Front Porch Tales Read online

  We shock so easily. We ogle fallen saints as if sin were truly a rarity, an unusual bird paying us a visit which sends us scurrying to a book to identify such an alien thing. Are TV preachers the only ones who still believe that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory? In our worship of self-esteem, have we turned a blind eye to sin and consequently to the refreshing touch of divine amnesty?

  This I desire: to sit once more on Saint Mary’s back pew, overhearing the steady rhythm of sin and grace. Not to gloat, but rather to marvel at a people’s confidence in God’s sure pardon.

  Life’s Too Short

  I once spent a pleasant evening in the company of friends who thought my father had just passed away. I had gone to a church gathering to hear a friend speak, and people came up to me to ask how I was doing. Not in the usual way we ask people how they’re doing, when we’re being polite and really don’t care to hear, but in a sincere way with their hands on my shoulder and their voices funeral soft.

  At first, I thought they were just sucking up to me, since a few weeks before a rumor had circulated that I had come into some money, which wasn’t true. I hadn’t refuted it, though, because if you’re going to have a rumor floating around about you, that’s a good one. It sure beats all the other rumors about me, most of which are true.

  Then a man sat down beside me, leaned over, and said, “I’m sorry about your father.” I had talked with my dad that very afternoon but grew alarmed at the thought that something could have happened to him in the short hours since. It would be like my mother to forget to call me if something had happened. I was sitting there being mad at my mother, when the man said, “I read about it in yesterday’s paper.” What had happened was that a man with my father’s name had died and the survivors included a son with my name.

  People from three different churches had prayed for me that morning. If you can ever arrange it to experience that much compassion without having to suffer the pain of a loved one’s passing, I encourage you to take full advantage of it. It was a splendid evening.

  Oh, there were a few drawbacks. One guy, whom I thought was my friend, didn’t say a word to me. The more I think about that, the madder I get. If his father had died, I’d have said something to him. It takes something like this to show you who your real friends are.

  The other drawback is having to explain to people that your father is alive and well after they’ve gone out on an emotional limb to express their sorrow. You can see how they might be embarrassed. It’s hard to talk with someone who has experienced a loss, so after you’ve been a comfort to someone it’s natural to feel good about yourself. I hated to deny them that feeling, so after a while I stopped explaining and started thanking them for their kindness. It seemed the nobler gesture. Naturally, I’ll have to set the record straight someday, but not until folks have stopped dropping food off at the house.

  I called my dad and told him he was supposed to be dead. He thought it was pretty funny and said it explained why people at the grocery store had stared at him that day. My mom didn’t laugh and thought we were sick for joking about it. I’d hate to be a mother. They exhaust themselves trying to civilize us, and we repay them by watching The Three Stooges and letting our pants ride halfway down our bottoms.

  Nevertheless, this whole episode has helped me appreciate compassion and those who show it. I’ve decided I want to be numbered among them. I’ve also decided to forgive the friend who made no effort to console me. After all, life’s too short. Just ask my dad.

  Observations

  When I was nine years old, we moved from a ranch house to a rambling, turn-of-the-century house across town. The last thing the movers packed were our bicycles, which meant they were the first to come off the truck. I pedaled mine next door to meet the neighbors, whom I was sure would have a nine-year-old boy just waiting to show me the neighborhood ropes. What I got instead was a Quaker widow named Mrs. Draper. Initially, I felt gypped. But after a while, when she began turning out popcorn balls and cookies, I realized I had hit the mother lode.

  Mrs. Draper—we called her Mawga—passed the time sitting on her porch swing telling stories about our town and how it used to be. Mawga told how our house had been built by a Civil War veteran as a gift to his daughter. She still called it the Hollowell house after the people who had lived in it back in the 1930s.

  If you listened close to Mawga, you’d pick up an insight or two about right living. Mawga was careful to say that she didn’t preach, she made “observations.” In that spirit, I offer a few observations. I hope you find them as helpful as I found Mawga’s.

  The Kitchen Table

  My hobby is woodworking and has been for a number of years. My foray into wood began when we needed a kitchen table and my wife suggested I build one. We were low on money, and I was between college and graduate school and had the time. I’d never built anything before, but a kitchen table seemed as good a place to start as any.

  My grandfather had a workshop set up in the family barn. I’d go there in the morning, turn on the heater, and walk around sniffing the workshop odors. Grandpa had lubricated the drill press once a month since 1950, and I could smell nearly forty years of oil buildup in the corner where it sat. Over by the table saw I smelled sawdust. After a while I became a sawdust connoisseur and could tell the difference between pine sawdust and cherry sawdust. There are few scents more pleasant. The dog slept in the workshop, and I could smell her, too, wet and stagnant, like the pond used to smell with its August coat of scum.

  It took me the month of February to build the table. I could have done it quicker, but being tucked away in the barn while winter blasted away outside was so pleasant it made me want to dwell on that page as long as I could. In March, I took the table outside beneath the trees, next to the crocuses that were pushing up, and sanded it down. Grandpa came by and taught me how to use slivers of glass to plane the joints smooth. That’s an old woodworker’s trick I never would have picked up on my own.

  I spent a week massaging five coats of tung oil into the wood. It takes a long time to get the finish right on a piece of furniture, but you can’t hurry it, or the flaws will show, and all your hard work will be for nothing. Woodworking is a good way to learn that doing something worthwhile takes time. It is possible to make a table in a hurry. It is not possible, however, to make a table worth passing on to your grandchildren in a hurry.

  My wife and I wrapped the table in blankets, loaded it up in the truck, and carried it home. She gave me a brass plate, engraved with my name and the year, to mount on its underbelly. That’s so when my children’s children play underneath it they’ll be able to see when Grandpa built it.

  I wanted to buy chairs to match, but we didn’t have the money so we made do. Though every time we’d go into an antiques store, we’d keep our eyes peeled. I even thought about making chairs, but building a good chair is extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming. I could build a bad chair in a day. After six years of haunting antiques stores, we found four chairs. By then, times were better, and we took them home. Each is as fine a chair as can be had, and I intend to enjoy myriad ears of July sweet corn while sitting in them.

  A friend came for dinner not long ago. He asked me where I had bought my table, and I told him I had made it. He wanted me to make him one, but I told him no. A man has to be careful not to let his hobby become his business. He was talking about how his kitchen table is forever falling apart and lamenting the shoddy nature of today’s craftsmanship. People slapping things together in five minutes expecting them to last a lifetime.

  We got to talking about how that isn’t only true about furniture, it’s true about life. Folks get discouraged because God doesn’t make them saints overnight. They don’t understand all the years of God-work that go into making one’s life a thing of beauty—a lot of shaping, a lot of smoothing, a lot of finishing. And if we rush the process, the flaws will surely show.

  Once a week I rub a coat of lemon oil into my table. It remin
ds me that my table is never really finished. Kind of like me.

  Television

  The Smiths lived across from us when I was growing up. They were Pentecostals and believed television rotted the soul. They said it was from the devil. They also held that opinion about Catholics and made every effort to convert us to their way of thinking. Their church was up on Lincoln Street. On Sunday nights, my friends and I would ride our bicycles over, sit underneath the windows, and listen to the goings-on. It didn’t sound like anything we were hearing at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church. My brother went once, and he came home talking about people dancing in the aisles and men playing guitars. I could see where television would be anticlimactic.

  The Smiths were the only family I knew without television until I met my friend Jim. His family’s television had broken, and they couldn’t afford to replace it. So they threw it away and started saving for a new one. But by the time they’d raised the money, they’d decided not to waste it on a new television set. I couldn’t imagine going without television. I asked him what they did at night. He said he and his wife read a lot and their kids played board games. Then they went to bed at seven o’clock.

  Shortly after that, my wife and I read some articles about how destructive television can be in the formation of values. We were expecting our first child and, in a fit of pre-parent concern, gave our TV away. Then one of our friends thought we couldn’t afford a TV, so he and his wife gave us one of theirs. That was almost four years ago. We put it in the closet but take it out every Sunday night to watch The Andy Griffith Show. The rest of the week we read or go for a drive in the country or sit outside on the porch swing and visit while the kids play.

  I’m beginning to understand that TV is like a drug. When we first got rid of ours, I experienced withdrawal symptoms. I was edgy and crabby and out of sorts. Now I can’t stand any television, except for Andy and Barney and Opie. Mostly, it strikes me as a bucket of sleaze.

  I suspect a lot of folks feel that way. Seems everywhere you turn somebody is railing against television—from parents to pastors to politicians. They want Hollywood to clean up its act. Hollywood says they’re just showing it like it is. Meanwhile, violence is spinning out of control, and our schools are graduating kids who can’t read a job application, let alone a fine book. A lot of smart people lay this at the feet of television.

  This is one problem whose solution is a nobrainer. Stop whining, unplug your television set, and put it in the closet. Take it out once a week to watch Andy or any other program that embraces the values you hold dear.

  Folks, no one’s holding a gun to our heads. No one’s saying, “Watch this, or else.” If your kids don’t like it, tough. Here’s where they start learning they can’t have everything they want. And if they keep complaining, hand them a book. If your spouse puts up a fuss, then find something to do together that is more compelling than watching Roseanne. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

  I would ask you to excuse my passion on this subject, though I’m not ashamed of it. A day scarcely passes that I don’t come across some sedentary soul whose literary tastes go no further than TV Guide. The waste of potential appalls me. The Smiths, bless their Pentecostal hearts, were right. Television does kill our souls. And it’s not too good for our brains, either.

  Vocation

  The first job I ever had was delivering newspapers. I had twenty-six customers, but it took more than two hours to deliver the papers. I was raised to believe that it’s polite to inquire after a person’s health when you see him. Trouble was, all my customers were elderly. When I asked them how they were feeling, they told me.

  I did that for three years, then I quit to mow lawns and do odd jobs. Once, after a snowstorm, I earned twenty dollars shoveling out the widows on our street. I showed the money to my dad, and he made me take it back. He said it wasn’t right to take money from widows. I learned from that experience. The next time it snowed, I sent my little brother out to shovel.

  When I was sixteen, I went away for the summer to work at a national park. I earned fifty dollars a week, plus room and board. We spent the summer helping to renovate a historical building. I met my first girlfriend there. Ever since then, I’ve had a weakness for women in hard hats.

  Then I came home and got a job working in a grocery store. I used to sack groceries and put canned goods out. I almost went away to college to become a grocery store manager, but my dad advised against it. He said that the hours were long and the pay wasn’t all that great. So I became a minister instead. I’m glad my dad was looking out for me.

  When I graduated from high school, I worked for an electric utility for five years. I operated big computers. I hated it. To this day, I won’t own a computer. People look at me funny when they find out I don’t like computers. Once I tried writing on one, and the computer had the gall to suggest that I use one word in place of another. I don’t like computers telling me what to do. That’s what parents are for.

  I quit my computer job, got married, and started college. During college, I had a bunch of different jobs. One summer I got a job with the state highway picking up dead animals along the road. I always mention that in job interviews so prospective employers will know I’m willing to do anything to earn a living.

  While I was in college, I was hired by a country church to be their pastor. After worship I would find grocery sacks of sweet corn in my car. Plus, once a month we’d throw a pitch-in dinner. I was there for four years and gained twenty pounds. One year at Christmas they gave me a hand-stitched quilt. I can’t imagine a gentler way to initiate a young pastor into ministry than keeping food in his stomach and quilts on his bed.

  Now I pastor a church in the city. Been here six years. No quilt yet, but free baby-sitting and tears when we miscarried and people so tender they make Mother Teresa look like a slacker. I hope God keeps me here a long time.

  I’ve met a lot of people in my lifetime, and over the years I’ve had a lot of people bare their souls to me. Consequently, I’ve formed a few insights into what constitutes the good life. The first is this: Never ask people how they’re doing unless you really want to know. The second is this: Find a vocation that uses your God-given gifts, or you’ll be a miserable wretch of a human being.

  That’s the God’s truth. I know a guy who’s a janitor. He is thoroughly convinced that God has called him to be a janitor, and he loves it. He doesn’t make much money, but he’s one of the happiest persons I know. He worked real hard to put his children through college. So they went down to Bloomington to the state college, and now they earn a ton of money, but none of them are as happy as their father. If you have to choose between following money or following your heart, go with your heart.

  There are some choices we make that cannot be corrected. Squandering your life in a job that shrivels your soul isn’t one of them. Use your gifts. Follow your heart.

  Tasting Tears

  When my wife and I first married, we lived upstairs in an old house owned by a mortician who gave us a rent break every time I helped him bury someone. Eventually, they tore the house down, since in America it’s easier to throw something away than to fix it.

  We moved into an old farmhouse with thousand-dollar heating bills and wraparound porches. The house sat in the middle of five hundred acres of corn and beans. Came with a barn, a chicken coop turned garage, and a smokehouse. Since I don’t smoke, we put our bicycles there. The house also came with a whole tribe of barn cats, one of whom slipped through the screen door, unpacked his cat suitcase, and set up housekeeping. We named him Whittier, after the Quaker poet, and trained him to hide every time the landlord came around checking for violations.

  Our neighbor had a cat named Cream Rinse. How that name came into being is an entirely different story. Let me just say it made no difference to the cat who, like most cats, didn’t come when he was called anyway. The cat I had as a child came when I called it, but only when I ran a can opener at the same time. What’s more important to know is t
hat Cream Rinse and Whittier were nearly identical in appearance, except for a small white spot on Whittier’s chin.

  We didn’t have any children at the time and considered Whittier our “baby.” So when I was lying in the bathtub one morning and heard my wife wail and gnash her teeth, I knew something had happened to Whittier. Sure enough, there had been a feline-auto encounter of the worst kind on the road in front of our house. Being the one with burial experience, it fell to me to entomb him out back underneath the walnut tree. Except I didn’t have a shovel, so I had to borrow our neighbor’s at six o’clock in the morning, which woke her up. Being the mother of Cream Rinse, she was most understanding.

  Three days later, I was sitting on the porch swing reading “Dear Abby” (Dear Abby, I have neighbors who borrow my lawn tools at all hours of the day. What should I do?), and Whittier jumped on my lap, white spot and all. Resurrection! Hallelujah! Turns out Whittier had gone to visit relations for a few days, and it was Cream Rinse I’d buried. Perhaps you’re wondering how I could have made such a mistake. I will simply mention that when dealing with flattened feline, one doesn’t look too closely for identifying characteristics.

  Now came the hard part. I had to tell my neighbor it was her cat who’d used up his nine lives. And I had to do it without laughing, it being unwise to chuckle when giving death notices. I’d learned that from my old landlord. But certain aspects of this seemed so humorous, a chortle and a titter slipped right out. Which confirmed her suspicion that I was an unfeeling clod.

  Turns out Cream Rinse had gotten his name from Saturday night baths. So they had a history, and she had some tears to shed.