Front Porch Tales

by Philip Gulley

  The first mistake many mushroom hunters make is their failure to organize. Fortunately, Dad came prepared.

  “To begin with, we need a vision statement,” he said. “Every organization worth its salt has one. I would like to suggest ‘Semper Fidelus’ or ‘Always Faithful.’” Dad watched a lot of Marine movies. They voted. It was unanimous; not a person disagreed. Mostly because their heads hurt too much from heeding Saint Paul the night before.

  After breakfast, they went to the woods. The morel mushroom is one of nature’s more elusive quarries. Buckskin-clad men at one with nature have been reduced to tears in their search for this Holy Grail of the mushroom family. Children, however, have been known to stumble upon entire acres of this delicacy only to return as adults and not find even the smallest spore of a morel. The memory of it haunts them in their sleep.

  The first day’s search proved fruitless, as did the next day’s. They went home more or less morel-less. Dad, being a leader of men, called an emergency meeting of the D.M.H.A. that week. He sat at the head of the table pondering their failure. One of the members ventured an idea: “Maybe next time we should go when the snow is off the ground.”

  “Don’t bother me,” Dad replied. “I’m thinking, and what I’m thinking is that we need a new vision statement. You can do just about anything with a good vision statement. How about ‘Semper Investigare, Nunquam Invenire’?” Dad thought he knew Latin from watching movies about Latin America.

  “Sounds good, Norm,” they said. “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s Latin,” he said. “It means ‘Always Searching, Never Finding.’”

  That being something they could live up to, the vote was unanimous.

  In the Bible it talks about knocking and the door will be opened. I’ve met some folks for whom that is true. Folks who stumble upon the holy like children upon morels. But for every one of those happy finders, I’ve met a weary knocker. Lifelong seekers whose knuckles are bloody-raw in their quest for the divine.

  Sometimes they come by to talk. They flop down in a rocker and ask why God seems silent. I never know what to tell them, other than to keep on looking, that God works at God’s pace. I point out that sometimes good things come easy, but not usually. So it’s a matter of persevering, of not discouraging, of organizing your life to increase your chances of finding.

  I didn’t learn that from the Bible. I learned it from my dad, while traipsing through light-dappled woods in search of the Holy Grail.

  Exercise

  One consequence of sedentary, modern life is that 73 percent of us are overweight. As I write this, I have to let my belt out a notch and unsnap my pants. My waist has increased three inches in six years, and I’ve gained fifteen pounds, most of it in my stomach, which makes me resemble a snake who’s ingested a small mammal. Worse yet, my wife isn’t overweight. I wish she were. Then she would pile food on my plate and say “Eat, eat!” like they do in those Italian movies. Instead, she flits around in a leotard exhorting me to exercise. Between you and me, I’d rather be fat.

  When I was younger I exercised to build a muscular, chiseled physique that would attract young women. This has its equivalent in the animal kingdom with the fire-red cardinal and the strutting peacock. And it worked. Every time I went somewhere, flocks of birds followed me home.

  Then I married and stopped exercising. You probably think I stopped exercising because I’d managed to attract a mate and no longer felt it necessary to keep myself fit and attractive. You might be right. Whatever the case, I did not lace a jogging shoe or curl a barbell for twelve whole years. During that time, we had children. Doctors have long contended that bearing children causes weight gain. It’s true! I’ve gained ten pounds since our children were born.

  In the winter of my thirty-fifth year, I took up exercise. This I did at the urging of my wife, who pointed out that if I continue to expand at my current rate, I will weigh 475 pounds by my seventieth birthday. So three mornings a week I go to the basement and pummel myself into shape on a giraffe-like machine called a Nordic-Track. Next, I lift weights. After one month, a faint burp of a bicep has appeared. Then I come upstairs and eat three pieces of bacon, two bowls of Sugar Smacks, and a cinnamon roll. Plus I take a vitamin, proper nutrition being important to us fitness buffs.

  Exercise, I’m discovering, is in no way fun. Its advocates speak in reverent tones of the post-exercise glow. All I feel is itchy and sweaty and achy. Exercise is the price we pay for inventing labor-saving devices. Our ancestors cut firewood by hand and chased their food through the woods. Sometimes their food chased them. Life was exciting back then, and people were a lot thinner, probably because of consumption. They also didn’t smile when their pictures were being taken, but that had something to do with corsets.

  The worst thing that happened for exercise fans was when Jim Fixx died. Remember him? He jogged a lot and went around the country telling other people what was good for them. Then one day his heart attacked him, and he died. His doctor said if he hadn’t been exercising, he’d have died ten years earlier. That’s the kind of thing you’d expect a doctor to say. I was hoping a doctor would come out and say, “If Jim Fixx had stayed home, watched TV, and ate butter pecan ice cream, he’d still be alive.”

  The Bible has a lot of exercise language in it. Paul speaks of the Christian faith as running the race and pressing on toward the goal, though I don’t get the impression Paul was big on exercise. He was too busy getting knocked off horses and thrown in jail. I’m betting the exercise talk was Paul’s way of reminding us that the Christian life requires no small amount of work and discipline.

  Lot of talk these days about grace and how God loves and forgives us. I believe that. I also believe that while we live by grace, a daily dose of soul exercise never hurts. Besides, think of the benefits—if we’re too busy praying, we won’t have time to jog. Rats!

  Misery to Joy

  Every two years we hold a rummage sale at our church. It takes that long for the memory of the last rummage sale to fade. Then a widow needs some help or the meetinghouse needs fixed, and before you know it we’re rooting through our closets, digging for treasure.

  My wife and I can’t donate much stuff to the rummage sale, since a lot of the things we have were gifts from our church friends. Folks get upset when they spend thirty dollars on a Madonna and Child cookie jar at Christmas and see you selling it five months later for seventy-five cents.

  Right before our last sale, I read an article about how too many toys can be bad for children. I know it can be bad for their parents—my wife threw her back out carrying their toy chest. We decided we’d sell some of their toys at the rummage sale, so after they went to bed, we gathered up everything they hadn’t played with for a while and took it over to the church. Then—and this will show you how smart we are—we took our children to the sale. Those church ladies play hardball. Made us pay full price to get those toys back.

  While we were there, we bought some more stuff. Found a toaster from the 1950s. It works a whole lot better than the one we bought last year at Wal-Mart, which we’re going to donate to the next rummage sale. We also bought a Tupperware cake carrier. We don’t ever make cakes, but it was such a good deal we couldn’t pass it up.

  Someone donated a Flowbee, so we bought that, too. You hook it up to your vacuum cleaner, and it cuts your hair. The box said, “As Seen on TV.” What they didn’t show on TV is how your three-year-old runs screaming from the room when you switch on the vacuum cleaner. The Flowbee had only been used once. Brand-new, it cost seventy-five dollars. We paid five bucks, but it cost us another ten for the barber to make things right.

  A guy in our church donated a set of barbells. I thought about buying those, because my wife has been telling me I need to start a fitness program. Personally, I think I’m in pretty good shape. They were going for ten bucks. I would have bought them, but I couldn’t talk any of the church ladies into carrying them out to my car.

  We sold our kitchen ch
airs. One of the church ladies bought them after I told her they were priceless antiques formerly owned by Abraham Lincoln. Actually, we bought them from Spiegel when we first got married. We didn’t need them anymore, since we had bought another set of chairs at an antiques store the week before. Got a real deal on them. Believe it or not, they once belonged to George Washington. The dealer swore to it on a stack of Bibles.

  We made eight hundred dollars. The best deal we got was when one of the church ladies said she’d donate eight hundred dollars if we promised never to have another sale. But I think rummage sales are a balm to the church’s soul. Throw a group of folks together, pricing and sorting, and all the little rifts and cracks of the past year seem to fade in the fellowship. Nothing brings folks together like a misery shared.

  The Bible is full of stories of shared misery turning to joy. Like when Paul and Silas were imprisoned in a jail cell and they were singing songs of praise. That’s what trust in God can do for you. You can be surrounded by outward gloom but overflow with inward joy. That’s why Paul and Silas were so happy. That, and having a built-in excuse for missing their church’s rummage sale.

  Taking Inventory

  Read a magazine article not long ago that said middle age starts at thirty-five, which startled me, that being my next birthday. I took the test that accompanied the article, though I didn’t need a test to tell me I’m getting older. The signs are all there. I need glasses to read, I eat more toast, and the other day I asked a teenager to turn down his music, but not before saying, “If you call that music.” Plus, I’m losing hair on my head but gaining it in my nose. A friend asked me if I’ve been snorting Rogaine.

  Despite these obvious drawbacks, aging has certain benefits I never anticipated, achieving a measure of contentment being one of them. When I was younger, I was consumed with the idea of being known. I aspired to a big pulpit in a big city making a big name for myself. What I’ve gotten instead is a small pulpit in a big city, making a lot of friends. Sometimes what we think we need isn’t what we need at all.

  Another thing I’ve appreciated about middle age is my marriage. When Joan and I were first married, we argued a lot. Now that we’ve been married twelve years and have two children, we seldom argue. Mostly because we’re too tired, but also because our priorities have changed. We’re less concerned with our “rights” and more concerned with our “responsibilities.” After all, relationship, in the end, isn’t about getting one’s way. What it is about, I’m not yet sure. Ask me in twelve more years.

  As I’ve grown older, my understanding of happiness has changed. It used to take a new piece of furniture to make me happy; now if the boys are healthy and Joan and I go to bed cuddled like spoons, that’s about as good as it gets. When it takes less and less to be content, we’re on our way to joy. I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m super-holy or anything. I’ve just noticed that people who try hard to be happy seldom are. Besides, happiness based on things is fleeting—cars rust, and the cat coughs up a hair ball on the new couch. We’re better off aiming for peace at the center.

  The things that used to cause me worry no longer do. For a long time, I wanted everyone to like me and used to fret if they didn’t. Now I’m less worried about the good opinion of strangers. On the flip side, there are other people whose opinion of me has become all-important. Perhaps the most significant change in aging is whose opinion matters to you and whose opinion doesn’t. If you’ve thought about this yourself, you’ll know what I mean.

  When I was younger, I was impressed by wealth, but not any longer. I figure that folks with money got what they were looking for. I’m looking for something different. Mostly what I’m looking for, besides a nose hair clipper, is to appreciate what I have and savor where I am. Some days I manage to do just that; some days I don’t.

  I write this at year’s end, the obvious time for retrospection, a good time to commit to paper what it is I’ve learned. It gives me a feeling of progress to realize I’m not making the same dumb mistakes year after year. Part of this is because I need room to make new dumb mistakes, but it’s also because through retrospection I learn what has worked and needs retaining, and what hasn’t worked and needs releasing.

  In high school, I worked at a grocery store. Every Monday we took inventory to find out what we had and what we lacked. So, too, in the Christian life, should we take regular inventory of all we are and all Christ summons us to be. This I’m learning in my middle years, in my small pulpit in a big city, among all my many friends.

  Hardware Heaven

  Rawleigh Baker owned the hardware store in Danville. He was also the local mortician. Our small town couldn’t generate enough death to keep the Bakers gainfully employed in the funeral business, which is why they supplemented their income with the hardware store.

  Rawleigh didn’t make much money at the hardware store because he’d hire anyone who needed a job. A man down on his luck could wander in and five minutes later be tying on an apron and weighing nails. Rawleigh never hired a woman to work in the store, knowing most men wouldn’t dream of asking a woman, “Now should I use a flat washer or a lock washer with this?” For the same reason, Mrs. Mingle never hired a man to work in her dress shop. This was back in the days when you could sensibly discriminate without getting sued.

  One glorious feature of Bakers Hardware was that you could buy just one of what you needed. Not long ago I required one bolt to repair my son’s bicycle, but had to buy a package of twelve bolts to get the one. I’ll never use the other eleven bolts, but paid $2.50 for them and won’t throw them away. I put them in my workshop next to a package of eleven screws. I’ve recently come across a small hardware store which sells individual nuts and bolts. When I’m feeling nostalgic, I saunter in, plink my dime on the counter, and order one bolt. The owner deposits it in a small paper bag, folds the top, and hands it to me with his wish for a good day. I wish every business transaction were as congenial.

  Trust was operative at Baker’s. If you told Les, the counterman, you had ten screws at three cents each, your word sufficed. “That’ll be thirty cents,” he’d say, “plus a penny for Uncle Sam.” Rawleigh once hired a man who counted our purchases rather than take our word on them. This was an embarrassment and made us feel immoral, as if we’d been caught by the Reverend Taylor buying a top-shelf magazine at the Rexall.

  Bakers took cash, check, or charge. By “charge” I don’t mean MasterCard or Visa. I mean telling Les to charge it to your account, which you would settle at month’s end. My days as a freewheeling spender began when I learned about charging. I was eleven years old and went into Bakers, picked up a pocketknife, and asked Les to charge it to my father’s account. I felt terribly important scrawling my name on the bottom of the note. My days as a freewheeling spender came to an abrupt end when my father got the bill.

  I came by my nickname at Bakers. I had gone there to buy some fence staples and, without knowing what they were called, asked Les where they kept the u-nails. He started laughing and asked me what a u-nail was. After that, whenever I walked in, he’d call out, “Here comes old U-nail!” That’s the curse of being from a small town. I could go off and get a doctorate in nuclear physics, come back home, and still be known as the man too dumb to know what fence staples are called.

  Baker’s closed down a few years after I left home. One of those hardware chains long on lawn chairs and bolts-by-the-dozen moved in, and Bruce, Rawleigh’s boy, didn’t feel like doing battle. The new hardware store doesn’t have wooden floors, and the counterperson doesn’t call out your name when you walk in the door. They don’t give credit, either.

  Sometimes people ask me what I think heaven is like. I tell them it has wood floors and you get what you need with a minimum of fuss. The counterman not only knows your name, but your daddy’s, and can even recall when your mother was in high school and dated Herbert Riggle, who played center on the ’53 team that won the sectionals.

  Trust abounds there. And fellowship so
warm and gracious you could linger forever—which you can.

  Family Values

  First, let me say that I am a big believer in the family. Our country is only as good as its families. I am for the family. In fact, I think everyone ought to belong to a family. Naturally, by “family” I mean one husband, one wife, and two children. If the wife can stay home with the kids that would be nice. And if they can live in the suburbs, that’s even better. Just like on Leave It to Beaver. Now that was a family!

  A lot of people think families are in trouble because women work outside the home. There’s something to that, and I think Congress ought to hold a hearing on why we let it happen. If I remember right, this trend started with the advent of the outboard motor. Men, who had been content to stay home on the weekends and build birdhouses in the garage, wanted to spend weekends at the lake. But boats cost money. Lots of money. More money than most men make. So we encouraged our wives to enter the work force. They wouldn’t have to earn a lot, just enough to buy a nice boat. Let’s say sixty-seven cents to our dollar. So women started working, and everything fell apart.

  My fellow Americans, our task is clear. If we want to restore family values, we are going to have do something about the rising cost of boats. What I propose is electing politicians with the courage and conviction to enact boat subsidies for the average American family. Instead of throwing all our money away on welfare, let’s get to the root of America’s real problem—skyrocketing boat prices! I think churches ought to get behind this. After all, Jesus spent a lot of time on boats.