Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy: The Stories

In my previous post:

https://laughingatsid.wordpress.com/2024/02/05/southwest-mississippi-christian-academy-the-school/

I discuss the history and the physical plant of Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy. The school is stereotypical of several private schools in my resume of schools such as Clifton Ganus, Valley Forge North, Valley Forge Central, and Mississippi Baptist. The school was unique in that it was the mostest redneckest of the bunch. I still chuckle at the memory of it and myself, and I hope you do as well.

This was the year I learned that it is easier to make friends with the bad kids in the class. This was probably the high point of my growing prowess as the class clown. I will probably discuss my coping mechanisms for the “New Kid Syndrome,” but for now, I just want to tell some funny stories.

General Assembly:

We had a general assembly once a week. Each week, a class did the program. I don’t recall we ever had a chapel meeting even though we were a Christian school. Somehow, they all began to devolve into lip-synching popular songs. I laugh at the girls rushing the stage when Robbie Stinson did a perfect, “Hunk a hunk of burning love.” Old Elvis gets the chicks every time. My claim to fame was doing “Last Kiss” by J. Frank in the Cavaliers. Pearl Jam later did a cover of it, and I think they were such lightweights compared to me. I nailed it! I was later told they were afraid the chicks would rush the stage, and they closed the curtains quickly. Once again, I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!

Lest you think I am really old, the song was old when I nailed it.

A bad deal:

This was in the 3″B”‘s of education era; “Bust their Butts with a Board.” Teachers in that time had dungeons with whips, and chains, and handcuffs hanging all over them. Cross them, and they would cross your eyes with pain. Occasionally, I see some Facebook posts where someone is reminiscent of these good old days. They obviously didn’t have the same pain tolerance I had. I don’t have any fond memories of that pain.

Teachers had wooden paddles that were a 1 X  big enough to hurt. In a special combination of physics, sadism and a perverse need to mark their territory they would drill their names in holes in their paddle. This had the combined effect of better aerodynamics and more detailed scaring on both your posterior and your psyche. Your reward for enduring that moment of crippling pain was that you got to sign the paddle.

Coach Felder, who was both a coach and a math teacher, and not particularly very good at either, sauntered into class with a new paddle  with “FELDER” just glaring right at you. He announced the caveat that you got the right to sign the paddle if he signed your butt with said paddle. Being one with a compulsive need to make a scene, far outweighing my small brains ability to think with a twinge of common sense, jumped right up to snatch immortality in exchange for a concave buttocks. Two other of my dumbest and morally depraved fellow classmates popped up like lambs to the slaughter.

Surely, I had wingmen, and the confidence that he wouldn’t hit that hard since it was voluntary, and in jest.

MAN!  WAS I WRONG!!! He hit me so hard, one eye was staring at the pencil sharpener, while the other was looking across the road at some blurry cow in a field. I heard the exultation of the angels, along with the tortured screams of tormented souls being drug down a chute to the pit. As my fillings popped out and poisoned my gut with mercurial amalgam, one of my two brain cells gave up the ghost and fell over with a dull thud in my hollow head. I still believe that I have bruising and scaring, which I affectionately call “Felder Ass,” which coincidentally was my future designation for said teacher.

I signed the paddle with shaking hand. This was a totally Pyrrhic victory on my part. I think somewhere I can imagine him cackling with a fond memory of his actual victory. What I find ironical is that in today’s generation of cell-phone-equipped internet justice warriors, such violence would be met with more comments that a kid falling in a gorilla cage or a Cecil the lion shooting dentist. For me, it brought back a phrase I refer to as Grandmother’s saying. I could still envision her with tears in her eyes saying, “Sid, don’t be a jackass!!!”

Up next, Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy: More Stories.

Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy: The School

Site of Ruth School

I want to preface this post with a strongly stated disclaimer. Here, I am only describing the Deep South in which I grew up. There has been so much truly wrong with our national history. I will leave it for the historians to redress the Civil War, the Reconstruction, the Jim Crowe era, and the Civil Rights movement. I can tell you positively that the 60s and the 70’s was a really bad time to be black in the South.

In 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education set the precedent for desegregation of public schools. Throughout much of the Deep South segregation was not only tolerated but also the law of the land.  No longer was the doctrine of separate but equal applied to segregation of schools. This ruling was largely ignored until around 1969 when the status changed from desegregation to forced integration.

I remember when the change happened distinctly. I was in the fourth grade and my first day back at school, and the racial make-up of my class dramatically changed.

Overnight. white-only private schools popped up all over the South. Almost to a letter every one was started in 1969-1970. Most folded in under ten years. They were usually shabby, and ultimately, most of their parents grew tired of the expense.

My Mom and Dad were not racist people.  Dad generally looked down on public schools and grew to hate them with a passion in his later life. I just think the shock of the change caused him to move us. I don’t fault him. He was truly trying to give us the best education, and he was willing to spend money to make it happen.

Out of the next five schools, mom taught in four of them. She was never my teacher directly at this time. Many of these schools were CINO, Christian In Name Only. When I started there, the school named Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy. We got word from the state that one couldn’t have the name of the state and Christian together, so we voted on one of three names Southwest Academy, Southwest Mississippi Academy, or Southwest Christian Academy. Thankfully, we chose Southwest Christian Academy, but its name was totally optional at the whim of the student body.

When we moved to Summit, we enrolled in Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy. This was truly one of the strangest schools in my pedigree.

Most of these private academies put up a new school building. SMCA assimilated an old public school formerly Ruth School. I knew the school was old. Until I read the memorial plaque, I never knew how old.

The original school was started in 1924 as a consolidation of several community schools. It was expanded twice and closed down in 1961. My theory was that the school was too dilapidated to keep sending kids to such a horrid place. It was used as a cotton warehouse for eight years and then sold to be a private school.

The school was forty-seven years old when I went there. It is hard to describe how bad it was, but here I go.

Our school colors were maroon and white. This beautiful color pallette was shamelessly woven throughout the building. The halls were fourteen feet high with six feet maroon gloss oil pine bead-board wainscoting. The walls had so many coats of paint that you couldn’t stick a booger to it with a quart of muscilege. The upper wall was a dingy horsehair plaster. The school had honest-to-goodness schoolhouse globes hanging from a likely asbestos ceiling.

The classrooms were done in that lovely shade of mint green that every building that survived the 1960s green wave of interior decorating has buried under some beige. Our desks dating back to the 1920s had troughs for your pencil and a hole for your inkwell. Since we were of the Bic ballpoint pen generation, we never got the joy of dipping pigtails of the girl in front of you in the ink.

Our auditorium had that look of the last dance hall Buddy Holly played before The Day the Music Died. The football field was a repurposed cotton field. Cropdusters would spray the adjacent field to the delight of the students looking for a respite from academia. The school had a brand new gym and a full athletic program. Generally, the athletic program was a huge drain on the finances of institutions, but it was absolutely a must for the South.

This was truly a bizarre and wonderful place.

Stay tuned for Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy: The Stories.

Schools I Have Known

This was my seventh grade year. By this point, I was starting to get an impressive resume of schools.

Resume order:

Grade, Town, Teacher, Reason for leaving.

Kindergarten, East Globe, Esther Preston, Globe, AZ, school district changed.

First Grade, Central Elementary, Virginia Dolan, Miami AZ, moved to seminary,

Second Grade, Bienville School, generic second grade teacher, New Orleans, LA, moved to better housing.

Second Grade, W.C.C. Clairborne Elementary, Ms. Grant, New Orleans, LA, same school. I tell the amusing story of The Second Grade here:

https://laughingatsid.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/discipline/

Third Grade, W.C.C. Clairborne Elementary, Ms. Danton, New Orleans, LA, same school.

Fourth Grade, W.C.C Clairborne Elementary, generic fourth grade teacher, New Orleans, left for a private school (lasted one day).

Fourth Grade, Clifton Ganus, generic fourth grade teacher, New Orleans, LA, moved to church field.

Fourth Grade, Valley Forge North, Diane Something, Kentwood, LA same school.

Fifth Grade, Valley Forge North, Daniel Carroll, Kentwood LA, moved to a better school.

Sixth Grade, Valley Forge Central, Anne Elzey, Amite LA, changed churches.

Seventh Grade, Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy, assorted teachers, Ruth, NS, left church.

Eight years, eight schools, are you starting to see a pattern?

To continue:

Eighth Grade, Mississippi Baptist Academy, assorted teachers, Dad took a church in Oak Ridge, TN.

Eighth Grade, Jefferson Jr. High, assorted teachers, same school.

Ninth Grade, Jefferson Jr. High, assorted teachers, changed school district.

Ninth Grade, Norwood Middle School, assorted teachers. It was a  tough school, and I kept getting in trouble.

Ninth Grade, homeschooled, my mammer, went to a Christian school.

Tenth Grade, Mt. Pisgah Christian Academy, my mammer again, Dad started a school.

Eleventh Grade, Hagen School of Kentwood, my mammer again, same school.

Twelfth Grade, Hagen School of Kentwood, my mammer again, graduated finally!

I really hesitate to post this blog because it sounds like me whining. These are fairly impressive statistics. I made fourteen schools in thirteen years. Military brats think my schooling was unstable. I met a girl once whose father managed hotels, and they lived on site who had twenty schools. I wasn’t worthy.

As a funny irony, Dad and Mom settled down in the same area and never moved again. Forty years later, after Mom passed, and Dad’s health was failing, he still would not move! It worked out fine, but I often thought that of all the times we moved, he owed me one move at my request. Alas, I could never outstubborn Dad.

To be fair to mom and Dad, they cared deeply about my education. In some of the changes, they spent a lot of money trying to give me the best education they could possibly give me. Often, they couldn’t help the situation. Three times, they had to leave a ministry suddenly without having that much of a choice. The really bad side of a quick move is that we had to move into something  temporary while they sorted out what their next move was in life. This usually turned three new schools into six.

Before you relegate my blog to the “Grumpy Old Man” file of perpetual whiners, I plan to discuss how the circumstances turned my life into the rich tapestry of experiences my life became. It was both painful and good for me.

The next stop, “Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy.

Summit Mississippi

Dad grew restless. Southern Baptists have networks called associations that are usually two or three counties or parishes large in the Deep South. I am spotty on the details, but I think Dad networked around and found Fellowship Baptist Church in Summit Mississippi.

Summit, true to its name, was a high point on the Illinois Central Railroad. McComb five miles south had a big railroad shop. Summit was at the crossroads of three big industries in the pine belt: the railroad, the paper industry, and the oil fields. There was a big railroad siding where pulpwood trucks would bring a load of four to twelve inch logs eight feet long stacked six feet high to be loaded on the train to the pulpwood mill. If I hadn’t wasted so much time on education, I could be a good pulpwood hauler to this day. I joke, but those people did hard, intense work and were good people.

Summit sat on its own little mound of crude oil in that region. It wasn’t like the fields of West Texas where an army of mechanical dinosaurs lazily pumped black gold from the unknown depths. It had its occasional pump hidden in the pines, and every once in a while a new derrick would punch the surface for another lucky strike. Sadly, one of our locals opened a valve too quickly and was cut in half with the pressure. Some of our church members worked in oil. I had a comical fun neighbor, Ralph Smith, who spent his last working years flying all over the world as a drilling supervisor. It still amazes me that a man from humble beginnings was sought by drilling companies worldwide for his prowess in his trade.

Jerry Clower, the famous country comedian, was from a town about eleven miles southwest of there. He yells a story about my literal next-door neighbor there named Cutworm Smith. Cutworm earned his nickname brandishing a pocket knife, threatening to emasculate you. The other story was that he cut across the bases in baseball. He was nice, but his pocket knife was sufficient to make me never want to cross him.

We went to the most bizarre school of my resume of fourteen years. Stay tuned for Southwest Mississippi Christian Academy in a future post.

Summit and Fellowship Baptist Church had its honeymoon. Our little road had a few nice kids on it, and I really liked my new friends. The church helped us with our move and painted the inside of our parsonage. Once again, we were in the country with miles of forests and fields we could explore. We fought in plowed gardens with huge dirt clods. I have a particular fond memory of my brother Tim getting hit in the face with a dirt clod as big as his head and crying little rivers of mud. I have another great memory of the neighbors digging a dug fort in the woods and us realizing it wasn’t smart to build a fire in a hole. There was also that fun memory of me trying to bust through a cardboard box on my bicycle only to discover it was possible to fly over the handlebars like Superman.

It was fun for about a year. In my innocence, I had no idea there was a storm coming.

On Time

Do you often feel like time warps around significant events in your life? For example, I hardly remember anything significant from late 1993-2001. I was self-employed. I contracted every job imaginable we had two new kids. Life was mostly work, play, and routine. That was seven years, and time moves on.

When I was in transition from teaching in 1991-1993, time slowed into a big warp bubble. I changed careers. I can recall the most insignificant details of my life because the setting was new. That was two and a half years, and time moves on.

Dad’s career at Lewiston was four years. I have had the same pastor for thirty-one years. It seemed like an idyllic eternity, but in reality, it was just four years, and time moves on.

A paving company got the contract to hot tar spray gravel on West Lewiston road. Within a day, Dad was driving a steam roller for them in his coveralls, grinning like a mule eating briars. I think their contract only lasted for four weeks. In his old age, he would describe like a career, but I kind of get it. It was almost the last time anyone compensated him for hard work. This was a career in the span of a month to Dad, and time moves on.

When we left Lewiston, we only lasted about a year and a half in any place he tried to minister. It was just awful. Every year, a new house, a new school. Every bad situation left another scar that changed Dad, and us. Slowly, as kids, we lost our faith and became the new bad kids in every school, and time moves on.

Dad got tired of being forced out of ministry jobs. He did something different. He bought a ministry. I grew up and moved away, and he stayed put till he died there. That was about forty years. My paradox is that I was always forced into moving, but I could never get him to move. Forty years slipped away, and time moves on.

His heart never left the church he cut his teeth on nearly fifty years before. He and mom are buried in the graveyard. His impact of a life well lived as part of a community was so much greater than the sum of short careers. Fifty years was a career, and time moves on.

I have wanted to write about the bad years, but the time wasn’t right. I needed to heal enough to be objective. No one needs to be castigated. I am not venting. It is cathartic to just tell the story and move on. It is finally in my heart to do this in a way that respects my parents and doesn’t belch black bitterness from an angry soul. It happened. It is alright, and time moves on.

Our next stop, “Summit Mississippi.”

The Water Heater That Changed my Life

This post is a bit of an overstatement. Truly, this was a fork in the road that seemed to change everything. I started writing this story almost eleven years ago. Dad’s first years in the ministry were an idyllic new adventure.

The story begins here:

https://laughingatsid.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/life-in-the-fishbowl/

And then I stopped writing here.

https://laughingatsid.wordpress.com/2020/09/19/a-weekend-on-the-church-field/

The infamous water heater made everything just go to crap. I couldn’t write about Dad’s ministry anymore. The memories weren’t that good. beyond that point.

So, giving a little background here, Dad pastored a little church in Kentwood Louisiana as a commuter ministry from seminary. The church, Lewiston Baptist Church, was the centerpiece of a small community. It was a beautiful time in my life, and I get a special joy each time I pass that last turn in the road and see that little country church. When Dad finished his degree, and then he did something unheard of for a new Southern Baptist preacher. He actually moved to the church field.

Southern Baptist is its own culture. From the “Robert’s Rules of Order” in a business meeting to the smell of the paint in the bathroom, they have their own signature that is all things Southern Baptist. The bathroom smell is strong urinal cakes and old lead based oil paint. If you grew up around it, you can still have that aroma floating in your sinuses. The four pillars on the church are the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Cooperative Program.

The concept of growing a church is usually strange to a career pastor in the Southern Baptist. As a pastor, advancement is usually taking a bigger church. In some ways, movement is a pastor’s only option. Southern Baptist churches are spaced so closely in the Deep South that you can play baseball using each church as a base without having a large outfield.

Dad loved his church, and Dad loved to work. Dad jacked up the sagging floors. He raked the leaves even in the crawlspace. He shoveled out the clogged septic tank before Sunday School. He started and often personally drove the nails in a major renovation. He preached the weddings and the funerals. He worked for weeks for a paving company to get new gravel on the church parking lot. He picked up half orphaned kids in his van. He physically helped dig graves. He loved his new life, but as time went on, the parishioners grew complacent.

We lived in a parsonage three feet from the church. Our bathroom had an outside door, which doubled along with another exterior bathroom as the “His and Hers” for the church. The outside bathroom contained “The Water Heater That Changed my Life.”

The water heater was tall, blue, and white. It had rusty galvanized pipe and was covered in old paint dust. Somehow, it had an element that was grounded in series to the graveyard fence. When it was cooking, it would electrify the fence, which would deliver a mildly painful shock to the bereaved souls visiting their loved ones interred beyond. Mom and Dad would jump up from their Sunday nap to kill the breaker to protect the visitors. Finally, the water heater, like the residents in the cemetery it was painfully guarding with high voltage, breathed its last, and died. Thus was the blessed end of “Old Sparky!”

The church members were good people, but tight to the point, they could back up to a wall and pull out a brick with their butt cheeks. Dad one time passionately pleaded with the board to help a missionary bring his family over from India. After fifteen minutes of dead silence, someone moved that they give the missionary five dollars to get the meeting moving along.

Even in late 1960’s money, they paid very little. They were generous with food from their gardens, but the basic wages didn’t even cover our commuting expenses. Dad was somewhat self-supporting, but it couldn’t go on forever.

Then dad asked for a new water heater. Someone came up with a bright, economical, and possibly Satanic idea that changed my life.

“The water heater is for your house, and it is your problem.” Dad was crushed!

Dad only told me about it in the last couple of years of his life. I never understood why we left the church. Dad had a deacon that owned a store, which, among other things, sold water heaters. He had men who did plumbing. Dad would have done the work, but the reality was that water heater was dangerous to the people who touched the fence. It serviced the church bathrooms. Dad told me decades later, “It really struck me low.”

Having installed water heaters all my life, I wish the older me could have bought one and put it in. The reality was that ministry was becoming unsustainable. Ironically, Dad couldn’t stand the concept of tithing. I don’t think it is the New Testament standard of giving either, but Dad never realized that a tip of spare change won’t pay a fair wage. No one could live on what they provided.

I spurn the concept of the “Prosperity Gospel,” The “Poverty Gospel” that so many Christian workers labor under is a terrible testimony.

This was the end of the innocence. Then Dad got restless, and life was about to go to crap.

I believe this was the last time he would voluntarily leave a ministry. He gave his notice, and I really believe the people were sad to see him go. Dad and Mom maintained close ties with those people until their deaths forty years later.

Dad was actually so good about it that he never told us anything other than we were called to a new church. I had no idea that the train had just taken a dirt road. “Old Sparky” had changed my destiny.

The milestones in life send me into musings. “On Time.”

Water Heaters I Have Known

In my assortment of vocational skills I have attempted over the years, I often get stuck with plumbing.  I think somewhere along the way, I concluded, “Why do I ever say yes to plumbing?” I absolutely hate it. I am reasonably knowledgeable of the theory and practice of the trade. I just hate doing it! It is just nasty and aggravating. Mistakes are costly and time-consuming. I never have all the parts. There is always the issue that I might go broke throwing another dollar in the swear jar for every utterance along the way. Nancy Reagan got it right. “JUST SAY NO!!!”

Of the subcategories in plumbing, I have a complex relationship with water heaters. It is my old nemesis. It is my old friend. If I have to do plumbing, it is my favorite job.

To correct your nomenclature before it starts, it is NOT a hot water heater! Why would you heat hot water? Technically, it is a cold water heater or in short water heater. It just grates my sensitivities like fingernails on a blackboard to hear that linguistic abomination. Yes, I have too much time on my hands.

I have installed gas, electric, tanked, tankless, solar, on-demand gas, on-demand electric, tall, short, and stumpy water heaters. I once installed 162 water heaters in one contract. I installed ten in one day. I have carried them on my back three stories. I could draw you schematics for them, estimate their life span, and repair them ad-infinitum.

On the day my middle son, Jeremiah, was born, I left the delivery room and installed a water heater. Twenty years later, I installed one with him on his birthday and reminisced two decades of the sameness.

Oddly, I don’t hate them. There is a familiarity with them, like working with a grumpy old man. Sure, he is a pain on the ass, but it is kind of fun to hang out with him.

In the summer of 1973, a water heater changed the destiny of my life.

[Stay tuned for “The Water Heater that Changed my Life!”

[Same bat time, same bat channel!]

https://laughingatsid.wordpress.com/2024/01/12/the-water-heater-that-changed-my-life/

On Wisdom

I settled the issue several years ago that my career path would be vocational. This was no profound “Damascus Road” revelation. It was a little more like I looked back on forty years of work history and said, “Sid, you sure have fixed a lot of broken stuff over the years.”

The old adage is “Jack of All Trades, Master of None.” I kind of always hated that expression because I thoroughly believe one can master many trades. I get the concept that limiting one’s scope to one specialty is a great business and personal decision. But then again, where would life be if you don’t constantly push your boundaries and try new things.

I spent most of my life following yhe wise philosopher, Tigger, once said, “That is what Tiggers do best.” Sometimes my career decisions were as intentional as; I needed work, I bid on a job, I figured out how to do it by mimicking the work of others, and I stuck with it because I didn’t get paid unless I finished it and my customer was happy.

I wish I had taken the luxury of always only doing my dream job. Often, I don’t regret having to push my comfort zone because I believe that my offspring share a unique blend of creativity and work ethic that will carry through generations.

I used to dive a submerged graveyard in Lake Jocassee.  It’s a 140-feet down and 50-degree year round. The residents were reinterred fifty years ago or left in a silent, watery grave. I am struck with the thought that no one living knows them anymore.

In contrast, I believe that a skill set, a path of ethical behavior, a kind word, and even a glass of water can impact generations. On the converse, an evil path may go down a few generations. Busting a knuckle on a frozen bolt is significant eternal work.

The lessons of turning a bolt a quarter of a turn too far, misreading a schematic, or backing over a flower bed are often painful and yet the path toward wisdom. Often, teaching is letting someone make a mistake that hopefully becomes less than fatal often becomes great teaching.

So what would you like to know? Rocker arms have a particular order on a 68′ 318 Dodge. Bobcats have a tipping point. HI-VOC paint requires a respirator, and when you are painting high as a kite, you are making a terrible mess that you are going to hate in the daylight. You shouldn’t lose your temper with a boss over insignificant things. Go home, and the answer may come when you are rested. It is easy to mistake rebellion for childish immaturity. Don’t argue with dementia.

Sometimes, you become old and wise. Most of the time, you just get old.

A few years ago, I stumbled across a short story, “Alberic the Wise,” by Norton Juster. His story was so poignant that I ended up just sobbing at the end of it. Alberic, a simpleton, was inspired by stories of a wandering traveler to leave his life and learn a vocation in which he could establish his identity. He tried vocation after vocation, all with utter failure at try. As an old man, he unpacked his stories, and people flocked to hear him. He became disillusioned because he felt like a fraud. His conclusion was that he was the only one capable of judging him was himself. As a creature of Faith, I believe that God is the only true judge. I get the sentiment that the court of other’s opinion is not a place worthy to judge ones life. Alberic said, “It is much better to look for what I may never find than to find what I do not really want.” The “happy ever after” ending was, “Once again he felt the freedom and the joy of not knowing where each new step would take him, and as he walked along his stride was longer and stronger than was right somehow for a man his age.” (Juster)

“On wisdom, view it as a journey, with a destination you will never reach. Hopefully, you will get a little closer as you die trying. And that is all I know about that.” (Hagen)

Juster, Norton. Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys. Yearling, 9 Nov. 2010.

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Significant Influences: Ralph Lewis

Part of my goal in doing this blog is to point out people who have a significant investment in my life.  As a prelude to the Ten Commandments while God visits the iniquity of the Fathers to the Third and Fourth Generation he is actively “Showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  (Exodus 20:6)  People who have invested their love and their heart in my life, while they may be long gone from this life have extended a legacy to generations of my descendants.

I am a little reserved to list certain people with special mention, particularly in a small church like Lewiston.  Part of the significance of Ralph Lewis, or as we always called him Mr. Ralph is that he was my closest neighbor.  He owned the land on three of the five sides of the road junction that makes up the Lewiston Church yard.  If I don’t mention someone by name, it doesn’t mean they didn’t have a big impact on me.  It was more that he was someone I interacted with daily, and because of his heart toward us kids became a very influential friend in my life.

As part of my research for this post I got curious about how old Mr. Ralph was when we were neighbors in 1969-1973.  His tombstone lists his birth date as April 11, 1910.  He was twenty years older than my father, and about my age, fifty-nine, we first started at Lewiston.  Often you don’t think of a nine year old and a fifty-nine year old as friends.  The thing I have learned is that if you talk to children as adults, and treat them like their input on a conversation is valuable; a magical thing begins to happen.  The generation gap disappears!  Obviously there should be respect for an elder, but often we forget that there should be respect for a child as well.  I always referred to him as Mr. Ralph.  In Louisiana most of the older people in your life were referred to as Mr. (First Name).  All women were referred to by Miss (First Name).  If you had a special relationship with them like your Father’s best friend, or your favorite playmates father or they were considered an elder in the community, it was Uncle (First Name).

I teach Sunday school to a class of five to eight year old children.  Some of the highlights of my week are during the unstructured time in the class where we sit and talk with the kids.  There is specialness to that time where they become my friend.  The relationship carries on from that time.  Decades later the friendship stays.  I have a thirty-one-year-old friend TJ Francis who was the same age as his four-year-old daughter Rory, when TJ became my son’s friend and therefore my friend.  We need good friendships that span decades of time and decades of age.  The advice I give to people is to have a few good friends who are thirty years older than you, and then you and a few that are thirty years younger than you.

Mr. Ralph was a mentor, but he was also a good friend.  We didn’t have neighbor kids that we were that close to so often we would wander down the lane to his house and visit with Mr. Ralph and his wife Miss Louidell.

Ralph by trade was an old school house builder.  Most of the builders I know now are cell phone jockeys.  They coordinate materials and contractors, but rarely swing a hammer.  In Ralph’s day all decent houses were slab on grade, brick veneer on wooden framing.  Every nail was hand driven.  Most of the trim work and much of the framing was done with hand saws.  A builder often hand dug foundations, poured slabs.  The plumbing was galvanized iron over cast iron sewers.  Sewer joints were set in lead.  The same builder that set the foundation framed the structure.  Roofs were set with diagonal slats.  The builder set the brick.  He nailed the shingles.  He wired the electricity.  We were in Lewiston in the late sixties.  Electricity had barely inched its way up the country road around ten years before.  If you built houses you did everything.  I have watched Mr. Ralph pick up shingles by the bundle and throw them on the roof from the ground.  He had an absolute crushing handshake that felt like you grabbed a tree trunk.  That was the trophy of lifetime of hard work.

In addition to his trade as a builder, Mr. Ralph was a hobby and subsistence farmer.  He had several pasture around his place that surrounded the church on three sides.  Mom and Dad’s grave is right next to the border of the fence bordering his pasture to the south of the church.  They actually lie in what used to be his pasture, which was given to expand the cemetery.  I had a treehouse and my first motorcycle wreck in that pasture.  His property had a parlor style milking barn which was not really used for a dairy operation.  At the time we were there he had a few heifers in lactation for fresh milk, but it was predominately a beef herd of mostly Angus and Charolaise. 

He would work his fields in an early 1950’s tricycle steering John Deere 70.  The engine had a two cylinder horizontally opposed diesel engine with a long stroke.  When the engine would load up it would almost stall and get down to such a low RPM you could count the cylinder strokes.  The noise was as beautiful as a Beethoven Symphony.  The sound was a deep Poppappppa, POP Pop pop POP! Poppapoppa Pop POP!  The old timers referred to it as a Popping Johnny or a Johnny Popper.  I could tell by the sound when he had turned a corner in the field and he was loading up the engine.  He had a tall barn with a nice loft, and a stocked pond on the property behind it.  He never seemed to mind us playing on his land, or visiting in his house. 

Mr. Ralph grew a fabulous garden every year.  He kept everything heavily mulched with pine straw.  Their vegetables always had very distinct taste that was similar to pine sap.  I have a great story about Mr. Ralph and his armadillos, but at some point in the future I am going to give it its own blog page.

Mr. Ralph had really scary hands.  He cut off three of his fingers in a table saw accident when he was a young man.  It always used to amaze me that he was quite ambulatory with the remaining stubs on his fingers.  He used to laugh and say, “A bear came out of the woods and bit my fingers off.  Then he licked all the hair off my head.”  Mr. Ralph had a big bald spot on his head, which made the joke extra funny.

We moved away from the area, and then our friends from Kentwood Louisiana came up to visit us in Tennessee.  I went back with them and spent a couple of weeks with them.  It was one of the best times of my life.  Then we moved back there.  This is another story and not a great one, but again this is the subject of a future blog.

I remember Mr. Ralph commenting in his old age that he used to love to see us little boys coming over the hill to visit him.  He was a really good friend who respected us as kids and became a friend to us when we were teenagers.  The truth is that we loved to go over the hill to see our good friend.  I miss you Mr. Ralph.

The Best Halloween Ever!

So today is Halloween.  This is the kind of the vaguest of all holidays for Christians.  For most of the world it is this fun holiday full of diabetes in a sack.  We celebrate all things fun and creepy.  As I grew older this holiday gave me great angst.  My dad was always the ultimate killjoy.  Sometimes I think he converted to Christianity to have a reason to make everyone else miserable.  He converted from a guy who allowed us to enjoy the Disney movie at the theater to a guy who was in principle against everything fun.  I couldn’t pop off four dozen bottle rockets at once without getting a lecture that the fireworks where made in the same town in China where the Baptist missionary Bill Wallace was martyred.  I needed to read his biography so I couldn’t enjoy being a redneck kid playing with fire.

What is funny is that as I grew older I had a strange fetish for all things forbidden.  As dad grew older his malice toward Halloween grew deeper.  I am surprised that I am not the family with 20 Grand in blow up ghosts and goblins in the yard.  The truth is I am way too lazy for the effort it would take to be a fan of Halloween.

This brings me to a point.  If you would like your children to follow in your Faith, don’t ever make them feel like the greatest drag on earth is being born in a Christian home.  You can of sincere conviction to abstain from all things Halloween, but let them know it delights your heart when they have fun and smile.

This kind of leads me to a soapbox topic.  If you are doing Christian Halloween call it Christian Halloween.  You don’t really change it by calling it Fall Festival or Trunk or Treat.  The worst case is having a spook house and calling it Hell Night.  You aren’t making it better by saying, “We want you to get to go to Heaven, so we will scare the Hell out of you.”

So a close third to the best Halloween was “Operation Nightmare” put on by West Park Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.  They filed us by a casket brought in the church gym by some local funeral home with some anonymous dead guy.  Some pastor started describing bodies in a morgue. While he was speaking the stiff got up and got out of the casket and walked around.  I was younger and didn’t have incontinence problems then, so it didn’t make the mess it would have today.

The close runner up was “Scream in the Dark” put on in the grounds of a dilapidated mental hospital in Jackson Mississippi in 1975.  The level of cool was that the place was so creepy that you wouldn’t want to walk through the grounds during the day.  It was full of rubber masks, fake chain saws and strobe lights, but the reality is if you had to walk the trail without all the theatrics, it was terrifying.  Given the ghosts of people who suffered there under pre 1960’s psychiatry it was truly an awful place.

Somewhere in the mix is our own local to Community Bible Church in Easley, SC is  “The Abyss.”  We would string together miles of 10 foot black plastic into tubes filled by blower fans.  The trails would open into rooms inhabited by creeps.  Dianne and I used to love to occupy a room.  This allowed me in my fifties to act like I was in my twenties.  Ponce de Leon could have never found a better fountain of youth.

Another honorable mention is falling off a hayride at Ruth School in Summit, Mississippi.  At the scary moment “Ghosts” would come out and shoot fireworks at us.  I reached out to snatch the sheet off of a ghost I recognized, while Robbie Stinson, a ninth grader a bit too occupied with two girls in the cab of the tractor with him gunned the tractor and left me running behind the wagon.  I ended riding back to the school with the ghosts.

And then I will try to describe the “The Best Halloween Ever!”  My dad would have just died if he knew what was going to happen.  Before I get into the details, I need to tell you about my good friend, Martha Lewis.  The year was 1972.  I would have just turned eleven.  This leads to something I am so passionate about.  You can never underestimate the value of someone in their twenties, who stays in the church and tries to be a mentor to the youth under them.  The reality is that many children hit eighteen, and never darken the door of the church again.  It is really a time when it shows if all the sermons they endured at gunpoint really stick.  So many kids start thinking that this Christianity thing is really not for me, and the last day I am obligated to stay will be the last time I will be there. 

The impact of someone in their twenties, staying in the church and mentoring other kids is just beyond huge.  I used to drive a van when I was in college and pick up little mill kids in a country town.  We reconnected years later and I can see that it had that kind of level of impact on their lives.  In short it helped.  My mom used to mildly complain that her dates with my dad were in a car full of slum kids in Nashville he was taking to church.  It became the basis of their ministry together for decades later.  My son’s mentor the youth group kids to this day.

Martha Lewis, Miss Martha was just that level of cool.  We had about ten Junior, Junior High, and High School kids in that little church.  Miss Martha taught Sunday school.  I still remember with fondness a Red Revised Standard Bible with my name in gold letters on it I received from her for memorizing the books of the Bible.  She cared enough to invest her time in us.  Most importantly she was fun.  The rewards of writing your memoirs when you are alive are that you get a chance to say thank you for people who made you the person you are.

The stage is set for “The Best Halloween Ever!”  I made my own costume that year.  This is so out of character, but I went as a clown.  I was a fun clown.  I sewed a stocking together with a tuft of red yarn in it to make a wig.  I duded up my face with cold cream and made a big greasy smile with mom’s lipstick.  For the baggy pants I stole a baby blue pair of Dad’s Pajama bottoms, and some worn out Sunday shoes.  Then there came this problem caused by the discrepancy between the diameter of my eleven year old waist fitting in Dad’s massive PJ’s  No problem, I grabbed the red yarn and fashioned a belt which worked almost as well as fifteen Washington DC bureaucrats.  So all night it was walking three steps, and picking up the pajamas hanging on my ankles.

The party was set at an abandoned house in the country occupied by the long deceased Rosa May Varnado.  It was built around the turn of the century and had all the peculiarities of a house with additions to accommodate new innovations like running water, a kitchen, and yes even indoor plumbing.  The house was vacant but barely habitable.  The yard had overhanging live oak trees with Spanish moss.  We had a bonfire, candy apples, roasted marshmallows, and everything was right in the world.  Of course my pants fell to my ankles with a frequency you could set a clock too.  It was good training for the years I spent doing plumbing.

Miss Martha had a partner in crime, Miss Kathy Dale Forrest.  Miss Kathy went on to become an icon in her community.  I saw her about a year before she died a couple of years back.  She taught school for decades, and mentored a lot of us.  The last time I saw her she was laughing having spent the morning wrestling calves.  We kind of knew that we knew each other.

So at the apex of the evening we were summoned to the house for a Séance. I think as a warmup Miss Martha did “The Telltale Heart.” While we were still stinging from the beating of the heart she cascaded to the climax of the evening.

This probably wasn’t the best thing for a Baptist church to do.  Like I say dad would have died.  Then again we all knew this was staged, if not entertaining.  Miss Martha led the Séance; I sat to her right side.  To set the stage for this you would have to understand the Rosie Varnado house.  We were in a room that was an addition.  There was an interior hallway that passed by a formerly outside window that was between our room and the interior hallway.

Miss Martha, had us cross our hands and legs and sit with all our crossed hands touching each other as well as the flat of our feet touching each other.  It makes more sense if you think about it.  In the center was a slender white candle.  Then we heard the story.  It was about the late Marylyn Monroe.  “I would have liked to love her, but I was just a kid.”  Actually I didn’t remember her at all.  Then we heard about her troubled life, and in the depths of her desperation she decided to end it all.  She took an overdose of sleeping pills, and then realized that she still wanted to live.  But it was too late to call out for a rescue!

“Marylyn, YOUR SPIRIT IS TROUBLED!  REACH OUT TO US!!”  and then Miss Kathy walks by the window outside our room and inside the house, in a blond wig and a white dress holding a slender candle.  She stood in the window, paused for a minute and walked by.  The room was full of whispers of “Who is that?”  We knew it wasn’t a ghost, but we wondered who on this side it was.  My friend Norman Wayne Travis had his back to the window and never saw the apparition.  And then Martha screamed.  I have never a scream like that.

Then I jumped, and my pants stayed there.

It just doesn’t get better than that!

Happy Halloween Miss Martha, and Miss Kathy Dale