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 One
“thing” is a mail box some where along a country road in
northwest Arkansas. There is this tall pole, with one properly
placed box, about 42 inches above the road. But fifteen feet above
the first box, on a red and white striped extension of the pole,
there is a second mail box—clearly labeled “Air Mail!” It is
hard to beat that Arkansas spirit.
And
then there is genuine Kentucky country ham. It is something like a
“spirit,” with a soul of red-eye gravy and a tabernacle of soda
biscuits: choked from the mother dough, patted into shape, and baked
in a wood-burning stove to mouth-watering perfection. For forty
years I have eaten cereal every morning, thinking that was breakfast—then
this came along. Kentucky ham pushes diets aside, cuts straight
through to yesteryear and my early upbringing. It is basic, it is
fundamental! Why fight it??
Another
thing is a country meeting with singing like you seldom hear any more.
Dragging, off-key, and “wound” pronounced like “hound”—which,
incidentally, makes it rhyme with the companion word, in the song. I
stop trying to override the monotone behind me and just sit
listening, and realizing that these folk are singing to the Lord.
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The melody in their hearts is somehow transferred
to mine.
And
a baptizing! A family man, long deaf to well-meant pleas, now yields
to Christ. Calloused hands cover an emotion-twisted face. His voice
is low but firm as he confesses his Lord. Friends can scarcely wait
to shake his hand. His wife stands to the side, head down, tears
streaming. A neighbor says, “You all ride with us;” and a
caravan of cars move up the road to another community, fifteen miles
away, where there is a small church building with a baptistry. “Oh
Happy Day---!!”
Out
back of the barn a lady calls “George! Now where is George? If you
see a black pig, George is close by. That pig always stays somewhere
near George.” And sure enough, we find the, pig and George—a 950
pound Hereford bull—that ambles up to allow the owner to scratch
his massive head.
I
like to think the Lord saves few spots like this, here and there in
Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana and Pennsylvania (and wherever you
live as a kind of “left-over” from Eden— samples of the better
things in life.
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