My Appalachia

by Sidney Saylor Farr

When we got back to the registration area, someone said, “Tom’s there around the corner.” It was now past midnight. Tom was leaning against the wall by the elevator, holding a yellow rose in his hand. He looked straight at me. “The answer is yes!”

  I was confused because I didn’t understand. (Several years later Tom told me what he meant. Months before the conference, God had told him he would be meeting a woman who would write his book. Tom said that when I walked down the hall, he knew I was the one.)

  Then he smiled and held out the rose to me. He said someone had just given it to him. “Can you imagine me with a rose?” he smiled. “A few years ago, if someone had offered me a rose, I’d’ve hit him.”

  Tom talked to our little group for a while, answering questions. He told of being at Virginia Beach and that, while he was swimming, dolphins surrounded him. He said he communicated with them.

  Finally Tom said he was going to turn in. He was going to lead a meditation early in the morning, he told us, and he needed to see Dan. I offered to take him to Dan’s room upstairs. The group left, and Tom and I walked up one flight of stairs and down the hall. I told him Dan had ordained me earlier in the week. His face lit up. He put his arm around my waist. “Already I can feel so much change within,” I said, and he smiled.

  Dan was not in his room, so I walked with Tom to his room. I offered to take a note to Dan if Tom wanted to write him about needing to do an early meditation. Tom laughed, “You worry about details too much. It will be all right.” He hugged me. I said, “See you in the morning,” and he said, “Yes, and if not here, then in the other place.”

  I woke up early the next morning. Phyllis and I went into the chapel to listen to Laraaji, a musician who was playing at the conference. At the end, Tom walked to the front of the chapel, spoke quietly to Laraaji, and then turned to us. “When I was lying on my couch those three days after my accident, I discovered I liked all kinds of music on the radio. As soon as I was able to go, my wife took me to a concert. I loved it. Then a New Age school invited me to speak at one of their sessions. A young man played wonderful, strange music beforehand, and that man was Laraaji.”

  Then Tom directed us to go outside and form a circle in front of the chapel. We did so, and I noticed that Laraaji positioned himself directly across from Tom in the circle. Two large men were beside Tom, one on either side. Dan had said Tom seldom permitted himself to be in a circle of any kind. I felt privileged to be in the circle.

  Tom had us close our eyes, and he prayed. Then he asked us to send love to the person on our right. After a few seconds he said send it on to the next person on our right, and so on around the circle. Before my thoughts of love got past three people, I began to receive what was coming to me from my left. I’ve never felt such power. It felt like a strong, thick rope around us at waist level. At that instant the sun came out.

  I began to “see” things, strange city skyscrapers, sunsets, a city where everything was some shade of red. I saw Tom walking beside me up the steps into a building. We entered a large room filled with books. Tom led me to a particular shelf and motioned for me to look at the books. A shelf or two contained books that all had my name on them as author. Somehow I knew this was to be in my future. Tom talked to the people in the circle lovingly, and then blessed us.

  As our circle broke up, I noticed that a young mother with a child, perhaps a year old, who had been standing about three removed on Tom’s right (my left), was lying flat on her back, unconscious. The child was lying face down on her chest. Tom quickly approached the pair and touched the child first, then started working with the mother. Her young husband kneeled beside them.

  Tom told me later what had happened during that morning meditation. The two men on each side of Tom in the circle were testing Tom, determined to prove he was a fake. Tom had asked Laraaji to stand opposite him in the circle as a balance in the “struggle.” The young woman near Tom felt the crosscurrent of power and passed out. Neither she nor the baby was hurt. The two men did not succeed in their plans to discredit Tom and quietly left the circle.

  After breakfast that day, I walked over to Hopwood alone. People were standing outside, bewildered to hear that Tom had already done the meditation. They thought it was going to be done there, outside Hopwood, at 9:15. I felt sorry for all those people who’d missed his meditation. Then I realized that exactly the people who were meant to meditate with Tom had done so. There are no accidents, Phyllis likes to say.

  A young musician at the conference played her harp in the auditorium and sang a couple of songs at the last meeting of the conference, then announced that her last number was going to be “Amazing Grace” and that she wanted to dedicate it to Tom Sawyer and for all he stood for. Then she started crying. We cried with her a moment or two. Finally she gained control and did a beautiful rendition of that old hymn. Afterward, hug- ging, tears, and laughter filled that room and all along our path back to the dining room for lunch, as people said their good-byes.

  Phyllis and I loaded the car and headed toward Winston-Salem. We got there about 6:00 that evening. I spent the night at Phyllis’s, visiting with her and later, in my room, thinking over all that had happened during the week.

  The next day I boarded a plane for home. The ride to Atlanta was smooth and quiet. From Atlanta to Lexington, my seatmate, an engineer at the space center in Florida, helped pass the time by talking about his world travels. He was from Ireland, and his extended family still lived there.

  Near Lexington we ran into a thunderstorm. As the plane detoured and circled to find another approach to the landing field, I looked out my window and gloried in the storm. It was impressive to fly through the dark clouds, and I felt like I was up with the gods. At one point we flew through some serious turbulence, and I said over and over, “Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and ever shall be. Amen.” It felt good to say that up there in the clouds.

  Grant called me on Wednesday of that week. He asked on the phone if it would be all right for Caleb to come with him to the airport to pick me up. They wanted to take me to dinner. I had looked forward to having that time alone with Grant, to share parts of my week with him, to talk about the future, to talk about whatever. After my experience of releasing Grant on Friday morning, though, it was all right for Caleb to come with him.

  They were waiting at the airport when I arrived. Grant gave me a chaste little kiss on the cheek and half hugged me. I knew he didn’t want to do more than that in front of Caleb. I understood. I turned to Caleb and held out my arms. He gave me a big hug. We got in the car and headed for Berea, having dinner on the way.

  Being there with Grant and Caleb, I was surprised to find that I did not feel the kind of the pain I’d felt before when I saw them together. There had been times since Grant moved in with Caleb that I felt my heart had broken and was lying in shards like splintered glass somewhere in my chest cavity. But now it felt okay to see them together. Thank God for showing me the way to release the hurt and pain.

  I will carry only good memories of all Grant and I shared together for fifteen years. We raised a son; we got college degrees; we shared the deaths of his father and mother and my mother; we shared in learning about spiritual things through reading, talking, listening, and meditating. We also experienced tremendous growth periods together, giving each other encouragement and patience, and working through our frustrations. No one can take those years away.

  I am grateful to Grant for many things. He taught me how to feel young again; he shared his gift of laughter with me, especially in the early years. And threading through all that, like a gold thread in a rich tapestry, were his piano music and songs—”Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Floyd Cramer arrangements, spiritual and gospel songs, and other kinds of music. It became so much a part of my daily life at home that I took it for granted, like one takes running water or electricity for granted. I missed Grant’s songs and music.

  In August, I decid
ed to write to Tom. I asked if there was any possibility that he could come to Berea to speak on campus. A little over a year later, in October 1988, Tom did come to Berea. This was the first of what became many trips after I began working on a book about him. The accounts of some of those visits are in the two books on which we collaborated (What Tom Sawyer Learned from Dying, 1993; and Tom Sawyer and the Spiritual Whirlwind, 2000).

  SEPTEMBER IS A SAD TIME OF YEAR for me because my grandson, Richard Lawson, was killed in an automobile accident on September 21, 1990. He had lived with me for four years, so I got to watch him grow into a teenager before his death at fifteen. He had just started his sophomore year at Berea Community High School.

  Richard’s family life was a troubled one. His parents were divorced, and Richard desperately wanted to keep his family together. His father, Wayne, remarried. Richard’s mother, who lived in Indianapolis, decided to move to Berea so Richard could live with her. She rented an apartment, found a job, and things seemed to be going well. Then suddenly she took off back to Indianapolis, leaving Richard with me. Richard would tell me how sad he felt that his mother had not stayed. He said he was just beginning to feel at home with her again.

  Richard was in a car with friends when the accident happened. None of the other teenagers was hurt, but Richard was killed.

  After Richard’s death I was astounded to hear from people all over Berea, expressing their grief and telling me stories of how Richard had helped them, how he had made their days more cheerful. Over five hundred people came to his funeral at Union Church.

  The following school year one of his teachers sent me an essay that a boy in Richard’s class had written and turned in as a class assignment. The boy told how Richard had befriended him, a newcomer, to the school that year. He expressed regret that he did not have a longer time to be with Richard. I treasure that essay, and all the other stories about Richard I’ve been told by people who had grown to know and love him.

  Richard never had the family security and the love he ardently craved, so the people of Berea became his new family. Richard was one of those rare individuals with spiritual charisma, and this drew people to him. His light stopped shining in 1990, but the afterglow lingers in our hearts and minds.

  I was grateful that Tom Sawyer had been in my home and got to know Richard before he was killed. In fact, Richard helped me transcribe some tapes about Tom for our first book. He knew of Tom’s near-death experience and asked a lot of questions about it.

  Tom was a comfort to both my son Bruce and me as we grieved for Richard. Tom told us he knew that Richard went straight to God, and that his existence is glorious.

  Tom’s greatest gift is his teaching that God is love and that He loves us unconditionally. We can overcome. Tom teaches that our fear that death is the end of all life is false, that life in the next world is paradise, and the light in paradise is God.

  Tom Sawyer has changed my life. I am not the same person I was before I met him in 1987. I am more confident.

  Tom began that change by telling me I was a worthy person. “God don’t make garbage,” he said. Bless his heart, he didn’t give up on me. “If you only knew who you are,” he often said. When I told him about the loving response I received from the women in Ginny Carney’s class in Alaska, he said, “Of course they loved you because they sensed who you are.” I drank in Tom’s teaching about God’s love and other things of the spirit, and the hole in my psyche is now filled.

  Tom set out to prove to me that I was worth something, that I mattered. It took many years, but I now believe that I am worthy, that I do have talent, that people do like to read the stories and poems I write. Tom has helped me accept the fact of God’s love for each one of us. Because of what he’s taught me about God and myself, I am contented and whole.

  23

  The Art of Writing

  As a child I craved to put words together in fresh

  and enlightening ways. I wrote poems that were

  like square soldiers on a page. Then I wrote verses

  like high clouds before it begins to rain . . .

  While still married to Leon and living at Stoney Fork, I received a scholarship to attend a Bob Laubach “Each One Teach One” Writing Workshop. At that time different groups of people were teaching illiterate adults how to read. Soon there was a demand for books and other literature to be written at about the fourth-grade level for these newly literate adults. The purpose of the “Each One Teach One” writing workshops was to have the participants rewrite such things as government pamphlets, drivers’ manuals, and the like so that a person who had very little education could read and understand the material. Each workshop participant chose what he or she would write as the class project. I chose to rewrite Kentucky’s Home Demonstration Manual on how to prepare fruits and vegetables for the freezer.

  Several people from different parts of the country were lecturers and teachers for the workshop I attended. After a week of rewriting material and hearing lectures on how other classes did it, I was bored. That weekend I wrote my first short story. I shared it with our minister’s wife, who was also in the workshop. She asked permission to show it to some of the instructors.

  On that Monday, in the afternoon session, one of the instructors discussed a manuscript submitted by a workshop participant that was intended to retell the Book of Ruth in the Bible. The instructor pointed out how miserably the author of this piece had failed and why. He said that she didn’t understand what the story was about, that she did not have the soul to attempt that kind of rewrite. Then he said, “At noon today, a short story was passed around, and I read it. I don’t know who the author is, but I can tell you she is a good writer. She has the soul to rewrite the Book of Ruth.” I sat there stunned, thinking, “He said I am a good writer.” I felt as though I had just been born again. His statement authenticated me as a writer.

  One of the instructors, Robert Connor, was editor of Mountain Life &Work, a publication of the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM) in Berea. He invited me to submit some of my work to be considered for publication in Mountain Life & Work.

  I sent Bob a story that fall entitled “The Worry Mouse.” He published it, and the story, retitled “Hill Country Christmas,” was later reprinted in Teen magazine. For the reprint I was paid $75. This was the first time I was paid for my writing. That same year a publication called Cycloflame, in Texas, bought one of my poems. They sent me a check for $2.

  I corresponded with Bob Connor and his wife, Phyllis, for a couple of years after the workshop. Bob published another short story of mine after Leon and I moved to Indianapolis in 1960. After living there for two years, we moved to Berea in 1962. My son Bruce was born in October of that year.

  A year later, around the time I was looking to return to work, I heard that the Council of the Southern Mountains needed a person for the staff of Mountain Life & Work. The CSM was founded in 1913 as a meeting place/clearinghouse for missionaries, teachers, and health-care workers in Appalachia. In 1925 the Council began publishing a quarterly journal that became Mountain Life & Work.

  In the early 1960s President Johnson’s War on Poverty was going strong. The Council was invited to join in the effort and provide training for workers who would be coming into the area. The first group to be organized was the Appalachian Volunteers. Ann Pollard, associate editor of Mountain Life & Work, joined that group.

  I applied and was hired as associate editor of Mountain Life & Work, replacing Ann. Thus began a new phase of my life. During my first year of work, I met writers James Still, Jesse Stuart, Harriet Arnow, and Wilma Dykeman. Later I encouraged Gurney Norman, a fairly new writer, to submit fiction to the magazine. Gurney credits me for having his first short stories published.

  Before I was a college student, I had already been published several times. I entered the Writer’s Digest contest for short fiction one year, and placed thirty-seventh among 10,000 entries. I was awarded a deed to one square foot of Gettysburg Battlefield.
Over a number of years I attended writers’ workshops at Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, Kentucky, and other places, hoping to learn how to write in a way that would please the outside world. The workshops instead gave me the courage to write about what I already knew—people, places, social events, and nature.

  When I enrolled in Berea College in 1972, a woman named June and I were the oldest students in the college classes. The freshmen were young enough to be our children. I was amazed at how well they accepted us. While our classmates knew about things through reading, June and I had lived them. They asked us questions and told us about themselves.

  After I graduated from college, I continued working as an assistant in the Archives and Special Collections Department of the Berea College Library. When the decision was made to move Appalachian Heritage from the Hindman Settlement School to Berea College in 1985, John Stephenson, the college president, appointed me as that publication’s editor. Thus another new phase opened in my life.

  I would not have missed being the editor of Appalachian Heritage for anything. It was a tough job because I could only work half-time on the magazine while continuing my duties to the department. But I met writers from all over the region in person, by telephone, through correspondence, and through their submissions. I also kept up on what was happening in Appalachia by reading seven or eight daily newspapers from different Appalachian states. I marked articles, features, comments, and scholarly works that were in the papers. Students clipped the articles I’d marked, which were then categorized and put into the large collection of books and files on Appalachia. The Berea College Library made this resource available to scholars, authors, and students researching the region.

  My greatest pleasure during my years as editor was to introduce new writers to the reading public. Having their pieces in Appalachian Heritage was the first time many of them had been published. Among that number, Silas House, Anne Shelby, Mary Hodges, Carolyn Bertram, and many others went on to gain greater recognition and win awards for their writing.