A clear conscience is a great comfort. Especially, in the dark.
My best friend, Keith Clarkston*, often slept over with my brother and I in the tent we pitched in the back yard each summer. As Keith lived the next street over, it wasn't far to come. He would bring his sleeping bag, his pillow, his flashlight, his pajamas, and a candy bar or two to eat should he get the nibbles in the wee hours.
He would arrive early, a hardened, woods-tested, mountain man, a warrior of the wilds. His bravado and swagger assured us all that any past cowardice, such as being afraid of the dark, was a thing of his now-forgotten infancy. Tonight, for the first time ever, he would actually make it to morning without freaking and bolting for home.
The first night Keith chickened out, I thought it was a fluke. To humor him, I suggested we camp inside underneath my Mom's grand piano. He indicated this was an acceptable alternative, so we dragged our sleeping bags in and installed ourselves beneath the ivories. We should have stuck it out in the back yard. If I hadn't caved and come inside with him, perhaps the seeds of morbid horror would not have become planted so deeply in his quivering soul. Once there, however, they proved impossible to dislodge. Like nightshade, they bloomed in the dark.
I'm not sure why sleeping outdoors with my brother and I rattled Keith. We tried to keep him entertained with interesting stories to divert his mind, but it was of little use.
There was the story about THE GREEN RAT our older cousin had first told us in the dark behind our Grandparent's house at a family reunion a few years earlier. It was all about the haunted mansion, and the three kids that went inside it, and the door closing behind them and locking them in. As they wandered around inside exploring, they found the big painting of the Great Green Rat hidden in a closet, eyeing three pieces of cheese. That first night, when the flashlights turned off, there had been a terrible roaring snarl. When they turned on their flashlights again, ONE OF THE KIDS WAS GONE. The next morning, the other two went back to the closet and looked at that horrible, huge rat. ONE PIECE OF CHEESE WAS GONE, and ONE DROP OF BLOOD WAS DRIPPING FROM THE RAT’S FANG! The next night the same thing happened exactly, with the second kid disappearing. The second piece of cheese had disappeared from the picture, and a second drip of blood appearing on the fang of the painted rat. On the final night, THERE WAS ONLY ONE KID LEFT. The batteries of his flashlight were blinking and about to give out, and actually DID GIVE OUT! So that last kid lit a match, and made a torch, and went to look at the picture of the Green Rat again. It glared at him with glittering eyes, so he threw his torch at the picture. THE PICTURE VANISHED IN A BLINDING FLASH, and there was only a tiny squeaking green rat running about on the floor. The boy stomped on it. When he did, the locked door to the mansion flew open, and so he was safe and feeling so much better. Until he took off his coat when he was about to go to bed that night back in his bedroom at home, AND FOUND A PIECE OF CHEESE IN HIS POCKET, AND A DROP OF BLOOD ON HIS PILLOW!
There was also the terrible tale of the couple who had heard of the MURDERER WITH A METAL HOOK IN PLACE OF HIS MISSING HAND, who had been terrorizing the couples who parked to smooch on Lover's Lane. A couple were up in their car kissing and stuff and THEY HEARD A NOISE THAT SCARED THEM. So they tried to turn on the car and get away, but they found they had LOST THE KEYS IN THE DARK when they were fooling around. They frantically fumbled in the dark, and finally found the keys in the crack in the back seat. They roared away into the night, laughing at how scared they had been--only to discover the next morning A HOOKED HAND HANGING FROM THE CAR DOOR'S LATCH!
Then there was the gruesome account of the man who ran out of gas on a ghastly stretch of lonely road, who pulled over to wait until morning. He locked himself in because, of course, A CEREAL KILLER HAD BEEN SEEN IN THAT VICINITY RECENTLY. So the traveler knew IT WASN'T SAFE. He dozed off for a little while slumped over his steering wheel, then woke with a start. What was that he heard? The tiniest of sounds came from the car’s roof DIRECTLY OVER THE MAN’S HEAD. It scritched. And scratched. He held his breath and listened. The sound stopped. His heart finally quit pounding and he was about to nod off again, when it scritched, then scratched again. ALL NIGHT LONG, THIS CONTINUED, until in sheer exhaustion, the stranded traveler fell asleep. He was wakened the next morning by the police pounding on his window. “GET OUT! GET OUT!” THEY CRIED. When he unlocked the door, they dragged him out. Then the policeman pointed up. There over his car HUNG THE BUTCHERED BODY OF ANOTHER VICTIM, tied and hanging from the limb of the tree above. Its curled and cold fingers reached down just far enough so A SINGLE DEAD FINGERNAIL could scritch and scratch AS THE CORPSE SLOWLY TWISTED IN THE BREEZE.
That story alone set any small sound of the night in a darker shade of blackness. Crickets chirped horribly. A dog barking in the distance was an omen of evil. The mere rustle of grass in the breeze signified ghosts passing in search of things they had lost and we might have inadvertently found, and which they now wanted back. A stray moth's fluttering wings on the canvas overhead buzzed like a madman's chainsaw. Even dead silence was proof zombie cereal killers were creeping silently forward to pounce, carrying boxes of Lucky Charms in their crooked, bloody fingers.
My brother and I were veterans in the standard spook stuff, the updated versions of stories surely told in the shadow of the pyramids as they were being built along the Nile. Somehow these tales always came to mind when we were lying safe in our sleeping bags, and had helped eat Keith’s candy bars, and our flashlights had been turned off for the night. Then they seeped out of us like water drips from ice. We could no more trace the connection between these stories and Keith’s unaccountable fear of the dark than a tobacco company doctor can link lung cancer with smoking Pall Malls. We only observed that every time Keith came for an overnighter in the back yard, we could count on him beginning to sink down into the Edgar Allen Poe-ish regions of sheer horror and madness long before dawn, no matter now many stories we told to divert his attention and ease his troubled mind.
One would think after a dozen failed attempts, Keith would give up and declare himself a permanent indoors man. But he never did. He was a hardy and hopeful soul. A few nights later, he'd ask to come over and sleep outdoors with us all over again.
One night when Keith camped over with us, we were fresh out of ghost stories. Then someone remembered the blueberry patch in the back yard of the man at the end of the street. We'd spotted it when we rode our bikes down that way earlier that afternoon. The thought of those luscious tart berries waiting for us made our mouths water. Grandpa told us of raiding watermelon patches in the South as a boy and cutting the hearts out of the big melons with a jack knife to eat right in the field. But in Washington State, our Northern growing seasons were generally too short for melons to thrive. They did provide excellent blueberry climate, however. We determined to uphold the traditions of boyhood and do a bit of raiding of our own with what was available and near at hand.
We pulled on our shoes and tiptoed down the dark roadway, past the sleeping houses with an occasional glow of a T.V. through the window. We'd have to be quiet. As late as it was, not everyone was asleep quite yet. As we neared the blueberry patch, we slowed and slunk into the shadows. In fact, we got down on our bellies and crawled the last hundred feet or so, listening carefully. We didn't want to set a stray dog to barking. We feared the owner of the patch might flick on his back porch flood lights and come blasting out to capture our pirate-hearted thieving carcasses. We well knew what we were engaged in was wrong. We learned that at our church where my watermelon-stealing-Grandpa took us to be instructed in the ways of God. Example trumps precept any day. Besides, how could we know true forgiveness if we never actually sinned?
I found myself among the low shrubs in the black of night, fingering tender blueberry twigs.
Ten minutes later I whispered, “Keith, have you found any?”
“No,” he breathed.
“Me neither,” wafted my brother's voice from the shadows beyond.
“Keep looking.”
We spent nearly an hour slinking on our bellies and feeling for forbidden fruit, but without success. It seems God had seen our evil ways, and hidden those luscious jeweled berries from us plundering pirate-hearted scum. We were groping in darkness and sin, but without any appreciable pleasures resulting. Finally, we gave up and withdrew as stealthily as we had come.
We made it back to our backyard tent in safety.
Then our consciences began smiting us. This was a new kind of terror, and it quite outdid mere ghost stories. It occurred to us with great force that WE HAD DONE WRONG. We had intended to STEAL WHAT DID NOT BELONG TO US. That was AGAINST ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the one right after “Do not commit idolatry with your neighbor’s wife”, whatever that meant. IF YOU BROKE ONE, we knew, YOU HAD BROKEN THEM ALL. A blueberry might not be so large a fruit as the Snake offered to Eve, but we’d all heard HOW THAT TURNED OUT.
We were certainly goners. WE HADN'T A HOPE. The fact we had never actually found a single berry didn't matter. GOD COULD SEE IN THE DARK, and He knew what was in our hearts. And OUR HEARTS WERE VERY DARK INDEED. We sat shivering in horror at the enormity of our crime. Our remembrances of religion had taken us as far as the “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God…” part. But not quite so far as the “…being freely justified by faith in Jesus blood” remedy. We were SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD, and it was ALL OUR OWN FAULT.
We sank down into blind, black, mutual misery.
Suddenly, Keith leaped to his feet with a horrible wail. He charged out the tent door, nearly taking out the center pole when the toe of his shoe caught on the zipper flap at the bottom that was supposed to keep out the rain. He plowed through my Mom's prize irises. He careened off the garbage can Dad had set out by the street, leaving a dent we found the next morning. He set off on a lope for home, leaping such obstacles as presented themselves, and wailing his confessions to the dark skies. The Devil was on his track. He dare not look back. The cruel, creeping, craven shivers had struck with a vengeance.
Once Keiths's cries had died away in the echoing darkness, my brother and I muttered our own trembling bedtime prayers, begging for forgiveness, promising reform, hoping for mercy. We had no immunity against this variety of night terror.
The forgiving sun woke me at daybreak. It was a comfort to open my eyes and see the familiar ceiling of my bedroom above, and the light shining in through the curtains. Ghosts were one thing. God was another.
Next day, I rode my bike at the end of the road. I glanced over at the blueberry patch we'd slithered and slunk through the night before. The man who owned them was out in his back yard, watering his roses. I rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and casually glanced over at the blueberry patch, a criminal drawn back to the scene of his crime. After gazing at the blank bushes for some time, I spoke up.
“Where are the blueberries?” I asked.
“This is only June,” he replied. “They don't come ripe for another two months.”
Sometimes still I remember Keith, and what we put him through telling ghost stories and raiding blueberries. On such nights, I lie awake and stare at the dark bedroom ceiling. And somewhere overhead, perhaps in the attic, I hear a faint scritch. Scratch. Scritch. Scratch. Scritch...
Is it a mouse gnawing a ceiling joist? Or could it be SOMETHING ELSE?
“The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” Proverbs 28:1 NIV
Note: * Name changed to preserve a long-time, and still-cherished friendship.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The World's Largest Cowpie, and How It Was Almost Successfully Crossed
The World's Largest Cow Pie was, in fact, achieved by numerous chickens who worked cooperatively over a period of time. This glooping monster was expelled late one winter from a dump truck onto the half acre plot beside the house I grew up for future use as garden fertilizer. Scooped in an eye-watering cloud of ammonia fumes from beneath the laying pens at the chicken farm where we three Johnson kids gathered and packed eggs at two cents per flat, it was, we neighborhood kids were sure, the largest specimen of its kind in existence.
The front loader on the chicken farm tractor plunged in, tilted, backed out, and dumped its big bucket into the back of the dump truck repeatedly. Then began the ride to our garden space in the small neighborhood two towns away. The dump truck backed into the center of the waiting half acre. Then its rear flap was unlatched and the hydraulic lift screamed to lift and shift the massive load. There before our eyes, like the primordial toilet of some great dinosaur, we kids witnessed the creation of The World's Largest Cow Pie. It glurped, steaming, to the cold ground. Fragrant, semi-fluid, and thick as oozing lava, it settled in a puddle about 15 feet across and three feet deep. Within its semi-liquid heart lay my Father's dreams for the finest garden in the neighborhood.
My father's dream was not without foundation. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and knew the power potent fertilizer exerted upon growing things. In his boyhood days before indoor plumbing was common, outhouses were mined each spring and spread on the face of the fields under the euphemistic phrase "night soil", presumably in memory of blizzardy midnights on wooden thrones with drafty bottoms. It was their early equivalent of recycling. Everybody used night soil for fertilizer back then, and nobody complained. But times had changed. Folks had grown more finicky and tender minded. Other views and customs prevailed. So the arrival of The World's Largest Cow Pie, which while it did not emanate from humanity, was still a novelty in our neighborhood. While the concept had many enthusiasts among the younger set, their elders looked upon it with suspicion and upturned noses.
Weeks passed. The initial stink passed. The great cow pie in our garden began to crust over. We neighborhood kids, who had almost forgotten it, looked upon it again with new eyes. The huge crusting over cow pie reminded us of ice freezing over on the nearby ponds during the winter. Only this pond stood three feet deep above the surrounding chickweed in our still-to-be-tilled garden spot. It was brown and crusty, and had cracks on its surface. It didn't smell nearly so badly as the day it first arrived.
We speculated among ourselves that the crust had grown so thick one could walked across it safely. In fact, the more we talked among ourselves, the more we became convinced this was a important fact that needed verification. In the end, we recruited my four-year-old sister, Ingrid, to prove our theory. Ingrid was the most likely subject for the experiment. First, she was young enough to be be pliable. She could be talked into it. Second, she was the littlest and lightest kid in the neighborhood. She had the best chance of pulling it off. Third, we weren't entirely sure the crust would actually hold, so we needed someone else to brave the crossing. We led her, by persuasions and enticements of the glory that would be hers, to the edge of the great heap of moldering dung. Lack of life experience is a dreadful thing when others wish you to attempt what they will not.
Ingrid scaled the side of The World's Largest Cow Pie successfully. Its edges had indeed become hardened as the liquid vaporized or sank into the soil below. Our theory that the dried crust would support her lighter weight proved true--up to a point about six feet from the nearest edge. She was tiptoeing across quite nicely, when, suddenly, the brown crust broke beneath her like treacherous ice. Ingrid sank past her waist into the oozing chicken muck that boiled up from below. We who stood around watching were struck by the sudden fear that the stinking poop would suck her clear under, like quick sand. We set up a general wail that brought my Mom out of the house on the run. My sister floundered toward the edge and reached out a desperate hand. Mom grabbed hold and dragged her to safety. Then she turned on the garden hose and sprayed her off, before stripping her shorts and shirt, wrapping her in a towel, and leading her inside for a warm bath.
The World's Largest Cow Pie had plainly become a hazard to small children. It had nearly swallowed my sister. It might eat more of us. Mom prevailed upon Dad to do something about it. After work over the next week, Dad turned the original monster into a thousand smaller versions of itself. He scooped shovel fulls into his wheelbarrow, transported it through the early spring weeds, and plopped it down every few feet over the garden's entire surface. It looked like our half acre garden spot had hosted a herd of Holsteins with the runs. Only it stank rankly like the chicken poop it was. You could smell the Johnson place before you could see it driving in from town. Complaints from neighbors near and far rose to an angry rumble. What could those Johnson's be doing down there that smelled so bad? Why should they inflict this horrific odor on the entire neighborhood? The stench was enough to gag a maggot.
Dad ignored the neighbors' talk, and kept stolidly shoveling the fragrant stuff. He was a man with a plan, and nobody was going to stop him. Once the great cow pie was distributed, he hired a man with a tractor and a rototiller to come and churn the stinky stuff into garden soil. Then we planted corn, pole and string beans, summer squash, carrots, kohlrabi, tomatoes, beets, cabbages, lettuce, dill, parsley, potatoes, pumpkins, radishes, and the rest in rows and hills.
It mattered little what we planted. Vegetables and weeds alike exploded in glorious profusion. That year our garden easily produced three times more than any other garden in our neighborhood. Our corn patch rose, a mighty forest. The pole beans slithered up and weighted down their holding lines like jungle vines. Tomatoes loomed large in vivid green, weighed down with fruit. Our zucchinis swelled and jutted like torpedoes. Row upon row of the rankest and richest vegetation flourished in Eden-like profusion. Mom's rows of cut flowers for the church pulpit bouquets blossomed, heavy-headed on vigorous stalks. It seems everything that grows likes the taste of chicken manure.
As we lived near the entrance to our street, our lush garden was readily visible to passing neighbors. It produced so much food we were handing out fresh vegetables to anyone who would take it the rest of the summer. People took to locking their car doors at church to keep annonymous bags of zuchinis from appearing on their front seats during services. Back home, the public mood changed. The next spring, every garden plot behind the houses along our street had its own great cow pie installed. It seemed my Dad had become the gardening trend setter. The World's Largest Cow Pie had inspired imitators. Our neighborhood stank for miles. Nobody complained.
As for us kids, we played Robin Hood of Sherwood's forest in the corn patch, built dinosaurs from excess summer squash using kindling sticks for legs and hooking together the body parts, and grazed on fresh vegetables at will. The World's Largest Cow Pie had paid off hansomely.
We never heard of any other kids attempting another cow pie crossing, however. It seems the word had gotten around and grew into local cautionary legend. Sometimes, one experiment is enough.
"The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. When he falls he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the one who holds his hand." Psalm 37:23, 24 NASB
The front loader on the chicken farm tractor plunged in, tilted, backed out, and dumped its big bucket into the back of the dump truck repeatedly. Then began the ride to our garden space in the small neighborhood two towns away. The dump truck backed into the center of the waiting half acre. Then its rear flap was unlatched and the hydraulic lift screamed to lift and shift the massive load. There before our eyes, like the primordial toilet of some great dinosaur, we kids witnessed the creation of The World's Largest Cow Pie. It glurped, steaming, to the cold ground. Fragrant, semi-fluid, and thick as oozing lava, it settled in a puddle about 15 feet across and three feet deep. Within its semi-liquid heart lay my Father's dreams for the finest garden in the neighborhood.
My father's dream was not without foundation. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and knew the power potent fertilizer exerted upon growing things. In his boyhood days before indoor plumbing was common, outhouses were mined each spring and spread on the face of the fields under the euphemistic phrase "night soil", presumably in memory of blizzardy midnights on wooden thrones with drafty bottoms. It was their early equivalent of recycling. Everybody used night soil for fertilizer back then, and nobody complained. But times had changed. Folks had grown more finicky and tender minded. Other views and customs prevailed. So the arrival of The World's Largest Cow Pie, which while it did not emanate from humanity, was still a novelty in our neighborhood. While the concept had many enthusiasts among the younger set, their elders looked upon it with suspicion and upturned noses.
Weeks passed. The initial stink passed. The great cow pie in our garden began to crust over. We neighborhood kids, who had almost forgotten it, looked upon it again with new eyes. The huge crusting over cow pie reminded us of ice freezing over on the nearby ponds during the winter. Only this pond stood three feet deep above the surrounding chickweed in our still-to-be-tilled garden spot. It was brown and crusty, and had cracks on its surface. It didn't smell nearly so badly as the day it first arrived.
We speculated among ourselves that the crust had grown so thick one could walked across it safely. In fact, the more we talked among ourselves, the more we became convinced this was a important fact that needed verification. In the end, we recruited my four-year-old sister, Ingrid, to prove our theory. Ingrid was the most likely subject for the experiment. First, she was young enough to be be pliable. She could be talked into it. Second, she was the littlest and lightest kid in the neighborhood. She had the best chance of pulling it off. Third, we weren't entirely sure the crust would actually hold, so we needed someone else to brave the crossing. We led her, by persuasions and enticements of the glory that would be hers, to the edge of the great heap of moldering dung. Lack of life experience is a dreadful thing when others wish you to attempt what they will not.
Ingrid scaled the side of The World's Largest Cow Pie successfully. Its edges had indeed become hardened as the liquid vaporized or sank into the soil below. Our theory that the dried crust would support her lighter weight proved true--up to a point about six feet from the nearest edge. She was tiptoeing across quite nicely, when, suddenly, the brown crust broke beneath her like treacherous ice. Ingrid sank past her waist into the oozing chicken muck that boiled up from below. We who stood around watching were struck by the sudden fear that the stinking poop would suck her clear under, like quick sand. We set up a general wail that brought my Mom out of the house on the run. My sister floundered toward the edge and reached out a desperate hand. Mom grabbed hold and dragged her to safety. Then she turned on the garden hose and sprayed her off, before stripping her shorts and shirt, wrapping her in a towel, and leading her inside for a warm bath.
The World's Largest Cow Pie had plainly become a hazard to small children. It had nearly swallowed my sister. It might eat more of us. Mom prevailed upon Dad to do something about it. After work over the next week, Dad turned the original monster into a thousand smaller versions of itself. He scooped shovel fulls into his wheelbarrow, transported it through the early spring weeds, and plopped it down every few feet over the garden's entire surface. It looked like our half acre garden spot had hosted a herd of Holsteins with the runs. Only it stank rankly like the chicken poop it was. You could smell the Johnson place before you could see it driving in from town. Complaints from neighbors near and far rose to an angry rumble. What could those Johnson's be doing down there that smelled so bad? Why should they inflict this horrific odor on the entire neighborhood? The stench was enough to gag a maggot.
Dad ignored the neighbors' talk, and kept stolidly shoveling the fragrant stuff. He was a man with a plan, and nobody was going to stop him. Once the great cow pie was distributed, he hired a man with a tractor and a rototiller to come and churn the stinky stuff into garden soil. Then we planted corn, pole and string beans, summer squash, carrots, kohlrabi, tomatoes, beets, cabbages, lettuce, dill, parsley, potatoes, pumpkins, radishes, and the rest in rows and hills.
It mattered little what we planted. Vegetables and weeds alike exploded in glorious profusion. That year our garden easily produced three times more than any other garden in our neighborhood. Our corn patch rose, a mighty forest. The pole beans slithered up and weighted down their holding lines like jungle vines. Tomatoes loomed large in vivid green, weighed down with fruit. Our zucchinis swelled and jutted like torpedoes. Row upon row of the rankest and richest vegetation flourished in Eden-like profusion. Mom's rows of cut flowers for the church pulpit bouquets blossomed, heavy-headed on vigorous stalks. It seems everything that grows likes the taste of chicken manure.
As we lived near the entrance to our street, our lush garden was readily visible to passing neighbors. It produced so much food we were handing out fresh vegetables to anyone who would take it the rest of the summer. People took to locking their car doors at church to keep annonymous bags of zuchinis from appearing on their front seats during services. Back home, the public mood changed. The next spring, every garden plot behind the houses along our street had its own great cow pie installed. It seemed my Dad had become the gardening trend setter. The World's Largest Cow Pie had inspired imitators. Our neighborhood stank for miles. Nobody complained.
As for us kids, we played Robin Hood of Sherwood's forest in the corn patch, built dinosaurs from excess summer squash using kindling sticks for legs and hooking together the body parts, and grazed on fresh vegetables at will. The World's Largest Cow Pie had paid off hansomely.
We never heard of any other kids attempting another cow pie crossing, however. It seems the word had gotten around and grew into local cautionary legend. Sometimes, one experiment is enough.
"The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. When he falls he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the one who holds his hand." Psalm 37:23, 24 NASB
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Things That Are Supposed to Be True About Skunks...But Aren't
When I was a boy, we had three skunks for pets. I caught two of them myself. They were still armed, so to speak. In the process, I disproved certain myths, falsely circulated as facts, concerning this fragrant critter.
My Mom caught our first skunk one summer while blackberry picking in Washington State, where we lived, while the rest of the family was back on my Grandparent's farm in Missouri, where Dad was remodeling a house. By the time we arrived home, Cologne, as she had named the new addition to our rather extensive "family animal menagerie", was as innocuous as a kitten, olfactorily speaking.
The skunk, having such a deadly chemical weapon at its ready disposal, never has had to develop a hostile disposition to ensure survive. As a result, this particular branch of the mammal clan has a rather pleasing personality. Once the twin glands beneath his tail were removed through minor veterinarian surgery, Cologne became as sweet a pet as you could hope to acquire. When my father lay on the bed, Cologne would stand on his chest and pound with his front paws to request the raw hamburger that was his favorite food. He once scrubbed a shrew into mush when we presented one the cat had dragged up on the front porch. He refused to eat the tiny rodent, however. Apparently, he thought it stank. Ground steer was more to his liking.
Attached to a leash, Cologne scooted along the sidewalk like a small dog, much to the amazement and interest of the general public. People were never quite sure whether to draw near in wonder, or flee in terror. Cologne liked being carried. He would even stick his head inside my brother's mouth in search of some fragment of a potato or blot of mustard he might devour, much to us watching kids' delight. We all wondered how far down he would go, so kept a leash on during such experiments, in case a retrieval were required and we must drag him back through my brother's tonsils. All in all, Cologne was a marvelous pet.
One night, Cologne escaped through the kicked-through bottom of our front screen door when someone forgot to shut the main door. The neighbor boy had kicked in the screen door and come in to help himself to a cube of butter one day when he found the screen door latched. We had never repaired it. We hoped Cologne's reputation would come to his assistance in the great wild world beyond, since his six gun holsters were both empty.
I immediately began dreaming of catching Cologne's replacement.
Us three Johnson kids were still in grade school. As we attended a small, church-operated educational facility that relied on charging tuition rather than taxing the public for its support, we began working to help earn our tuition at an early age. One of our first jobs for pay was gathering eggs on one of the chicken farms that belonged to the doctor in whose clinic my Mom worked. Those long laying houses where the eggs rolled down to the aisles on each side and the chicken poop fell through to the ground below, attracted skunks. They'd come in, along with rats and raccoons from the adjoining woods, to search for such eggs as broke and fell through the wire, or to eat the occasional dead chicken that had been discarded into the stink below. Even over the sometimes over powering smell of ammonia from the juicy droppings, a skunk's smell still carries. There's really nothing else like it in nature. As I gathered eggs, I kept an eye open for a new skunk for a pet. But though I often saw adults of the species, there were none young enough for de-scenting and taming.
Then late one rainy night as we neared home, I spotted a small skunk in the beam of the headlights. "Stop the car!" I howled. Whether in agreement, or in shock, Mom complied. I quickly exited the car in pursuit of the skunk, which disappeared over the dark bank down into the field adjoining my friend, Ken Knutson's parents' house. Even in the near dark, those black and white stripes allowed me to keep his trail.
Now I happened to be wearing my brother's new grizzly bear coat. We each had gotten a new winter coat of fake animal fur a few days earlier. His was imitation grizzly bear's hide, long, dark and tipped with blue highlights. Mine was a blonder longhaired variety with a touch of brown shading--perhaps a polyester buffalo of some sort. I'm not sure why I had John's coat on rather than my own that night. But I do recall him calling, "Watch out for my new coat!" I was too excited at the prospect of capturing my own pet skunk to pay heed. The wild wind and rain snatched away his words as though they had never been spoken.
I trailed the escaping skunk from the mowed field through the Knutson's garden. He dodged this way and that among the rows of corn and pumpkin vines, lifted his tail briefly, but kept on going. Eventually, I cornered him beside the glass door going into the Knutson's basement. There the wall jutted out at the edge of the slab of cement where we shot hoops. He was stuck in the V, and I could head him off whichever way he turned. The skunk whirled to face me in earnest, stomping and lifting his tail, according to the custom of his kind. I ripped off my brother's great grizzly bear coat and began shaking it at the skunk, like a bullfighter taunting the raging beast with a cape.
Based on what I had earlier read concerning skunks, this seemed the most prudent strategy. According to notable experts in wildlife, the common white and black striped skunk has only 6 or 7 squirts of that stinky stuff before he runs dry. The implication is that if you can entice him to use up that ammunition, you can pick him up safely at your leisure. The poor little skunk must have thought that great, fake-furred grizzly had him for sure. Each time I lunged forward, he'd go up on his forelegs and cut loose with another blinding blast of nose venom.
One!
Two!
Three!
Four!
Five!
Six!
Seven!
Ha! He was all squirted out. I had him now. I lowered my brother's odiferous coat to allow an unimpeded view of my quarry.
Eight!
Nine!
He nailed me with two withering shots that smelled like essence of burned rubber, and which, by all written accounts by armchair nature experts, couldn't possibly have been in his gun. My jaw dropped open and my eyes widened in amazement. I lowered the coat even further to view this marvel of nature.
Ten!
In the end, I caught that skunk just as Dr. Knutson, who had been watching T.V. in the basement, slid the glass door open to find out what was causing the horrific stench to permeate his living quarters. My friend's father, being a hunter, owned a shotgun. He sometimes emptied the lead shot and reloaded the shells with rock salt to educate dogs that toppled his trashcans. He was angry enough to educate me in a similar fashion, I think. But he couldn't chance a shot with the skunk in such close proximity without becoming liable to incur additional damages. So I made my escape.
I strode home in a swirling cloud of victory, with Cologne the Second held at arm's length in the furry folds of my brother's ruined grizzly bear coat. Everyone in the neighborhood knew something had tangled with a skunk before I arrived at that one place where, if you come, they have to take you in. Fortunately, my family did not own firearms. No one wanted to get near enough to me to whop me, as I deserved with a belt, or even to prod me with a broom handle. So they locked the doors and called out hopeful instructions through cracked windows.
My crimes against humanity were such that I escaped direct punishment, other than the simple expedient of social banishment. I dropped the new skunk into a large ice chest beside the garage, carefully inserting some milk-soaked bread and a broken egg for his supper, as we had no hamburger available. I wanted Cologne the Second to survive until we could get him to the vet for descenting. Then I began the futile effort of attempting the impossibility of cleansing my stinking self back into civilized society again.
According to the experts I had consulting among the weekly armloads of books we checked out from the local library, there are, in fact, several suitable liquids legendary for their ability to remove scent of the skunk from one's defiled person and clothing. Some experts list their favorite few. Others offer different suggestions. Occasionally, the experts' lists overlap. Besides having arrived in print, these recommendations have one thing in common: They don't work.
I tried quarts of tomato juice, vinegar, bleach, ammonia, laundry detergent, and even gasoline. These only enhanced, rather than removed, the original fragrance. In the end, I buried my brother's grizzly bear coat, along with the rest of the clothes I had been wearing, in a deep hole at the end of our garden. That, I had read, is also a recommended method for removing smell of skunk. Unlike the liquid suggestions, burial actually works. So long as you bury it deep enough. So long as you never dig the clothes up again ever. So long as you have included the essential step of burying yourself along with them.
For the next several days, the teacher at our grade school sat me at a desk by the open classroom window. My condition made me a little neurotic. Out on the playground at recess I could tag along with the games, so long as we played outdoors and I was careful to stay down wind. Inside, it was a different matter. On warm afternoons, when I began to perspire, I could smell myself. I was sure everyone else in the classroom could as well--particularly when they started choking and gagging and wiping their eyes. That sort of thing can put a permanent dent in a boy's budding psyche.
Eventually, the skunk's smell faded. By then, Cologne the Second was also a memory. He had eaten the bread and egg I provided, nosed open the crack in the lid of the ice chest, and returned to the wilds from which I had snatched him the same night I caught him.
Several weeks passed before I encountered Cologne the Third. I was coming back along the lane from Horseshoe Lake, which lay a half-mile behind the Knutson's property. We'd go down there fishing in the summer and hunting with BB guns in the fall and winter. By now, it was fall. I looked up the muddy lane to see a half grown skunk crossing between brush rows that bordered the lane. I immediately dropped my BB gun, ripped off my outer long-sleeved shirt, and began the bullfighting stance required for capture. One tends to revert to old habits in a crisis, even if they didn't work well before.
Exactly as the experts stated, the skunk, when disturbed, first pounds the ground with his front feet. That's his sign language means of warning you to back off. Then he lifts his tail. If you still don't get the message, he raised up on his front paws, lifting his hind legs over his shoulders and arching his back so that he can both shoot you over his own head and see what he's aiming at the same time. This is rather a neat acrobatic trick if you see it on a nature show on T.V., rather than in person.
I saw the yellow globules of spray beginning to spread in the air before they hit me. The wretched odor of concentrated burned rubber smote my nostrils a staggering blow. I gagged, yet I still pressed forward, closing in for the quick capture. I knew I had no idea how many shots this treacherous critter might have stored rectally. But since my last encounter with the species, I had acquired another curious and helpful fact about skunks. The best experts all affirmed it: If you pick up a skunk by its tail, it cannot squirt you. Somehow, dangling by his tail paralyzes the muscles that do the aiming and the ejection of the significant fluids.
I closed in quickly, like an infantryman charging a trench mid-mustard gas attack. The air was thick with the foulest spray, but I had my eye on the prize, that black and white frond of a tail. I reached and caught hold of it, lifting my quarry into the air. There, dangling with all four feet off the ground, the little stinker twisted his small body, looked me in the eye, and let me have a blistering blast at point blank range. So much for the experts' advice.
After that, I swore off skunks. I'd tried the patience of my family, classmates, neighbors, teachers, and fellow church members sufficiently. My interests turned to other wild pets. A half grown crow with an injured wing that my brother and I built a spacious cage for, only to find its new occupant a heap of cold feathers the next morning. Polliwogs with no, one, two, three, and even four legs we scooped from a slough along the road in a fishing net we constructed from the wedding veil we found in my Mom's closet and installed with the goldfish in the bowl on the bookcase. A score of sunfish we brought home and set swimming in our wading pool. The naked, still-blind baby sparrow my Mom found blasted from the nest in the bush beside the back door to the clinic where she worked by a sudden summer downpour. These, along with the more ordinary dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, sheep, chickens, and horse all entered and exited our lives in their turn. When we were collecting insects at school, by brother and I even sent away for praying mantis eggs, hatched them, and had 20 or 30 Mason jars incubators where we raised them on fruit flies.
But of all the members of our family's animal menagerie, none could match the three Colognes, at least in their ability to harness the attention of the neighbors--who involuntarily learned of their capture, and retained that memory for several days. My friend Ken's Dad finally forgave me for catching that skunk on his back porch. It was either that, or kill me. Many years later, Dr. Knutson still shifted in his chair uneasily and eyed me suspiciously when I reminded him of the incident. I had, after all, temporarily driven down housing prices in the area. My brother got a new winter coat. The skunks themselves became a wafting memory. Somewhere in the back of the old garden beside the house where I was raised, under two feet of dirt, lies the moldering remains of a fake grizzly bear's hide. I never did dig up my brother's coat, or the other clothes I buried with it. Some things, once buried, are better left undisturbed.
I recall these things and have written them here because a childhood friend, who sat near me at school, reminded me of the incident earlier today. Apparently, of our many shared memories of growing up together, this is the one that left its mark most deeply engraved in his recollections four decades later.
He remembers how I stank.
"A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." Proverbs 22:3 NIV
My Mom caught our first skunk one summer while blackberry picking in Washington State, where we lived, while the rest of the family was back on my Grandparent's farm in Missouri, where Dad was remodeling a house. By the time we arrived home, Cologne, as she had named the new addition to our rather extensive "family animal menagerie", was as innocuous as a kitten, olfactorily speaking.
The skunk, having such a deadly chemical weapon at its ready disposal, never has had to develop a hostile disposition to ensure survive. As a result, this particular branch of the mammal clan has a rather pleasing personality. Once the twin glands beneath his tail were removed through minor veterinarian surgery, Cologne became as sweet a pet as you could hope to acquire. When my father lay on the bed, Cologne would stand on his chest and pound with his front paws to request the raw hamburger that was his favorite food. He once scrubbed a shrew into mush when we presented one the cat had dragged up on the front porch. He refused to eat the tiny rodent, however. Apparently, he thought it stank. Ground steer was more to his liking.
Attached to a leash, Cologne scooted along the sidewalk like a small dog, much to the amazement and interest of the general public. People were never quite sure whether to draw near in wonder, or flee in terror. Cologne liked being carried. He would even stick his head inside my brother's mouth in search of some fragment of a potato or blot of mustard he might devour, much to us watching kids' delight. We all wondered how far down he would go, so kept a leash on during such experiments, in case a retrieval were required and we must drag him back through my brother's tonsils. All in all, Cologne was a marvelous pet.
One night, Cologne escaped through the kicked-through bottom of our front screen door when someone forgot to shut the main door. The neighbor boy had kicked in the screen door and come in to help himself to a cube of butter one day when he found the screen door latched. We had never repaired it. We hoped Cologne's reputation would come to his assistance in the great wild world beyond, since his six gun holsters were both empty.
I immediately began dreaming of catching Cologne's replacement.
Us three Johnson kids were still in grade school. As we attended a small, church-operated educational facility that relied on charging tuition rather than taxing the public for its support, we began working to help earn our tuition at an early age. One of our first jobs for pay was gathering eggs on one of the chicken farms that belonged to the doctor in whose clinic my Mom worked. Those long laying houses where the eggs rolled down to the aisles on each side and the chicken poop fell through to the ground below, attracted skunks. They'd come in, along with rats and raccoons from the adjoining woods, to search for such eggs as broke and fell through the wire, or to eat the occasional dead chicken that had been discarded into the stink below. Even over the sometimes over powering smell of ammonia from the juicy droppings, a skunk's smell still carries. There's really nothing else like it in nature. As I gathered eggs, I kept an eye open for a new skunk for a pet. But though I often saw adults of the species, there were none young enough for de-scenting and taming.
Then late one rainy night as we neared home, I spotted a small skunk in the beam of the headlights. "Stop the car!" I howled. Whether in agreement, or in shock, Mom complied. I quickly exited the car in pursuit of the skunk, which disappeared over the dark bank down into the field adjoining my friend, Ken Knutson's parents' house. Even in the near dark, those black and white stripes allowed me to keep his trail.
Now I happened to be wearing my brother's new grizzly bear coat. We each had gotten a new winter coat of fake animal fur a few days earlier. His was imitation grizzly bear's hide, long, dark and tipped with blue highlights. Mine was a blonder longhaired variety with a touch of brown shading--perhaps a polyester buffalo of some sort. I'm not sure why I had John's coat on rather than my own that night. But I do recall him calling, "Watch out for my new coat!" I was too excited at the prospect of capturing my own pet skunk to pay heed. The wild wind and rain snatched away his words as though they had never been spoken.
I trailed the escaping skunk from the mowed field through the Knutson's garden. He dodged this way and that among the rows of corn and pumpkin vines, lifted his tail briefly, but kept on going. Eventually, I cornered him beside the glass door going into the Knutson's basement. There the wall jutted out at the edge of the slab of cement where we shot hoops. He was stuck in the V, and I could head him off whichever way he turned. The skunk whirled to face me in earnest, stomping and lifting his tail, according to the custom of his kind. I ripped off my brother's great grizzly bear coat and began shaking it at the skunk, like a bullfighter taunting the raging beast with a cape.
Based on what I had earlier read concerning skunks, this seemed the most prudent strategy. According to notable experts in wildlife, the common white and black striped skunk has only 6 or 7 squirts of that stinky stuff before he runs dry. The implication is that if you can entice him to use up that ammunition, you can pick him up safely at your leisure. The poor little skunk must have thought that great, fake-furred grizzly had him for sure. Each time I lunged forward, he'd go up on his forelegs and cut loose with another blinding blast of nose venom.
One!
Two!
Three!
Four!
Five!
Six!
Seven!
Ha! He was all squirted out. I had him now. I lowered my brother's odiferous coat to allow an unimpeded view of my quarry.
Eight!
Nine!
He nailed me with two withering shots that smelled like essence of burned rubber, and which, by all written accounts by armchair nature experts, couldn't possibly have been in his gun. My jaw dropped open and my eyes widened in amazement. I lowered the coat even further to view this marvel of nature.
Ten!
In the end, I caught that skunk just as Dr. Knutson, who had been watching T.V. in the basement, slid the glass door open to find out what was causing the horrific stench to permeate his living quarters. My friend's father, being a hunter, owned a shotgun. He sometimes emptied the lead shot and reloaded the shells with rock salt to educate dogs that toppled his trashcans. He was angry enough to educate me in a similar fashion, I think. But he couldn't chance a shot with the skunk in such close proximity without becoming liable to incur additional damages. So I made my escape.
I strode home in a swirling cloud of victory, with Cologne the Second held at arm's length in the furry folds of my brother's ruined grizzly bear coat. Everyone in the neighborhood knew something had tangled with a skunk before I arrived at that one place where, if you come, they have to take you in. Fortunately, my family did not own firearms. No one wanted to get near enough to me to whop me, as I deserved with a belt, or even to prod me with a broom handle. So they locked the doors and called out hopeful instructions through cracked windows.
My crimes against humanity were such that I escaped direct punishment, other than the simple expedient of social banishment. I dropped the new skunk into a large ice chest beside the garage, carefully inserting some milk-soaked bread and a broken egg for his supper, as we had no hamburger available. I wanted Cologne the Second to survive until we could get him to the vet for descenting. Then I began the futile effort of attempting the impossibility of cleansing my stinking self back into civilized society again.
According to the experts I had consulting among the weekly armloads of books we checked out from the local library, there are, in fact, several suitable liquids legendary for their ability to remove scent of the skunk from one's defiled person and clothing. Some experts list their favorite few. Others offer different suggestions. Occasionally, the experts' lists overlap. Besides having arrived in print, these recommendations have one thing in common: They don't work.
I tried quarts of tomato juice, vinegar, bleach, ammonia, laundry detergent, and even gasoline. These only enhanced, rather than removed, the original fragrance. In the end, I buried my brother's grizzly bear coat, along with the rest of the clothes I had been wearing, in a deep hole at the end of our garden. That, I had read, is also a recommended method for removing smell of skunk. Unlike the liquid suggestions, burial actually works. So long as you bury it deep enough. So long as you never dig the clothes up again ever. So long as you have included the essential step of burying yourself along with them.
For the next several days, the teacher at our grade school sat me at a desk by the open classroom window. My condition made me a little neurotic. Out on the playground at recess I could tag along with the games, so long as we played outdoors and I was careful to stay down wind. Inside, it was a different matter. On warm afternoons, when I began to perspire, I could smell myself. I was sure everyone else in the classroom could as well--particularly when they started choking and gagging and wiping their eyes. That sort of thing can put a permanent dent in a boy's budding psyche.
Eventually, the skunk's smell faded. By then, Cologne the Second was also a memory. He had eaten the bread and egg I provided, nosed open the crack in the lid of the ice chest, and returned to the wilds from which I had snatched him the same night I caught him.
Several weeks passed before I encountered Cologne the Third. I was coming back along the lane from Horseshoe Lake, which lay a half-mile behind the Knutson's property. We'd go down there fishing in the summer and hunting with BB guns in the fall and winter. By now, it was fall. I looked up the muddy lane to see a half grown skunk crossing between brush rows that bordered the lane. I immediately dropped my BB gun, ripped off my outer long-sleeved shirt, and began the bullfighting stance required for capture. One tends to revert to old habits in a crisis, even if they didn't work well before.
Exactly as the experts stated, the skunk, when disturbed, first pounds the ground with his front feet. That's his sign language means of warning you to back off. Then he lifts his tail. If you still don't get the message, he raised up on his front paws, lifting his hind legs over his shoulders and arching his back so that he can both shoot you over his own head and see what he's aiming at the same time. This is rather a neat acrobatic trick if you see it on a nature show on T.V., rather than in person.
I saw the yellow globules of spray beginning to spread in the air before they hit me. The wretched odor of concentrated burned rubber smote my nostrils a staggering blow. I gagged, yet I still pressed forward, closing in for the quick capture. I knew I had no idea how many shots this treacherous critter might have stored rectally. But since my last encounter with the species, I had acquired another curious and helpful fact about skunks. The best experts all affirmed it: If you pick up a skunk by its tail, it cannot squirt you. Somehow, dangling by his tail paralyzes the muscles that do the aiming and the ejection of the significant fluids.
I closed in quickly, like an infantryman charging a trench mid-mustard gas attack. The air was thick with the foulest spray, but I had my eye on the prize, that black and white frond of a tail. I reached and caught hold of it, lifting my quarry into the air. There, dangling with all four feet off the ground, the little stinker twisted his small body, looked me in the eye, and let me have a blistering blast at point blank range. So much for the experts' advice.
After that, I swore off skunks. I'd tried the patience of my family, classmates, neighbors, teachers, and fellow church members sufficiently. My interests turned to other wild pets. A half grown crow with an injured wing that my brother and I built a spacious cage for, only to find its new occupant a heap of cold feathers the next morning. Polliwogs with no, one, two, three, and even four legs we scooped from a slough along the road in a fishing net we constructed from the wedding veil we found in my Mom's closet and installed with the goldfish in the bowl on the bookcase. A score of sunfish we brought home and set swimming in our wading pool. The naked, still-blind baby sparrow my Mom found blasted from the nest in the bush beside the back door to the clinic where she worked by a sudden summer downpour. These, along with the more ordinary dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, sheep, chickens, and horse all entered and exited our lives in their turn. When we were collecting insects at school, by brother and I even sent away for praying mantis eggs, hatched them, and had 20 or 30 Mason jars incubators where we raised them on fruit flies.
But of all the members of our family's animal menagerie, none could match the three Colognes, at least in their ability to harness the attention of the neighbors--who involuntarily learned of their capture, and retained that memory for several days. My friend Ken's Dad finally forgave me for catching that skunk on his back porch. It was either that, or kill me. Many years later, Dr. Knutson still shifted in his chair uneasily and eyed me suspiciously when I reminded him of the incident. I had, after all, temporarily driven down housing prices in the area. My brother got a new winter coat. The skunks themselves became a wafting memory. Somewhere in the back of the old garden beside the house where I was raised, under two feet of dirt, lies the moldering remains of a fake grizzly bear's hide. I never did dig up my brother's coat, or the other clothes I buried with it. Some things, once buried, are better left undisturbed.
I recall these things and have written them here because a childhood friend, who sat near me at school, reminded me of the incident earlier today. Apparently, of our many shared memories of growing up together, this is the one that left its mark most deeply engraved in his recollections four decades later.
He remembers how I stank.
"A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." Proverbs 22:3 NIV
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk
I'd gone over to the church with my guitar one evening to sit up near the dark pulpit and sing my prayers to God before retiring for the night. As I was in the midst of my musical devotions, I felt the inspiration for a new song rising in me. I fumbled on a chord progression and a melody began weaving its way through my mind. Suddenly, there was the image of a robed man riding through the desert on a great, white stallion. For a long-time songwriter, that's irresistible. I knew this song was to be a desert love song.
That seemed somewhat out of place in the midst of my prayer. I tried to ignor the image, with success. Finally, I told God my goodnights, and drove on home to sit down and get that song out of me. I knew I wouldn't sleep until I had done so. It ended up being a somewhat unusual love song, with the theme of two lovers who found each other against all odds in the sweltering and shivering cold of the desert by means of a perfumed tent. While the imagery was Arabian Nights exotic, there was enough of the story of my own wife's courage and sacrifice in our past relationship that I went in and sat on the edge of the bed and sang it, still not performance ready, for her. "Its really about us!" I told her.
But I learned the next morning that it was about more than I had thought. In my regular morning personal reading of the Bible, I happened upon the recipe for the perfumed annointing oil used in the sacred service of the sanctuary tent where God's people worshipped Him during the 40 years of desert wandering on their way to the Promised Land. (See Exodus 30:22-33) They had used that perfumed oil to annoint pretty much everything connected with the physical objects employed in their worship of God--the tent, the altars, and even the priests themselves. That original "Perfumed Tent" where God, the Great Lover, met with Israel, His Beloved, suddenly made sense to me. The intent behind what would have been a dry bit of Biblical history was plain. This was a love story between God and man.
As I went back to the lyrics to the song I'd written the night before when the imagery had been so impressed on my mind during my prayers, I saw even more than I had the first time. The white stallion is pictured as a part of the imagery of Jesus Second Coming, when He returns to earth for His people. (See Revelation 19:11-13) The three days in the "death zone" of the desert were comparable to Jesus three days in the heart of the earth after His crucifiction. Even the basic connection between the love between a man and a woman being a symbol of God's love for His people was in place. (See Ephesians 5:25-28)
The new song wanting to be written that had interupted my prayers had not been out of place after all. Curiously, a week later, as our Jamaician congregation met for the first time in their new church building in Salem, Massachusetts, my associate lay pastor conducted a service that involved using scented oil to consecrate the new building, its implements of worship, and also those who had gathered there to worship who wished to participate. I'd never seen that done before, but felt the spiritual significance of what occurred that day deeply as a result of what I had already experience in writing the lyric that follows...
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk
Riding my white stallion through the desert,
Fingers tangled tightly in his mane.
My cloak trailing in the wind behind me,
Trying to remember my own name.
The sun's blinding eye high above me,
Dunes smoldering till they meet the sky.
My water bag holds memory of a swallow,
I swore I'd ride to meet her, or die.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
I know I've only one chance in a thousand,
Another mirage vanishes in flame.
Then I catch the scent of rarest perfume,
Drawing me along the path it came.
There beyond these sand dunes I've been climbing,
Where the cool palm rises by the well--
I can see her Scarlet Tent at sunset.
She's waiting for the love I've come to tell.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
For three days I was lost and wandering,
Crazed by the sun, I had lost my way.
Then she poured her jasmine perfume for me,
And its fragrance helped me find my way.
Her silken Scarlet Tent is stained and ruined now,
Rich jasmine bottles emspty on its floor.
But she lies in my arms 'neath bright stars,
We never will be parted anymore.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
Scarlet tent now stained with fragrance--and my journey's done.
c2009 Skip Johnson
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 500 shekels of cassia--all according to the sanctuary shekel--and a hin of olive oil. Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anoinging oil. Then use it to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony, the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basis with its stand.'" Exodus 30:22-28 NIV
That seemed somewhat out of place in the midst of my prayer. I tried to ignor the image, with success. Finally, I told God my goodnights, and drove on home to sit down and get that song out of me. I knew I wouldn't sleep until I had done so. It ended up being a somewhat unusual love song, with the theme of two lovers who found each other against all odds in the sweltering and shivering cold of the desert by means of a perfumed tent. While the imagery was Arabian Nights exotic, there was enough of the story of my own wife's courage and sacrifice in our past relationship that I went in and sat on the edge of the bed and sang it, still not performance ready, for her. "Its really about us!" I told her.
But I learned the next morning that it was about more than I had thought. In my regular morning personal reading of the Bible, I happened upon the recipe for the perfumed annointing oil used in the sacred service of the sanctuary tent where God's people worshipped Him during the 40 years of desert wandering on their way to the Promised Land. (See Exodus 30:22-33) They had used that perfumed oil to annoint pretty much everything connected with the physical objects employed in their worship of God--the tent, the altars, and even the priests themselves. That original "Perfumed Tent" where God, the Great Lover, met with Israel, His Beloved, suddenly made sense to me. The intent behind what would have been a dry bit of Biblical history was plain. This was a love story between God and man.
As I went back to the lyrics to the song I'd written the night before when the imagery had been so impressed on my mind during my prayers, I saw even more than I had the first time. The white stallion is pictured as a part of the imagery of Jesus Second Coming, when He returns to earth for His people. (See Revelation 19:11-13) The three days in the "death zone" of the desert were comparable to Jesus three days in the heart of the earth after His crucifiction. Even the basic connection between the love between a man and a woman being a symbol of God's love for His people was in place. (See Ephesians 5:25-28)
The new song wanting to be written that had interupted my prayers had not been out of place after all. Curiously, a week later, as our Jamaician congregation met for the first time in their new church building in Salem, Massachusetts, my associate lay pastor conducted a service that involved using scented oil to consecrate the new building, its implements of worship, and also those who had gathered there to worship who wished to participate. I'd never seen that done before, but felt the spiritual significance of what occurred that day deeply as a result of what I had already experience in writing the lyric that follows...
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk
Riding my white stallion through the desert,
Fingers tangled tightly in his mane.
My cloak trailing in the wind behind me,
Trying to remember my own name.
The sun's blinding eye high above me,
Dunes smoldering till they meet the sky.
My water bag holds memory of a swallow,
I swore I'd ride to meet her, or die.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
I know I've only one chance in a thousand,
Another mirage vanishes in flame.
Then I catch the scent of rarest perfume,
Drawing me along the path it came.
There beyond these sand dunes I've been climbing,
Where the cool palm rises by the well--
I can see her Scarlet Tent at sunset.
She's waiting for the love I've come to tell.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
For three days I was lost and wandering,
Crazed by the sun, I had lost my way.
Then she poured her jasmine perfume for me,
And its fragrance helped me find my way.
Her silken Scarlet Tent is stained and ruined now,
Rich jasmine bottles emspty on its floor.
But she lies in my arms 'neath bright stars,
We never will be parted anymore.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk pitched 'neath oasis palm.
Scarlet Tent and dark-eyed beauty waiting till I come.
When night skies are ripe with jewels,
This old desert buries fools.
Scarlet Tent of Finest Silk lies where my jounrey's done.
Scarlet tent now stained with fragrance--and my journey's done.
c2009 Skip Johnson
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 500 shekels of cassia--all according to the sanctuary shekel--and a hin of olive oil. Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anoinging oil. Then use it to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony, the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basis with its stand.'" Exodus 30:22-28 NIV
The Ballad of Boston's Stolen Drink
The following lyric is based on actual events, retold here as humorous history. The people of central Massachusetts submerged four towns when the Swift River was dammed to create the Quabbin Reservior to create a water supply for Boston, the largest city of the six New England States.
Town Meetings, which are mentioned, are the place where New Englanders could go ill-informed and sound off anyway. They often occurred in March, and allowed individual residents in the town-based society to have their way about everything down to where the new fire hydrants would be installed. In Vermont, these meetings were generally accompanied by a meal of donated food, and were sometimes referred to as "Vermont's Dinner Theater" due to the local theatrics so often on unrehearsed display.
Attendance by all voters at such events was simply assumed in times gone by, as the following actual notice reveals:
Warning of Town Meeting:
Residents Who Are Legal Voters
Are Hereby Notified and Warned to Meet
The refrain "I'm 'Agin It!" is a characteristically New England one, where a great deal of stubborn joy is derived based on things to which one is opposed. The irony is that Boston has long been champion of individual freedoms--a hotbed for activism of all kinds dating from before the Boston Tea Party. That she should have stolen her water supply at the cost of personal property rights of four towns of neighbors is a point where this grand old American city can properly be needled, as I do in the following lyric...
The Ballad of Boston's Drink
(I'm 'Agin It)
They flooded four towns so Boston could drink,
They dammed up the Swift for Bean Town's sink.
Now the water is rising and I must go,
But next Town Meeting, I'll let them know
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Grandma floating by in her galvanized tub,
Paddling with a broom as she rub-a-dub-dubs.
Granpa on stilts--he's wading like a bird!
In his winter longjohns, he looks absurd.
Mama on our roof, steaming fit to kill.
She loves her home, but she'll have to grow gills.
Papa rides the barn door with a rooster and a pig.
He tunes his fiddle and he plays this jig:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Sister in her cradle caught the dob by the tail.
Wherever he swims, that's where she'll sail.
Parson on his pulpit, swirling on by,
Saying his prayers, trying to keep dry.
Brother rides shotgun on the chicken coop roof,
With poor Aunt Sally and three sheep on the hoof--
Trying to keep balance so their perch won't slant.
As they start to sink, they raise this chant:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Well, that next Town Meeting, it never came.
Now the Swift swirls 'round down Bean Town's drain.
There in the city, they drink mighty good,
But here's one thing I'd tell them, if I could:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
c2009 Skip Johnson
"You shall not steal." (The eighth of the Ten Commandments) Exodus 20:15 NIV
Town Meetings, which are mentioned, are the place where New Englanders could go ill-informed and sound off anyway. They often occurred in March, and allowed individual residents in the town-based society to have their way about everything down to where the new fire hydrants would be installed. In Vermont, these meetings were generally accompanied by a meal of donated food, and were sometimes referred to as "Vermont's Dinner Theater" due to the local theatrics so often on unrehearsed display.
Attendance by all voters at such events was simply assumed in times gone by, as the following actual notice reveals:
Warning of Town Meeting:
Residents Who Are Legal Voters
Are Hereby Notified and Warned to Meet
The refrain "I'm 'Agin It!" is a characteristically New England one, where a great deal of stubborn joy is derived based on things to which one is opposed. The irony is that Boston has long been champion of individual freedoms--a hotbed for activism of all kinds dating from before the Boston Tea Party. That she should have stolen her water supply at the cost of personal property rights of four towns of neighbors is a point where this grand old American city can properly be needled, as I do in the following lyric...
The Ballad of Boston's Drink
(I'm 'Agin It)
They flooded four towns so Boston could drink,
They dammed up the Swift for Bean Town's sink.
Now the water is rising and I must go,
But next Town Meeting, I'll let them know
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Grandma floating by in her galvanized tub,
Paddling with a broom as she rub-a-dub-dubs.
Granpa on stilts--he's wading like a bird!
In his winter longjohns, he looks absurd.
Mama on our roof, steaming fit to kill.
She loves her home, but she'll have to grow gills.
Papa rides the barn door with a rooster and a pig.
He tunes his fiddle and he plays this jig:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Sister in her cradle caught the dob by the tail.
Wherever he swims, that's where she'll sail.
Parson on his pulpit, swirling on by,
Saying his prayers, trying to keep dry.
Brother rides shotgun on the chicken coop roof,
With poor Aunt Sally and three sheep on the hoof--
Trying to keep balance so their perch won't slant.
As they start to sink, they raise this chant:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Well, that next Town Meeting, it never came.
Now the Swift swirls 'round down Bean Town's drain.
There in the city, they drink mighty good,
But here's one thing I'd tell them, if I could:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
c2009 Skip Johnson
"You shall not steal." (The eighth of the Ten Commandments) Exodus 20:15 NIV
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Old Man's Paradise (For My Father)
A year ago today, my Father died on the sofa at home, surrounded by his wife and we three grown children who had traveled from both coasts to be with him at the end. While I miss my Dad, I would not have wished an extention to his 83 years of earthly life. He was the most active and hard-working man I have ever known. I had to go out and build houses with him to get to know him growing up. I remember leaving in the gray of morning my sixth grade summer to pound shingles on the house we were building for a fellow teacher who worked at the girl's reform school where Dad was English teacher and librarian. By the summer I graduated from high school, I ran my own crew of eight building a barn and a house. No worries. I'd learned the carpentry trade from my Dad. I had six summers and school vacations of building skills under my leather carpenter's belt by that time.
Still, I did go down to the nearest pay phone and called Dad for advice the evening before we hoisted that huge beam to the peak of the second floor living room. He said, "Make sure you've got two ropes on it, Skip." I did. The monster beam winched into place without a hitch. If it had fallen, it wouldn't have stopped until it hit the slab 30 feet and two floors below. Now everything else he taught me can never be forgotten. It is hardwired into me, a part of who I am and how I see life.
The stroke that laid Dad low so quickly and dialated the pupil in one eye would have put him at the least in a wheel chair, and at most in a nursing home bed, perhaps for months, or even years. He would have hated that. Better he go as he did, after a sudden illness and surrounded by those who loved him. He had been working on the plumbing in the house a week before his death, and had won the "Lawn of the Town" award for his landscaping efforts the month before his passing. A quick death is the kiss of God.
I knew for years one of my generally annual visits to see him would be the last. All of his brothers and many of his friends had already gone. It was only a matter of time. He knew he was getting to be "the last leaf on the tree". I knew it, too. I mourned my father's passing in advance, in part with the lyric that follows. I will always believe that Dad held out until he knew I was on my way for a month long visit before letting go and slipping away. Curious how the longest vacation I have ever taken coincided with the death of the hardest working man I've ever known.
Things had gotten more and more difficult for him as the years bent his frame, as old work injuries, and new ones he regularly inflicted on himself in attempting to work as he had done in his youth, kept closing in. "I can only lift 50 pounds anymore," he would complain. "I can only work four hours at a stretch before I have to come in and lie down for a while." We'd read those letters and know all was well in the world. Dad was working, so the world must be spinning in its proper courses.
It was fortunate my Mother was a nurse. She kept Dad alive and patched up for those final dozen years as he broke a leg when a pile of lumber fell over on him off saw horses, then took the dive down the basement steps that battered his face and left his forhead with a huge black and blue patch, then tore his rotator cuff trying to use a large drill to pierce concrete, then fell off another roof or ladder. I did not fear for my father's safety, nor encourage him to retire to a rocking chair on the front porch of the final of many homes he had either built or remodeled. I knew him too well. He would have counted himself most blessed to die in a "work related accident". Such a thing would have been an entirely fitting end to a life marked by both a keen teacher's intellect, and the calloused hands of a carpenter and gardener. So my prayers weren't for Dad's safety so much as for my Mother's endurance. It isn't easy keeping a guy patched up who works like he's a third his actual age.
My father is gone now, but certainly not forgotten. He wrote me every week for many years, with his letters giving his musings on life, listing his intended projects around the yard and house, and telling me what a wonderful wife my Mom was to him. Sometimes he'd tell me, "Now I don't want to give you advice..." then go ahead and do it. Sometimes, it was helpful. Other times, he didn't know enough about the situation for the advice to work. But always I knew he loved me. Perhaps the most important words my father spoke to me was contained in one of those letters. He had seen the results of the ministry I was engaged in. He wrote, "Skip, God is still in the business of saving souls--and He is using you to do it."
I often wish I had written him back as faithfully, but perhaps that is a debt I owe now to my own sons some day when I'm older, and they are far away.
One of those weekly letters Dad sent apparently slipped behind the desk in the hallway. We located it, still unopened, several months after his passing. Sitting down to read it was rather like listening to a voice from beyond the grave. Dad wrote, "I can't hear anymore. Soon I'll leave this life. God willing, in heaven I'll get new ears." I'm sure God will give you new ears, Dad. That comes with your new body. One thing I know for certain: When God turns my Father loose in Paradise restored, He won't have any worries about the grounds not being tended. Dad will take care of that.
I post this in memory of a great and good though humble and largely unknown man. He was someone full of faith and wisdom, not perfect, certainly--but a grand old warrior who won and wore his scars well. I am proud to call him my father. If I become half the man my father was, I'll be doing well.
Old Man's Paradise
My hands shake.
Its hard to hold a pen to sign my name.
My ears ring.
It seems my vision changes day to day.
Can't see through my new glasses,
And these dentures hurt my gums.
I forget to take my pills,
When did I grow so dumb?
My back hurts.
I stumbled and fell again last week.
I can't sleep.
I don't hear a single word my family speaks.
When our preacher starts his sermon,
I know his lips still move--
Can't hear him, but I hear God
Beside me in the pew.
Sometimes my thoughts get tangled,
And tears run from my eyes.
I used to be so strong.
What did I do wrong,
That I should live this long
In an Old Man's Paradise?
I can't drive--
Except the riding mower here at home.
I've lost weight.
My daughter says I shouldn't stay alone.
My mind weaves dreams and memories
Of when I was a boy.
The sight of my great grandson
Is my greatest joy.
I still work.
I putter fixing screens and mow the lawn.
I still pray
Through endless silent nights that stretch so long.
My cane's beside my bed,
And my walker's by the door.
I've written it all down,
But whose this letter for?
Sometimes my thoughts get tangled,
And tears run from my eyes.
I used to be so strong.
What did I do wrong,
That I should live this long
In an Old Man's Paradise?
I used to stand so tall,
Now I hobble, or I crawl.
But the Good Lord hears my call
In this Old Man's Paradise.
Though life's not always nice,
Each day I thank God twice
For His sun that shines like ice
In this Old Man's Paradise.
In this Old Man's Paradise.
c2009 Skip Johnson
"Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, befoe the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, 'I find no pleasure in them'". Ecclesiastes 12:1 NIV
P.S. I was trying to figure out why all but one of the blogs on this new blog my dear wife, Judi, just set up for me were about old people. I think it is because Dad has been on my mind on this anniversary of his death.
Still, I did go down to the nearest pay phone and called Dad for advice the evening before we hoisted that huge beam to the peak of the second floor living room. He said, "Make sure you've got two ropes on it, Skip." I did. The monster beam winched into place without a hitch. If it had fallen, it wouldn't have stopped until it hit the slab 30 feet and two floors below. Now everything else he taught me can never be forgotten. It is hardwired into me, a part of who I am and how I see life.
The stroke that laid Dad low so quickly and dialated the pupil in one eye would have put him at the least in a wheel chair, and at most in a nursing home bed, perhaps for months, or even years. He would have hated that. Better he go as he did, after a sudden illness and surrounded by those who loved him. He had been working on the plumbing in the house a week before his death, and had won the "Lawn of the Town" award for his landscaping efforts the month before his passing. A quick death is the kiss of God.
I knew for years one of my generally annual visits to see him would be the last. All of his brothers and many of his friends had already gone. It was only a matter of time. He knew he was getting to be "the last leaf on the tree". I knew it, too. I mourned my father's passing in advance, in part with the lyric that follows. I will always believe that Dad held out until he knew I was on my way for a month long visit before letting go and slipping away. Curious how the longest vacation I have ever taken coincided with the death of the hardest working man I've ever known.
Things had gotten more and more difficult for him as the years bent his frame, as old work injuries, and new ones he regularly inflicted on himself in attempting to work as he had done in his youth, kept closing in. "I can only lift 50 pounds anymore," he would complain. "I can only work four hours at a stretch before I have to come in and lie down for a while." We'd read those letters and know all was well in the world. Dad was working, so the world must be spinning in its proper courses.
It was fortunate my Mother was a nurse. She kept Dad alive and patched up for those final dozen years as he broke a leg when a pile of lumber fell over on him off saw horses, then took the dive down the basement steps that battered his face and left his forhead with a huge black and blue patch, then tore his rotator cuff trying to use a large drill to pierce concrete, then fell off another roof or ladder. I did not fear for my father's safety, nor encourage him to retire to a rocking chair on the front porch of the final of many homes he had either built or remodeled. I knew him too well. He would have counted himself most blessed to die in a "work related accident". Such a thing would have been an entirely fitting end to a life marked by both a keen teacher's intellect, and the calloused hands of a carpenter and gardener. So my prayers weren't for Dad's safety so much as for my Mother's endurance. It isn't easy keeping a guy patched up who works like he's a third his actual age.
My father is gone now, but certainly not forgotten. He wrote me every week for many years, with his letters giving his musings on life, listing his intended projects around the yard and house, and telling me what a wonderful wife my Mom was to him. Sometimes he'd tell me, "Now I don't want to give you advice..." then go ahead and do it. Sometimes, it was helpful. Other times, he didn't know enough about the situation for the advice to work. But always I knew he loved me. Perhaps the most important words my father spoke to me was contained in one of those letters. He had seen the results of the ministry I was engaged in. He wrote, "Skip, God is still in the business of saving souls--and He is using you to do it."
I often wish I had written him back as faithfully, but perhaps that is a debt I owe now to my own sons some day when I'm older, and they are far away.
One of those weekly letters Dad sent apparently slipped behind the desk in the hallway. We located it, still unopened, several months after his passing. Sitting down to read it was rather like listening to a voice from beyond the grave. Dad wrote, "I can't hear anymore. Soon I'll leave this life. God willing, in heaven I'll get new ears." I'm sure God will give you new ears, Dad. That comes with your new body. One thing I know for certain: When God turns my Father loose in Paradise restored, He won't have any worries about the grounds not being tended. Dad will take care of that.
I post this in memory of a great and good though humble and largely unknown man. He was someone full of faith and wisdom, not perfect, certainly--but a grand old warrior who won and wore his scars well. I am proud to call him my father. If I become half the man my father was, I'll be doing well.
Old Man's Paradise
My hands shake.
Its hard to hold a pen to sign my name.
My ears ring.
It seems my vision changes day to day.
Can't see through my new glasses,
And these dentures hurt my gums.
I forget to take my pills,
When did I grow so dumb?
My back hurts.
I stumbled and fell again last week.
I can't sleep.
I don't hear a single word my family speaks.
When our preacher starts his sermon,
I know his lips still move--
Can't hear him, but I hear God
Beside me in the pew.
Sometimes my thoughts get tangled,
And tears run from my eyes.
I used to be so strong.
What did I do wrong,
That I should live this long
In an Old Man's Paradise?
I can't drive--
Except the riding mower here at home.
I've lost weight.
My daughter says I shouldn't stay alone.
My mind weaves dreams and memories
Of when I was a boy.
The sight of my great grandson
Is my greatest joy.
I still work.
I putter fixing screens and mow the lawn.
I still pray
Through endless silent nights that stretch so long.
My cane's beside my bed,
And my walker's by the door.
I've written it all down,
But whose this letter for?
Sometimes my thoughts get tangled,
And tears run from my eyes.
I used to be so strong.
What did I do wrong,
That I should live this long
In an Old Man's Paradise?
I used to stand so tall,
Now I hobble, or I crawl.
But the Good Lord hears my call
In this Old Man's Paradise.
Though life's not always nice,
Each day I thank God twice
For His sun that shines like ice
In this Old Man's Paradise.
In this Old Man's Paradise.
c2009 Skip Johnson
"Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, befoe the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, 'I find no pleasure in them'". Ecclesiastes 12:1 NIV
P.S. I was trying to figure out why all but one of the blogs on this new blog my dear wife, Judi, just set up for me were about old people. I think it is because Dad has been on my mind on this anniversary of his death.
Old Woman's Bucket
The following lyric is based on a true story told me by an old gentleman who came for screening to our "Take It to Heart" health van at Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts. When he learned of our efforts to help people adopt healthful habits which would promote long life, it jogged his memory concerning something he had heard as a boy growing up in the Appalachian Mountains. I asked him if I could quote him on the story he had told me. He said, "Why, yes. I wouldn't tell you a lie. This really happened. I knew the old woman myself when I was a boy."
I've set his bare outline of a story to meter, rhymn and music, and included God as the "Silent Partner" in the long conversation that follows.
Old Woman's Bucket
Old woman in her cabin in the Appalachian Mountains,
Far from the freeways and the bright city light.
She lived all alone miles beyond the nearest faucet,
And she prayed this prayer when she knelt at night...
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm a weary old woman, and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing."
The long years passed as she prayed her prayer,
Each day was the same in the heat and the snow.
She trudged with her bucket to the spring down the mountain
Where the great oak grew and the clear water flowed.
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm a weary old woman, and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing."
Wild flowers bloomed and autumn leaves swirled,
A long decade passed, and then a decade more.
She never got an answer to that prayer she prayed,
But she died last year...age ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR!
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm a weary old woman, and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing."
Now what's your spring and what's your bucket?
What's the rugged trail that's so hard in your eyes?
The next time you kneel, thank the good Lord above.
Each trial He sends is a blessing in disguise.
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm worn and weary and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing.
Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing.
c2009 Skip Johnson
"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will recieve the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him." James 1:12 NIV
I've set his bare outline of a story to meter, rhymn and music, and included God as the "Silent Partner" in the long conversation that follows.
Old Woman's Bucket
Old woman in her cabin in the Appalachian Mountains,
Far from the freeways and the bright city light.
She lived all alone miles beyond the nearest faucet,
And she prayed this prayer when she knelt at night...
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm a weary old woman, and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing."
The long years passed as she prayed her prayer,
Each day was the same in the heat and the snow.
She trudged with her bucket to the spring down the mountain
Where the great oak grew and the clear water flowed.
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm a weary old woman, and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing."
Wild flowers bloomed and autumn leaves swirled,
A long decade passed, and then a decade more.
She never got an answer to that prayer she prayed,
But she died last year...age ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR!
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm a weary old woman, and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing."
Now what's your spring and what's your bucket?
What's the rugged trail that's so hard in your eyes?
The next time you kneel, thank the good Lord above.
Each trial He sends is a blessing in disguise.
"Lord, O Lord, why do I have to carry
My water so far in this bucket from the spring?
I'm worn and weary and the trail's so long.
Dear Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing.
Lord, I keep listening, but You don't say a thing.
c2009 Skip Johnson
"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will recieve the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him." James 1:12 NIV
Singing Hymns on the City Bus
Old Miss Thatcher, she knows God,
Talks to Him every day.
First thing she wakes each morning,
She kneels right down to pray.
Reads her Bible through each year,
Knows all her hymns by heart.
Never misses Preacher's preaching,
Always does her part.
So when Big Jake cursed "Jesus Christ!"
On our city bus,
Old Miss Thatcher's soul blazed up.
You knew there'd be a fuss.
She's singing hymns on the city bus,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Amazing Grace", in God we trust.
Singing hymns on the city bus.
The bus driver got annoyed,
He said she had to stop.
Old Miss Thatcher sang out strong,
So driver flagged a cop.
Police man ordered her to quit--
And Big Jake, he just grinned.
Then that whole bus burst into song,
To help Miss with her hymn!
When Big Jake cursed "Jesus Christ!"
On our city bus,
Old Miss Thatcher's soul caught flame,
You knew there'd be a fuss.
We're singing hymns on the city bus,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Amazing Grace", in God we trust.
Singing hymns on the city bus.
Policeman said, "I have no room
To lock folks up for talk."
Big Jake scowled and found the door,
I guess he'd rather walk.
Driver said, "We'll, okay.
Guess free speech is no crime.
Old Miss Thatcher, you come ride
On my bus anytime."
When Big Jake cursed "Jesus Christ!"
On our city bus,
Old Miss Thatcher's soul caught flame,
You knew there'd be a fuss.
We're singing hymns on the city bus,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Amazing Grace",in God we trust.
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Jesus Loves Me", I know He must,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Old Rugged Cross" won't go to rust,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
Old Miss Thatcher, she knows God,
Talks to Him every day.
c2009 Skip Johnson
All rights reserved
"I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." Jude 1:3 NIV
Talks to Him every day.
First thing she wakes each morning,
She kneels right down to pray.
Reads her Bible through each year,
Knows all her hymns by heart.
Never misses Preacher's preaching,
Always does her part.
So when Big Jake cursed "Jesus Christ!"
On our city bus,
Old Miss Thatcher's soul blazed up.
You knew there'd be a fuss.
She's singing hymns on the city bus,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Amazing Grace", in God we trust.
Singing hymns on the city bus.
The bus driver got annoyed,
He said she had to stop.
Old Miss Thatcher sang out strong,
So driver flagged a cop.
Police man ordered her to quit--
And Big Jake, he just grinned.
Then that whole bus burst into song,
To help Miss with her hymn!
When Big Jake cursed "Jesus Christ!"
On our city bus,
Old Miss Thatcher's soul caught flame,
You knew there'd be a fuss.
We're singing hymns on the city bus,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Amazing Grace", in God we trust.
Singing hymns on the city bus.
Policeman said, "I have no room
To lock folks up for talk."
Big Jake scowled and found the door,
I guess he'd rather walk.
Driver said, "We'll, okay.
Guess free speech is no crime.
Old Miss Thatcher, you come ride
On my bus anytime."
When Big Jake cursed "Jesus Christ!"
On our city bus,
Old Miss Thatcher's soul caught flame,
You knew there'd be a fuss.
We're singing hymns on the city bus,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Amazing Grace",in God we trust.
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Jesus Loves Me", I know He must,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
"Old Rugged Cross" won't go to rust,
Singing hymns on the city bus.
Old Miss Thatcher, she knows God,
Talks to Him every day.
c2009 Skip Johnson
All rights reserved
"I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." Jude 1:3 NIV
The Church is a Charterboat
The church is a charterboat.
She is built for the sea--
for the wave slap,
and the salt spray,
and the chase.
In dock she rests,
and rusts,
and rots.
She tugs at her moorings,
longing for the open skies
and the deep.
The church is a charterboat.
She's heaven's hunter,
the sea's lady,
her Captain's lover.
She dreams of the flash of heavy silver
at forty fathoms--
and fishermen shoutiong for joy
ninety miles from land,
dancing knee deep in albacore
on her decks.
She aches for arched poles at her rails,
the singing line tugging on every side,
and the gull's eager cry as the catch is cleaned
on the homeward trip.
The church is a charterboat.
God is her Maker and Owner.
The patriarchs laid her keel.
The prophets set her spars.
The apostles hammered her hull and decking.
The Spirit christened her at Pentecost.
Her anchor is faith.
Her engine is truth.
Her Captain is Jesus,
high on heaven's bridge--
steering her course for the choice catch
in every age.
The church is a charterboat.
The Bible is her locker
stocked with nets, poles, lines, hooks, weights,
and lures for every need.
Inside the cabin fishermen crouch,
relaxed, yet ready,
warming fingers around steaming mugs.
A father stoops to lace his son's shoe
while others speak in low tones
of fishing past and soon to come.
Below in the hold nestle the bunks,
reserved for early-rising anglers
and battle-weary veterans
exhausted from the day's work.
Only the sea sick sleep
when there are poles to rig
and fish to catch.
(Is your line in the water?)
The church is a charterboat.
The pastor is the baitboy.
He takes orders from the Captain
and works for everybody.
He rigs poles,
replaces lost tackle,
and encourages the beginners.
He clubs the occasional shark,
gives bait or advice,
and announces when it is time
to reel up or let down the lines.
His duty is the fishermen's need.
His pleasure is the fishermen's catch.
His reward is the fishermen's delight
at their heavy sacks of fish.
The church is a charterboat.
She longs for gray dawns
edged with the promise of rose.
She yearns for the brilliant blue blaze
of deep noon.
She trembles for storm-torn peaks of foam
and the dizzy green chasms of brine.
There is life in her.
It strains at the rope
as the worms bore holes in her belly
and the barnacles weigh her down.
The church is a charterboat.
Her passion, the sea.
Her purpose, the chase.
Her passenger, the fisherman.
(Is your line in the water?)
c2009 Skip Johnson
All rights reserved
"Come follow Me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4:19 NIV
She is built for the sea--
for the wave slap,
and the salt spray,
and the chase.
In dock she rests,
and rusts,
and rots.
She tugs at her moorings,
longing for the open skies
and the deep.
The church is a charterboat.
She's heaven's hunter,
the sea's lady,
her Captain's lover.
She dreams of the flash of heavy silver
at forty fathoms--
and fishermen shoutiong for joy
ninety miles from land,
dancing knee deep in albacore
on her decks.
She aches for arched poles at her rails,
the singing line tugging on every side,
and the gull's eager cry as the catch is cleaned
on the homeward trip.
The church is a charterboat.
God is her Maker and Owner.
The patriarchs laid her keel.
The prophets set her spars.
The apostles hammered her hull and decking.
The Spirit christened her at Pentecost.
Her anchor is faith.
Her engine is truth.
Her Captain is Jesus,
high on heaven's bridge--
steering her course for the choice catch
in every age.
The church is a charterboat.
The Bible is her locker
stocked with nets, poles, lines, hooks, weights,
and lures for every need.
Inside the cabin fishermen crouch,
relaxed, yet ready,
warming fingers around steaming mugs.
A father stoops to lace his son's shoe
while others speak in low tones
of fishing past and soon to come.
Below in the hold nestle the bunks,
reserved for early-rising anglers
and battle-weary veterans
exhausted from the day's work.
Only the sea sick sleep
when there are poles to rig
and fish to catch.
(Is your line in the water?)
The church is a charterboat.
The pastor is the baitboy.
He takes orders from the Captain
and works for everybody.
He rigs poles,
replaces lost tackle,
and encourages the beginners.
He clubs the occasional shark,
gives bait or advice,
and announces when it is time
to reel up or let down the lines.
His duty is the fishermen's need.
His pleasure is the fishermen's catch.
His reward is the fishermen's delight
at their heavy sacks of fish.
The church is a charterboat.
She longs for gray dawns
edged with the promise of rose.
She yearns for the brilliant blue blaze
of deep noon.
She trembles for storm-torn peaks of foam
and the dizzy green chasms of brine.
There is life in her.
It strains at the rope
as the worms bore holes in her belly
and the barnacles weigh her down.
The church is a charterboat.
Her passion, the sea.
Her purpose, the chase.
Her passenger, the fisherman.
(Is your line in the water?)
c2009 Skip Johnson
All rights reserved
"Come follow Me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4:19 NIV
An Old Car, an Old Convict, and God
I met an old convict one afternoon at a small prison chapel service. Someone who ministered there earlier warned me in advance this man rarely said anything, but that before going to prison, he had been a restorer of old cars. As there were only a few of us in the chapel, and two hours ministry time available, I decided to ask the old man a few questions about his hobby.
When I showed an interest in old cars, it loosened his tongue. He told of finding an old rusted relic that had been abandoned in a farmer's field. It had no doors. The weather had eaten the paint away. The seats were in tatters. The bent hood covered a motor that had been worked on, then abandoned as a lost cause. Yet to him, the farmer's trash was a treasure.
He told how he bought that old heap, put it on a trailer, and hauled it home to his garage. Then began the long process of restoring it to its original condition. He found the replacement doors in the eaves of another farmer's shed. He actually hand made some of the parts for the motor that were no longer available. In fact, that turned into a small cottage industry when he made even more of the same for other restorers of vintage vehicles. The money he made went into his own project.
He spoke friendships he had made along the way in the years-long process of restoring that junker into a vehicle that became the prize-winning "jewel of the show" at restoration rallies. The old convict spoke on and on, caught up in the memories. That first car, and the others he later restored, had been sold to help support his family when he was placed behind bars. Yet in his mind, they were still as real as if he could reach out his hand and lay it on the soft leather seats and sleek painted hood. It was plain that amid the ruins of own wrecked life, those memories were the high point of success, pride, and achievement. He loved that car. He loved how he felt and who he was back when he was still in the process of making it shine, back before everything had gone so terribly wrong. He spoke quietly for more than a half an hour while the rest of us sat and listened.
Finally, the old convict finished. There was a long silent moment. I looked over at him and said, “That's just what God is doing in your life, my friend.” Tears welled up in his eyes and began rolling down his cheeks. God wasn't finished with him. Not yet. And I knew God wasn't finished with me either.
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus..." Ephesians 2:10 NIV
When I showed an interest in old cars, it loosened his tongue. He told of finding an old rusted relic that had been abandoned in a farmer's field. It had no doors. The weather had eaten the paint away. The seats were in tatters. The bent hood covered a motor that had been worked on, then abandoned as a lost cause. Yet to him, the farmer's trash was a treasure.
He told how he bought that old heap, put it on a trailer, and hauled it home to his garage. Then began the long process of restoring it to its original condition. He found the replacement doors in the eaves of another farmer's shed. He actually hand made some of the parts for the motor that were no longer available. In fact, that turned into a small cottage industry when he made even more of the same for other restorers of vintage vehicles. The money he made went into his own project.
He spoke friendships he had made along the way in the years-long process of restoring that junker into a vehicle that became the prize-winning "jewel of the show" at restoration rallies. The old convict spoke on and on, caught up in the memories. That first car, and the others he later restored, had been sold to help support his family when he was placed behind bars. Yet in his mind, they were still as real as if he could reach out his hand and lay it on the soft leather seats and sleek painted hood. It was plain that amid the ruins of own wrecked life, those memories were the high point of success, pride, and achievement. He loved that car. He loved how he felt and who he was back when he was still in the process of making it shine, back before everything had gone so terribly wrong. He spoke quietly for more than a half an hour while the rest of us sat and listened.
Finally, the old convict finished. There was a long silent moment. I looked over at him and said, “That's just what God is doing in your life, my friend.” Tears welled up in his eyes and began rolling down his cheeks. God wasn't finished with him. Not yet. And I knew God wasn't finished with me either.
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus..." Ephesians 2:10 NIV
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)