Two Swing Front Porch

There is a spot on Sugar Ridge, the place where I grew up and live now, that once was a place of comfort, laughter, music, philosophy, physics, Bible study, mechanics, hotrods, and life in general.  All that remains of this place of profound debate and hospitality is a concrete slab with part of the brick walls that enclosed it.

For year it was a dirt floor with two boards that held the roof of what would become our front porch.  We lived a shack that most folks would have not used for a barn.  Built the old timey way, the shack stood atop some big rocks used to hold the floor off the ground.  Dad started building it around 1956. 

We moved to Illinois from Alabama in 1957 for dad to find work.  He worked for Beloit Iron Works and we, mom, dad, my sister, and I, had a prosperous and productive life until mama tired of ways of Yankee land and we, now with a newborn, returned to the poverty of the south.  We moved back into the unfinished house with primitive and limited things to live in the spring of 1960.  That fall the last of the Hopper children arrived.

Ten years later we would install two more rooms and an indoor toilet and bathtub.  I helped dad set the commode and tub.  I had tried out for a football scholarship that morning.  My dad and two brothers poured the concrete for the porch slab.

It was the place where my dad, brothers, and I spent most of the time.  We thought we were somebody because we had two swings on the porch.  One swing faced the west, the other the east.  It was from the swings that we discussed life.  On the swing facing west, we hung two big springs from a truck’s hood giving the swing an energy of its own.  It was fun to watch our victims sit in the swing and get a quick lesson in physics.  A couple of laws were in play.  One was what goes down must come back up.  It was sorta fun to watch the theory of what goes up must come down, but when the victim went down, legs went up, eyes opened wide and squills got high.  When the swing bottomed it came up, legs went down, eyes shut tight, and the yell was loud.  What followed was a series of ups and downs and smiles on the hopper men folks.

The swings were not attached according to any safety regulations.  Dad placed two oak 4X4’s over the rafters and wired the swing chain around the 4X4’s.  Worked fine until one morning my middle brother and I had called a truce on our fighting and were sitting together looking at the newest of Hot Rod Magazine which came in the morning mail.  Mamm had threatened to kill us several times that morning for our fighting but most of the time they were idle threats.

Sudden in Biblical judgment speed, one of the oak 4X4’s fell from the heavens, naw the porch rafter, and hit me across my shoulder.  Taller than my little brother, the board hit me first and we were sitting on the floor.  My brother got the worse though.  Where the chain wrapped around the 4X4, hit him in the head and blood was flying everywhere.  He was crying as I dug us from the rubble.

With the swift judgement of the Arch Angel Michael, momma come flying out the front door with a rod of judgment and began to whup me screaming, “I told you to leave your brother alone.”  My brother crying, “Momma, Bobby didn’t do anything.”  Momma had blind justice and kept whuppin.’  I kept digging us out.

Many great and wonderful things happened on those swings. I’d love sit facing mom and dad and discuss life again.  Sunday afternoons the swigs and bannisters became a stage to sing.  It was the place to share heartaches, bad news, good news, to hug, to kiss, and reflect on life.

Dad had a brain tumor, and he would swing after having radiation treatments.  One day my daughter Angel had a marker and was sitting in the swing with dad playing tic-tac-do on his bad head.  The Chemo people had drawn a diagram for treatment and dad was allowing his only granddaughter to play.

Oh! The memories of a two-swing porch.

 

That Must Have Been 20 Years Ago

 

I looked up on the wall of the office one morning and made a startling discovery.  I have been in the ministry over thirty years.  The date on my Certificate of License is dated 27^th day of February 1983.

Moments earlier, I read an article in the Cooperative Farming News, From Pastor to Pasture: That Must have Been 20 years Ago!  Glenn Crumpler, author of the article said he heard a family member say of an event, “That must have been 20 years ago.”  He said that when as a kid he could not imagine how someone could remember something that happened twenty years earlier.  Ironically, he said that happened 45 years ago.  Life is short.

Thirty-one years ago, I would hear preachers say that they had been in the ministry 20, 25, 30, and 40 years.  I remember thinking that is a long time and that I wish I could be in ministry that long. Well, I is there!  That’s not correct subject-verb relationship, but it is true.  Time does fly.  Life is only a vapor!

Ministry has made significant changes in the last thirty years.  When I was pastor at Gallion, a person from the community came to church for the first time in twenty-five years.  After the morning service he told me that church had changed some much since his last visit.  He said he thought he had been to a nightclub instead of a church.  I looked puzzled at him.  He said that the music of the worship service and the humor in my sermon were like that of a comedy club.

I understand his rationale.  The last Christian youth concert I attended I commented that when I was a teenager momma did not allow us to attend rock and roll events at school and now we have them at churches.

Speaking of changes, one night at an Association event, someone asked if she might make a suggestion.  We are always open to suggestions because as Association Ministry Directors, Pam, and I would always evaluate our events.  This person suggested to us that we not  schedule association events that interfere with sporting events.  This question happens more often that you might think.  One time before, I was scolded by a member of one of our churches for having an event during Spring Break.  Bethel Baptist Association ministered in six different school districts, which at that time did not observe spring break at the same time.

Back to the sporting conflict or may I say spiritual conflict.  I learned in thirty plus years of ministry as a pastor, that any event the church schedules conflicts with some activity outside the church.  I assured the questioner that we do our best to dodge as many possible conflicts as we can.  We would never have any ministry events if we tried to dodge conflicts.

My concern here is when did a sporting exercise for a child take precedence over spiritual training?  A majority of student athletes will never use their sporting exercises in the professional arena, yet most parents spend more money and time at the ball field than in studies and time for God. 

When did our communities become consumed with sports and recreation?  I played football, baseball, basketball, and volleyball while growing up.  My dad loved sports and enjoying watching my brothers and me play ball.  Dad taught us that it was a game and that work and chores around home and school came before sports.  Sports were extracurricular events.

I have walked home, around seven miles, after practice to slop pigs and load firewood many times.  I have missed games because dad and mom were at work and I did not have a way to go.

Coaches, schools, and clubs would never allow practice or games to interfere with church events.  Coaches would always allow players to leave early if there was a revival or church event that an athlete needed to attend.  This is not the case today.

The issue at the association event was not with the interference with the athlete playing an event, but with priorities.  I am burdened that parents do not see spiritual development as more essential than worldly development.  I want to weep when I see dads taking their boys hunting or fishing instead of to worship on Sundays.  My dad was a lost man, but he prohibited us to go hunting or fishing on Sundays.  Dad taught priorities.

Before I became a pastor, I volunteered to attend an association brotherhood training event.  The event was on a holiday, but because I worked rotation at the cement plant, I was not off and was scheduled midnights.

My midnight shift allowed me to attend the workshop and not miss work.  Before leaving to attend the workshop, I received a call from the plant that the second shift man did not show and I needed to come in four hours early, six o’clock pm.  I told the second shift foreman that I could not come in early.  He wanted an excuse.  I said that I had committed to our church brotherhood director that I would attend the workshop and I was taught to keep my commitments.  He reminded me that that I was turning down double time and half pay because I was being called out on a holiday.  I reminded him that my commitment was greater than the pay.  I am not bragging, but speaking of commitment and priorities.

Association Ministry Directors, Pam, and I had a yearly planning day where we try to avoid conflict.  We publish this calendar as early as possible where Church Executive Lay Members can share them with their churches.  Conflict is inevitable, commitment is inconvenient, and choice is a matter of priorities.

Not long ago someone inquired of my commitment.  I quoted sports writer and poet, Grantland Rice’s poem “Alumnus Football”:

For when the one great Scorer comes

To mark against your name,

He writes -not that you won or lost-

But how you played the game.

For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day (II Timothy 1:12b KJV).

"Sin Too Great?"

J M’s eldest son asked, “Dad, why don’t you give your heart and life to Christ?”  J M answered, “Son you don’t know what all I have done.”

J M had an intriguing past.  As a five year-old he, along with eight siblings, felt the impact The Great Depression.   Six years later, he witnessed his dad’s suicide.   At eighteen, he left for WWII.

While serving in North Africa and Italy, he had a machine gun and a grenade wound.  He was left for dead in a foxhole, taken prisoner, eventually escaping, and missing in action for a short time.  J M’s mom received word that he had been killed in action.  She responded, “No, he is not because I am praying for him.”  Yes, J M had a praying mother.  Her last plea before her death was that all her children be saved.

Somewhere in J M’s past, he learned his sins were so bad that he could not be saved.  He attended church on Christmas, Easter, and funerals without any persuasion, but had to be begged on other occasions.  He wanted his children to be Christians, but he knew there was no hope for him.  J M always made sure that someone offered the blessing before a meal.  J M acknowledged that God was in control, but could not accept the fact that God could forgive him.

His eldest son could not bear the thought of eternal separation from his dad.  He would say, “Dad, if you ask God to forgive you, Psalm 103:12 says, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.’”

J M was confident that his sin was too great.  He understood Romans 3:23, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God, but did not understand Ephesians 3:20, now unto him (Jesus) that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.  The Holy Spirit was working in J M.

Finally, J M could not resist the prayers and pleas of those who loved him.  At fifty-eight, J M asked Jesus to forgive him.  Dying two years later, J M had lived an abundant life as promised in John 10:10b, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Sitting on the Front Porch

Philip Gulley’s, Front Porch Tales, is a delightful read and inspiration for many of the articles I write.  Gulley writes of family, faith, laughter, and love.  Paul Harvey, Jr. says, “The tales Philip Gulley unveils are tender and humorous . . . filled with sudden, unexpected, lump-in-the-throat poignancy.”  I envy Gulley’s talent.  Front porch tales, how wonderful is that.  It reminds me my home place and our front porch.

I visit dad and mom each time I go back to my home church.  A pink granite headstone marks their grave.  It is not hard to find.  It is the only pink headstone in the graveyard.  Momma got it when daddy died.  I stand there and whisper to them.  I usually smile remembering what momma said about her grave before she died. “I been so bad, the grass will probably not grow on my grave.”  She’s right, it doesn’t.  Her grave is where the rain runs down the hill and the centipede is patchy.  It has nothing to do with her being bad, just bad location.

I wish many times I could go back to those days on our front porch.  Around my high school graduation, we remodeled the front porch and daddy put momma oak swings on each end.  Springs from the hood of one of our old junk cars held one swing on the porch.  We would get momma in that swing and bounce her up and down.  There was a sensation springing up and down, swinging back and forth that no county fair ride could duplicate.  Momma would scream, holler, and we would bounce more.

From those swings, we would have talks.  I would sit in one swing and dad and mom would sit in the other. Back and forth, toward and away, and sometimes just sitting still we discussed important things of life.  We talked of getting married, leaving home, dying with cancer, having babies, whipping (disciplining for those who are politically correct) children, planting crops, attending funerals, heaven, hell, and the real issues of life.

Sitting on the swings, I can see momma smooching on daddy, my daughter Angel playing tic-tac-toe on the marks left from radiation treatments on daddy’s baldhead, and the look of horror of the unsuspecting visitor who sat in the “spring loaded swing”.  They thought it was falling only to realize the Hopper Law of Physics (reverse of Newton’s law of physics) was at work.  What goes down will go up.

Sitting on the swings, I learned how much daddy and momma loved God, loved family, and loved me.  Stories, laughter, tears, hope, and wisdom saturate the swings.  I stop there sometimes and draw from that magnificent saturation.  It is sweet and precious.  I wish everyone could have had a turn in the swings.  Life is short and good counsel is essential. 

Losing someone who counsels us leaves a great hollowness in our system of significance.  I am glad dad and mom chose to give me life.  Since Jesus gave me life, I am glad I have the Holy Spirit.  The Lord’s promise from Hebrews 13:5 reminds me, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  Dr. Calvin Miller in his book, Loving God Up Close, writes:

This is the most remarkable thing about the counsel of the Holy Spirit: those who seem to abound with the most obvious joy, do not have less frequent troubles.  In fact, just the opposite seems true.  Those with the most joyous lives have often wept their way to the inner Counselor.  Laughter among people of real faith does not indicate that they are strangers to affliction. The truly joyous often have lived on the edge of an abyss where they have had to face the glare of despair and learn the laughter of God.

Life is Short - Spend it Well

The early sixties were a great time to be a young person in rural Alabama. It was a time of innocence, romance, and wonder.  Before the decade would end, radical change would take place and the whole culture would change.  Dark times would come with political unrest, protest marches, a growing drug culture, and the hippie movement.  Part of the evil today has grown from these dark and ungodly seeds planted in the sixties.

I remember the start of the seventh grade in 1965.  School started with a musical bang, heavy metal rock and rock was not making a run yet.  A group called the “Vehicles” played rock and roll songs.  For a measly seventh grader the old men who graduated in the spring returned to help indoctrinate us into the world of permanent press clothing, lockers, and having a different teacher for each class.  These four instrumentalists were probably 19 years old.

In the seventh grade, boys shied away from the girls.  Our interest was motorcycles and hot rods.  Old jalopies intrigued me.  Chrome reverse rims were the newest fad for poor boys and Cragar mags for the boys from affluent homes.  A couple of rich kids drove a new car called the Mustang.  Most old jalopies were fifty and forty models, but a few were the early sixties Chevys with v-eight engines and four-in-the-floor speed transmissions.  The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and other sixties musical groups romanticized hotrods.  Every young man’s desire was to own one.  Young people today call it the “Dark Ages.”

Fast forward to the new millennium and today it seems to be the “Dark Ages.”  “Black Opps” have replaced the chrome reverses, big, blacked-out four-wheel drive pickups replaced the Mustang, and foreign sports cars replaced the hotrods.  I recently saw a pickup that the owner had painted his chrome wheels with black spray paint.  Back in my day, everyone hated black rims.  In fact, those of us who had hubcaps used them to hide black rims.

I remember painting the outside of the rim with chrome paint.  Running down the road these red-neck painted rims looked like Cragar Mags.  Some of my friends painted their rims chrome all over and they looked like the chrome reverses.  We wanted to shine!  To paint a real chrome wheel with black paint is just wrong!  Even today, an average old jalopy looks better with a set of shiny chrome wheels. 

Times change with each passing day.  Chrome wheels in the past, “black opps” today, and who knows about the future.  We used to make do with what we had, folks today see, want it, and buy by putting it on the card.  In the sixties, we refurbished an old car by working all summer just to have new interior or new raised white letter tires, today everyone wants new and they want it “NOW.”

Black Opps must be what is trending.  In our world of texting, Facebooking, and Tweeting, comes the term “Going Dark.”  This term did not originate at Kentucky Fried Chicken, white or dark meat.  It means to disappear: to become suddenly unavailable or digitally out of reach for an undefined period of time.  Young people have become so addicted to cell phones that they suffer withdrawal when they do not have one.

I been “Going Dark” for years but did not know I was “Going Dark.”  When folks quiz me about my not answering the phone, reading a text, or returning an e-mail, I would say that I did not want to be reached.  There was a reason I did not answer.

I remember when one of the churches I pastored wanted me to wear a “beeper.”  They were handy devices.  When people wanted to know what my beeper was, I would say that it was a device designed by deacons for tracking their pastor.

Everyday we read or hear of a skirmish captured on video and gone viral.  Can I remind you that film can distort the truth?  Sometimes I think the era of “Big Brother” watching has become a dark reality with iphones, security cameras, drones, and satellites. 

We have gone from hot rods to iphones, chrome to black outs, privacy to “smile you are on candid camera.” The desire to have the latest gadget is more prevalent than we ever imagined.

Our society is geared to make us want what do not have and offers many venues to purchase the desires of our heart.  Is it any wonder that the average credit card debt in Alabama is $30,000?  Just because it is the newest gadget or on sale, doesn’t mean you have to buy it. 

I know people that struggle financially.  They cannot understand that you cannot spend more than you make.  We go into debt where we spend most of our time making money to buy things that promise us to save time.  I texted my oldest son. “Life is short, spend it well. Have a good day. Love dad.”  I sent it because I do not know many people that say, “I wished I spent more time with my job.”

If we are not careful, we will spend our lives wanting what we do not have.  We act like cows grazing in the pasture.  The grass is always greener across the fence.  I repeat, society is geared to make us want what we do not have.  That kind of darkness is not good.

Don’t love the world’s ways.  Don’t love the world’s goods.  Love of the world squeezes out the love for the Father.  Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father.  It just isolates you from Him.  The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out – but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity (I John 2:15-17 The Message).