Lessons from a Talking Rock

It was my idea to take a ride yesterday. Susan had been planning on doing some work in the basement and I was cutting grass. It was already getting hot and we’d both been under some pressure lately, I thought it would be a good idea to take a ride. I had just bought a 2008 Z71 and filled it up with gas on Saturday.

“Hey,” I said, “I like driving this truck, it’s full of gas and we need a break. Let’s go up to Talking Rock and see the land.”

Susan has a lot in The Talking Rock Creek Resort. We like to go up there and dream about building a cabin there one day. The lot is high on a hill, in a curve, on Mayfield Rd. The first time we went there, it was not really as high and it wasn’t in the curve; she was actually mistaken about the lot she had purchased. For several years, she had been going there, walking around on the wrong property.

When we got to the road that leads to the back gate, I said, “Hey, it’s about noon. You want to grab something to eat before we go back in there?” That turned out to be a good idea. We were both kind of hungry and had we not eaten first, it may have been hours before we did. We turned around there and went on in to Chatsworth. After a quick bite, we headed back to the property. This is where things started going wrong. As we pulled out onto the main drag, the truck tried to stall. The check-engine light came on. A little traction-control light came on too. Little messages started scrolling across the bottom of the cluster; “Check Stability Control”, “Engine Power Reduced”, “Don’t go up a mountain”, and several others.

I saw an Auto Zone and pulled in. I borrowed a diagnostic reader and the onboard diagnostics in the truck would not give me a code. I had seen this before; that time, it was the BCM (body control module) and if that was my problem, I knew I could reset it by disconnecting the battery and letting it sit a few minutes. I bought a couple of wrenches and took one cable off and we waited. By now, it was hot. The humidity was high and there was no breeze. We sat there and baked in the parking lot of Auto Zone for ten minutes. No big deal. I hooked the cable back up and started the truck and as I had hoped, all was well. No lights were on and it ran like new. We debated on skipping the real excursion and just heading home. “Well,” Susan said, “You know what it is now and you have the tools. Let’s just go on in and, if it does that again, you can reset it again.”

That seemed reasonable. We drove on back to the gate and swiped the card and went in. we parked near the property and started walking. It was breathtakingly hot. The leaves were dry; walking through them sounded like walking on potato chips.

Let me back up a little and tell you about the conversation we had on the way up to Chatsworth. “You know what’s bothering me?” I said, “I don’t have a lot of faith.”

I worry a lot. Anyone who knows me, knows this about me. We’ve been doing a few big projects lately, I have some big decisions to make at work and I was telling Susan how I felt as if I had to control situations. She has a totally different attitude about life’s “big deals”. She has been through her share of them. I marvel at her ability to take whatever comes without missing a beat. “How do you do that?” I asked her a while back. “Well,” she said, “When Tom was dying, I had gotten to the end of my rope. We had gone to doctors and the doctors had done all they could do. We had our daughter and it looked like her father was not going to make it. I didn’t know how I would make it. One day, I realized I couldn’t do anything else so I prayed. ‘God,’ I said, ‘you know I can’t do anything else. I give up. It’s in your hands.’ And that’s when I just felt a peace like you wouldn’t believe. It just came over me all at once and it hasn’t left me since.”

I have never been there. On the drive up to the property, I actually said, “There are some things I don’t trust God with. I can’t help it. Like building a house or working on a car; I figure God hasn’t had a lot of experience with things like that, so I feel like I have to do those things myself.”

Susan just smiled. I swear, it was as if she knew I would be taught a lesson.

Back on the mountain, we surveyed the hill, sat on a log and pretended it was our front porch. Finally, we decided to head back. We got back to the truck and sure enough, the same lights came on and it crippled its fool self again. No big deal, I could get it up to ten miles an hour. I drove to the bottom of the hill and disconnected the battery again. We waited and hooked it back up and we were off. Within a mile, we got on some slippery gravel and, as soon as the back tires spun, the traction control system tried to engage and completely freaked out. The truck stalled on a small hill and we had lots of hills to go. After about the third or fourth reset, it was apparent that we were not going to make it home in the truck. Our new goal was to get to the gate where we could get a tow. Without getting to the gate, we weren’t sure how a wrecker could get in. “Let’s head to the front gate,” Susan said, “It will be easier for a wrecker-driver to find and it will be easier to load the truck there.”

About halfway to the front gate, the old mule of a truck decided it was not going to move another foot. In The Talking Rock Creek Resort, with five thousand acres, half way is a long way. I asked Siri how far it was to the entrance and she said it was nine miles. I don’t know how hot it was at that time, but I’m pretty sure my boots began to melt as I walked up to the top of the hill to get a signal. I called my buddy with a wrecker and he headed out from Dallas. I told him we’d figure out how to get him in the gate by the time he got there. I can’t believe we actually talked about walking all the way to the gate.
A group of locals came first. They were on their ATV’s, riding through the resort and having a nice day. They all pulled over. We told them we were just waiting on the truck to reboot again and we were going to try to get to the front gate. I could tell by everyone’s expression that they doubted the truck more than I did. “You guys will burn up out here.” Seemed to be the common reaction.

They all promised to come back and check on us and then they cranked their dependable four-wheelers and sped off. I would have given anything for one of those ATV’s. When they left, the silence was numbing. There was no breeze. The birds had even stopped singing. We were on a hill, in the middle of nowhere, with no water or anything.

Susan grabbed her folding chair out of the truck and sat it under a shade tree and got as comfortable as she could. I just paced. After a few minutes, I heard a car coming. It seemed like ten minutes passed before it got to where we were. A decorated soldier pulled up in a red sedan. “You guys need some help?” He asked.

“I think we will be okay,” I said, “We have a tow truck coming and we are going to make another run for the gate in a few minutes.”

“You guys will burn up out here.” He said.

I watched his tail lights go down the hill, around the curve at the bottom and then out of sight.

We tried to move again, but this time, the truck would not budge. We needed a plan “B”.

Finally, a couple comes crawling up the hill in a newer Jeep. “Need help?” asked the driver.

“Well,” I said, “Are you guys heading to the front?”

“Yes.” They said

“I may have you open the front gate for the wrecker.”

“Let me pull you to the front gate.” Said the husband.

“No,” I said, “It’s too far and it might not be good for your Jeep.”

Tammy, the wife, reached in the console and pulled out a bottled water. “Take this.”

I got their number so I could call them whenever Brian made it in the wrecker. Alone again, we shared the water and started laughing about the situation.

“I’m sorry.” I said to Susan. “You wanted to get some things done and it was my bright idea to go riding. Now we are stuck on a desolate mountain in 100 degree weather.”

“Call me crazy,” she said, “But I think it’s fun.”

Yes, I did call her crazy.

“It will be a memory.” She said.

Another car came  over the hill and stopped. It was a lady driving alone. “Hey,” She said, “That guy that stopped earlier, the soldier, he’s with me. I am going to the house and getting water and we’ll be back. You guys will burn up out here.”

In a few minutes, the lady and the soldier did come back. They had brought several bottles of ice cold water. While we were yet thanking them for the water, a red Cadillac topped the hill. We had a traffic jam. Out stepped one of the first guys who had stopped to check on us earlier. “Hey,” he said, “Mike and I got to talking and we parked our Mules. It’s too hot out here. You two need to come with us. My place is at the front gate and it’s cool.”

After very little debate, we climbed into the back of the cool Cadillac and headed to the front gate. We went over hills and around curves for a long way. I was glad we hadn’t tried to walk it. In that heat, it would have been rough. Sure enough, David’s place was at the front gate. He and his wife, Elaina, took us into their home and insisted we sit on the bigger, more comfortable chairs. We sat there and talked for an hour. Needless to say, they were just great people.

Finally, my phone rang. Brian was at the gate. We walked down to meet him and rode with him back into the community where the truck was. On the way up there, we told him about our adventure and when we got to the truck, Brian said, “I’m surprised you guys didn’t burn up out here.”

Of course we laughed. It was a long ride back to Hiram, but the wrecker was air conditioned and we weren’t complaining.

We finally made it home after several hours. And what did Susan say? “Thank you for today. I really enjoyed that.”

I knew she was serious. It really was kind of fun. We met so many people. I didn’t mention all of the offers we had to get off that hill. Meeting David and Elaina was great.

“Don’t forget this.” Susan said.

“Forget today?”

“No,” she said, “That lesson. See, you were telling me, on the way up there, how you had to be in control. You weren’t in control on that mountain. There was nothing you could do to get us out of there. You tried. You took those wrenches and you checked everything you knew to check and you couldn’t get that truck going. We had to have a little faith to get out of that one. Other people came along and you had to let them help. God didn’t fix the truck, but he got us out of there another way. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes. You may not get the answer you want. But you’ll make it.”

Home

When I was a little boy, I thought it had a proper name. Everyone called it “Up Yonder” so often that I had assigned that name to it. “In Yonder” was the coldest room in our house. We had three bedrooms with “Chester Drawers” in each room, but I knew that if mom said something was in yonder in the Chester drawers, I would find it in that cold room in the corner of the house. As far as I could tell, we lived in the area of the compound known as The Holler. My bedroom was in yonder and I could see Up Yonder from there. Our house was a cinderblock house with a flat, black roof. I didn’t find that odd; I thought other houses were odd. Why didn’t everyone else live in a box, tucked into the hillside like ours?

The neighborhood didn’t have a name, but I thought it was the center of the world. I still remember going from house to house without feeling any sense of transition. The whole place was ours. Grandma lived Up Yonder and yes, that was her first name. Her last name was Coker. I didn’t know some people called her Della until I was much older. Must be a nickname. Uncle Roy lived in a trailer. His wife, Aunt Mable, lived there when she wasn’t Up Yonder with Grandma, but as to where she actually belonged, I could not tell. Like me, Mable just went from place to place and made herself at home.

Uncle Howard lived Up Yonder from time to time.

The Alexanders were family too, but I never really knew if they were cousins or what. Uncle Albert was simply Uncle Albert to me. Nobody told me he wasn’t my uncle but I wouldn’t have understood anyway. The Alexanders occupied four houses then. Granny Alexander lived in a trailer. She must have been kin to Grandma; the names were so similar.

It wasn’t that I felt I owned anything; Entitlement really never occurred to me. Ownership is so overrated when you can recall the way it feels to belong. I would grow out of the nest with my siblings. We would go our separate ways, but there was one place where we would always belong and we would go back there often and share that feeling throughout or lives.

Little by little, the neighborhood changed. Time didn’t stand still at all. Roy was the first to slip away. Weeds grew up around his trailer and one day, I came home from school and it was gone. Granny Alexander moved away to live with one of her daughters. Her trailer just disappeared too. One by one, the Alexanders moved away and there isn’t one still living in the neighborhood. Someone renovated Uncle Albert’s house. I was glad to see it get a new life. New bicycles lean on the old trees out there now.

We lost Grandma many years ago. Mable died many years later and Uncle Howard had to go to a place where he could be cared for. He is 85 now; suffering from dementia. Daddy died in 2009 but Mom still lives in The Holler.

Years ago, Daddy built an upper level onto the cinderblock house. What I thought of as our house has been nothing more than a basement for 42 years now.

Nature and neglect tried to take Grandma’s house. It was the last thing standing to remind us of the way things used to be. We’d open the unlocked back door and walk around sometimes. Pushing aside cobwebs and ignoring spiders, we’d go there and just have a look. With the reverence you might witness at one of the Stations of the Cross, we’d just walk into one of the rooms and stand in silence. It was not an old house to us. It was where we belonged. I would go there with one or even all of my siblings and I’d watch their expressions. With every visit, with every one of them, there would always be that gaze. They’d walk into a room and pause. They weren’t seeing the room, but the room had magically taken them through a wormhole and they were seeing another time. Bill could see Mable sitting in one of the old rockers. She’d be wearing a pastel, flowery sundress. Her finger would be pointing as she told an old story and she’d be laughing out loud. Myra could see Grandma Coker coming in from her garden. Jeffrey could see Uncle Howard drawing a picture; the same picture he always drew; there was always a house, a barn, a dog, a horse and an old truck. Me? I was satisfied seeing them while they saw whatever it was they saw.

We managed to repair the old house and we’ve been sharing it again. A new generation has come along and they see the old house in their own way. It may not be home to them, but it will forever be a part of their memories now. I love the old place, but I still don’t feel as if I own it. I don’t want to feel that way. I still feel as if I belong whenever I am there. It’s home.

Imagine my surprise when, as a young boy, I’d hear a preacher talking about how wonderful it is Up Yonder. I had no idea that Grandma’s house was so well known; and it seemed to be the place where everybody wanted to be. I get it now.

I wonder if someone from the younger generation will walk through that unlocked back door one day. I wonder if they’ll push aside cobwebs, stand at one of the stations and remember me. I hope so. I’ll be there, just like the old hymn says, “When the roll is called Up Yonder, I’ll be there.”

Here is Home Again by Elton John.

A Little Note About Today

Sometimes, it is a very hard thing to put your thoughts in words. I write a lot and still, I’m sure I don’t always say what I mean to say. In the age of social media, it seems that we are being watched closer and scrutinized or even criticized for our random thoughts. Sometimes, just making a quick observation about something can be taken the wrong way. I’ve sort of backed away from constant updates and posts.

I don’t always agree with my friends on facebook. People are often very outspoken on issues I often feel very differently about. I don’t get into debates in these cases. I have “unfriended” people who continually offend me with some kind of narrow-minded obsession.

I’ve had cancer in the past few years. I’ve gone through financial troubles in the past ten years. I’ve gone through some personal things and somehow made it so far. I’ve had to face deaths, some family members had some major health scares and I’ve had to make some big decisions in business. I’m sure I’ve done a few things right and a few things wrong. I managed to secure the old home place for my family. I fixed up the old house a little and it’s even good enough to live in.

We’ve all made mistakes. I’ve made my share. Each time, I was trying to do the right thing but sometimes, the results were not what I expected. I’m not foolish enough to imagine I am finally done with making mistakes.

I’ve really been soul searching for about two years. I’ve changed. I’m growing. I see God in a different way. I see some loved ones in different ways. I took some people off of wobbly pedestals and I’ve tried not to put anyone else upon one. I’m beginning to accept my own mortality. In terms of years, I have more behind than before me. But as for quality, I may have the best ahead.

I haven’t said a lot about Susan. I probably won’t say a lot about her for a while. I’d rather tell this story in retrospect, but I will say that I adore her. She is a very good woman. I’ve looked back over her life while sharing mine with her. Many nights, we’ve sat on Grandma’s glider and we’ve talked for hours. Her story is a lot different than mine. I’ve listened closely for hints of bitterness. She was in love twice before; she has even been happily married twice before. With both husbands, terminal cancer shortened their lives and shortened her time with them, but instead of dwelling on the pain of having to say goodbye to these good men, she talks about how blessed she was to have them in her life. “I could cry because I lost them or smile because I had them.” She says, and it’s not just words. She lives this and she really is grateful in areas where some people might not be. She has taught me a lot.

I fell in love with Susan on our second date. It was Valentine’s Day this year. For us, it wasn’t a romantic night .We went to Dave Poe’s Barbeque and I didn’t even take her any flowers. There were no fireworks that night. It was quiet in her house. We went out to the sun room and she said, “Sit there,” pointing to a recliner, “It was Danny’s chair. You’ll like it.”

She leaned back on a chase lounge across the room. “This is my place.” She said, “I like to just come out here to think.”

We talked a while. She told me all about her new grandson, her daughter, her son-in-law and how proud her first husband would be if he could see what kind of mother his daughter has become. We talked about my life too. I told her about my family and some of my struggles through the years.

In between our conversations, something happened in me. I somehow knew this person. I didn’t feel like I was on a second date. I felt like I was with someone I had known and loved all my life. I was completely at ease. In that moment, I realized I could never be without her. And that’s how it happened for me.

Eight months later, we are getting married; today in fact. In these eight months, I’ve only felt what I felt that night. I’m at ease. She was right; I do like Danny’s chair.

PS Dave Poe’s Barbeque is great.

My Brain and God

Trying to take it apart; to defuse it. I want to see what wires I can cut without making it go off.

I heard someone say, “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

This is true of the color blue and it’s just as true of me and you. I think the thing we refer to as God is the same thing we refer to as love and that’s just the same as life. All of this is synonymous. We cannot take love out of it. What is happening, as I write with this keyboard and this computer, is God speaking but completely through the thing I think of as me. All expression is inspired. I have got it all wrong when I think that there is a brain in my head that instructs my hands and eyes to put down in writing what it thinks. The truth is that there is a much bigger brain which tells my brain to tell my hands to do what they do. The continuity of it all is liberating. My hands cannot live without me, but I can live without my hands. I am sure I would not like to lose my hands because they seem to make my life easier. But imagine how devastated my hands would be if they lost me. They’d cease. They’d no longer have any kind of life in them. I could plant them in a garden and they’d eventually fade forever from the planet. Even the bones of my hands would eventually turn to dust. Suppose I could live a thousand years beyond my hands. And suppose, within those years, I never grew more hands. Would I be less alive?

This is how God sees me and my beloved brain. “Oh you precious boy; you think you are doing this independent of me. That’s cute.” He might say.

But the thing beyond and greater than myself will be here when I am cut off from this world as an individual.

An indeterminate hypothesis is often referred to as religion and religions want to have the last word. They are there to fill in the gaps left by logic and science. However, if it is what we use to fill in the gaps, there is a very good chance we are wrong. This can be seen clearly by looking back over the centuries and the religions imposed upon each generation.

I’d personally like to remove the fillers and let science fill in the gaps; let the religions fail and then reintroduce religions whenever science fixes a place for them.

In my experience, we’ve only used God as an answer when we had no other answer. We came up with a theory about how the planet got people on it and then came science with a much better answer. By trying to establish God as an engineer, we’ve taken away His credentials. He never put “Engineer” on His own résumé.

If we had left God alone with His poetry, He would have been recognized for it by now, but by insisting that He is a Universe Builder instead, no one is willing to hear His poetry now. They think He said that He made the universe the way Al Gore said he developed the internet.

If I tell you that I made Mt Everest, you would likely not hear me if I say, “You are beautiful and I do love you.”

You’d still be thinking about my claim. You’d want me to go away.

The same thing might happen if one of my friends tell you that they know me. “He is good. He made Mt Everest and he is just a loving person. I know he made Mt Everest because he said so.”

Then you happen to meet me and you’ve already got this idea about me. But maybe I never said that to my friend. Perhaps my friend thought it would impress you if he said all that about Mt Everest and then you’d want to meet me more. But it doesn’t work that way.

I did not create Mt Everest.

You are beautiful and I do love you.

Bunch of Pricks

Bunch of Pricks

The old house? Oh, it is so much a part of me now. It is my heart and soul of homes. I’ll never feel like that again in my life and I know it. But perhaps the experience was for a season only. I never realized that while it was happening. I recall feeling so incredibly happy that I had finally found the one place on earth that felt right to me. The sticking doors and squeaking floors were the voices of the departed. I’ve sat where my grandma sat and I’ve contemplated her many hours of peace within that old house. She was also protected there. It was her refuge as surely as it was mine.

I never owned the old house. Even though I owned the experience and I owned the heartbeat, but I might have to move out some day.  

It has taken me a few weeks to get my head around this, but I may have no choice. I began to see the difficulty I might face not long ago. It felt old; it was the same curse that plagued the last generation. The sacredness of the home-place affects everyone deeply, yet the emotions are private for each person affected. I have to remember that the house, the shops, mom’s house and the land means something to several other people on this planet. I’m not the only one who can see the ghosts. I’m not the only one who can go there and feel the warmth of its embrace. It’s easy to become selfish once you’ve been there a while.

I wanted that experience to translate and extend to everyone still living with Della’s blood in their veins, but it is very hard to do while living with the ghosts. We’d get up together each morning and have coffee together. Yes, we would walk the property together. Sometimes, daddy would work with me in the old house, late into the night. I could feel him there. I thought he was smiling while I was cleaning, clearing and rebuilding. I would get lost in a project and the project would seem to be swallowing me whole when suddenly, I would feel daddy nudging me in a new direction and, just as suddenly, the project would begin to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Friends and other family members did a lot to help me there. Bill and I did a lot of the initial cleanup together. Someone would loan me a tool I needed just in time. Neighbors would come over, almost mysteriously, at just the moment when I would need help lifting something. It wasn’t like I’d call them over; they’d just appear at exactly the instant when I was about to take on something too heavy.

In spite of all the opposition I faced in the beginning, I always knew I was on the right path because the doors would simply open as I needed them to. The renovation seemed to go according to plan; yet it really didn’t feel as if it was my plan at all. The ghosts were there all the time. I faced a few pricks along the way, but they didn’t stop progress.

In recent months, things began to change. The garden would barely produce; my gas heaters would not heat the old house and when the weather turned hot, the window units would not cool it. I was fighting termites and drafts. It was still a very glorious home, but I was not comfortable.

I began dreaming up ways to remedy the problem. I thought I’d renovate mom’s house or build another house. Of course I knew I would have to work out a lot of details to make that work, but I had gotten used to working out details. However, the more I tried to keep moving forward, the more the ghosts complained. This could not be the right path. I was faced with way too much opposition. A big yellow sheet of paper with red letter appeared on my back door; “Stop Work” it simply said. Those pricks.

I didn’t see this as my only sign, but rather one of so many signs. All of the doors were closing. The old house patted me on the head and said, “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” I wondered.

This is not what I expected, but that could be said of my last two years. When I ended up in mom’s basement in my 49^th year, I looked around and thought, this is not what I expected. When I found a way to clean up the old place and when I found a way to buy it, I thought, this is not what I expected. When I got the old house habitable again, I thought, this is not what I expected. Now that phase is over and I have no idea what happens next; not what I expected.

All of this has been made possible by a series of miracles. I am so grateful. I am a better man. It’s only when I began to think that I had done it all by myself that the miracles ceased. This caused me to scramble for a while. Everything I touched was breaking. I finally got quiet and it began to hit me; it’s not up to me; it never was up to me. The miracles were not my doing.

All I can tell you is that I finally got peace again by accepting my humanness again. None of these things happened because I am good; they happened because they were supposed to happen. I was just one gear in the clock; all of the other functions were simply not me. You might think the opposite to be true, but this has been exactly what I needed to restore my faith. I now realize that whatever happens going forward will be just as miraculous as everything I just experienced; it may not be what I want, but as crazy as it sounds, I still believe there is a path ahead of me, not a jungle where I carve one.

A prick was something like a prod used to move horses, mules or livestock around many years ago. They were a very sharp, spear-like poker and that’s where we get the word “prick”. If an animal didn’t want to feel that pointy prick, it would follow the master’s plan and everything would be okay somehow.

In The Book of Acts, Paul was having a really hard time. Nothing seemed to be going his way. Jesus, with his dry sense of humor, said to Paul, “It’s hard to kick against the pricks isn’t it?”

Get A Little Mud On The Tires

“…I’ve got the perfect place in mind.  It’s in the middle of nowhere. Only way to get there. You got to get a little mud on the tires…” Brad Paisley Mud On The Tires

I just walked next door to Captain Eddie’s and got a little nostalgic as I looked around. I remember when there was a Fleet gas station where my car lot is now. I’ve been working in this area for decades. I was with Brad and Danny Williams in the early 90’s. There is a CVS where our lot was then. In 1997, My brother Jeff and I started a lot where Landmark is now. In 2005, I started selling real estate with Steve Adams at Re/Max Westside. Our office was just a block down the road. In 2009, Doug and I started Landmark Auto.  All of this has taken place right here near latitude 33.9 and longitude 84.7; better known as Charles Hardy Parkway and Atlanta Hwy.

When I was a lot younger, working at American Tire in Smyrna, I bought a 1959 Ford truck from Tommy Rakestraw. It was a beast of a truck. The oil that didn’t burn would leak out in a month. It smoked and chugged, but I liked it. That was thirty years ago. I was 18. Robert Farmer and I would take turns driving from Powder Springs to the tire store. He didn’t like riding in the old Ford. It had a complete round of play in the steering wheel. Fortunately, it pulled hard to the right so all I had to do to keep it in the road was to keep a constant pull left on the wheel. It was dangerous, but if you had good coordination, you could get it up to 55 or so safely.

I decided to try to find a steering sector for it. I called around the junkyards until I finally found Auto Parts Recycled in Dallas. Ernie Simmons answered the phone and said that he didn’t have one, but his manager, Ken Zeal might have one at home. Turns out, Mr. Zeal was restoring a truck like mine at home and he had some spare parts. I met Ken and picked up the steering sector and we hit it off right away. “What do you do?” He asked.

“Right now I work at American Tire in Smyrna, but I like to keep my options open.” I said.

I originally started in Smyrna, nearly a year earlier. At that time I was working at Tire Town with Ricky and Allen Myres. On one delivery to American Tire, I met Slade Jones and Tony Eubanks and applied for a job there. They hired me on the spot. American Tire was a big move up from Tire Town. And Slade and Tony let me keep a car for sale out on the grass right there on busy, South Cobb Drive.

Ken asked me if I would like a job pulling parts. I don’t know why that appealed to me so much more than tires, but I knew I would gain experience at Auto Parts Recycled. Just how much I gained has blown my mind over the many years since that decision. Just about thirty years ago, I drove out here to Dallas and sat down with Ken Zeal at Auto Parts Recycled. They hired me and I began pulling parts. I bought more tools and quickly moved up to management and moved into the dismantle shop. Where the shop once sat is a muddy tract of land, roughly 400 feet from where I am right now.

I used to get so muddy out at Auto Parts Recycled that I would have to throw clothes away. They were red with mud. The boots I wore were black. When I left that job, I was about to toss them when Daddy said, “Don’t throw them boots away. I want to hang them out there in the shop and when you get older, and have a nice office, I want you to put those muddy boots on display so you can remember where you started.”

I managed to save them up until a year ago when Bill was cleaning out the old shops. He had no idea. I tried to retrieve them from a full 30 yard dumpster, but I was dealing with cancer then and I just let them go. At that moment, they were not a priority and I didn’t feel great. The dumpster got carried off and the boots went with it.

You won't believe this next part.

Amazingly, Interestingly and ironically, while I was writing this note, a guy came and drove one of my cars. It is a 2006 Honda Ridgeline. It was spotless. Poetically, he took it on a test drive and drove into the property where the old junkyard used to be. Where the old dismantle shop used to be. In all my years selling cars, I’ve never seen one get any muddier on a test drive. The boots are gone, but I can go next door and get all the old mud I want. Chris, my potential client, got mud all over my Ridgeline. All over the tires. Authentic, Auto Parts Recycled Mud.

I’ve got that nice office now. Daddy, thank you for the reminder. I won’t forget where I started. How can I? There is mud all over the parking lot.

My Favorite Song

My earliest memories of church are now a bunch of random, black and white films that play in my mind from time to time. The little brick building sat on a hill in Powder Springs, Georgia. We seldom missed a Sunday morning service. I vaguely recall the times when my dad actually went with us.

We only had one car back then; and daddy was the only one with a license. The car was a dark green, 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne Sedan. This was a few years before my youngest brother, Jeff, was born. I remember climbing in the back seat of the old car and standing on the seat while Bill, my older brother and Myra, my sister, sat. Our driveway was red dirt. We didn’t have gravel, we had dirt. I would track in the clay and grind it into the back seat. I finally wore the seat completely out and daddy knew some guys at Puckett Upholstery. They gave him a small roll of orange vinyl. He took the vinyl home and… I’ll bet we had the only dark green Chevrolet Biscayne in the world with an orange back seat.

On Sunday morning, mom would make me dress up and then she’d drag me into the tiny little bathroom where daddy was still combing through the thick VO5 in his hair. She’d squeeze out a little and work it into my hair. She’d borrow dad’s Unbreakable black comb and I’d have the most perfect part you’ve ever seen. That was the brand name of the comb. I always wanted to challenge them on that, but I never did.

As soon as we all piled in the green car, daddy would light one up. He smoked Pall Mall Golds back then. He had a Zippo lighter with a very distinct sound. When he flipped it open, you could hear the trademark clink and when he closed it, you could hear the trademark clunk. Zippo lighters still make that sound and if I hear one, I think of him. 1958 Biscayne Chevys were big cars; big enough to hold all of the secondhand smoke from the two cigarettes that daddy would smoke on the four mile trip. We were used to it. By the time we got to church, we all smelled like Pall Mall Golds and we all had a little nicotine buzz. That would come in handy.

Our lessons were about Jesus and His love for us, God and His grace and The Holy Ghost and His particular interest in our denomination. We were taught that these persons were one person, but The Holy Ghost was the one you could really get ahold of.

It was hard to distinguish the difference, but rings and necklaces were ornamental jewelry. Watches and brooches didn’t count. You couldn’t even wear a wedding ring in those days. We couldn’t go to bowling alleys or theaters. There was the big ten and then we had twenty-nine really important teachings right after that. In those days, a lot of denominations were competing for exclusivity. There was The-First-This-Or-That and then there was a whole bunch of One-And-Onlys. We were one of those. I felt really lucky to have picked the one church that Jesus was actually coming back for. I had no idea.

The sermons were powerful. The preachers would really work up a sweat and I thought they were really mad sometimes. Maybe they were. They’d pound the podium and stomp their feet. It would get your attention. We were all looking for a deeper experience and this seemed to be a step in the right direction. The old timers had obviously gotten ahold of The Holy Ghost. I’ll have what he’s having.

As I grew up, I began to challenge some of the old doctrine. I had met some people who had never even heard of our church and thought they were a genuine part of The Body of Christ. I got in a few arguments about it and lost them all. I finally withdrew my membership when I was 28 years old. A friend was going through a difficult divorce and the pastor wanted to discuss her rights to fellowship with our church. This happened during a business meeting on a Wednesday night in 1992. I didn’t want to judge another person. That was nearly twenty years ago and I still feel the same way.

How often we get it wrong. Sometimes, we get it all wrong. To me, it seems that this is how we eventually get it right. The first time I ever wore a necklace, I felt self inflicted conviction. I thought it was a sin. It took a while for me to accept people who didn’t believe the way I did.

“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Psalm 37:25.

I was young when we were climbing in the back seat of that ’58 Chevy. Now I am old. I’ll tell you what stands out in that black and white memory: It’s my dad’s pressed shirt and shiny hair. It’s mama singing hymns all the way back home. It’s the orange vinyl seat. It’s a big meal and a big crowd at grandma’s house. It’s the red clay driveway and the tiny, cinderblock house. It’s the woods and the creek. It’s my brothers and my sister. We have not been forsaken.

I have a favorite tune from those days; it’s the clink and the clunk that daddy made with his Zippo lighter.