"In Defense of the Common Redneck"

Whew! I can't tell you what a relief it is to get back to a subject I really know something about. I was in kind of deep water on my last post so now I feel a little like Brer Rabbit after he had got hissef throwd back into the brier patch. Man, it feels mighty good to be home!

Now maybe you didn't realize it, but there are actually some Christian rednecks around. In fact there are a few (me and Jeremy anyway) Mennonite Christian rednecks in southern Campbell County. If you go north towards Charlottesville and east towards Richmond or Va. Beach people get more high-falutin and citified. If you to west towards Floyd County (I've got relatives there) you run into just plain old hillbillys. There's some similarities but they ain't necesarily the same.

 My good friend Jeremy (sorry Jordan, couldn't get you out of the way) and his favorite t-shirt. At least I guess it is because he wore it in the picture that his family sent out at Christmas time. How to hunt like a redneck. Shine, shoot, and run!

How can you tell if you're in redneck country? Let me  give you a few clues. One surefire way to know you're passing thru redneck country is if all the road signs are shot full of holes. I've never really figured this one out, but rednecks do have a strong hankering for shooting things and maybe when hunting season isn't in they just have to cut loose at something.

Another obvious clue is how much curl is on the bill of a guy's baseball style cap. The more curl, the more redneck. I personally wear mine at about half-curl which would be sort of moderately redneckish.

At the peak of my career. Myron and I were singing "Now the way to cook a possum is to bake him nice and sweet, put him in a fryin' pan with taters roun' his feet"

And the bib overalls. Tuck Poindexter was one of my favorite locals. Tuck was a big man with a big voice. I'm not sure I ever saw him in anything else except bib overalls. He kept his head shaved like a pealed onion, had a walrus mustache, had one arm missing; sometimes he wore his hook and sometimes he didn't. In the summer his favorite wardrobe was the bib overalls all by themselves with no shirt.  He had a cattle truck and did our cattle hauling for many years. Tuck had a closer sense of "space" between people than most.When having a conversation you would feel a little too close so you would back up a step every so often. Then of course he would take a step forward. If you were in a 20 minute conversation you might be 10 or 15 feet back from where you started from at the beginning.

And listen to the jokes. In Lancaster or Goshen they have Amish jokes. Around here it's the redneck ones. Like "you know you're a redneck if your front porch falls off and more than five hounds get killed". One of my favorites actually mentions the Amish as well. How to tell if your Amish neighbor is a redneck?? If he has his horse up on blocks.

There really is something about the relationship between a redneck and his hounds. Years ago  Whitehall Plantation  was bought by Mr. James Britt from Suffolk, VA. Now they hunted deer with hounds back in Suffolk as well, but they would surround a tract of land and use the hounds more like drivers.

Here the redneck hunt clubs (even though I claim to be a redneck, I don't like this style of hunting) run big Walker hounds and turn their dogs loose on one road and run the deer hoping they will cross another road somewhere. And sometimes they run the deer for miles. And while the dogs are trailing the deer, the "hunters" are roaring up and down the roads in their 4wheel drive pickups keeping each other informed on the particulars of the chase by cb radio. Billy Joe Poindexter told me once how some of the guys in the hunt club determined if they had a good hunting day. If you burned a tank of gas and shot up a box of shells, that was a good day. It didn't really have that much to do with killing a deer, he said.

What really irked Mr. Britt was that they hunted his land without his permission. The dogs ran thru his property and they would just pick the deer off when they crossed the road; they didn't even need to get on his land themselves. So he started shooting a hound every now and then when he thought he could get away with it.

Somehow this was found out and he was hauled into court. He told me afterwards that he found out one thing, if you want to do something to these guys, shoot their wife maybe but definitely don't shoot their hounds.

You know you're in redneck country if Mud Bogging is one of the main sports. Never heard of it?  There is a big trench dug out and filled with dirt and water to make mud. Then you try to get thru it with your pickup." I've never actually been to one and probably better not start. When I was young and was off-roading and came to a mud hole, I would feel this irresistable  urge to see if I could make it thru to the other side. And I didn't have a 4wheel drive truck either, so the technique was to back up and get the most speed possible so the speed would carry you at least part way thru on pure inertia. If you did get bogged down you had to use the old rock it back and forth trick. You weren't truly stuck as long as you were still gaining a couple of inches on each forward run.

Mike Cox is a friend of my cousin Donnie and was also the sheriff of neighboring Amherst County some years back. He told me how it was when he got elected. He was running against an incumbent  sheriff who didn't take his challenge all that seriously. The incumbent made the statement, "Oh, the only ones who will vote for Mike will be the redneck loggers." Well, said Mike, what the old boy didn't realize was that most of Amherst County people were redneck loggers!

Now rednecks aren't always model citizens. Reminds me of the words of an old country song I remember from years ago. It goes, "Makin' their way, the only way they know how;  that's just a little bit more than the law will allow." They might be a good neighbor on one hand and make a little moonshine on the other.

But there are some things about them you've just got to admire.(here are a few nuggets I got from a redneck website) They have no respect for man made timelines. They live one day at a time. A true redneck may put his car up on blocks for a decade before restoration begins. True-blue rednecks feel really sorry for the poor people who work themselves to the bone for 8 years in college only to become corporate slaves.

Where did the term "redneck" come from anyway? In the 1640's there were Presbyterians in (I think) Scotland (or was it Ireland) who refused to accept the Church of England as their official state church. They signed a covenant opposing it, some of them signing with their own blood. This lead to them being called "Covenanters". They also would wear red cloths around their necks to publicly identify themselves with the movement. This gave them the nickname "rednecks", which followed them to the New World.

Rednecks. You gotta love 'em in spite of themselves.

 And I think when I go to work tomorrow morning and before I put on my faithful Hackett's Chain Saw Sales camouflage cap I'll give that bill just a little bit more curl for good measure.

"Food For Thought"

Here is a very thought-provoking blog post written by my uncle Harvey Yoder. Well worth reading......

Harvspot: Knit Together by Differences

"Non-Traditionally Conservative"

From the very first time I used the words "non-traditionally conservative" in the profile section, I knew I would have to write about it sometime. Well, it's starting to stick in my gut so I might as well get it out of my system.

Now one thing the older generation never told me is that sometimes the older you get the LESS sure you get about things. I always looked at the older ones and thought how nice it would be to have everything figured out  and your convictions all set like concrete. Of course, maybe I'm the first one to which this phenomenon is happening. I've been suspicious for awhile now that I'm abnormal.

On one hand, I'm definitely a conservative. Almost a "rank" conservative in some ways. Like in vehicles. Suppose I could take a poll about vehicles that would include all our conservative Mennonite churches. What percentage, do you think, would be driving a primary vehicle that has almost 250,000 miles on it??  I'd be willing to bet (if I was a betting man) that the percentage would be very, very low. Conservative Mennonites may be big believers in simplicity and non-conformity but it doesn't show up too much in their cars.

Even my dear son Myron pokes some fun at our van that has 248,000 miles, but I'm determined to make it run till 300,000. It still goes between 5,000 mile oil changes without needing any added oil and has the original engine and transmission. I like a vehicle to run well, look decent,etc. but I've just never felt the need to prop up my image with a status symbol.

And clothes? I think I could go a year or two and not feel the need to buy a thing along those lines. (Well, let me qualify that. I do need a buckskin shirt and pants, but other than that I'm entirely good)

So in areas like this I'm quite conservative. But in some others, not so much. Like in areas concerning church systems of uniformity. One time years ago, William McGrath was having meetings at the South Boston church. We got there late and got seated all the way up front. He asked the question, "How many of you believe that  for a church to have unity you must have uniformity?" Hands were raised all over, but I couldn't conscientiously  raise mine.

We go almost every year to the "Physically Challenged" seminar at Penn Valley Retreat Center in PA. It's a real mixture of people; Amish, Old Order Mennonite, Horning, Eastern, Beachy, Pilgrim Fellowship,  and a few stray, suspicious "Independent" Mennonites like ourselves. We have the most wonderful fellowship as any I've ever experienced. And we should.

But I wonder what would happen if we would decide that since our fellowship is so great, we'll just camp out there for a year or two and have church. Do you think it would work?  I'd be very afraid that our desire for "uniformity" would destroy the fellowship we so enjoyed. But couldn't it work if we kept our eyes on what gave us grounds for fellowship in the first place? 

I really don't know how this happened that I turned out this way. I mean, I come from pretty stable Mennonite stock on both sides of my family. And the last thing I want to be is a pain to my brothers and sisters in the faith.

I really do consider myself a blue-blood Anabaptist. (if there happen to be any of you out there reading this that aren't familiar with the term "Anabaptist"; it doesn't mean "anti-baptist" but rather "re-baptizers". The Anabaptists had their start  in the early 1500's when they, among other things, rejected infant baptism) When I think and read about the sufferings these spiritual forefathers of mine went thru, my heart is deeply stirred.

And let me say this also; this blog is ABSOLUTELY  NOT going to turn into a place to rant about all things Mennonite. There are far smarter people out there better at that than I am. To be honest with you, when I read or hear people putting down the Mennonites in a derogatory way, it makes me a little upset. I know we've got some problems, but these are "my people" you're talking about!

But I'll have to admit, I've got a few questions and a few problems with us myself. I'm one that's big on things "making sense". And of course sometimes things seem to "make sense" within our subculture but not so much to the ones looking on. Now the "way of the cross" will never make sense to most of the non-believers looking on. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about things like this: in some groups the requirement may be (for "simplicity" and "non-conformity") to have black cars. but if you would go to their services probably 90% of the men would have on white shirts. How is this figured out? How can we be sure we shouldn't be wearing black shirts and driving white cars? Personally, I wear black shirts a lot; it's my small effort in trying to bring a little balance to the situation.

Harrisonburg, VA. Does this "make sense" to you?

Another thing that bothers me is I'm afraid sometimes we have a superior attitude. I've heard preachers talking about the poor conditions in the Christian churches of today and say something like, "and even in our Mennonite churches" this and so. To me it sounds like we consider ourselves at the top of the list. Wouldn't it be better to say, "Our churches aren't innocent in this (whatever we're talking about) either".

I was listening to a sermon in a visiting Mennonite church recently. And a good sermon it was.Well, it was.............. until the minister was talking about how even with all the terrible conditions in the world today, God is still building His church. He was telling about some non-Mennonite couple they had learned to know who had moved to another state and were starting a fellowship that was really hungering and thirsting after God. The minister and his wife were on a trip and stopped in to see this couple. He said what a blessing it was to him to see how "God was building His church". Now of course, he said, we wouldn't commune with them.

What? Did I hear right? This is "God's church" and we're supposed to be part of God's church also? It left me feeling a little confused. It's more than a little scary to me if we were sure by all evidences that someone was part of God's church but we couldn't commune with them. It would give me the panicky feeling of "what if I'm in the wrong church?"

And then I worry, too, about the verses talking about"teaching for doctrines the commandments of men". How I hope we're not doing that. I do think that a group of believers has the latitude to make some "brotherhood decisions" about applications of scripture. And I think if you voluntarily joined this brotherhood, you shouldn't  just ignore these decisions. But I still worry, is it possible, even in brotherhood agreements, to come up with some that are  "commandments of men"?

I worry that we spend too much of our energy building and maintaining our "guardrails",trying to protect ourselves from the evils without, leaving little time to focus on what is supposedly the church's main mission. I worry that sometimes we rely on the "rules" to keep us and our people in line, when if we had a heart that was burning with a desire to follow Jesus, maybe the "rule" wouldn't even be necessary.

There is an amazing amount of activity that has to happen to keep the church "machinery" going. Sunday school teaching, Sunday evening services, Wed. night groups, accountability groups, youth group, home groups, etc. etc. Now, I know we need to teach our children and encourage ourselves around the Word.

But I can't help but wonder. Let's say we had half of the services we now have. And let's say we'd spend the other half in learning to know and interacting with our neighbors.

This is how it feels to me personally. It feels a little like a football team that gets together often for that all important "huddle". And gets pretty enthused at times in that huddle, and enjoys greatly the fellowship there. But never really gets out there and plays the game. That's how I feel about myself; I've been sort of faithful in supporting the "huddle", but I feel like I've done SO,SOOO little in playing the game. At times I feel almost discouraged enough to give up because of this.

What can you say to help me?? "You think too much". Probably. "YOU NEED A BRAIN TRANSPLANT!" Probably that too.

The simplest thing to do would be to reduce your conviction list to one. Just do whatever your church tells you. Without meaning a bit of disrespect to churches and leaders of them, I think God wants more out of us than that. Doesn't the Bible encourage us to "Search the scriptures to see if these things are so?"

I sincerely hope I don't offend anyone with this ramble. You notice that I made very few proclamations. I asked a lot of questions and was honest about some of the things that worry me.

How I long to be "found faithful". It's the longing that pulls at my heart and makes all other desires look completely insignificant. 

Oh, God, help me to sense your call and direction. Help me to see my sometimes impulsive ways. And help me for sure to know the difference.

"A Few More Thoughts on the Same Subject"

If some of my "old South" friends were to have read my last post I would suppose they might call me a "blacks lover". Only they may have used the "n" word instead. It's still used a fair amount in all white company at least in this part of the South.

Am I?? You bet, I'm guilty as charged. I'm a lover of the red and yellow man as well.  And the brown. I am fascinated by the amazing ethnic variety that populates this globe.

Several weeks ago we were at the Sight and Sound Theatre in Lancaster, PA to take in the "Jonah" presentation. Such a mix of people from all parts of the world! We talked with a quiet, reserved exceptionally beautiful young mother of Indian (India Indian) descent as she took care of her young child while the rest of her family was taking in the presentation before ours. The man who sat in the seat beside me was from the Dominican Republic. When I asked him his nationality he said first of all he was a citizen of heaven.  We had a lively conversation with some Coptic Christian young ladies with Egyptian roots who sat behind us. I kept thinking of the verse,"Out of every kindred, tongue and nation".

When "white" people think of themselves as superior, they are missing out on so much of what other people and cultures have to offer them. Frankly, sometimes I think "white" is just pretty downright boring!

Last post I was deploring the wrongs committed by the white race. So does the black community have any problems? You better believe they do, I just happen to think you should talk about your own problems first.

The black community has especially big time problems in the area of family life. I don't remember the figure, but well over half of black births are to unmarried moms. There seems to be a thing of almost bragging rights with some black men over how many children they have by however many different women. Hmmm. Sounds awful similar to some of those old plantation owners, doesn't it?

The bottom line is that the human race,( all branches) has big time problems. Martin Luther King's efforts eventually changed the laws but didn't really change the hearts of men. I'm glad the slavery of the old South is gone; but there are many forms of slavery today that aren't as obvious. The slavery of materialism.The slavery of addictions. The slavery of lust. All very devastating but not cured by any law you might pass.

There is only one Deliverer I know of who can make a real difference and break down the barriers between people groups. And that would be Jesus Christ and His gospel.

You do see the barriers breaking down more and more  the last number of years. But sad to say, it seems mostly to be happening among the low morality crowd. I wish the church could have been on the leading edge instead.

I am sort of proud of our church in this regard. We had an interracial marriage in our church over 30 years ago already. We have quite a variety of skin tones among us on any given Sunday. A little dash of Haitian, Guatemalan, Belizian, Cuban, and American black-Native American genetics help add some spice to the mix. Give us several more generations and we may blend up to a delightful shade of brown.

I have this vision of the church, while respecting and celebrating each culture represented therein; having a "kingdom culture" that supercedes them all. Binding us all together into one family.

After all, that's what heaven will be like. We better be getting used to it.

"Our Christian Nation?"

Now don't get me wrong. I love my country and I'm not sure where else I'd rather live. But you have to admit, we've had a few problems along the way.

And even though I was born (no fault of my own) in Pennsylvania, (my folks were up there while my dad was doing his two years of alternate service) I consider myself a Southerner since my folks brought me along back down to Campbell Co. Virginia when I was just a little bitty baby.

I've been known to join in  conversations when the discussion turns to how someone is a "Yankee", and you know how Yankees are. They aren't very friendly and they're uptight about getting their agenda pushed through and they're suspicious and untrusting, etc. etc. I mean they just don't understand Southern hospitality at all.Which of course isn't nearly always true, but true just enough to keep the stereotype alive.

But there are some things about the south that I am so not proud of. Slavery for instance. Oh, I've heard all the old Southern arguments that try to make it look ok and benign. Like the one that goes, "Well, in Africa the Africans themselves made slaves out of their enemy tribes". My answer is that two wrongs don't come nowheres close to making a right. Or, "The plantations were peaceful, loving places where the slaves were well taken care of". I'm sure that was true in some cases, but probably for every plantation run that way there was one that was run by the rule of the whip and the threat of the dogs coming after you if you ran away.

Now I wasn't raised in a prejudiced family. My folks taught us to respect everyone no matter of their ethnicity or color of skin. But I think all of us living at that time had sort of bought into the "separate but equal" idea more than we should have. It's amazing what you just don't think about when you grow up used to things being "as they are" and not really questioning much of anything.

Of course, living out in the country I wasn't aware of all the "Jim Crow" laws that were more obvious in the cities. And I'm pretty sure that at the time I had the feeling that Martin Luther King was a rabble rouser and a troublemaker who was just getting people worked up needlessly.

I went to segregated public school for the first seven years. The "white bus" went over the area picking up the white students while the "black bus" went all over the same roads picking up the black students. We went past the "black" school on the way to ours. I never thought much about it at the time but it seems crazy now.

I had never really had any close contacts with blacks until a new family moved into the old school house turned residence across from Perrows Chapel. We began learning to know the children in the family who were all near our age. We spent many hours riding bike and playing ball with Raz, Ruby, Randy and Kenny.  And even at that fairly young age I began to question the old Southern attitudes about the relationship between the races.

I distinctly remember being in the Gladys Elementary sixth grade in Mrs. Ida Mae Arthur's class. Now with all due respect to a teacher's position, Mrs. Arthur wasn't my favorite. She was very old (at least it seemed like it to me at the time) and had snow white hair and red lipstick.

One day she began to explain to us about race relations. (Now you must remember, this would have been about 1967-68 or thereabouts, and the civil rights movement was in full swing) She told us that she had a black lady that worked for her as a maid. (I think she called the blacks "nigras") She said that her and Martha get along just fine. She said," Martha knows her place and I know mine". She said  be courteous and respectful but to always hold yourself a little bit above them.

Something boiled up inside me that day.  I was about as mad as a shy, backward little Mennonite boy could get. I didn't say anything, of course, but I firmly decided that this was terrible advice and I absolutely would not follow it. To this day I look back and see that decision as setting the course for the way I've lived my life all these years since.

The public schools in Campbell County desegregated the year I went to the eighth grade. My seventh grade class of the year before (about thirty students) were split up into almost exactly thirds. One third went to William Campbell in Naruna. One third to Altavista, and the other third to Rustburg.This shows you how much extra busing was being done to get all the students to their "proper" schools.

 I well remember the day in the seventh grade when we rode the bus down to William Campbell High School for "eighth grade day". This was something that was done every year to introduce incoming eighth graders to what high school would be like. The bus pulled in to Gladys Elementary with the seventh graders from the black grade school already on the bus. All on the back of the bus, that is, leaving the front seats for us. (Sounds  awful much like Jim Crow doesn't it) The only black student I recognized was my friend Randy. And I remember thinking, too, that all the black students looked exactly alike; you couldn't tell one from the other.  A few years later I thought back on how crazy that was also!

So I'm going to be a friend to all, right? Not always as easy as it sounds. When I went to eighth grade I really had no friends in my grade other than my friend Randy. And I don't think we had hardly any classes together; not even lunch. So I would sit in the lunch room with some of Randy's friends that I was learning to know. Robert (Bob) Hubbard was the friendliest. So here I am, the only white guy sitting at the table with a bunch of black guys. Some of the other black students would come by and ignore me but would say to the other guys, "Aw, yall 'tommin'" Or call them an "Uncle Tom". If you don't know what that means, it comes from Uncle Tom in the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It's a saying meaning a black person that is trying to cozy up to a white person to maybe gain favors or something. And in the process would be sort of a traitor to their own race. Also, of course, it shows that they thought Uncle Tom was too docile and didn't stand up for himself like he should have. Bob never seemed to let it bother him and always was friendly to me.

So you can see that this subject is one that I've always done a lot of thinking about. And recently I've sort of re-explored it again.

It started with going to the musical "Big River", which is Roger Miller's creation based on Mark Twain's story about Huck Finn and runaway slave Jim going down the Mississippi. "You see the same sky through brown eyes that I see through blue, but we're worlds apart, worlds apart." The drama and the singing make you feel the story in a much deeper way as opposed to just reading in the book.

Now I can't put my blessing on the whole musical. The "Royal Nonsuch" should definately be left out and you can also feel Mark Twain poking fun at religion. But the truth is that the Christian religion of that day deserved to have some fun poked at it. So pious and religious on one hand, but so inhumane and uncaring at the same time. At one point in the musical Huck is mightily convicted about how he isn't doing his "Christian" duty by helping Jim run away. Finally in a fit of passion he says he'll just have to go to the "bad place" then because he just can't bear to turn his back on his friend Jim.

And then awhile back I watched some of the episodes of "Roots" on Youtube.

And even if Alex Haley made it all up as far as it being his actual family line, all the things that happened in the story happened in real life I'm sure. The absolutely horrible conditions on the slave ships. The unimaginable degradation  of being auctioned of like so much cattle. The indescribable agony of families being torn apart when one member was sold away. The rank hypocrisy of how many owners held themselves up as being such fine "Christians" but thought nothing of using their favorite female slaves as concubines. (Did you ever stop to think how most American blacks look very different from native Africans?)

And even after the Civil War the injustice continued. The "night riders" and the Klu Klux Klan. The whole sharecropping system. For a good picture of life during that time read the book "Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred Taylor. Read " The Emancipation of Robert Sadler". Robert's dad sold him to a plantation owner and he grew up like a slave forty some years AFTER the Civil War ended. True story.

One evening several weeks ago I watched several of those "Roots" episodes back to back. When I got done with one (each one was about an hour and a half long) I knew I should head for bed, but I said I'd just start a little bit of the next one. Mary was in Harrisonburg helping out at her dad's so I had no one to tell me to quit.

Finally at about 2:30 in the morning, deeply moved about all the sadness and injustices in the world, I made my way upstairs. I got my favorite praying blanket and knelt in my praying spot by the couch in the living room. I cried for all the sad things in the world. I cried before God for my sins and the sins of our nation.

"Bible School is Over and We All Went Home"

So, where have I been; hibernating? A novel idea, even if I thought of it myself. Being  the strong non-conformist that I am and seeing as how the groundhogs hibernate in the winter, it would stand to reason that I would do it in the summer.

I haven't been, but it wouldn't be the world's worst idea. July was a brutal month with the temperature day after day between 95 and 100 with a couple days over 100.

In short, I was tired; I was busy; and I was uninspired. I decided that writing here was never going to be "work" and that being the case it was just going to have to wait.

But that isn't to say that the last month has been uneventful. Far from it.

We had Bible School the last two weeks in June. A very peaceful and enjoyable time for the most part. Some years in the past haven't been anything of the sort. One year we had a returned from Romania missionary teaching a large older class of mostly community young people. He came to me afterwards looking like he was slightly in shock. "I've never seen anything like this!", he said. I'll take the peaceful Bible School any day.

Now, that's not to say that the children didn't get into it. They sang with gusto and listened well to the stories. We had a outstanding bunch of teachers. And we had a record offering; right at  $900.00.

Along about early Thursday morning of the first week, our phone rang at 12:30 A.M. We didn't get it picked up in time the first go-round but it started right in ringing again. It was Myron on the line. He said to come quick because Clifton wasn't breathing.

We threw some clothes on and raced over. But the whole time thinking, if he's not breathing.......... We didn't know what we would find when we got there. By that time they had pounded him on the back several times, cleared the congestion somewhat, and he was breathing better.

The doctor recommended taking him in to the ER, so I headed in with Myron and Heidi while Mary stayed at their place with Caleb. They took him back fairly quickly but we did a whole lot of waiting after that. The diagnosis was RSV, which causes thick congestion that young babies have a hard time dealing with, so they wanted to admit him.

Finally by about 6:30 or so, we moved him up to his hospital room. Heidi was going to stay in with Clifton and Myron and I headed for home and work. Got home about 7:30, got a bite to eat and headed over to work. Then Bible School again in the evening.

Clifton ended up staying in the hospital right at a week. Mary and Heidi's mom Anne took turns staying in some so Heidi could have some time at home. Myron stayed in by himself one night. We were all wore out till "Teke"got home again.  (And for a good while afterwards)

Where does the "Teke" come from? Well, Myron says they already have one "tyke" in the house (Caleb), and Clifton is too little to be a tyke, so he's a "Teke". It will be interesting to see if he's still "Teke" when he gets grown!

And there was another thing that kind of sent me reeling. We had a young lady stay with us for the two weeks of Bible School as she was teaching one of the classes. Now Charlotte is a delightful young lady that reminds you quite a lot of Anne of Green Gables, right down to the red hair.

She is also a photographer and Mary has wished for a good while now for a good photo of ourselves to put on a tapestry that Myron's had given to us. (You send this company a photo and they somehow print it on a tapestry that you can hang somewhere if you have the nerve.)

 Now I've always despised getting my picture taken. The one taking the pictures always wants you to give a big smile and I can't. If I smile with my mouth at all open, I very much resemble a prehistoric possum.

Anyway, she took some pictures over in the beautiful woods across the road. (At least that part was nice) Then she took the one we picked out home and photo-shopped it a little. I think there was a stray male nose hair or two that she needed to delete. (Isn't it maddening when you get older that hair grows extra well in all the wrong places and not so good on the top of your head where you need it the most?)

So then she sent the photo back to us by e-mail and said, here's the photo; is there anything we want changed?

I e-mailed her back. I want it changed, I said. Who is that old man in the picture?, I asked. Are you sure you didn't run into Rip Van Winkle back in those woods somewhere??

So that was a big reality check.  I'm still recovering from the shock. I mean, I used to worry about dying young. I guess that's one worry off the list.

There was one positive thing about the picture. About myself, I mean.( Mary, of course, looked nice on the picture)  I noticed that at least I had laugh lines around my eyes. That meant a lot to me. Life has thrown us a few curves now and then and it did me a lot of good to see that while I might be bordering on being an old man, at least I'm not a bitter old man.

Now if we can just decide which closet we want to hang that tapestry in..................................

"For the Love of the Game"

We played softball last Friday evening. "We", meaning the youngsters and I. (along with two of the dads)

The "youngsters" are the girls and boys ages 9 thru 14 from our church. Willis Byler had started these games for the boys maybe 5 years ago and had gotten me to help. Then when Willis moved away I kept it going for the boys and then a couple years ago decided to try adding the girls in also. At the end of the year I told them that  I had wondered how it would go over with the boys to have the girls help play. You know at this age boys are a little concerned about associating too closely with girls in fear of catching some of those dreaded "cooties" that girls supposedly  have sometimes.

I told the boys I was proud of them for not acting like it was any big deal, and I told the girls I was really proud of them, because they played along with the boys even while knowing for a fact that the boys definitely had the cooties.

We bend the rules a little to help out the first year players. First timers get unlimited strikes and also I as pitcher can't field the ball when they do hit it. It gives them a much better chance of getting on base. 

Anyway, the game last Friday was a good one. Usually these games have scores like 25 to 14 or something similar. This one stayed close, 4 to 2, then 7 to 5, etc. At the end of 9 innings the score was tied, so into extra innings we go. Ten innings, still tied. Eleven innings, no change. Finally it was the bottom of the twelfth with two outs, the bases loaded, and Clayton up to bat. The suspense is almost too much to bear.

Now Clayton is a very promising young man, good sized for his age, and can swing a bat like he means serious business. But every once in awhile he'll take a tremendous swing that you are sure is going to result in the ball being hit clean into the graveyard in deep center field, but somehow he strikes out instead. Reminds me of the Mudville Nine and "Casey at the Bat".

Now let me tell you up front that I'm really not a sports nut. Right now I can't even remember who won the last World Series. I think professional sports are overrated and way too many of the players are spoiled brats. But now a good old fashioned country softball game on a fine summer evening, that's somethin' else awhile.

And softball (or baseball as well) is such a dignified sport. As opposed to football where brute force is so important. Or basketball, where the players run back and forth like idiots the whole game, trying to decide on which end of the court they want to be playing.

My love for softball goes back a long ways. I learned the fundamentals in my Uncle Robert's front yard  watching him and his five boys play. Home plate was just in front of one flower bed, first base right by the front porch step, second in front of the other flower bed and third base by a big oak tree. Aunt Esther must have had a lot of patience as those flower beds had to have gotten a rough life. I can't remember if I was old enough to help play at the time but I do remember lots of games later on with Sonny, Missy, and "Nookie". I can still hear Sonny saying that here comes Missy to bat with her "washerwoman chop".

Actually Sonny and I had many baseball games just the two of us. (Hey, we had imagination when we were growing up) We would take turns catching and pitching and if I remember right the catcher would call the balls and strikes and say when there was a "long fly ball hit to deep center field, it's going, going, gone!" and how many runs had scored, etc. etc.

At the peak of my make-believe baseball career.

One thing that influenced me greatly in my developing love for softball during my "growing up years" was that I was doing very little of the growing up part. I was too scrawny to be any good at football. And I wasn't a real fast runner either.  And I was too short to make a good basketball player. And my lungs were (still are) too small for long distance running; I would always come in towards the end of the pack along with the fat boys on the 600 yard run we had to do in school.

But I can remember the good feeling in grade school when the "big boys" William Bell and Gary Hall were picking up teams and I got picked  fairly early on. "He can catch", one of them said. (Now not catch as in being the catcher, but as in fielding the ball)

 At the time I loved to play left field. You got a lot of hits with the majority of players being right handed. I can still feel the rush that came with the crack of the bat and racing to try to make the catch.

I never got to be a power hitter. One field we played on at Gladys Elementary  was fairly narrow with a bank going down just past third base. If  I hit it just over the third baseman's head hard down the line it would go over the bank and I could get on base.

During the teenage years our weekly softball game was as much a part of the fabric of summer as were eating and breathing. We had a ball field in the middle of a cowpasture  down on the Seneca Creek just upstream from the swimming hole. We built our own home run fence out of slabs and old boards we got from Dan Zehr's sawmill.

We would take a pickup truck up to Halley Dillard's store and pick up a whole pickup load of neighborhood boys and haul them down to the creek where we would trek across the narrow trail over to the swimming hole and up to the ball field. Most of the guys we picked up played in some sort of "bush league" and were pretty good. We prided ourselves in being the underdogs but still won some games now and then.

One year we even kept batting averages, rbi's, and all those good statistics. Hey, we were pretty good, too, with batting averages around 600 or so. Not too many of those in the major leagues these days.

But back to our game last Friday evening; I guess I've kept you in suspense long enough. As I said,  two outs in the bottom of the twelfth, bases loaded, and Clayton up to bat. I was thinking about "Casey at the Bat". And actually also wondering if there would be enough daylight left to play thirteen innings if necessary.

Here's the pitch. (I pitch for and sort of coach both teams at these games) As I said, here's the pitch. Clayton swings mightily. He connects! It's a solid base hit to I don't remember where. The leading runner crosses home plate. The game is over.

It was a summer evening at it's finest.