Icy Rain and Falling Tears

 The vacuum wipers of my old 1950 Plymouth slowly swiped the light icy rain peppered on the windshield late one night as took a co-worker home. Clifton and I talked of the cold night and possible snow flurries that would create a panic among the people of Alabama and especially Chilton County.  We were having a light-hearted moment in Clifton’s heartbreaking relationship with his wife.

To pacify his wife, Clifton bought her a new red with white stripes, Ford Grand Torino fastback.  It was a beauty.  It was also a gift to harness his wife’s wandering ways.  As we passed Friendship Baptist Church, one I pastored years later, I spotted Clifton’s Torino underneath the security light of the church parking lot.  Whether he knew it or that he acted dumb, we joked that his wife left it there.  Having an eye for details of automobiles, I knew without a shadow of doubt that it was Clifton’s car.  I had this empty, wishing I was wrong, moment.  It would become a defining moment as I witnessed something that will always be etched in my mine.

Clifton lived just over the hill from the church at the Blacksnake Trailer Park.  Ice collected on the wipers as I pulled to his driveway.  Clifton said, “She’s gone again.  That was her Torino.”  I waited as he opened the mobile home door.  He motioned for me come to the door.  I saw three little girls, all in t-shirts and diapers, cuddled up like puppies on a rug at the front door.  The oldest little girl said, “Momma is gone.”

My heart broke for these precious little girls and for Clifton.  Clifton had an alcoholic brother who appeared from the darkness.  He had tried to open the door, but it was locked.  He waited in shadows and from the cold underneath another mobile home until Clifton arrived.

These three little girls were ages three, two, and one.  They were red-haired, blonde, and brunette.  All three had different dads and Clifton was not one of them, but Clifton loved them as though they were his.

I never will forget the first time I met Clifton.  He had grown up in the same Mars Hill community that I did.  He was older than I was, and we had never met, but since he worked where mom did, and I eventually did, I heard a lot about him.

He was pale as a ghost when I first met him.  He was recovering from a gunshot wound to his stomach and had a 22-caliber bullet lodged against his spine.  Days before, he had escaped, yes escaped, from a Birmingham hospital by hiring a cab to transport him to Clanton.  He was wearing a hospital gown.

Clifton claimed that he had accidentally shot himself while cleaning a rifle.  Truth was that his wife shot him.  Can I tell you that I had lived a rather sheltered life, and I learned a lot about life in the real world?

Clifton’s wife was a very loose woman.  She was a little on the trashy side.  She loved men, but Clifton loved her more.  I had never seen a man that loved a woman as he did her.  As the old saying goes, “He put up with a lot.”

As the energy crisis of 1973 swept the nation, I faced my first layoff, and it would be the last time I saw Clifton alive.  Clifton kept working and his wife kept running around on him.  She was so despicable, that her mother and father disowned her.  In fact, Clifton had moved in with his in-laws who were helping with the three girls.

A friend called me to tell me that Clifton had committed suicide.  The bullet against his spine continued to cause pain and health problems.  Overwhelmed by the heartache of a wayward wife and a bullet she placed in his body, Clifton borrowed his father-in-law’s 410-gauge shotgun to shoot rabbit or squirrel, but placed the barrel against his heart and pulled the trigger.  His in-laws saw him stagger and fall near the clothesline.  Helped came too late.

I attended his wake.  My heart was with the three girls.  I had not been married very long and thought about adopting them.  As for Clifton’s wife, I was told that as Clifton lay at rest, she lay intimate with another man in a Clanton parking lot.

Every year at Christmas, I wonder what happened to the girls.  It was the Christmas season when I saw them cuddled on the rug cold and shivering. If they are alive, they are in their forties now. 

When I think of Clifton and them, I think of God’s love for us and Hosea’s love for his wife Gomer.  Love is a powerful force.  I could understand the love of Hosea and the wandering of Gomer a little better when I read Francine Rivers Christian novel Redeeming Love.  If you have not read it, you are missing a great book.  I could not put it down.

 

The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord.  So he went and took Gomer (Hosea 1:1-3a KJV).

Some Things We Never Forget

Our eyes are recording devices capturing images and storing them for retrieval when remembering or taking time for refection.  The birth of that first child, their first bike ride, first prom, graduation, and wedding are pictures that stay with us.  These “memo graphic” snapshots and “memo recordings” bring smiles or laughs.

Then, there are those pictures recorded in our minds we wish we had never seen.  These images wake us in the night, preoccupy our thoughts in the day, and scare us in the twilight.

Some images trigger forgotten or suppressed images.  Such is the case of Martin.  I met him when I trained as a die setter for Keystone Metal Moulding Corporation.  He was my lead man and die setting mentor.

Martin was frail and pale from a gunshot wound, a 22-caliber bullet pressed against his spine.  He claimed that he tried to commit suicide.  Most of the scuttlebutt around the plant was that Martin’s wife shot him.  As a nineteen-year-old kid, I knew that one does not commit suicide by shooting oneself in the stomach.

Martin’s wife was beautiful, but very unfaithful.  I had never been around very many adulterous people out in the sticks of my youth.  My familiarity with running around was wind sprints at football and chasing pigs.  I did discover that there were some very promiscuous people in my family and other family who “lived across the tracks.”

Keystone Metal Moulding Corporation was a very promiscuous plant.  It was so bad that I would not tell people I worked there.  It was an eye opener for this naïve kid.  The things said and the things I witnessed at the plant would make Corinthian sailors blush.  With this licentious environment, Martin’s exposure to mockery and tease were common as the daily news that another jealous husband was interrogating every male’s exit from the plant.  I could not believe how Martin laughed and cut up when the unfaithfulness of his wife was the topic for the day.

To appease his wife, Martin bought her a new house trailer and a new 1973 Ford Gran Torino.  The Gran Torino was the hit as a muscle car and it was good looking, red with a black vinyl top and mag wheels.  I wondered how these things could corral an unfaithful wife, but I was unfamiliar with hedonist world of infidelity.  I knew good-looking hot rods attracted girls, so why not a wandering wife?

Martin hitchhiked to work and I would carry him home after work.  We worked the evening shift.  One cold winter night it was sleeting.  I have this “memo recording” of my old Plymouth’s wipers pushing the sleet on the windshield.  Vacuum wipers have an unrhymed movement and the sleet rolled against the window.

Martin lived less than two miles from the plant.  As we passed the Friendship Baptist Church parking lot, a church I would pastor years later, I noticed a Red Gran Torino under the security light.  I said, “That’s looks just like your wife’s Torino.”  He joked that she must be running around on him again and said, “That’s not her car.”  I used to pride myself on identifying cars and I knew that it was his wife’s car.

Remember its cold, sleeting, and after midnight when I take Martin home.  I pulled into Blacksnake Trailer Park to Martin’s trailer and there is no Torino there.  I wait for Martin to enter the trailer door and then he motions me to come.  The sight I saw is one of those things you never forget.  There on a doormat on a cold trailer floor were three little girls curled together just like small puppies.  One was wearing a diaper and the other two were wearing panties.  They wore no tops just a diaper and panties.  The oldest was three or four years old and said, “Momma’s out with a man.” 

My heart broke.  The sad thing was that none of the three was Martin’s daughters and all three had different daddies.  I stood there in amazement and disbelief.  Martin was angry, but always defended his wife’s infidelity.  Martin eventually lost all he owned and lived with his in-laws.  The bullet against the spine and his wife’s unfaithfulness eroded his health.  One night I received a phone call saying that Martin placed a 410 shotgun to his heart and committed suicide.  I had never witnessed a man who loved such an unfaithful wife that he could not live without her.  The memory of three little girls curled on a rug is an image I shall never forget and puts a face on Gomer in The Book of Hosea.

The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord (Hosea 1:2 KJV).