He rose to his feet and moved forward to Appomattox, to victory. He marched up the basement stairs, up from that dungeon of death, and didn’t look back.
The alcoholics met every Wednesday evening at seven in the church basement. Dale Hinshaw would arrive at six-thirty and set out the cookies, then leave before anyone got there.
Gary and Uly would arrive at a quarter till and go over their battle plans.
“This is war,” Gary would remind him. “We’re fighting for people’s lives. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Uly started coming to church. Every Sunday. Brought his wife and his boys and sat in the sixth row, in Fern Hampton’s pew. For sixty-five years, that pew had not been sat in by anyone outside the Hampton family. As her mother lay dying, Fern pledged she would guard that pew with her life. But on that day, Fern looked up at Uly and his family and smiled and slid right over. There are those who claim that was a bigger miracle than Uly Grant’s sobriety.
Dale Hinshaw was beside himself. He stood during the silence and said, “One saved soul, and all it cost was cookies. What a bargain!”
After church, Uly proceeded directly to the Emporium, took down the Miss Hardware calendar and threw it in the trash.
“It’s the straight path from here on out,” he told his wife.
Then one Wednesday, Gary phoned Uly at the Hardware Emporium.
“I won’t be there tonight,” he told Uly. “I’m needed elsewhere. I’m leaving you in command. I need you to take the hill. Can you do it?”
Uly rose to his feet and shouted into the phone, “Yes, sir. I can do it, sir!”
And Uly did it. He marched down to the church basement and at seven o’clock rose to his feet and declared, “My name is Uly, and I’m an alcoholic.”
Thus are the changes wrought in a man’s life—that courage is treasured more than comfort and, in that choice, victory is gained.
Summer
Seven
Miss Rudy, Wilbur, and Friday Nights
I’ve always loved books, ever since I was in the first grade and my mother promised if I read a book a week, she would give me a dime for an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen.
We lived one mile from the library. On Saturday mornings she would tuck a dime in my pocket, walk me to the front door, and point me toward the library.
“It’s that way,” she’d tell me, pointing east. “A big brick building. You can’t miss it.”
I’d walk east on Mill Street to Cook Avenue, down Cook Avenue to Marian Street, then past the Grant Hardware Emporium to the Harmony Public Library. The library was built in 1903 with a donation from Andrew Carnegie, who had made a fortune in steel and had given money for thousands of libraries.
I’d walk through the front door. There would be Miss Rudy, perched on a stool behind the counter. I’d turn in my book, almost always a biography. I love biographies. To this day, my head is filled with little known facts about obscure historical figures: DeWitt Clinton, builder of the Erie Canal; Bernard Baruch, businessman and statesman; and William Almon Wheeler, United States vice president from 1877 to 1881. When he died, though, no one noticed he was dead until 1882. He was a very private man. Plus, in 1881 we had three presidents and in all the excitement no one noticed the death of Vice President William Almon Wheeler.
He was appointed vice president by Rutherford B. Hayes, who left office in early 1881 and forgot to take William Almon Wheeler with him. Then James Garfield became president. Unfortunately, Garfield was assassinated before appointing a new vice president. No one told William Almon Wheeler to leave, so he just sort of hung around. When Garfield was killed, William Almon Wheeler was ready to assume the presidency, but Chester Arthur said, “I’m in charge here” and took over. He was pushy that way.
Before William Almon Wheeler became vice president, he was a librarian. He only became vice president because it allowed him more time to read, and it paid better. He was Rutherford B. Hayes’s college roommate and had never earned much money, so when Rutherford B. Hayes offered him the vice presidency, Wheeler jumped at it. Then, while attending a state dinner, he met Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist. They were seated at the same table, and Andrew Carnegie was pondering what to do with his money. He couldn’t decide whether to buy a baseball team or give money to build libraries.
William Almon Wheeler leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Baseball is a fad. If you give your money for libraries, your name will be famous in every city and hamlet throughout the land. It will be your legacy.”
So that’s what Andrew Carnegie did. Today, everyone knows who Andrew Carnegie is because of the Carnegie libraries, while William Almon Wheeler, despite being a man of vision, rests in obscurity. No one knows anything about him unless they’ve read his biography, which I did when I was in the third grade.
But not many people have read it. I was at the Harmony Public Library the first week of summer and came across William Almon Wheeler: Man of Vision. I opened it and looked on the due-date card to see who else had checked it out. My name was the last on the card. Sam Gardner. It had been carefully printed by Miss Rudy, along with the return date, May 3, 1970. There was a Coke ring on the cover from where my brother had used the book as a coaster, which Miss Rudy lectured me about when I returned the book.
I remember handing it to her. Remember her looking at it, then peering over her glasses at me and saying, “You need to take care of these books. You wouldn’t set a Coke on your Bible, would you? You take better care of these books, or we won’t let you check them out.”
I was terrified. No more books. That would be tragic. I loved books. I loved going to the library on Saturday mornings when the other boys were playing basketball in the school gymnasium. Loved walking up and down the rows of books and tilting my head and reading the titles. Loved looking through the biographies, especially the Childhood of Famous Americans series. Then walking over to the adult fiction shelves and pulling out the due-date cards to see who had read certain books. That was always enlightening.
People who I thought were pillars of the community and saints of the church had read certain books Pastor Taylor had cautioned us about. Books like Gone with the Wind, which had a bad word in it, a word we Christians didn’t use, even though Miss Rudy had scratched out the bad word and written the word hoot above it. So that Rhett Butler said to Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot.”
If you went to the circulation desk to ask if the library had a certain book and Miss Rudy didn’t think it was one suitable for Christian people, she would let you know.
She’d say, “We don’t have that book. This is a library, not a cesspool. If you want smut, you’ll have to go to the city.”
She’d say it in a loud voice, so that people would look up from whatever they were reading and stare at you. By the time you reached home, three people had phoned your mother to tell on you.
Miss Rudy attended the Quaker meeting, though it pained her to do so. The elders reading scripture at the pulpit would mispronounce the words, and she would wince. They would read about the ten leapers whom Jesus healed, and she would flinch as if someone had struck her with a whip.
The worst Sunday of all was when Pastor Taylor called on Wilbur Matthews to come forward and read a passage of Scripture. It took Wilbur five minutes to read three verses, and one of them was “Jesus wept.” Five painful minutes, and even then he couldn’t do it. Finally Wilbur said he couldn’t see without his glasses and sat down, to everyone’s relief. No one suspected anything, except for Miss Rudy, who thought, Wilbur Matthews can’t read. And poor Wilbur was so embarrassed, so ashamed, he stopped coming to church.
Miss Rudy went to visit him. She knocked on his front door. Wilbur opened the door. She said, “We’ve missed you at church, Wilbur.”
He said, “Well, I’ve been awful busy. I’ve had lots to do. You know how it is.”
Miss Rudy said, “Wilbur, I can teach you how to read.”
Wilbur blustered, “W
hat do you mean? I know how to read.”
Miss Rudy stared him down. “Wilbur,” she said, “I know when a man can’t read.”
Wilbur began weeping. He was ashamed. He could scarcely read. All these years he’d kept it a secret. But now he was tired of the deception, of patting his pockets like he was searching for glasses. A man can keep a secret only so long. He blurted out, “I can’t read and I’m too old to learn. I’m a dumb old man.”
Miss Rudy said, “Don’t talk that way. You come to the library this Friday at closing time and we’ll start.”
So Wilbur went.
I would walk past the library with my brother Roger on the way to the Dairy Queen after supper on Friday nights. We would drop our books in the outside depository and we’d see the lights on. The doors would be locked. We’d press our faces to the glass and watch Miss Rudy hold up flashcards and watch Wilbur Matthews frown and study each card and then blurt something out.
If he got it right, Miss Rudy would smile. If he wasn’t right, we could read her lips: “Try again, Wilbur.” And he’d try again and keep trying, until he got it right.
He went to the library every Friday night for one year. Miss Rudy never told anyone and neither did he. Sometimes I would see him over at the biographies, looking through the Childhood of Famous Americans series.
After several months, Wilbur came back to church, and when the pastor asked for a volunteer to read the Scripture, Wilbur raised his hand, eased out of his pew, and walked down front to the pulpit. That long walk down. All those people watching. All those people thinking, Oh no, not Wilbur.
Wilbur was scared. His hands shook as he opened his Bible. Then he glanced down, and there was Miss Rudy in the third row, right side; she smiled at him and mouthed the words, “You can do it.” And he did. He read about the ten lepers whom Jesus had healed and how only one had the decency to thank Him. When Wilbur finished reading, he closed his Bible, looked down to the third row at Miss Rudy, and said, “Thank you, Miss Rudy.”
She mouthed the words, “You’re welcome, Wilbur. You’re welcome.”
No one knew what he meant, except for my brother and me—and we never told. Oh, people talked about it. They speculated about it on account of Miss Rudy wasn’t married. Why did Wilbur thank her? What did she do? What was going on? But Roger and I never told, and Wilbur and Miss Rudy never told either. Then people forgot about it, until one year later when Wilbur Matthews died and left his money to the library, and no one knew why, except for Roger and me and we weren’t talking. The library added on a room and Miss Rudy hired the town jeweler to make a brass plaque that read:
In Memory of
Wilbur Matthews—
A Man of Courage
This summer they built on to the library, and the Wilbur Matthews Room is gone. I was there when a worker pried off the brass plaque and it bent, and he turned to his boss and asked, “Do you suppose we oughtta keep this?”
His boss said, “Naw, you can pitch it.” And that’s what he did. I watched him do it. He pitched it in a wastebasket.
But I retrieved that plaque, took it home, straightened it out, and polished it. I’m going to go back to the library, sneak over to the biography section, to the Childhood of Famous Americans series, and find the book titled William Almon Wheeler: Man of Vision. I’m going to put Wilbur’s plaque in that book. It’ll be safe there. No one ever reads it. If someone does find it, years from now, it’ll be a mystery. They’ll look at that plaque and wonder who Wilbur Matthews was and why he was a man of courage. But I won’t tell. It’s a secret and I intend to keep it that way.
I’ve lived in Harmony ’most all my life, in this same little town. I walk up and down the same streets I did years ago, past the same houses and same people sitting on their porches. But underneath the visible lies the invisible—our shameful secrets, our quiet shames.
Then we get found out and brace ourselves for ridicule, but are visited with grace. Grace knocks on our door and pays us a visit. Just like Miss Rudy. Grace takes us by the hand and says, “That’s not so bad. I’ve heard worse. Let’s see if we can make things better.”
When love takes you by the hand and leaves you better, that is home. That’s the place to stake your claim and build your life. You might never get written about in the Childhood of Famous Americans series, but there are deeper blessings to be had.
Eight
Burma-Shave
When I was growing up, after church on Sundays we would eat dinner at my grandparents’ house. At precisely twelve-thirty the grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway would dong, which signaled that dinner was on the table. The children would come in from the front yard, the men would rise up from the rockers on the porch, and we would make our way in to the feast.
Except on the last Sunday of the month, which was when we had to stay after church for the monthly business meeting. On that day, we ate cold meat loaf sandwiches left over from my grandmother’s Saturday night meat loaf. The cold meat loaf sandwiches were the highlight of the day. I’d put ketchup on mine and squish the bread flat around the meat, then dip it in ketchup again to ease the dryness.
The business meetings were long and tedious, chock-full of detailed reports on trifling matters. The meeting would begin with a devotional thought from Bob Miles Sr., former editor of The Harmony Herald and teacher of the Live Free or Die Sunday school class. Bob Sr. would begin by recalling how much of the week he’d spent in earnest prayer, seeking God’s counsel on what message he might bring. But it was obvious to us that Bob had forgotten all about the devotional until that very moment and was merely biding his time until a thought worth sharing came to mind. The devotional took fifteen minutes and always ended with Bob cautioning against the United Nations.
After the devotional thought, the meeting clerk would call for the treasurer’s report. The head usher, Dale Hinshaw, would bring forward the Florsheim shoebox where he stored the month’s offering and would spread the money on a table and count it in front of everyone. Twice. Pastor Taylor often said that if we gave, a good measure would be given to us. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over. But in all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen Dale’s shoebox run over.
The best part of the monthly business meeting was when the elders gave their report. The elders were a fascination to me—upright saints of the church, meeting in the basement on the third Thursday of every month to shepherd us along. They would keep careful notes, which they shared with the rest of us, except when it concerned certain scandalous topics that could not be made public. Then they would just say, “We discussed several matters of a confidential nature.”
That always intrigued me. I would sit in the fifth pew and speculate about such things. My father was an elder, and I would try to pry information from him to no avail. He would look at me and say, “There’s some things you’re better off not knowing.”
I’d reply, “Why don’t you tell me what they are, and let me be the judge of that?” He would fix me with a long stare.
I always wanted to be an elder and learn the church’s secrets, so you can imagine my delight when I became the pastor and started attending the elders’ meetings down in the basement on the third Thursday of every month.
The delight was short-lived. At the June meeting, Dale Hinshaw asked for prayers for his nephew who, after siring five children in six years, had gotten a vasectomy and was in great pain. The doctor told him to keep ice on it, but his wife had forgotten to fill the ice trays so he used a bag of frozen peas instead. His children kept asking why their daddy was walking around with frozen peas in his underwear.
Dale said, “That’s not all of it. He doesn’t sleep well, on account of his thin eyelids and the streetlights keep him up. He doesn’t get near enough sleep. Three, maybe four hours a night. He’s having a time of it.”
We promised to pray for him, then quickly moved on to another subject, not wanting to dwell on Dale’s nephew with thin eyelids and peas in his pants. Miri
am Hodge wrote in the notes, We discussed a matter of a confidential nature.
Then we discussed several other matters, none of which had any bearing on the kingdom of God. This is what happens when you have elders who fancy themselves great philosophers. They can wax eloquent about eternal truths as long as it doesn’t get personal. Everyone is an expert. Everyone has a firm opinion about what we ought to do and no one gives an inch. If we accidentally appoint a saint to the elder’s committee, by midyear we have broken them of all Christlike tendencies.
We nearly ruined Miriam Hodge. We appointed her to serve as the head elder after Dale Hinshaw nominated himself to the committee. We put her in charge to offset the “Dale Hinshaw Effect.” The Dale Hinshaw Effect is simply this: If there is a bad idea to be thought, Dale Hinshaw will think it.
Before Miriam took charge, a typical elders’ meeting would go like this: At ten after seven the elders drive up to the meetinghouse parking lot, ten minutes late. The first one to arrive makes the coffee. They stand in the kitchen until the coffee is brewed, then set up a table in the basement and talk about basketball and the state of our country, which according to them is bad and getting worse. This takes one hour. Then they discuss matters of a confidential nature, then go home flush with accomplishment. If someone thinks of it, they close with prayer.
Miriam Hodge arrived fifteen minutes early for our first meeting. She made the coffee. She stood at the door and greeted her fellow elders, and handed them an agenda. The others were mystified. An agenda? What was this? What’s going on here? First item: prayer. Miriam worked her way around the table, inviting each elder to identify a spiritual need in his life, then encouraging the rest of us to pray for that person.
All the other elders are men. Men not accustomed to spiritual introspection. There was lots of “Umm, I’ll have to give that some thought. I was thinking we were going to talk about painting the meetinghouse.”
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