver himself to the couch where the shot gun lay hidden. When he had secured and cocked the old single barrel, he simply let the end of the tape measure drop. The stranger began to swear and curse Ed for letting go saying he was “messing up the measurements” but when he appeared in the doorway of the front room again he was shocked to find the 95 year old had the drop on him and told him in no uncertain terms what would happen if he did not leave in a dead run and keep on going. The stranger accepted the invitation to evacuate. “After that,” Ed declared, “I promised myself I would keep that thing loaded.”
Finally one morning the call which we had been dreading came, Ed had crossed the bar and I found myself being thankful for every hour we had spent listening and collecting the stories he had shared with us.
One of his son-in-laws conducted the funeral service and did a wonderful job of telling of this person of Joy. He told of the Joy with which Ed received them each time they came to visit, of the exuberance he felt toward life in general. How, even in his declining years, he was interesting and interested in life and living. I suppose some would have found his life bleak and joyless, but to Ed that never appeared to be the case. He found joy in his friends who sat on the front porch in the cool of the evening and talked with him, he found joy in his daughter’s great salsa made from tomatoes in his garden, he found joy in just looking at the big red 4 wheeler, he found joy in giving and we never left his home without a can of tomato juice or some other gift that he insisted we take. One Christmas Eve, we took our son and daughter-in-law and two of our grandchildren to visit him, brought with us fruit, candy and other small gifts reminiscent of Christmas gone by, but he would not let the children leave empty handed. He pulled from his wallet two crisp one dollar bills and pressed them in their chubby little palms.
His needs were simple and family and friends were everything. When once we witnessed a daughter tenderly ministering to him by washing his feet and then rubbing them with lotion, or when we listened to another speak of him adoringly, there could be little doubt in our minds that he was a rich man indeed.
As we sat together through the funeral service, holding hands for comfort against a day of gray skies and drizzle, I was shocked to hear his son-in-law say that Ed was 93 years old! “Dave”, I asked, “did I misunderstand, I though Ed told me several years ago that he was 95?” “Oh,” Dave said, “he has been telling everyone that since before he was 90. He thought it sounded better.”
Well Ed, as always, you had the last laugh and I will always remember you as a man of great Joy.
Matthew 6:34 says, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself;” and I never saw it lived out better than the life of Ed Lafever. Have a blessed day,
Bob Robert.r.chaffin@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Peddle Andy Peddle,
The brown eyed girl and I found ourselves in Blowing Rock North Carolina this week, a town which I knew little if anything about and which, in fact, I hardly knew existed. As we were walking up the street toward our hotel we cut through a little park with lots of play equipment for children. As might be expected, there were a couple of little girls and a small boy playing on the “monkey bars” and a little way away I noticed an older man, about my age I suppose, watching the three. Immediately my mind went to what the old fellow might be up too and so I lingered behind a bit to just watch. In a few minutes he called the three over and it became evident this was their grandfather, watching to make sure out of town characters, like me, did not cause any harm to his precious charges. Quickly my doubts turned to feeling a little ashamed that I had so quickly characterized the man.
Just hours before, we had departed Mt. Airy North Carolina where Andy Griffith grew up and the town which became the model for Maberry of “The Andy Griffith Show.” The lady from the Chamber of Commerce who was showing us around, stressed over and over the places where Andy once peddled his bike, always saying, “Andy just peddled his bike over here to take trombone lessons, In those days, a child could go anywhere safely here in town,” leaving us to infer that this was not true today.
I know it was true of Carthage when we were growing up. We rode our bikes at night and hung out under the old fluted shade street lamps, fighting the bugs that circled around above. We roller skated on the newly asphalted streets and trick-r-treated from house to house across the length and breadth of the town from the time we were in the third grade. I personally was not a fan of the hot lunch program at school, and so walked home for lunch, generally in the pleasurable company of a few other kids who though a sandwich at home beat “mystery meat” at school. We played “cops-n-robbers” and “kick-the-can” until ten o’clock, generally avoiding coming within hearing distance of our own house for fear our mothers might call.
Never in my memory was there any mention of fear that someone would take us away. Probably our parents’ consensus was, when daylight came, and anyone who might have taken us away saw in the clear light of day what they had, they would bring us back. At any rate they didn’t seem to worry in the slightest.
I’m not sure I know whether things are just so much worse today, or whether the 24 hour news cycle, in search of some new, startling, and awful thing to tell us, just makes us keenly aware of the dangers that can exist, but I am quite sure my own kids would never allow my grandchildren to do the things we did, and neither would I.
It saddens me though, to think of the loss of innocence, not only of children but of our nation as a whole. We have, as a people, become aware beyond our years of the dangers that await the unsuspecting, and the harm that can befall the innocent, and our days are watchful and our sleep troubled as a result. Eccl. 7:10 says, “Say not the former days are better than these.” But I find that hard advice to follow these days. Have a blessed day, Bob bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Vacant Lot Baseball
Vacant Lot Baseball
Today the brown eyed girl and I went to see John Patrick play baseball. J. P. is in the second grade, so this is still early in his baseball career and difficult to tell if he will make the big leagues or not. The little fellows were all dressed out in matching uniforms, with sporty equipment bags, special shoes, and batting helmets. Their names were printed on their backs and they looked like pros out there. Being as young as they are, the coach was doing the pitching and an umpire provided by the parks and recreation department, was ruling the roost. Looking around, there were nearly as many adult dads on the field as there were players and a few of them were doing that coach thing of pointing to their eyes with a couple of fingers and saying “on the ball.”
As we sat on the aluminum fold out bleachers and shivered against a late spring north wind that brought temperatures in the mid 50s and falling, I thought how different this is from baseball as I remember it in the 1950s.
The baseball field was the vacant lot that was nestled in a corner formed by the Borden’s Cheese Plant, and the Stock Sale Barn. (Which perhaps explains why it was vacant?) The first games I remember were played when I was too small to even be considered for playing but contented myself with shagging foul balls and crawling into the stock pens to get pop flies that went foul in a special sort of way. The players were most often the Upchurch boys, the big Upchurch boys, Ray and Bobby not Philip or Tommy as they were also too small, Tyrone Pointer, Edwin Pierce, Glen Pettross, and a host of others their age that constituted the “big boys” in our neighborhood.
The first job of course was to find someone who could actually produce a baseball and a bat to start the game. The criteria for entry was having your own glove and to get the game in motion is was necessary to find some old paint can lids or like suitable objects to serve as the bases.
No one had any thing that remotely looked like something a baseball player might wear unless he was going to visit his Aunt Maude on Labor Day. There were no tight stretchy pants, no special shoes, no jerseys with numbers and names, no hats that said much of anything but “Coop” or “Chevy” on the front and certainly no batting helmets. The very thought of wearing a helmet to face the opposing pitcher was beyond consideration. It just would not be done.
I think however the thing that was the most obvious in its absence was adult supervision. There were no adults around, and we liked it that way. There were no dads looking over our shoulders telling us to keep our eye on the ball and no coaches pitching for us. No umpires were present and every contested call was simply argued out until it became clear that the biggest boys were going to win the argument and everyone quite contesting just in time to save the integrity of their own nose. No mothers yelled from the bleachers, “That a way to go, Levi” or alternately, “Hunter, you have got to watch what you are doing.” It was simply a vacant lot ballgame not intended to build character, prepare us for a scholarship to MTSU, teach us the rules of fair play, ingrain teamwork within us, build our self esteem, or any of the things people talk about today. It was just a chance to have fun – that was the only aim.
The football field, now that was the backyards behind Kemper Hailey’s house and the biggest requirement was to be big, strong, and tough. No skill necessary. As for hockey, and soccer: we had never heard of them. Didn’t know what they were, didn’t want to know. Baseball we could see on the old black and white T.V. when the Yankees played the Dodgers in the World Series and Football we could witness every Friday night in the fall at the local high school. They were REAL sports.
Now, I’m not saying the way we did it was better, or that these organized sports leagues for children don’t accomplish some of their stated goals. But sometimes when I watch a little fellow wandering around in right field with his mind clearly somewhere but in that ballgame, or listen to the rhetoric from some of the parents, or watch some of the dads on the field, I wonder who this is really for. Is it really for Anders, or is it for Anders’ dad? Is it really as much fun when dad says, “Well, when we get home we are going to practice getting those ground balls until you will never miss another one”, as it was when Ray and Bobby and Tyrone just happened by the vacant lot to play a game of baseball with how ever many players were available, or as much fun as it was when we gathered in Kemper Hailey’s back yard and Walter Booker showed us how he could cross the goal line with six of us still hanging on to various parts of his body and bits of his clothing. Sometime, we may just put to much rigor into things that should be simple.
I wonder the same thing about worship sometimes when we find ourselves trying to choreograph every move of the “participants” rather than letting it be the simple kind of heartfelt expression of praise of our maker that Jesus involved himself in. I worry that in our minds we segregate the “participants” and the “audience” rather than recognizing that all of us are the participants and it is God that is the audience.
As you may have figured out by now, I am better at questions than answers. A great philosopher once opined that “sometimes the answers are simple but the questions are complicated.” No, it wasn’t Voltaire, it was Dr. Seuss, Sam I Am.
While you ponder these great questions, go watch your grandchildren play a sport, it will be good for them and great for you. bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sepia Toned Memories
Sepia Toned Memories
I suppose this has been an unusual spring, what with the warm weather and all, but it really did seem “old timey” to me. It got warm in March, the March winds blew right on schedule and the flowers appeared when they were supposed to – at least in my memory. We seem to have the capacity to make our early days near perfect, sepia toned, and endlessly pleasant and the ability to “soft pedal” the distasteful parts of those days.
The way I remember spring was that it began to warm up in February to the point where by the middle of the month, we took to the fields to disk in those corn stalks left from gathering time last fall. By the end of the month the buttercups that grew down the side of our house on Jefferson Avenue were blooming and the forsythia bushes that faced Dottie Grissom’s house were alive in their yellow and green dresses.
By March the old fashioned purple Iris were blooming along the gully that served as a gutter on Jefferson before the tar and chip road was replaced with asphalt and concrete gutters were poured. The phlox began to bloom along the edges of Mrs. Nollner’s yard on Main Street and the grass in our lawns began to show splotchy patches of green where real grass was growing. Most of our yards were weeds back then and it was good enough for us. What we had was just as good as what everyone else had so we were content, as mankind is inclined to measure contentment.
The goal was to have roses in full bloom by the first of May, not Knockout Roses, but real old fashioned roses of the climbing variety that sagged on our fences and climbed up trellises in our backyards. Why roses for the first of May? Why of course it was to be able to pin a white or red rose to your lapel for Mother’s Day. Red if you were lucky enough to have your mother still living, white if she had gone on to a better place.
It was warm barefoot weather and it was neither too hot nor too cold in the school room. The teachers would pull open the old metal frame windows that tilted into the school room and the sweet fragrance of fresh air would rush in crowding out the stale, heated, germ laden air of the long winter. It was a welcome relief since air too long occupied by fifth graders had a special smell that was unwelcome even to a farm kid not unused to unpleasant odors. Some mix between old sneakers and the boys locker at the gym.
I imagine they don’t do that today, rather they heat and air condition the room at a constant 74 degrees and keep the germs inside and the pollen outside, which necessitates taking Junior or Suzy to the allergist to get a shot of that selfsame pollen, at great financial cost, rather than getting it in the air we breathed for free. Oh well, one cannot fight progress.
The days would be pleasant, punctuated by Red Bud Winter or Dogwood Winter when one might have to drag out your winter coat for a day or two, and then back to short sleeves and no coat. Always of course, when school was done for the day, you were allowed to go barefoot, once Easter had passed.
Soon the best time of the spring would come – planting time. There would be corn to plant in the long rows stretching across the seemingly endless river bottom fields with the split wheels of the corn planter neatly pushing the earth together to cover the grains of seed corn that had been placed in the earth by the big round boxes on top of the old two row planter. Best of all was setting tobacco but only if the weather remained dry enough to use the big old tobacco setter with the 55 gallon drum of water weighting down the back. First the plants would be “drawn” from the plant bed that had lately had the canvas cover removed. Then the plants would be carried to the setter where two men would in turn place the plants into the ground with just the right rhythm to have the setter put a gush of water to their roots. Little boys could not do this job though, for one had to take great care to not catch a hand between the two heavy iron wheels that squeezed the ground together and “tamped” the soil around the newly set tobacco plant. It was like a carnival with two or three women drawing plants, one man driving the tractor pulling the setter, two men on the setter and one or two little boys, including yours truly, carrying wash tubs of plants to reload the plant boxes on the old converted horse drawn tobacco setter. Best of all – no school that day. I can still remember the warm loose soil on my bare feet which would turn cool if you wiggled your toes down several inches.
Rainy days were not so good though, for that meant going to the pegs and working along a grass string stretched from one end of the patch to the other while our backs ached and mud collected on our shoes until we could hardly pull our feet along.
Just like our memories selectively filter out the cold, rainy days, the ice storms, the sudden cold snaps, the late February snow storms, the tired achy bodies at the end of a long day in the tobacco patch, our minds also have the ability to look at our lives, putting the best possible “spin” on what we see and reason with ourselves that we are not too bad and that perhaps the Great Maker of the Universe is pretty lucky to have us as followers of him. After all, there are a lot of people worse than we are and we don’t really do any bad stuff. That was probably what Peter thought when he demanded to know why he couldn’t come with Jesus when Jesus had said, “Where I go, you cannot come.” “After all,” Peter must have reasoned, “I am a pretty handy fellow with a sword, and I would be willing to lay down my life for Jesus. Yes sir, he would be pretty lucky to have me along.”
Jesus quickly informed Peter that his own opinion of himself was highly inflated and that before the rooster crowed, Peter would deny Jesus three times. This must have been a crushing blow to Peter’s ego, but he manned up and when the moment came, he did in fact draw his sword and try to defend Jesus. But he found that it was easier to remain of good faith in the heat of battle than in the long night of despair.
It is pleasant to remember the good old days and few of us over 50 don’t like to engage in a little nostalgia, but we must remember to live in the present. And, like Peter, we need to remember that in spite of the narcissism with which we view of ourselves, it is we who are lucky, or rather blessed, to have Him, not the other way about. Enjoy your blessed day.
Bob Chaffin bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org
I suppose this has been an unusual spring, what with the warm weather and all, but it really did seem “old timey” to me. It got warm in March, the March winds blew right on schedule and the flowers appeared when they were supposed to – at least in my memory. We seem to have the capacity to make our early days near perfect, sepia toned, and endlessly pleasant and the ability to “soft pedal” the distasteful parts of those days.
The way I remember spring was that it began to warm up in February to the point where by the middle of the month, we took to the fields to disk in those corn stalks left from gathering time last fall. By the end of the month the buttercups that grew down the side of our house on Jefferson Avenue were blooming and the forsythia bushes that faced Dottie Grissom’s house were alive in their yellow and green dresses.
By March the old fashioned purple Iris were blooming along the gully that served as a gutter on Jefferson before the tar and chip road was replaced with asphalt and concrete gutters were poured. The phlox began to bloom along the edges of Mrs. Nollner’s yard on Main Street and the grass in our lawns began to show splotchy patches of green where real grass was growing. Most of our yards were weeds back then and it was good enough for us. What we had was just as good as what everyone else had so we were content, as mankind is inclined to measure contentment.
The goal was to have roses in full bloom by the first of May, not Knockout Roses, but real old fashioned roses of the climbing variety that sagged on our fences and climbed up trellises in our backyards. Why roses for the first of May? Why of course it was to be able to pin a white or red rose to your lapel for Mother’s Day. Red if you were lucky enough to have your mother still living, white if she had gone on to a better place.
It was warm barefoot weather and it was neither too hot nor too cold in the school room. The teachers would pull open the old metal frame windows that tilted into the school room and the sweet fragrance of fresh air would rush in crowding out the stale, heated, germ laden air of the long winter. It was a welcome relief since air too long occupied by fifth graders had a special smell that was unwelcome even to a farm kid not unused to unpleasant odors. Some mix between old sneakers and the boys locker at the gym.
I imagine they don’t do that today, rather they heat and air condition the room at a constant 74 degrees and keep the germs inside and the pollen outside, which necessitates taking Junior or Suzy to the allergist to get a shot of that selfsame pollen, at great financial cost, rather than getting it in the air we breathed for free. Oh well, one cannot fight progress.
The days would be pleasant, punctuated by Red Bud Winter or Dogwood Winter when one might have to drag out your winter coat for a day or two, and then back to short sleeves and no coat. Always of course, when school was done for the day, you were allowed to go barefoot, once Easter had passed.
Soon the best time of the spring would come – planting time. There would be corn to plant in the long rows stretching across the seemingly endless river bottom fields with the split wheels of the corn planter neatly pushing the earth together to cover the grains of seed corn that had been placed in the earth by the big round boxes on top of the old two row planter. Best of all was setting tobacco but only if the weather remained dry enough to use the big old tobacco setter with the 55 gallon drum of water weighting down the back. First the plants would be “drawn” from the plant bed that had lately had the canvas cover removed. Then the plants would be carried to the setter where two men would in turn place the plants into the ground with just the right rhythm to have the setter put a gush of water to their roots. Little boys could not do this job though, for one had to take great care to not catch a hand between the two heavy iron wheels that squeezed the ground together and “tamped” the soil around the newly set tobacco plant. It was like a carnival with two or three women drawing plants, one man driving the tractor pulling the setter, two men on the setter and one or two little boys, including yours truly, carrying wash tubs of plants to reload the plant boxes on the old converted horse drawn tobacco setter. Best of all – no school that day. I can still remember the warm loose soil on my bare feet which would turn cool if you wiggled your toes down several inches.
Rainy days were not so good though, for that meant going to the pegs and working along a grass string stretched from one end of the patch to the other while our backs ached and mud collected on our shoes until we could hardly pull our feet along.
Just like our memories selectively filter out the cold, rainy days, the ice storms, the sudden cold snaps, the late February snow storms, the tired achy bodies at the end of a long day in the tobacco patch, our minds also have the ability to look at our lives, putting the best possible “spin” on what we see and reason with ourselves that we are not too bad and that perhaps the Great Maker of the Universe is pretty lucky to have us as followers of him. After all, there are a lot of people worse than we are and we don’t really do any bad stuff. That was probably what Peter thought when he demanded to know why he couldn’t come with Jesus when Jesus had said, “Where I go, you cannot come.” “After all,” Peter must have reasoned, “I am a pretty handy fellow with a sword, and I would be willing to lay down my life for Jesus. Yes sir, he would be pretty lucky to have me along.”
Jesus quickly informed Peter that his own opinion of himself was highly inflated and that before the rooster crowed, Peter would deny Jesus three times. This must have been a crushing blow to Peter’s ego, but he manned up and when the moment came, he did in fact draw his sword and try to defend Jesus. But he found that it was easier to remain of good faith in the heat of battle than in the long night of despair.
It is pleasant to remember the good old days and few of us over 50 don’t like to engage in a little nostalgia, but we must remember to live in the present. And, like Peter, we need to remember that in spite of the narcissism with which we view of ourselves, it is we who are lucky, or rather blessed, to have Him, not the other way about. Enjoy your blessed day.
Bob Chaffin bob.chaffin@maplehillchurch.org
Monday, October 18, 2010
Excerpt #1 from Ridin' the Blinds
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. .......
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. .......
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Showers of Blessings
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
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
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