Thanks Dad

In one of my favorite pictures of my dad, he is leaning against a two by four board holding up the front porch.  Dad did not like to have his picture taken.  On this occasion, his brother was down from Illinois.  Dad had been hauling logs that day and had the smell of pine rosin and sweat mingled with the aroma of Camel cigarette smoke and grease on him.

In this picture, dad is tanned and muscled.  He was very strong from working with pulpwood and logs most of his life.  I, along with my brothers and sister, could not wait for dad to come home in the evenings.  We would spend many evenings lying on an old quit in the front yard just talking about life and looking at the heavens.

I remember that I could not wait to get old enough to go to work in the woods with him.  Back then, pulpwood was measured.  I carried a measuring stick and marked the fallen pine timber as dad cut.  He had a large, and heavy, McCulloch chainsaw.  As a ten-year-old, the chainsaw was very heavy.  It was all I could do to crank it.  When I could not, daddy would give the cord a yank and fire it up.  Ever once in a while, he let me run the chainsaw.  Most dads won’t let a ten-year-old run a chainsaw!  I had the best dad.

When hauling logs, dad allowed me guide the mule that pulled the logs back to the truck.  I was not sure I could do it, but dad said the mule knew what to do once I hooked the tongs to the log.  It was fascinating that the mule could find his way back to the truck.  I would jump on the log and balance myself as the log rolled, twisted, and turned going up and down the hills and hollers back to the truck.  It was even more fun to watch the side loading arms of the log truck throw the logs on the truck.  I don’t think momma would have let me go with daddy if she had known how dangerous it was.

I remember helping dad fall a giant oak.  He bated the tree and I helped to push.  Suddenly as the giant tree started to fall, a gush of wind caught the oak and pushed it back toward us.  Daddy yelled, “Run son!”

As a boy, I wanted to spend as much time with dad as I could.  Dad was what folks back home call a “jackleg mechanic.”  When you are poor and have nothing but junk, you spend a lot of time repairing.  Most of my time was spent under the hood or underneath cars, tractors, and trucks.  This is something I enjoy doing today.  It is therapeutic and nostalgic.

For some reason, dad went most places by himself.  On particular day, he was going to Montevallo to pick up his check.  Momma asked if I wanted to go.  I think she wanted me to spy on dad and see what he was doing.  I knew I had to keep my lips sealed if there was to be another expedition with dad.  I was so excited and could not wait to ride in our log truck with him.

As I went out the door, I closed the door on my fingers.  Doing the natural thing, I pulled them from the closed door, leaving one of my fingernails in the door.  Blood was flying and the finger was throbbing.  I was not going to miss an opportunity to spend time with dad.  I dare not cried.  He would have made me stay home.  I remember sitting alone for what seemed an eternity with my finger throbbing with the beating of my heart.  Dad wanted me to be tough.

Momma taught me how to drive, but daddy let me drive.  Dad went from logging to working in a rock plant.  Our family car became his work vehicle.  As usual, it needed repair another rear axle.  As we started to Bessemer to find a replacement, dad said, “You drive.”  I was twelve. 

On a long hill near Montevallo, I remember being scared to death as we descended.  I looked at dad and he seemed to have confidence in me.  That was until I kept riding too close to the outside of the highway.  Dad told me that there was more room to the inside and stop driving like momma. He said that we would have to have new tires and the front end realigned if I kept running off the road.  Driving in Bessemer was scary and exciting.  I had the time of my life, me driving my daddy.

In her book, Catching Fireflies, Patsy Clairmont says that she read somewhere that we get our role models from our same-sex parent and our sense of safety and security from our opposite same-sex parent.  I don’t know about all that, but I do know that I am glad I had a daddy that loved me and taught me much about life.  I know there are thousands of children that do not have a dad in their lives.  Society is paying a tremendous price for this.  This creates a negative view of God as our Father.  Those that have a nurturing and tender interaction with their dad helps in bonding with our heavenly Father.  Clairmont says that Deuteronomy 32:4, 9-10 gives us a glimpse God’s father-heart.

 

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

 

November is the time for Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving.  Thanks dad!

Ignorance

But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may grieve as others do who have no hope. First Thessalonians 4:13

Bubba used a crosscut saw to cut pulpwood.  One day a chainsaw salesman asked Bubba if he had interest in a chainsaw that would increase his productivity.  Bubba did not know about productivity, but he did want to cut more pulpwood.  

Bubba said he could cut about a cord.  The salesman convinced Bubba an increase to three, maybe, four cords with the chainsaw.  Bubba borrowed the money from the bank and bought a new chainsaw.  Working as hard as he could work, Bubba could only cut a half cord of wood. 

A week later, Bubba told the salesman.  Thinking it odd, he gave Bubba a new spark plug, but Bubba only managed three-fourths cord.  Not satisfied, the salesman told Bubba to take the saw to the local repair shop because the saw was under warranty.  Bubba told the repairman his dilemma to which the repairman turned on the switch and pulled the cord.  Bubba said, “What is that sound?”

Paul informed the Thessalonians concerning the Lord’s Return and pagan hopelessness of future life.  Bubba had the resources for a better life, but was ignorant about what he had.  Do not be a Thessalonian Bubba. Share the hope of Jesus today. 

Old Fashion Graveyard Cleaning

Down the hill, facing the East is a pink granite headstone in West Chilton County. 

The headstone is unique among the gray granite headstones in the Union Springs Baptist Church Cemetery.  The name etched in the pink granite is the only headstone with that name.

I served on the Cemetery Committee for many years.  One of the things the committee did was remodeled the cemetery.  Don’t laugh, it was in terrible shape.  Families had staked out their territories.  Bricks, bushes, wrought iron fences, galvanized pipes with chains, and huge flowerpots marked the boundaries.  Some family plots had pebbles, some white, other colored. There were rose bushes, daffodils, sweet gum trees, and junipers.

Cleaning the cemetery was an annual event, usually before the Easter weekend.  Men and women arrived with rakes, hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows, lawn mowers, weed eaters, and tractors.  With the eagerness of worker honeybees, everyone descended on the cemetery to make the resting place of the dead a thing of beauty for the living.  I remember moments when I would see people weeping over a grave as they cleaned around it.  Most people cleaning the cemetery had loved ones and friends buried there.

Years before the remodeling, the only tool needed was a yard broom made from dogwood saplings.  The cemetery, as most yards did not have grass, so most people sweep the bare ground with the yard broom.  A bare graveyard with thousands of sweet gums balls makes for hard work.  Sweet gum balls in grass, in white pebbles, and all the stuff mentioned above makes it harder.

Even though my dad was not a Christian, he always helped with cleaning the cemetery.  In fact, we did not have to beg him to come to church on Easter.  I wish more pastors and believers would be more sensitive to families that have a dad or others who only attend church at Easter and Christmas.  For a family pleading with tears for a husband and dad to attend church only to have that loved one ridiculed when attending is heart breaking.  I know that I was so happy when daddy went to worship with us at Easter and Christmas.

Years before there was a Cemetery Committee and remodeling, on a Saturday we were cleaning the cemetery.  I have to believe that this catalytic event initiated both.  Here is what happened.  There was discussion on the difficulty of the annual cleaning.  All the stuff in the cemetery had deteriorated with time.  Families did not want their sacred territories disturbed, so anyone who violated this unwritten rule was severely reprimanded.  As a point of interest, most of these sacred territories belonged to folks who never attended the church. You might say they had been grandfathered into ownership.  Their granddaddies planted those trees and placed all the other stuff.  Their descendants continued this possess until this incredible moment in time.

Holy indignation built in the cemetery among those who were entrusted with cleaning in preparation of the Holy Week.  Holy Sacraments of the cemetery were about to face an episode likened to Jesus cleaning the Temple.

A sweet gum tree towered above a grave on a bare bank.  Erosion and sweet gum balls presented a growing problem.  Some men of the church huddled in deliberation to conjure a remedy.  The verdict was the tree needed to go but gripped with fear of retaliation from the Sacred Society of Cemetery Relics and Botanical Substance, no one volunteered.

Daddy, who listened at a distance because he was not a member of the church, asked, “Do you want the tree cut down?”

They replied that they did but feared the repercussions.

Daddy looked at me and said, “Go get the chainsaw.”  I went home to get the McCullough daddy used when he logged for a living.  Daddy reminded me of Jerry Clower’s cousin Marcel Ledbetter, who used a McCullough to get a soft drink, as he fired up the chain saw and felled the towering sweet gum.

Yeah, the family that said they planted the tree was upset.  We did not have to worry about them quitting church because they never came anyway.  Eventually, all the sacred relics and botanical substance were gone as were those who wrestled over the decision and those who retaliated.  Manicured and groomed, the cemetery looks nice today.

I often shed a tear when I visit that pink granite tombstone with the name Hopper on it.  I snigger when I stand at the foot of daddy’s grave.  It is just a few feet from where he created the stir in the cemetery and among those from both sides of the issue.

The old song reminds us that when the Lord returns, the cemetery will be a mess with graves bursting open.

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.  Jesus wept. (John 11:25, 34-35 KJV)