Last night, I took Grandmommy and Granddaddy to hear a guest preacher at a Baptist church in Dudley, Georgia, some ten miles from their hometown. Dudley is a tiny hamlet, about six or eight square blocks in all, with one stoplight on the main (two-lane) road, and a railroad track. We arrived early, and the sanctuary was already full—Grandmommy’s sharp eyes spied an empty section on a pew near the front, though, so we had good seats—and while we waited for the service to begin, two women came up from either side of the room, about 5 minutes apart, the first greeting Grandmommy by name and the second Granddaddy. The first turned out to be a former coworker of Grandmommy’s from the Farmers and Merchants Bank—a young married woman then, she now has 10 grandchildren, but still works with several other people Grandmommy knew at another bank branch (F&M is long gone in multiple mergers). What I thought was interesting was the way this woman simply accepted Granddaddy as a given part of the furniture, so to speak, not to mention the way that she instantly recognized my grandmother after three decades’ separation. And that Grandmommy remembered details about the woman’s husband, and was able to inquire after him intelligently—yes, he still is at the Farm Bureau—was mind-boggling. I have trouble remembering how my own close friends are employed at present, much less how their spouses may be, and recalling the salient details over time—Gosh! Then, the second similarly middle-aged woman popped up at Granddaddy’s elbow and engaged him in conversation. Since Granddaddy only retired from public employment 18 years ago, this was not as chronologically-distant an acquaintance, yet Granddaddy’s memory is not as sharp as Granddaddy’s; he nonetheless managed to respond pleasantly, if somewhat confusedly, to this convivial onslaught.
The speaker was good—
David Ring, a preacher with cerebral palsy—sharp and funny, with more mustard and fewer platitudes than might have been expected, given the old stereotype of revival ministers. The organist (or pianist in this case) did not play “Just as I am” for an altar call. Instead, at the end of the talk, she led everyone in a few verses of “Amazing Grace,” which was really the theme of the evening—not so much non-believing people becoming Christians, but confessing Christians becoming active in their churches, realizing what Jesus had done for them, and in gratitude getting off their “blessed assurance” (here Mr. Ring patted his posterior) and to work, sharing their gifts and their testimonies, living what they say they believe.
Besides Mr. Ring’s message itself, there were a couple of encouraging details in the attendance and conduct of the meeting. First, there were a lot of what my Grandmother termed “young people”—not just old and middle-aged, but actual youth, from middle schoolers to college kids—there. Secondly, there were several Black families there, and nobody was looking at them funny. Small-town Georgia has come along way when Christians of two ethnic groups as long-separated, forcibly and then voluntarily, as members of African-American and White churches will come together to worship spontaneously—I still remember going by myself to a Black church one Sunday in the summer of 1992 in a tiny town south Georgia and being looked at like I was an alien being (great sermon and singing, though!). And lastly, before he invited Mr. Ring to the podium, the pastor of the church asked all the men in the congregation to come forward to kneel at the altar to intercede with him to God for the message, the church, and their families. All three of these aspects of the event were so delightfully counter-cultural! Men being particularly and explicitly invited to spiritual leadership, to repent of passivity; Christians of every tribe getting together to worship; and kids and young adults who could have been at home frittering away their idle school-night hours instead in church listening to a 55-year-old man give his testimony.
We got home about 9 PM, too late to play Scrabble, and I hopped in the shower before kissing the grandparentals goodnight and toddling off to snuggle under half a dozen Grandmommy afghans (which, unfortunately, did not put me to sleep—I was up to the wee hours with bad insomnia). While I was in their room hugging Grandmommy goodnight, Granddaddy came around the doorjamb in his flannel PJs, and his eyes went wide: “What in the doust is that!?” referring to my volumous new nightgown. Grandmommy laughed and said that she’d thought I was wrapped in a sheet at first. All this jocund criticism, and I wasn’t even wearing my beaded Moroccan “harem” slippers with the curly toes...
This morning, I wandered outside as Granddaddy was finishing up his “inspection” of the yard (he’s roto-tilled several rows in the garden, where he hopes to have tomatoes, potatoes, and some peas—this is much reduced from the garden of yore, which had up to four kinds of peas, greens, and other vegetables, besides the several acres of corn he used to plant out at the farm—and these are in addition to the annual blueberries, pears, apples, figs and scuppernongs), and he started telling me some stories about his own grandfather, the Civil War veteran. He said he was ragged when he went into the Navy in 1936 about being a Southerner, a “rebel”, and he’d responded that the only reason they’d been able to whip the South was because his grandfather and six great-uncles had “gone North to help them out.” I had known my great-great-granddaddy was an abolitionist who answered Lincoln’s call for volunteers, but I didn’t know that after the war, even up to when my Granddaddy was a boy, his older brothers would all come in from their farms in south Georgia to the “old home place” in Wedowee, Alabama, and visit their youngest sibling each summer, sitting around “tellin’ stories” as Granddaddy put it. Granddaddy used to sit in his grandfather’s room and listen to the old man tell tales—“He was a pistol,” Granddaddy said. “I loved him, I wish he was living today.” His grandmother’s family didn’t fight in the war—they’d not owned slaves, but they’d just hunkered down and waited for the fighting to blow over.
I would have loved to have Granddaddy relate some of the Civil War stories he’d overheard, but he moved on to a more recent war, and went off on John F. Kennedy— whose path he’d crossed in the Pacific. He’d pumped up the torpedoes on JFK’s PT boat, while the latter, in contravention of sensible Navy regulations, had been in shorts, shoeless. Granddaddy said he’d helped pick up survivors off the USS
Lexington and USS
Yorktown that were flash-burned—which happened when bombs went off and one wasn’t properly clad. Granddaddy loathes the Kennedys, folks “with a good Irish name that aren’t worth 2 bits.” Happily, he didn’t get carried away on that topic, and we discussed how small a world it is—besides a rescued
Lexington sailor that had been in grade school with him in Alabama, he’d run into a fellow in New York City when he was in the Navy that was from his hometown (the guy had yelled his name and “How’s Wedowee?” from across the street as he was striding along “like a big bottle of Coke-cola”. I reminded him that when I was in Russia the first time, I’d met a man who’d been a youth pastor at my home church—we knew the same folks. You just never know.
And then went in and had dinner. With devil’s food cake and apple pie afterwards (why have just one dessert when you can have two?). And then Grandmommy and I played Scrabble—I eked out a 5-point win after trailing most of the game, but we each finished with over 300 points. And then I had some more chocolate cake. And at last, I drove home. Where I played another game of Scrabble with Mums (lost badly to her) and ate two more pieces of cake—generous hunks of vanilla pound cake that had been in the freezer, and then nicely warmed in the microwave. Ummm.
I’m supposed to go all the way back to DC tomorrow. I don’t suppose any cake will be waiting for me when I get there….
