Counting the Cost

I remember the last day I worked for Blue Circle Cement Incorporated at Calera.  As I left the electrical department, Truman Hughes stopped me.  He asked, “How long do you think we will be out?”  He was referring to a strike planned for the next morning, August 3, 1994.

I responded with, “Truman I have worked my last day.” 

With eyes of disbelief, he said, “No, really how long do you think we will be out?”

Once again, I said, “Truman, if we go on strike the company is going to replace us.  I have worked my last day.”

Still not believing me, he said, “Do you really mean it?”

With my electrical tool pouch on my shoulder, I said, “Truman, if we are not back to work in two weeks it is over.  I, like some others, will never be back.  I have been in negotiations since February and the company is ready to replace us.  They have told me that if we strike, I will not have a job.  Look, I have all my personal tools with me.  I have a few in my locker, but I have most of my hand tools in this pouch.”

Negotiations had been tough.  Chicago lawyers have disdain for Alabama rednecks.  Sitting across from an educated know-it-all who twists every article of a contract is deplorable.  Sometimes times we had to remind the lawyers that just because we talked slow does not mean that we were stupid.

Negotiations were long and frustrating with trips to Atlanta, Birmingham, and Anniston.  Every time the negotiating committee returned to the plant, the men had hundreds of questions.  We tried to give them as much information as we could without doing any damage to the negotiations.  Hearsay among employees ran rampant throughout the plant.

The men wanted to strike immediately when the contract expired in May.  The negotiating committee tried to hold them together as long as we could without hitting the highway.  Many of the men thought that we were not trying hard enough in negotiations.  They would remind us what they would do if they were on the negotiation committee.  I offered to let them have my position.  I never had any takers.

The anxiety was building with each meeting.  Co-workers would heckle members of the negotiating committee.  I remember an incident one morning while buying a coke in the canteen.  Some of my friends, I use the term friend loosely, sounded like laying hens in the hen house.  They were clucking as a hen does when laying an egg.  I will let your imagination take you were they were going with that one.

Another time a co-worker cussed me from the time I got out of my truck, punched my time card, and entered the plant.  He told me that I was not a man, had no guts, and that I was probably on the take by the company.  As a footnote, when we went on strike, that same man was the first to cross the picket line.

The president of the union and good friend on the negotiating committee was worried sick about the situation.  I remember riding back from Atlanta with him.  I told him that the situation was bigger than we were.  We knew that men wanted to strike and that the company was prepared this time.  There had been two successful strikes previously.  One was a twenty-four-hour wildcat strike over a dismissed employee.  The other was a two-day strike resulting from three years of implementation, which involved pay cuts, holiday and vacation losses, and benefit reductions.  The employees of the plant were confident, but the company had the workers and the money to outlast them.

On another occasion, he and I were standing outside the bathhouse.  He said, “Hopper, what are we going to do.”  I reminded him that we would make it.   As we talked, Eddie, another employee, walked by us.  I said, “I worry for Eddie.  He cannot get another job making $40,000-$50,000.  He has no education and his age is a factor.”

Billy, an older machinist, walked past us.  I said, “Billy is too old to get another job.”  Then, there was Jerry.  I said, “Jerry is in the same boat as Eddie, but you and I are young enough and have enough education to start over.”

The men voted to strike.  True to their word, the company bussed in enough strike busters to run the plant.  The men were strong until they missed their first payday.  After a month of negotiations, the negotiating committee convinced the employees to return to work.  Of 157 employees on strike, only fifty returned.  Some of us, especially the negotiating committee, never did.  I learned that although the majority rules, it is not necessarily right.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13-14 KJV).

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).

What a Waste

Trash dumps amaze me.  They break my heart.  When I worked at the University of Montevallo, I had to make frequent trips to the dump for the carpentry shop.  On one occasion, I noticed hundreds of old black and white photographs of a time long forgotten.  You could tell this from the clothes, hairstyles, buildings, and cars it was the 1930’s.  I wondered why these pictures were discarded.  Who were these people?  Were the pictures stolen?  It was such a waste of someone’s time, talent, and money.  It makes me think how our world is a trash dump of people.

Garbologists say America is a wasteful nation.  Garbology is the study of garbage.  It is a great source of information about a society.  What a society discards reveals who they are.  It shows how they live and how they are living.  The conclusion is Americans are spendthrifts. 

Take a trip to the dump and look at what you find.  Garbage is an expensive problem.  People tend to waste more in bad times than in good times according to garbologists. 

What about our lives?  How many people do you know who live wasted lives?  Every day, more and more people realize that they have done little in life.  Others exist in a living hell, suffer torments, and die to suffer for an eternity.

Jesus used a garbage dump when describing hell.  In the Greek, the word for hell is Gehenna.  It was the place of polluted filth, dead carcasses of animals, dead bodies of criminals, and constant fires.  The fire destroyed the smell and the refuse.  The fire always burned creating a never-ending process.  Gehenna was the place where Moloch made human sacrifices.  Gehenna was a picture of hell and its ugliness.  Jesus told His disciples to fear God’s judgment in hell, which is the eternal Gehenna.

The judgment of God extends beyond death.  Believers find confidence in God while sinners fine confinement in the eternal Gehenna. 

Gehenna is a figurative picture of the wastefulness of a precious life.  It is tragic ending for neglecting the love of God.  People can discard many things, but a wasted life is paramount.  Hell is a monument to those who do not love God.  We need to get a burden for lost people.

One morning after sleeping a couple of hours off a midnight shift, Sharon woke me.  I thought I was dreaming.  In this dream, she was shaking me to tell me our neighbor’s house was on fire.  The neighbor’s house was on fire and it was not a dream.  Fortunately, no one was home.  About the time I got to the house, another neighbor was there with a small kitchen fire extinguisher.  As he reached for the door, I cautioned him.  I felt the door and it was extremely hot.  I knew from safety training at work this was a bad sign.  I said if you open the door, the flames would engulf us.  I had not finished the sentence when windows on the front of the house exploded and immediately the house went down in flames.  In less than thirty minutes, the house was a pile of ashes that smoldered for a couple of days.

The family lost some valuable substance, but the most precious substance saved untouched by the fire was their lives.  I pray that our churches learn the value of recycling lives.  The change of the disciples after Resurrection Sunday reminds us of the transforming power of God. Many people discarded by the world find hope and encouragement in God and His people.  Look around at the waste of talent, time, and money.  Let us live transformed lives.

And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him (Luke 12:4-5).

Peach, Plum, and Black Cherry Switches

The Front Porch Swing

I went by my mom's grave and placed some flowers for her birthday and Mother's Day.  I had promised to place flowers there because she loved it when I brought her flowers.  Today's blog is another flower placed in her honor as we close another chapter in the book of life.

Mother’s Day reminds us of the great sacrifice that a mother makes for her children.  I remember when daddy moved us to Beloit, Illinois.  Momma never adjusted to the North.  It was too cold in the winter and Southern hospitality did not exist.  She insisted that we move back to “Sweet Home Alabama.”  Staying up there was a sacrifice she did not want to make.

Momma was not your TV sitcom mommas like June Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver, but she did act comical like Lucile Ball on I Love Lucy.  She loved working outdoors.  We spend most of our time outside washing clothes in a ringer washer with a set of number three washtubs.  Most people had automatic washing machines inside or in an outside building.  Momma heated water on the stove and we carried outside in buckets and poured it in the washing machine tub.  She sacrificed convenience to wash our clothes.

Momma was a disciplinarian.  Her favorite saying was, “Go cut me a switch.”  Her preferred “rods of discipline” were black cherry and plum.  If you think plums are sweet, you should taste them when they sting your naked back and legs.  They ain’t so sweet then.  She sacrificed black cherries and plums to correct us.

Momma would switch us several times a day.  She was not quick on the draw and was longsuffering.  She warned us many times before actually executing judgment on us.  We knew she was serious when she would call us by our full name.  If she said Bobby Earl Hopper, I had crossed the point of no return.

On one particular occasion, my brother and I had been fighting all morning.  You know important issues such as I was older, and he was younger.  Momma had gone as far and to call me by first and middle name.  I was on thin ice. 

Suddenly, the mailman delivered the mail.  We loved getting the mail.  It was a treat to get the Sears or Spiegel catalogs.  Momma called them wish books.  On this stop, the mailman left a Hot Rod magazine.  I had gotten a free subscription from selling magazines for the school.  Momma said we could not afford magazine subscriptions.  If they were not free, we did not get them.

My brother and I were in peace and harmony as we sat on the front porch swing and looked at all the cars in Hot Rod.  We called a ceasefire in our battle and were united by hot rods.

Daddy had not secured the swing very safe to the porch.  He had brought some rough oak four by fours home from work.  The kind truckers use for stacking so that a forklift can remove cargo.  He had laid them across the rafters and wrapped the chain of the swing around them. 

My brother and I swung back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth.  With the quickness of a streak of lightning, one four by fours worked off the rafter and fell across my back and across my brother’s head.  I was much taller than he was, and he took the brunt of the lick.  The chain wrapped around the four by four hit him on the head.  He screamed, and blood went flying.

As I tried to get the four by four off us, momma came through the front door with a big switch and flogged me.  She yelled, “I told you to stop hurting your brother.”  I was trying to stop my brother’s bleeding head, which appeared to momma that I was beating him up.  My brother was pleading for me, but momma had turned deaf with anger.

We could not convince momma of what happened, and my brother and I laugh about it now.  I did not deserve the whipping that time.  Overall, I did not get as many as I deserved.  I thank God I had a momma who loved me enough to discipline me.  I always believed that momma would not kill me when she disciplined me.  She sacrificed too much for me to beat me to death.

My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:  For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck (Proverbs 1:8-9 KJV).

Why I honor Memorial Day

The Man in the Middle Lives

Appearing as a dark fog drifting from hole to hole

Death, devastation, and destruction shrouded

The sacred ground where demonic fiends

Methodically pierced the hearts of the mutilated

Silent are loud bombs, rattling guns, exploding grenades as

Aromas of sulfur, blood, and guts saturate the air along with

Coalescing cries of pain, pleas for help, and begging God

Become quiet as the grim reaper surveys the carnage

Enthusiastic agents of death with spikes of demise

See three in another death pit to add to their trophies

Two disfigured youth had given the ultimate sacrifice as

Death laughed when his urchins penetrated their silent hearts

One urchin twisted his lethal tool deep into victim’s heart

As his partner made a noxious jab in the other victim’s heart

Shielded by the prayers of a mother on her knees and far away

Her son lies motionless beneath two that died to set people free

Petrified, the son deciphered enemy idiom concerning his plight

With devious confidence, the urchin replies the third one is ours

Blinded buoyancy does not allow them to see the young man’s verve

Death cannot and will not eradicate a mother’s prayer and true life

Anonymous and gone are the two who shielded the man in the middle

Eternal are the praying mother and the son whom she loved

Always present are the agents of evil seeking to kill and destroy

A praying nation will continue to bolster the red, white, and blue

The man in the middle left a legacy behind through his children

Teaching them to be responsible citizens for freedom is not free

My daddy was the man in the middle.  Private Mitchell Clark Hopper fought under General Patton in North Africa and Italy.  Somewhere in Italy dad lay beneath two dead soldiers in a foxhole.  German machinegun fire ripped open his chest and abdomen.  He pulled dead soldiers together and two German soldiers pierced the fallen soldiers’ hearts.  With a limited knowledge of the German language, he heard them say, “What about the one in the middle?”  “He’s dead.”

Receiving official word that dad was killed in action, Granny Hopper said, “No.  He is alive. I am praying for him.”

Mother's Day Poem

Mom has been dead for thirty-one years.  I think of her and hear her voice almost every day.  I wish I could talk with her and tell her that I am sorry for all the times she cooked and I grumbled about fried taters, field peas, and corn bread.  Bless her hear that was the best she could do at times.  At other times we had only brown gravy and biscuits.  What I would give to eat momma's fried taters, brown gravy, peas, cornbread, and biscuits.  I would love to spend Mother's Day with her.  I promised her that I would put flowers on her grave and I do.  Her birthday is close to Mother's Day and I will place flowers there and I dedicate this poem to her.

“ODE TO ROE”

There she sits with a peach in one hand and a paring knife in the other,

looking up with peach juice dripping off her elbows and yelling stop hurting your brother.

She is singing and smiling clothed in a cotton dress covered with tiny flowers, her hair pulled back and washing clothes, cleaning house, and canning peaches for hours.

This picture is one of many whirling in my head,

realizing that there are many moments not caught on film or picture now that she is dead.

Of all the scenes of my memory it is the one in the cotton dress that comes to me,

a great provider, a great comforter, and a great leader, my momma Roe Leecie.

She hated that name Roe and would get aggravated and mad when we would call her Roe,

but today that name is a precious name and I miss her and I want the whole world to know.

There’s the picture of us in the cotton field and her grabbing me and running in fear,

while picking cotton, a violent thunderstorm with lightning was popping very near.

No more than age three she held my hand and we ran to cover from the lightning and rain,

I still see her scared, trembling in fear and on her face the sight of great pain.

There’s the picture of her on the 8-N Ford tractor plowing the ground,

not looking as a farmer girl, but a queen on her throne wearing a golden crown.

She as a tomboy, who could play very rough,

making us holler “calf rope” when we had enough.

She was tall and lean, her daddy’s other boy on the farm,

but she was very much a lady and had a smile that worked like a charm.

She was a picture of beauty when she stood by daddy’s side,

so pretty and happy, but nothing compared to the beauty inside.

In my mind there’s the picture of her holding us tight,

when the fever made us see the boogie man and we were filled with fright.

Standing in the kitchen is where she worked and slaved the most,

fixing fried taters, fresh field peas, cornbread, and on Sunday’s that delicious pork roast.

There’s the smell of fresh biscuits, chicken and dressing, and homemade pies,

a yard full of boys and cousins when feeding them joy filled her eyes.

There’s the picture of her working late into the night mopping and waxing the floors,

letting us kids shine it by sliding on rags back and forth and through the doors.

Oh, the picture at age six of us in the old toilet with no top and us looking at a plane in the sky,

me asking her if they could see us using the restroom and her telling me no they were too high.

She had an eye that was better than a carpenter’s level,

and she made daddy so mad when building the house he thought he was dealing with the devil.

She labored in love while daddy was sick and confined to a bed,

Telling him she loved him and she was sorry for all the bad things she had said.

There’s the picture of her trying to get up and wash her hair,

but the pain of the melanoma was more than she could bear.

When she had only days to live she wanted to know the truth, how long she had,

when I told her there was no hope, that’s a picture of her that’s very sad.

Forever etched in my mind is the night I spent with her in the hospital and listed to her yell,

everyone on her floor was dying and their moans and cries were a picture of hell.

There’re many pictures that I could share with you about the one named Roe,

many of you would not believe them even if I told you so.

She is there in my mind in that cotton dress all covered with tiny flowers,

praying for all of her family to become Christians filled with God’s power.

Her last words were that she wanted Christian kids, never to be rich or famous and have stuff,

having children who were Sunday school teachers, deacons, and a pastor were enough.

That’s all she wanted in the world and I thought you would want to know,

that’s not bad for a momma named Roe.