Process

One of the buzzwords today is process.  Sometimes I wonder what all the hullabaloo is about process.  Everyday life is a process of understanding, developing, and growing.  Babies process from newborns not knowing how to do anything to in just a few months can walk, talk, and balk.

Those of us that have worked in plants know that the manufacturing of products is a process.  It is a long process to go from a log to a roll of bath tissue, paper towels, or paper.   It is the same with cement.  It is a long process to transform limestone, sand, iron ore, and aluminum into cement.  The list is of industries that process products are endless.  There are garment plants, welding and machine shops, electrical shops, etc.

At a very young age, I decided I wanted to be a mechanic.  Since we monetarily handicapped, a fancy way to say poor, we never owned many new things.  I remember helping daddy repair an engine, Danny Baker of Linden Baptist, tells me motor means an electric motor and I say an engine is what pulls a train.  Any who, daddy taught me how disassemble generators, starters, transmissions, and engines.  Sometimes I would tear a starter or generator apart and have daddy show me how to put it back together.  I cannot write in my articles what he said but the jest of it was; how in the world did you tear this apart?

As a preteen, I was repairing just about everything we owned.  I would study the parts as I removed them, hoping I would remember how to put them back together.  If only I had an iPhone back then.  It always amazed me that I could get the part back to working with fewer parts.  It seems that I always had leftover parts.

I remember that there were a few things that flew into what seemed a jillion pieces when tearing them apart.  It kinda complicates things when you do not know what went flying or you cannot find it.  Then, I had to use a similar part from another part.

I remember when I began working at the cement plant.  I knew nothing about cement although I had helped pour and finish concrete.  Concrete and cement are two different products.  Concrete is a mixture of cement, sand, and stone.  I wanted a job there because it paid big money.  I left a machine shop hoping to be a machinist at the cement plant.  I can assure you that if I were there today, I would not be a machinist.

At the plant, I was placed on an oiler’s job on the cement kiln.  Kiln operators made the most money of all hourly employees.  I love the cable show “How it’s Made.” I love to see how things are made.  I did with the process of the cement kilns.  The operator was glad to teach me.  He provided me with an understanding of the “cooking of cement.”  He told the production manager, his good friend, about me wanting to “burn” the kilns.  The production manager, who had been an oiler at one time, told me to grasp a good understanding of burning the kilns and gave me a book, The Art of Kiln Burning.

I told the production manager that I did not know if I have enough time to learn the operation of the kilns.  He said that he knew how much work I had and that I understood what was necessary and was not and to spend a couple of hours a day training.  I told him that I did not want to leave undone work for the next shift.  He said, “Let me worry about that.”

I knew that everyone in the plant feared the production manager.  His nickname was “Killer.”  Knowing that, I realized if he wanted me to understand the operation of the kilns, it would be best for me.  I understood the consequences of being on his list.  My burner loved it because he could take breaks.  I was mortified burning two 400 feet pipe bombs.  While breaking, my burner would cut off a piece of equipment to see if I understood the total operating procedure.  If I did not understand the gravity of the situation, he would explain how vital it was and the quicker I recognized the problem, the better it would be.  My burner became a supervisor and I eventually became a kiln burner, operating them for several years. 

When I bided into maintenance, I had to train my replacement on the kilns.  I made sure that those that had not been oilers had more training, understanding the dangers and consequences of burning the kilns.

When I was a young man, Roy Moxley, a machinist and my father-in-law, told me that a person could do anything once they understand it.  I have experienced that.  Now having been in ministry for thirty-eight years, I have a better understanding on life.  Sometimes that is.  Evil is fast taking over our lives and it is important and imperative that we understand the dangers and consequences of evil and reverence for the Lord.

I like Job’s rebuttal to his so-called friends in response since Job has fallen on hard times.

 

And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding (Job 28:28).

 

The truth today is; there is a limit to power and skill.  We can learn many things and can harness the basic energy of the universe, but we cannot find wisdom in science.

You Live Too Much In The Past

Someone informed me that I lived too much in the past.  After talking to them, I looked at my fitbit to check the time and how many miles I walked.  I checked my iphone to check for missed called, voice mail, text messages, and email.  I checked my weather app on my iphone to see how warm the day would get. The fitbit and iphone are new millennial, current.

The stories I write do deal with things of the past, but when I write them, they become current.  I reminded my accusers of my antiquity, that I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History.  I am a student of the past.  Those who do not study the past are doomed and destined to repeat the same mistakes and atrocities.  A study of the history of Rome, Sodom, and Gomorrah will reveal how our nation is following in their footprints.

If I write about an event yet to happen, it becomes a work of fiction.  It will be a product of my imagination and creativity.

The late Dr. Calvin Miller encouraged me to write.  I responded to his challenge by asking the question, “About what?”  Dr. Miller said one of the most effective ways to share the Gospel with the new millennials was by story telling.  A close examination of the Bible and the teaching of Jesus disclose the use of story telling.  The Bible is an Oriental book, filled with short, bright stories.  These stories, or tales, are like people, good or evil. “A tale” is the view of brevity, a trifling character, and a speedy forgetfulness into which they fell.  Tales have these essential elements: energy and activity, thoughtfulness, characters revealed, a generous and high aim, and it must end well.

I remember studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales translated by Edward Hopper.  It intrigued me that I might have a relative that was a writer long before I even thought about being a writer. 

Hopper translated Chaucer’s tales from Middle English to Modern English.  Canterbury Tales is a critique of the society in Chaucer’s lifetime and reflects diverse views of the Church in Chaucer’s England. 

Chaucer created satirical tales prompted by the Church, political figures, and stories told by Christians making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land during what was called Verde or the greening associated with Spring.

Verde is a word I learned while taking Dr. McMillan’s English class at the University of Montevallo.  Verde is Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian for green.  Green reminds of renewing and new life.  Incidentally, I made the highest grade on one of the tests about the Verde.  It helped that I was taking Spanish also.  Oops, I am talking about the past again.

A tale or story roots in the past.  Fond memories of daddy are those nights we would lay outside on an old quit or blanket on the grass and he would tell interesting things about his childhood and people associated with it.  I could never get him to talk about WWII other than a few funny things he did while serving.  Little did I know that his generation was passing and mine was rising.  That is true as I write.  My generation is fleeting and another is rising.  I challenge you to pay attention to the target audience of commercials.  The ones for my generation are for medicine, medical supplies, life insurance, lawsuits, and ensure. 

My life, your life, is as a tale told.  “Our lives are illustrations of heavenly goodness, parables of divine wisdom, poems of sacred thought, and records of infinite love; happy are we whose lives are such tales.  When it is said and done, our time on earth is as a sailing ship, which leaves no impression or track behind, a dust, a vapor, a morning dew, a flower flourishing one day, fading the next.”  The rapid consummation of our years is speedy and inevitable.

Some years of our lives are as a pleasant story, sometimes a tragic tale, mixed, but all short and transitory; which may have been long in doing, but may be told in a short time in a book, newspaper, magazine, or even an article on the back of The Alabama Baptist, which I wrote for several years. 

It is said, “Life is real, life is earnest, – the simile only holds good if we consider that a holy life is rich in interest, full of wonders, chequered with many changes, yet arranged as a story.”

As Moses writes Psalm 90 he tells about the brevity of life as the years in the wilderness rapidly roll down life’s highway.  While the Hebrews were consuming in the wilderness, another generation was rising.  Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel.  Each stop they made was marked by a graveyard marking their trails with burial places left behind.  Sin cast a shadow over all things, and made the lives of the dying wanderers both vain and brief.

Moses’ view is very sad.  All he heard was about the tales of how good Egypt was.  What lay ahead were tales that would give hope to the nation of Israel as they remembered the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea.

 

We spend our years as a tale that is told (Psalm 90:9b KJV).

 

 

"Laughter Is Hope’s Last Weapon"

Author and preacher Chuck Swindoll in his book Laugh Again opens with this line.

“I know of no greater need today than the need for joy.  Unexplainable, contagious joy. Outrageous joy.”  He quotes Flannery O’Connor who writes, “Where there is belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not.  And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy.  Only if we are secure in our belief can we see the comical side of the universe.”

Do you laugh at yourself?  I do, especially when I catch myself in a funny moment.

Several years ago before moving back to our farm, I was spending some time the farm we call Sugar Ridge.  After a good night’s rest, I was suddenly interrupted from my sleep.  I rolled over and BOOM!  I fell out of bed.  Now I haven’t done that in years, since I was a kid or there may be a time or two.

What made this so bad was that as I fell from the bed, I twisted the sheet around in a mummy like fashion and I could not move.  I lay confined as Egyptian mummy there a moment, not being able to move and all alone.  With my back against the bed, I giggled at my dilemma and then yelled, “Help I’ve fallen and can’t get up.”  Someone asked, “How did you fall out of king-sized bed?  Simple, I slept too close to the edge.  After valiant effort of reverse twisting, I unrolled myself.  I laughed and laughed at myself.

I have found that the older I get, the more I find myself laughing at me.  Somewhere in my studies, I recall that laugher releases the endorphins that kill pain.  People ask me why I laugh a lot and always have a smile.  I hurt a lot!

Before retiring from Bethel Baptist Association, I started home for dinner and I decided to exit at the side door instead of the front.  Pam, the Associational secretary, and I must use a key to lock the front door and I did not know the location of my key.  The first step going down, or the last step going up, is a lulu.  It is inconsistent with the others.  Knowing that, I made sure to take one giant step then two small steps down, but I made one giant leap for dinner and the good for all mankind, especially for Bethel Baptist Association.

As I slowly pulled the door closed, I felt my double-jointed ankle roll over on the small step down.  I held tight to that tiny, shiny doorknob to regain my balance, but perpetual motion of a large body continued in an awkward and fast spiral descent toward the green grass that lay beneath.

Having a bag full of blueberries gracious donated to the good health of the director of missions by Tom Sessions, deacon from the Hope Baptist Church, I did not want them scattered everywhere.  I held them high as the green grass came quickly toward me.  Believing the arthritis commercial and knowing high school physics, I knew that a body in motion tends to stay in motion, especially when is a big body like me.  Experienced in falling, I knew to hit and roll.  As I started to roll, I realized that Pam had the bushes around the building pruned when large stubs from a bush/small tree tried to sever my spine.

As my back arched over one stub and two other stubs tried to puncher my kidneys, I continued my roll.  I lay on the grass for a few moments hurting and thinking, “I broke my back.”  I had no air, having knocked the wind out of me, and momentarily could not move.

I looked around to see if anyone was at the fire department next door, no one.  I looked to see if the neighbors were watching, not a soul.  I looked to the Linden and Robertson banks, the school, not a single person.  Where are folks when you need them to laugh at you?

Surprisingly, the blueberries remained intact and after a few moments, I collected my thoughts.  I had trouble breathing and figured along with breaking my back; I bruised my kidneys, and punctured my lungs.  In my trauma, I laughed thinking, “You clumsy ox, you broke your back falling in a bush. How are you going to explain that?”

I went home, looked in the mirror to survey the damage, which was a bunch of cuts and scrapes, changed my clothes which were permanently stained, and got some medical supplies to treat my wounds.

After Pam treated my wounds, the doctor examined my back and gave me the once over.  The doctor could not believe it was not broken.  In fact, it never bruised; I only had difficulty breathing the day of the fall.  Everyone said God was watching.  I said that I injured another guarding Angel.  I wander how many were under me were punctured with the stubs.

 

James 1:2 says, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.”

 

Falling is not a laughing matter for the one falling.  I lost a former church member and friend to a fall a few weeks before my fall.  Some will say that life is serious and is no laughing matter.

Swindoll says, “Trust me, when you laugh in the mist of this cesspool environment, people want to know why. Laughter is hope’s last weapon.”

Laughter makes one look and feel better and is highly contagious.  In fact, I bet you laughed about me falling out of bed.  I just had a thought.  I wonder if it was an Angel that wrapped me as I fell out of bed.

 

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine (Proverbs 17:22a KJV).

 

Like a Pin Hole in a Cardboard Box

One of the oldest chemicals known to man is soda ash; Salt and lime are the oldest chemicals.  It dates back 3,500 years to the Egyptians who extracted it from wood ash.  According to an article posted by International Mining: “New technology mines one of the world’s oldest chemicals” July 15, 2009, Soda ash from trona is involved in virtually every aspect of life, through the manufacturing of glass, in chemical manufacturing, fertilizers, soaps and detergents, pulp and paper, flue gas desulphurization, and water treatment.  In the 1938, the presence of trona was found in a core sample while drilling for oil at the John Hay No. 1 Well south of Westvaco, Wyoming. Trona was first deep-mined in 1947 by Westvaco Chlorine. Shortly after that, FMC Corp acquired Westvaco’s chemical business, including the mine, and then added the Granger mines.

The beds in which they all operate began forming 50 million years ago when Lake Gosiute covered deposited volcanic ash later.  The deposits formed in more than 42 beds of trona in the Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming, stretching from the Uintah Mountains of Utah in the south, along the Wyoming Range to the west, the Rock Springs uplift to the east to the Wind River and Gros Ventre Mountains in the north.

Today, more than 90 percent of the soda ash used in America comes from Wyoming trona mines.  Wyoming trona mines employ more than 2,225 people.  About 44 percent of the trona in Wyoming is produced from Federal government lands and some 56 percent from State government and private lands, all of it deep-mined using boring machines with continuous haulage, continuous miners with continuous haulage and shuttle cars, and, at the Solvay and FMC mines, long walls.

Well, that is enough of the boring information on trona.  I had the privilege of seeing this type of mining while on a mission trip to Granger.  It all started when a friend from Kemmerer, Wyoming, from an earlier mission trip, invited the Chilton Baptist Builders to a tour of the trona mines.  Four of us said we would go.  Arriving at the mine site, we saw a large building that housed a conveyer belt and railroad cars.  From the highway, it did not appear to be much of an operation.  We were in for a shock.

The first item of business for the tour was a short course on survival in case of a cave-in.  We were instructed how to operate life support systems until we could locate an air shaft leading to the surface.  At the conclusion of the safety survival course, we had to sign a release form.  I was starting to worry a tad at that point.

In the large building was an open cage enclosed elevator.  This elevator was large enough for two pickups to park side-by-side.  The elevator descended 1300 feet, that’s right 1300 feet, into the Wyoming ground.  That large elevator opening looked like a pinhole in a cardboard box as we reached the bottom.  We them loaded onto a mine car not too much different from the originally runaway mine cars at Six Flags Over Georgia.  We went two miles, that right, two miles in the mineshafts.

It was amazing how the equipment worked.  One neat thing was how they reinforced the mineshafts.  They would drill holes in the trona, place epoxy tubes in the holes, and the screw threaded rods in the epoxy.

Underground were these large pieces equipment.  Someone asked how they got the equipment in the mine.  We were told that it came in pieces assembled in the mobile shop at the bottom of the mines.  There canteens, coke and candy vending machines, offices, and everything underground.  The reason was that the Wyoming winters were so harsh that two weeks a year most people were homebound.  In the mines, the temperature varied very little, around 68 degrees.

I noticed that there was no ground water so I asked where it was.  Our mines at the cement plant in Calera, Alabama pumped millions of gallons of water from the limestone.  Our guide said that there was no ground water in that part of Wyoming.  Being that the Granger Baptist Church was beside a river, which looked like a creek to me, I asked, “What about the lakes and rivers?”  Our guide said that that was melting snow.  Lakes were constructed as reservoirs catching the snow runoff.  Well, that explained why that river was a crystal-clear 48-50 degrees in July.  One of the heating and air-conditioner guys had measured it with a thermometer.  That also explained why a river in the Uintah Mountains would not pass for a creek or branch in Chilton County Alabama.  For some odd reason the earth sure did look beautiful when we got back to the top and took a trip to the Uintah Mountains. Those trout were beautiful in that melted snow, the vegetation was lush green and the mountains were white capped.  The world does look better on top.

Man puts an end to the darkness; he searches the farthest recesses for ore in the blackest darkness.  Far from where people dwell he cuts a shaft, in places forgotten by the foot of man; far from men he dangles and sways (Job 28:3-4 NIV).

From Jezebel to Phoenix

I cannot remember when I first fell in love with driving.  It was not love at first drive.  Momma taught me to drive in a 1950 Plymouth Deluxe.  It was a flathead six cylinder with three-speed on the column manual transmission.  I can still remember hopping out of the drive on to the highway.  I had had practice driving our Farmall Cub in the field and it was much easier than the Plymouth.  For instance, when changing gears on the tractor it stopped and the cutch was different, as was the shift.  The Plymouth was still moving and going from first to second on the column, known as “three on a tree,” took more coordination than the tractor.  Pushing the clutch, shifting up, and releasing were complicated for a twelve-year-old.  Yes, I was twelve and momma was hollering because I was trying to go into reverse rather than in second.  I was puzzled how reverse and second were in the same place.  There were not on the tractor.

Dad gave me the old Plymouth when I was fourteen.  He had junked it as his work car.  He said that if I wanted a car, I could fix up the Plymouth.  I did.  I bought several old junk Plymouths, back when for five to ten dollars, for spare parts including engines, transmissions, mirrors, door handles, rims, and tires.  Most of the time people gave away the cars to get them out of their yards.  I remember visiting trash piles in hope of recovering a good used fifteen-inch tire.  Way things are inflating, no pun intended, I may have return to the garbage dumps to find tires.

I spent the whole summer working to earn money to get a new paint job on the Plymouth.  By this time, I had named her Jezebel, because she was so unfaithful and ornery.  I went to the parts store, that’s what we call ‘em up home, and bought the paint and a neighbor, who was learning to paint cars, did the body and fender repair and painted it crystal blue in honor of Tommy James and the Shondells’ hit song Crystal Blue Persuasion.

The next summer I spent my earnings from picking and loading watermelons, cantaloupes, and hauling and throwing hay for blue rolled and pleated interior and carpet.  I had me a hot rod.  It would run eighty miles an hour downhill.  You can only imagine how rough and safe a ride I had with tires from junkers that were not balanced.  I know that the tubes had multiple patches, which threw the tires more out of balance.

I started driving the Plymouth to football practice before I had a driver’s license.  It was a step better than all the walking, which I had done from the seventh grade until I started driving.  The sheriff told daddy that it was okay, but be very careful.  After I got my license, I drove carelessly.  To this day, my brother-in-law tells folks that God must have had a plan for me later in life because there is no way that I should have lived with all the reckless driving I did.

I guess that is why I am writing this article.  I did a lot of reckless driving and lived to tell it.  I was returning to Linden from Demopolis on US Highway 43.  I was running the speed limit with the cruise control, which undoubtedly was too slow for folks headed south.  Two cars behind me this lady thinks she is at Talladega Raceway because she is drafting the car behind me and makes her move to pass.  I never saw the checkered flag.  I did see the yellow line, which means no passing, it quickly becomes two yellow lines as she gets beside me, and there is a car headed north and directly toward her.  I have to slow for her to return to the proper lane.

The car behind me says if she can, I can.  He starts around me on a hill, two yellow lines, and a truck flying to Demopolis directly in his path.  Once again, I slow to prevent a wreck.  They had better be glad I was not in my hot rod Plymouth.  I would have been very slow for them.

I do not think people realize the risk they are taking behind the wheel.  I have been hit by a teenage boy in flying Trans Am, passing three cars, with two yellow lines on the road, and on a hill.  I am glad my brother-in-law was a prophet.  Had God been through with me I would have been killed.  I have some ailments today because of that wreck thirty-two years ago.  It is unsettling when people pass when there is no room for passing.  Many lives have been altered and many killed by idiotic drivers who drive recklessly.  All of us need to slow down, drive safely, and be considerate.

When I was hot rodding, folks would quote the Bible and call me Jehu.  I know some that called me a Yahoo.  Both would be true.  I saw two Yahoos on Hwy 43.

. . . And the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously (II Kings 9:20b KJV).

Tongue and cheek humor: I always felt that I was doing good owning Hondas, the choice of Jesus and the early disciples and that God drove a Plymouth Fury and owned a Pontiac Tempest and Geo Storm.  See what you think.  Check out John 12:49, Acts 2:1, Jeremiah 32:37, Ezekiel 13:13, and Psalm 83:15 in the King James Version.

 

In 2012, I started rebuilding the 1950 Plymouth.  My daughter had the volunteer fire department pull the Plymouth from the basement of our burning home before the remains of the house fell on it.

The old Plymouth now has a dependable 5.7 Hemi, a Mustang rear end, automatic transmission, four-wheel disc brakes, power windows, air-condition, synthetic leather bucket seats, Porsche Meteor Grey paint, modern stereo system, and chrome rims with store bought tires.  Since her transformation from the fire Jezebel is now named Phoenix.