Tag Archives: Bob Wachs

Fallen Leaves Upon the Ground…

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”-1Corinthians 2:14

Lately, there has been an awakening in my heart to the existence of the “Natural Man.” As Paul wrote in Corinthians, the natural man is unable to perceive the things which are of God, for they are foolishness to him.

Tonight, while on the “dreadmill,” the old Porter Wagoner song came on my playlist, “Fallen Leaves.” The beautiful melody began to play as the sunset out the recreation center windows bid the bitter, cold sunset adieu. It was then the voice of one spoke to me, reminding me of a natural man I had once known so long ago, and how his end was very much like those fallen leaves, “All the friends that he once knew are not around.”

It was a gray, windy, bitter-cold day. As I walked to the gravesite carrying my fiddle, I noticed there were but just three or four others walking up the hill toward me from their vehicles parked down below. We were at Oakwood Cemetery in Siler City. Preacher Bob Wachs was walking up with the others, mostly the men and women of the family that had hired the dead man to work for them. I don’t recall how I had been notified, but here I was, to do my part. When it came my time, I began to pull my bow across the frozen strings of my violin making the most awful sound. I had never played before in such bitter, cold temperatures and didn’t realize the impact it had on the tuning of my fiddle. Quickly, with nearly numb fingers, I found the proper place to recall the melody, and soon, the hauntingly fitting strains of Amazing Grace found their way onto our ears. The howling icy winds carried the sound away as quickly as it landed. The tiny funeral procession huddled, shivering against the elements while around us, solemn reminders of those gone on stood watch. Brown, withered leaves danced past as the strings played their mournful sound. The biting cold wind caused my eyes to tear up as I choked back the emotions. It was one of the hardest things I had done up to then.

Here lay in the ground, a man without friends or family to bid him adieu. It was like Porter had known the deceased man before us when he penned the lines, “All the friends that he once knew are not around. They are scattered like the leaves upon the ground.”

And so, I played one last song for my friend Robert, one more song to say goodbye.

Robert Johnson was as humble a human being as I ever knew. He lived in an old abandoned camper, the shell of which hadn’t seen the light of day in nearly half a century, so entombed was it from the dirt of the nearby chicken houses. Like the home in which he inhabited, Robert was usually as filthy from working in the poultry barns. His language was often as foul has his outer body, coloring much of what he said. He worked for a farmer as his hired hand, tending to the commercial chicken houses each day and night. Part of his pay was his housing, which didn’t account for much, but at least it was a dry place to sleep.

Our paths crossed when I began renting land from his boss on which I pastured my cattle. Often, I would pull in to the area where he lived to pick up my tractor to take hay to my cows, and there would be Robert sitting and resting in preparation for his next shift of either picking up dead chickens or checking their feed. The houses in which he worked were not up to the modern standards of today’s houses so that there was much more manual labor involved. Each time I saw him, he’d smile that big broken grin, and wave, “Howdy.” He was missing all of his front teeth. He never shared with me if they were missing from a single punch from someone’s fist or if they had rotted out from neglect. Regardless, his smile was one that you would not soon forget.

The more we spoke, the more Robert opened up and shared with me, no matter where we ran into one another. He would often hang out at the local grocery down in Goldston, sipping coffee, smoking his cigarettes, and just shooting the breeze. He told me of the old days of Siler City and how he had grown up, living on the “hill” as he called it. He would share with me some of the antics he had been known to play on folks back in the day. From looking at him, in his worn, dirty rags, you’d never guess he’d have the heart of a joker, but he did. He recalled how one time he took buckshot to a turkey shoot, and when the proprietors of the event weren’t looking, he loaded his shotgun with the heavy-duty ammo. When they gave the word to fire, Robert’s target disappeared from view, obliterated by the number two shot disintegrating it upon impact. He rolled with laughter at that point. When he told such a story, he would break into laughter, then begin coughing uncontrollably; the years of chain smoking catching up with him. It was always a bitter-sweet moment. When he had recovered, he recomposed himself and said with a smirkish grin, “They didn’t like that none too good,” and then broke into another round of chuckling and coughing.

After my family got to know of Robert, we’d make an extra plate for him on holidays. He didn’t have any family that anyone knew of, so we’d take it down to him at his shell of a home. He was always grateful for the hot plate of food. He’d smile that broken grin and hold the food up to his nose and sniff, “Mighty fine, mighty fine,” he’d exclaim, then he’d squeak out in a long southern drawl, “Thank you, …you didn’t have to do that.”

Once in a while, when I’d catch him taking a break, I’d take my fiddle down and play him a tune or two. He liked old-timey music, so I shared with him when I could. While I played, he’d rear back on an upturned five-gallon bucket in the garage next to his home. He’d close his eyes and take another draw on one of his camels, and then wash it down with a long drink of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. He’d smile that chasm of a grin and exclaim, “Mighty fine, mighty fine.” I would usually close his one-man show with Amazing Grace. He would lean his bucket back down square on the ground and solemnly remark, “That was beautiful, just beautiful.”

Robert was as much a natural man as I had ever known. His world was only that of which he cared to obtain through his flesh; his love of beer and cigarettes. Back in that day, no matter how much I offered up faith to him, he never cared to discuss it in depth. To him, the scriptures were just words written on paper in a book that he didn’t have time to open. He believed in God, but that was about as far as he would go. The natural world was all he knew. He could never break free from the simple pleasure of the flesh, no matter how fleeting their effect. Had he been able to do so, he might have found a new body, a new life, one which elicits awakenings to the glory of God. He would have found a place; a sensation that far exceeds anything here on earth. Yet, like the song, he passed from day to day, paycheck to paycheck, stuck in a life that appeared defeated. His story could easily be summed up in these few lines, “Some folks drift along through life and never thrill, to the feeling that a good deed brings until it’s too late and they are ready to lie down, there beneath the leaves that scattered on the ground.”.

On one of those occasions I pulled into the tractor shed area to pick up something from my tractor, I found Robert sitting on a bucket, looking more worn than usual. His leg had a large bandage around where something had cut through his clothing and into his flesh beneath.

“What happened to you,” I asked, curious to know what had slowed him down?

“Oh, nothing,” he said, “It’s just a cut I got on one of the feeders in the chicken house.” He continued on with something else, not worried about the wound. The thought of cleanliness and infection crossed my mind, but I didn’t give it another thought. Not long afterward, I heard that he had been taken to the hospital after passing out at the chicken house. I was told that he had a pretty serious infection from the leg wound I had seen. He continued on in the hospital for quite some time but eventually was released. I’m not sure if he wasn’t truly healed, for not long after being released he was back at the hospital after collapsing once more.

This time, he never returned alive.

We buried Robert in the cemetery located on the hill where he grew up. It was almost fitting. He had come full circle in his life, seemingly alone, but now united with the world in which he lived; the earth. The memory today matched the next few lines in the song, “Lord let my eyes see every need of every man, make me stop and always lend a helping hand, then when I’m laid beneath that little grassy mound, there’ll be more friends around than leaves upon the ground.”

One more gone that we might have never known but save that he never found a way to rise above his natural being. How much greater a journey he would have found had he not been like those leaves scattered on the ground. How much greater would his eternal life abound, had my friend’s soul been united with our Savior’s grace, and then his soul would have not been gone down, but risen with those on high, to live forever not in, but above the ground.

Tonight, I pray that on that final judgment day, Robert will have been saved by the grace of God and that we shall someday meet again. I know it’s possible, for with Christ all things are. As the scriptures say, “Even unto them that believe on his name,” may become the sons of God.

Believe on His name.

This much I pray.

Thanks be to God.

 

Fallen leaves that lie scattered on the ground

The birds and flowers that were here now can’t be found

All the friends that he once knew are not around

They are scattered like the leaves upon the ground

Some folks drift along through life and never thrill

To the feeling that a good deed brings until

It’s too late and they are ready to lie down

There beneath the leaves that scattered on the ground

Lord let my eyes see every need of every man

Make me stop and always lend a helping hand

Then when I’m laid beneath that little grassy mound

There’ll be more friends around than leaves upon the ground

To your grave there’s no use taking any gold

You cannot use it when it’s time for hands to fold

When you leave this earth for a better home someday

The only thing you’ll take is what you gave away.”- Porter Wagoner

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Cold Rain of Warm Memories

rainThe magnitude of any one day is compromised by its passing quickly into the next, a mere moment in time which soon fades into the collective memory of our past.” – T. Tron

Today as I ran in the chilly forty-degree drizzle, thoughts of past times would come to me as momentary glimpses afforded me when the passing cars would allow. Knowing I had to be aware of my surroundings, I couldn’t just drift off into deep thought, so safety was of the essence and thought was only of consequence.

My training was an easy ten mile jaunt over hilly terrain along the main vein of travel that connected our countryside with the link to Hwy 421 and Siler City, known as McClaurin Road. I don’t like to run the route, which it is probably one of my least favorites of all the places I’ve run because of the traffic, but it’s easy and convenient. Its ease of access reminded me of one of my first routes; another country road back in Indiana.

The road back then was also paved, but rough from wear during the winter months of freezing, the ground being forced to and fro from the tumultuous upheavals of freezing and thawing. It was also one large loop that was almost exactly three miles in length, perfect for the beginning runner. The only problem with the course was the traffic, it too being a little narrow country road. Of course thirty years ago, traffic was much lighter than today, almost everywhere and especially out in the countryside of southern Indiana. There was one major hill on the road, one we called Oak Hill. I don’t know where it received its name, but it was quite possibly an island many eons ago when the world was in its infancy and that area was covered with water. However, towering above the fields of corn, it was in a sense an icon of sorts, standing tall above the sea of green below, one that would become golden when the tassels atop the corn would come into bloom. On those summer days, the smell of the tar on the road would mix with the smell of the endless rows of corn, one I can still remember even today. The air was so thick with the smell of corn you could almost taste it.

Here in this area of North Carolina fields of corn are rare.

So as I ran along watching and listening for the next car, my mind would search for the next trigger to take it off into another void of thought and recollection.

I passed the home of one of the local newspaper writer, Bob Wachs. Evidently some of the cars passing me had been some of that family that had just gathered on his front porch and were being greeted and welcomed in the door as I passed by. I wondered how many of them noticed me just then, or if they had no idea I even existed as they had reached their destination and the joyous family reunion was just beginning. I was the onlooker, like the cattle lying in the pasture nearby, watching the humans carry on as if in some big celebration of sorts that kept them inside and out of sight. The thought came to me, “I wonder what they’d do if I just ran up and invited myself in for dinner?” I began to drift off to Thanksgiving Dinner’s past when suddenly another car tore around the curve ahead forcing me off the road and quickly searching for safe footing as the blast of fury and wind passed.

I continued on, thankful that I wasn’t tied to any table and was free to immerse myself in the cold, fresh air of outdoors this dreary overcast day. It’s funny how days like today make you want to stay inside and hide from the raw embrace of the outside air, but once you step outside and take the plunge into the elements, you find it’s not all that bad; in fact it’s almost refreshing. However, as I neared the end of my run I noticed the wind changing direction and the temperature seemed to dip even farther. If I hadn’t already had a full steam of body heat created, I would’ve certainly found myself colder than I could already gladly entertain. Thankful to find myself trudging up the last big hill toward our farm, I watched as my own herd of cattle lay in repose, chewing their cuds and watching another being trot by, uncaring, unfazed by my presence. Their nonchalant attitude gave me comfort, for they were at peace, and with that knowing, so was I.

After I had reached my stopping point, I walked a bit and soon found myself in the rocker on the back porch with my shoes and socks off for a few brief moments. As I cooled down I thought of the times I would wade in the icy waters of the pool at my mom’s house in Florida the last time I was there for her funeral a couple Decembers ago. I thought of my pond down below the house and wondered how cold it might be today and if wading in it would also bring me back to that pool in Florida. My thought was broken by the hunter’s truck driving back down the hill, obviously taking a break for lunch as it had just passed noon after I returned home. The mist was heavier now and again, I was thankful to have the shelter of the porch upon which I sat to cover me as I sat resting in the rocking chair. The handrail of the porch gleamed proudly with the new coat of paint, another task completed, and another step closer to the sale of the farm.

There would be no turkey dinner for us today, but that’s okay.

Both of my children had oral surgery yesterday and both are on liquid diets. Their ordeal was precipitated by the fact that they wouldn’t miss school after the surgery if done during the Thanksgiving break. Meanwhile, my wife is sick with a head cold and I have to work tonight; fun I know. Yet even with all this, I know there is a purpose for what we do. There will be other Thanksgivings; there will be other dinner tables to gather around, all this I know and with that I can also take comfort.

Yes, today was a good day, and for that I was thankful.

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