Hard Work and Hot Fun in the Summer

 The summers of 1969 and 1970 were fantastic and unforgettable.  The spring of 1969 our football coach arranged a meeting with a man name Dollis Ray.  Mr. Ray was recruiting athletic young men to work for Hiwassee Lang Company for the summer.

In the meeting Mr. Ray asked if any of us had ever loaded hale bales or pulpwood.  Most of us had hay experience but only a couple of us had both hay and pulpwood experience.  He talked of the difficulty of the two jobs and stated to us that the job he was recruiting us to do was harder than both the hay and pulpwood.  Our task was injecting hardwood trees with a chemical poison using five feet by two-inch steel pipe filled the chemical using a hand pumped apparatus on the end of the pipe.

Mr. Ray said he was like the Marine Corps.  He needed a few good men.  So began the work of killing hardwood timber to allow the pines to grow.  Areas where the hardwood was dominate; Hiwassee used helicopters to spray (mist blow) the chemical converting lush forest into dead wasteland.  Hiwassee did not mist blow long because the government outlawed the practice.  We were told that the chemical was weed poison.  I believe it was Round Up in its infancy. 

The summer of ’69 we started injecting hardwood along US Highway 31 north of Jemison, Alabama.  Hiwassee had a ninety-nine-year lease of hundreds of acres.  We heard that it was ten thousand acres.

Our foreman was a young man named Benny Lee.  Good old southern boys have a double name.  Benny Lee was an outdoorsman with a unique Southern Drawl.  He instructed us on the injecting technique.

Most of the hardwood we would jab the blade on the end of the pump about two inches apart around the tree.  Hickory trees we girdled making sure to place plenty of chemical.  Benny Lee had us gather around a large hickory in a low area near a branch.  It was about two feet in diameter.  We girdled it and Benny Lee who always carried an axe on his shoulder removed the bark of the hickory about three feet above the girdle.  Then we all went to dinner.

After dinner, Benny Lee carried us back to the tree.  The leaves on this giant hickory had already wilted.   The beautiful white meat of the tree had black streaks rising like a thermometer up the tree.

A little later he called us together to watch a moccasin snake trying to kill a king snake.  The larger moccasin had the smaller king snake in its mouth.  Benny Lee told us that the king snake would kill the moccasin.  We all watched in wonder and awe as the king snake slowly wove its body around the moccasin. 

Slowly, the king began to tighten its body around the moccasin.  We heard bone popping and the moccasin opened it mouth and released the king snake.  Benny Lee said, “The king snake will eat the moccasin.  The jaws of the king snake unhinged, and the king snake devoured the moccasin.

Working for Hiwassee was not as hard a loading and unloading hay.  It was not as tiring as shoulder loading pulpwood.  Working for Hiwassee was fun, exciting, full of surprises, and educational.  We worked hard for Benny Lee.  We worked ourselves out of a job.  What was supposed to last most of the summer we completed in two weeks.  Benny Lee gave us time off to watch the moon landing in “69.  

One day Benny Lee handed me a root and told me to chew it.  I had chewed sassafras roots it taste like root beer.  I chewed it and he asked me how it tasted.  I said, “It tastes like Vicks Salve.”  He said that was what the old timers used before the chemical companies started making it.

Another time he handed me a small railroad spike.  He asked, “What to you see on the side of the hill?”  I told him that it looks like an old road.  He said that it was a railroad bed where there had been a spur when the built Lay Dam on the Coosa River.  All that was visible was spikes along the way.

We had so many adventures that summer.  We pushed down dead trees, found bee gums, played king of the mountain on old sawdust piles from sawmills long forgotten, and run from yellow jacket wasps and hornets.  After work we would drag race our old jalopies. 

It was hard work! It prepared us for two-a-days football practice.  It taught us that it’s not work if you enjoy it.  It was a rite of passage for young boys becoming men.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men - Colossians 3:23

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 quilt 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 to 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!

That Bunch From Mars Hill

I never will forget the first time I heard the phrase “Below the Bogue” which I learned is the same as “South of the Bogue.”  I think I understood its meaning before anyone told me.  I am from across the tracks myself.  I grew up in rural Alabama in a community called Mars Hill.  While in school, Jemison folks called those who lived across the tracks “that bunch from Mars Hill.”

Most of us from Mars Hill lived in shacks, used outdoor toilets, and wore hand-me-down clothes.  We went to school Monday through Friday, to town on Saturday and church on Sundays.  Our dads hauled pulpwood and our mammas stayed at home. 

The best thing about being from Mars Hill was most were great athletes.  A picture of the 1917 Mars Hill baseball team crowns the cover of A Pictorial History of Chilton County.  Jemison High school state championships in baseball, basketball, football, softball, tennis, and volleyball all have Mars Hill athletes as their all-states, all conferences, and captains. 

It was in Sunday school that I learned that the Apostle Paul preached at Mars Hill, not the one in Chilton County, but the one in the Bible.  He had a difficult time preaching there.  They were a tough bunch in Mars Hill.  Mars Hill people are always tough.  If the Bible mentioned Mars Hill, I knew that being from Mars Hill was prophetic and had its advantages.

I have always had to defend my Mars Hill roots.  A church I pastored was one of the places I felt the bias.  A church member confronted me about the issue of prayer for one of our mission programs.  I wanted the leaders to teach our children and youth how to pray.  We had a wonderful mission's program, and it was a model for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions in Montgomery.  Two of our RA’s were pages at the Southern Baptist Convention in Salt Lake City one year.  One of the two got a scholarship to Samford University through our RA program. 

I did not want to sidetrack mission ministries but wanted incorporate prayer and teach the importance of prayer in concert and in support of missions.  The response I received knocked the wind from my sails.  The sin of sanctifying geography and the sin of sanctifying size reared its ugly head.  The church member said, “I know that you pastored a little old church in the sticks of Bibb County, and you did not have many members, so you know nothing of missions.  You need to leave the missions to us.” 

The truth was that I served as vice-moderator, moderator, and the Associational Brotherhood director for Bibb Baptist Association.  My Bibb church was a mission church.  I had been a Royal (RA) Ambassador since boyhood and understood the value of missions very much.  The Bibb church lead Bibb Association churches in giving eight percent of its money to the Association. 

I did not take his statement as personal attack, but it did affront me because he offended the kind, generous, and saintly members of that little church.  I felt as though this church member had slapped little churches and pastors of little churches in the face by such a diabolical statement.

I have learned that it is more important where the Lord takes you than where you have been.  Jesus’ teachings speak volumes about geography and size when He calls us to follow Him.  Let me use this paraphrase:  “Give me who you are and forget where you came” is the call to follow Jesus.  Wow, I wish I had known back then what I know today.

Are we guilty of the sin of sanctifying geography when we refer to “that bunch from Mars Hill” or “South of the Bogue?”  Where the Lord takes us is more important that where we have been.  Are we guilty of the sin of sanctifying size when we compare churches or say we are too small to do anything?  God has no small churches.

The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.  Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.  Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.  And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see (John 1:43-46 KJV).

 

 

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 yanked them from the closed door, leaving on of my fingernails between the door and the door sill.  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, Alabama 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. 

No Money, No Motivation, and No Morale

It is funny how things pop back into your mind.  Sometimes it is something you may smell, it is a word, or name spoken, or it is an event unleashing a flood of memories.

The other day a load of pine timber passed.  Suddenly, I was transported back to the pulpwood days of growing up in Chilton County.  Stumbling through the woods, tripping over vines, and falling over stumps with a ten-inch stick of pulpwood on your shoulder is comical now, but frustrating back then.  I did learn to fall gracefully without injury.  It was great off-season training for football.

When a truckload of pine lumber passed me the other day, I thought about all the houses that I helped Brother Bill Langston build.  Building houses was much more fun than loading pulpwood and carpentry paid more too.  Lumber is much cleaner than pulpwood.  Shoulder loading pine timber from woods burned annually results in smutty necks and arms that are very hard to clean, especially when you wash yourself in a washtub or pan.  Pine rosin from pulpwood and fresh sawed lumber is hard to remove.  Usually, you wear it off.

I received a call the other day informing me that a member from the first church I pastored passed away.  The family of AC Oaks wanted me to have a part in the funeral service.  It is important when a member of a church that you pastored thirty years ago wants you to say a few words.  I feel fortunate in that every church I pastored, I left it on good terms and could return.  I know that there are churches that do not want former pastors back and there are pastors that do not want an invitation to return for any reason.  Thirty years in the ministry seems like yesterday.  When I first started, it seemed unattainable.

AC was a true friend and mentor at the beginning of my tenure.  As I met with his wife Peggy and their children I immediately thought of all the good times I shared with them.  I had the privilege to commune with them more time than I could count.  Fellowship, the church we all ministered, was a small church of about fifteen in attendance. 

I remember the first Sunday I met the Oaks family.  I attended school with AC’s children and was attending the University of Montevallo with his daughter-in-law.  I had seen AC on many occasions, but I never had met him personally until that first Sunday I was at Fellowship to supply. 

After supplying for three Sundays, Fellowship extended a call to me to be pastor.  It was a challenge and opportunity to live out my calling.  The church had been in existence for a short time.  Fellowship started the Baptist way, a church split.  Sixty-eight members left a neighboring church and started a new church in an old and outdated Methodist church.

Full of enthusiasm, members of Fellowship dug a basement beside the old church.  It did not take long for the excitement to turn to an exodus.  When the money ran out, it took the motivation and members with it.

I became their third pastor.  There was no money, no motivation, and no morale.  The church was three months behind on the church payment, the butane gas was empty and the gas company would not refill, and the electricity was in the process of disconnection.

AC and family were pioneers.  That is what a member of the Alabama State Board of Missions called the remaining members.  AC was dedicated to Fellowship and was an emotion man.  I think that his frequent bouts with sickness personified his emotions.  I thank God for his wisdom and leadership.  In less than three years, Fellowship Baptist Church paid all delinquent bills, purchased a new piano, waterproofed the abandoned basement, and had two thousand dollars n a building fund.

I remember one Sunday that the old church was so cold that there was frost on the piano.  We had a modified Sunday School and Worship and everyone went to AC and Peggy’s to thaw.  Another time there was a blizzard during an associational brotherhood breakfast and before the men could attend morning worship, we cancelled church.  AC and I went to the church to be there incase someone came that morning.  The church was near Interstate 65 and we thought someone might be stranded and need a place to weather the snow and ice.

There are plenty of stories.  One we celebrated at the wake was the cantata we did.  We had more in the cantata choir than were in the audience.  We laughed about cantata, but we performed it for the Lord and five church members.  AC thought the cantata was great.

One morning a young girl rode a small motor scooter round and round the church.  We played that the scooter stop annoying us.  God honored the prayer and the scooter quit.

AC supported me when I was a novice pastor.  He encouraged me in the ministry and we talked many time through the years.  I thank God for AC and our relationship.

When I think of Fellowship Baptist Church and AC, I remember Paul’s words to the Church at Philippi: I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: (Philippians 1:6 KJV)