Brainstorming, Take Cover

The human mind is remarkable as God designed.  Lisa and I were discussing the other night about how smells, sights, and sounds trigger a memory, even those long forgotten.  For our minds to store infinite bits of information, we utilize very little that we have access to retrieve. 

We marvel at computers and the seemingly unlimited acquisition of info.  A computer’s capability is based on data programmed into it by those with human minds.  The media bombards us with possibilities and potential of computers giving our minds movies, programming, and stories, and to ponder and have vivid imaginations.

The electronic wizards of computer chips can never replace the human mind.  Mankind is the ultimate creation of God.  This three-pound organ is 75% water with approximately one hundred billion neurons with a storage capacity of one quadrillion (1,000 trillion) connections.  Therefore, when our minds start to wander it has a lot of territory to cover.

As Lisa and I talked, my mind started on a journey.  There is so much stored in my brain and the possibilities of where I’m going are endless.  Lisa comments sometimes, “I would love to see into your brain, but it scares me to think what you are thinking.”  Well, my brain is storming and everything is swirling.

That night something she said something that triggered a memory of an old black man that was our neighbor and friend of my grandpa.  They had known each other for decades.  I thought about the influence he had on the community and on me.

Lawrence Atchison was a very dark man.  His mode of travel was his feet and an occasional traveler that might give him a ride.  When I started driving, I gave him a ride home.  He lived about two miles west of us.

Lawrence was kind, gentle and big and tall.  He would travel to Land Mart which was our local store where there was hoop cheese, tubes of baloney, bread, and the entire essential for living in rural Alabama.  After filling grocery sacks, not the thin and flimsy plastic ones but brown paper sacks.

I remember seeing Lawrence walking home with two sacks under his arms and baloney protruding out the top of the sack.  If grandpa was sitting on the front porch rocking, Lawrence would join him.

Two old friends would reminisce about growing up together and living as sharecroppers.  Now both worn out from the hard labor and rugged lifestyle of trying to eek a living in poverty-stricken Alabama rocked, laughed, and talked.

Lawrence lived on a dirt road and lived in an old shack which was kind of standard for most that lived in our community.  Most of the time, Lawrence traveled at night.  He would visit his relatives that lived east of Land Mart.  He was hard to see at night.  If any dogs barked after sunset, depending on the time of the year, we all knew that it was either Lawrence or the old black panther making their journeys.  The black panther came through migrating in the spring or in the fall.  Dogs would hide when the panther was passing, and they walked with Lawrence when he was passing.

Sometimes on dark nights the dogs would have a soft bark and daddy would say, “Old Lawrence must be headed home.”  If it was someone of something passing, the dogs growled and barked angrily.

Lawrence and grandpa have been dead for more than sixty years.  Most people in our have never heard and know of them.  There is no evidence of Lawrence’s old shack, but Grandpa’s front porch is across the road from our home.  Sitting or swinging on my front deck I can still visualize and almost hear Lawrence and Grandpa enjoying the relationship they had.

They had something that computerized society so critically needs today.  They used their minds to reminisce and had a personal relationship with each other as well as with most in the community.

I thank the Lord for Him allowing Lawrence and me to cross paths in life’s short journey.  I remember walking home from football practice after being dropped off at Land Mart.  The night was so dark that I could not see the road.  I walked with one foot on the pavement and the other on the grass for the quarter mile journey.  I wondered how Lawrence was able to make the trip.

In closing, there used to be a commercial that stated, “A mind is a terrible to waste.”  With all the capability of our brain and all the information available, why waste our brain.  There used to be a song that had the lyrics, “Input, output, what goes in is what comes out.”  That’s our brain.  It processes and stores what we experience.

Thanks, Lawrence, for the influence you had on me.

 

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  (Romans 12:2 KJV)

“The Only Color Here is Green”

I had the privilege of working at a cement plant in Calera, Alabama for eighteen years.  Old timers referred to it as Southern Cement, one of the many names given to each with each corporate change.  It was Martin Marietta Cement when I started in 1976 and Blue Circle Inc when I left in 1994.

The cement industry is hot, nasty, dangerous, but paid good money.  I had literally begged to get a job there.  It was one of a handful of companies in my home area that young men sought to have.  I was the last man hired in October of 1976 and would be the junior man for five years.  There were 225 men with no women inside the plant.  The plant manager had a female secretary.

Employees of Southern had status in Central Alabama.  The plant is near the geographical center of the state and provided employment for men from Bibb, Chilton, Dallas, Jefferson, Perry, and Shelby Counties.  These men would become my brothers and the plant our plant.  It was Union and we were Local Union 50537 with one hundred percent membership and held monthly meetings.

Almost like an exclusive club, my brothers at the plant wanted to know how I got hired.  If you were hired, it was not by application, but by knowing and having someone on the inside.  I did know several men there and went to church with some.  I learned early in life that it is “not what you know, but who you know.”

The employee ratio was sixty percent black and forty percent white, but I learned immediately that the only color at the plant was green (MONEY).  Racial problems were non-existent.  I remember one brother yelled, “Hey boy come here.”  My brother responded, “There are only two kinda of boys, White Boys and Cowboys.”  When the table was turned, my brother would reply, “There are only Black Boys and Cowboys.”  Everyone would laugh, hug, and remain brothers.

Around 1988, came the first new hiring in ten years.  Hiring was non-discriminatory and the 60/40 ratio continued.  One of the new hires was a troublemaker.  I worked with him and tried to help him.  He was lazy with an attitude “You owe me.”  He would not work during his probationary time.  I told him that they were monitoring him.  He told me that he did not care.

Serving in the Union as Grievance Chairman, the Human Resource Manager asked me what I thought of the new hire near the end of his probation.  I told him that it would be a mistake because the man was trouble.  The human resource man told me that several supervisors and employees expressed the same concern. 

One of our black supervisors petitioned to hire the man.  I told the human resource man that it was a mistake and that when trouble arose that I would have to represent the new hire.

The new hire wasted no time causing trouble.  He filed a grievance over an issue that he was in the wrong.  I went to him to discuss the grievance and he told me that he did not want a white man representing him.  He told me that I would not fight for him because he was black.  I told him the only color a in the plant was “green” and I did not care if he was purple, pink, or yellow.  I told him that no one else felt the way he did.  I reminded him that union meetings were predominately black and that I had been elected president and for several year been elected as grievance chairman by my brothers.  I told him that should tell him something.

He caused so much disturbance that by black brothers gave him a “belt whipping” in the company showers.  They told him the only color in the plant was green, there was no racial trouble, and that there would not be any trouble.

Our “troubled brother” faked an injury and sued the company.  The human resource man summoned me to his office, told me that they had been building a file against the man, and had evidence that he faked his injury and committed fraud against the insurance company.  He said he should have listened to me in the beginning.  He did not understand the unique relationship between the men in the plant.  We were brother and had unity as evidenced during contract negotiations.

I miss my brothers since retiring. Many have gone to be with Lord.  I see the surviving occasionally, especially at annual picnics.  We will always be brothers even as the world around us becomes racially combative.



Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all. Colossians 3:11 KJV