Front Porch Tales

by Philip Gulley

  Ruby and Howard had a straightforward parenting philosophy—hard work, good food, lots of love, and church on Sundays. They also had the good sense to live beyond the range of most television stations, so the reception was pitiful. They watched Hee Haw on Saturday nights, but Grandpa Jones was always upside down and green. A little of that went a long way.

  Howard died in 1975. Ruby sold off the farm equipment, learned to drive, and took a job in town caring for an old man and his wife. The girls went to college, got married, and started families of their own. None of the kids wants to live there, so when Ruby dies, one hundred and fifty years of Apples living on that old gravel road will come to end. I try not to think about that.

  I go down to visit Ruby every now and again. We get in the car and drive down toward the old Grimes’ place and past the Roscoe Bennet farm. We stop at the Apple Chapel graveyard where those one hundred and fifty years’ worth of Apples are buried. Ruby knows the story of each one. When she dies, that will come to an end too.

  One day I was visiting, and Ruby called me to the window.

  “Listen to that,” she said. I listened and heard a bird give five short “whooo’s.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A rain crow,” she said. “You hear them before a big rain. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard them plenty of times.”

  That was a new one on me, but I wasn’t about to argue with Ruby. If she says there are birds that call out five “whooo’s” before a big rain, birds she’s never laid eyes on, the smart money is on Ruby. It rained two hours later.

  The Gospel of John tells about the resurrected Jesus visiting the disciples, and Thomas not believing it was Jesus until he touched the wounds. John tells how Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). A lot of smart people say John wrote at a time when the folks who had known Jesus were dead and gone. So John told this story to reassure early Christians that you can believe in something you’ve never seen. Kind of like Ruby believes in the rain crows.

  We’re all Missourians at heart, inclined toward the “show-me!” Except every now and then we bump into Jesus and rain crows, where seeing doesn’t come easy. Then the only thing to do is listen for the still, small voice and the five short “whooo’s” to know there’s substance beyond the seeing.

  Sometimes the most real things are the things we cannot see.

  My Friend Jim and Why I Don’t Like Him

  My friend Jim is a minister. He wears a big cross. He gives a wad of money away every year. He is devout. He is smart. His children are gifted, and his wife mows the lawn. Naturally, I despise him.

  Once he went on a trip to Honduras. “A mission trip,” he told me, “to minister to the poor.” It was the middle of winter, of course, when God routinely calls us to minister in the tropics.

  He needed work boots for the trip, so I lent him a pair of mine. I have two pairs of boots—my motorcycle boots and my snow-shoveling boots. My motorcycle boots are the John Waynes of footwear. I pull those babies on, and small children cower behind their mothers’ skirts. No one, I repeat, no one wears them but me. My snow-shoveling boots are part of the Ward Cleaver collection. Thankfully, I haven’t had to wear them since convincing my wife that shoveling snow actually melts fat from the hips and thighs. Jim got those.

  I drove Jim to the airport. He had never flown before and was nervous, so I comforted him by pointing out that death by airplane crash, though increasingly common, is virtually painless.

  Jim was gone for three weeks. He called on the phone when he got back home. “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “The bad news is that the airline lost all my luggage, including your boots. The good news is that the airline says they’re sure to find everything.” They still call him every week to report on their progress. Naturally, Jim and I remain confident that the airline will pursue this matter with the same thorough efficiency we’ve come to expect from them.

  There are losses, and there are losses. Whenever I see Jim, I reminisce aloud about the best pair of boots I’d ever had, but the truth is, I haven’t missed them at all. I lost them, but they were not a loss. But my grandmother Norma died right before that, and it was an uppercut to the heart. It felt like a thief broke in and stole the family quilt and ripped out the center pieces. So there are losses, then there are losses.

  Once heard a psychologist talking about loss. She said most folks she counsels are folks who suffered loss—loss of a loved one, loss of innocence, loss of trust—before they were capable of dealing with it. Sometimes we lose things before we’re done needing them.

  Story in the Bible tells about a man who lost a prodigal son. The other side of that story was about a son who lost a father. Then it hit him that maybe his father wasn’t lost to him after all, and he swallowed pride and headed for home.

  My friend Jim says pride can cause us to lose a lot of things, like perspective and faith and compassion. He’s right, of course, like he is about most things, which, if you must know, is why I don’t like him. But I’m working on it.

  Tim

  I met Tim in the second grade. We sat together in Mrs. Worrel’s class. We became friends when we discovered no other group would have us. We weren’t athletic enough to be jocks. The girls didn’t like us because we looked funny. Even the Scouts, who had taken a solemn oath to be kind and charitable, steered clear of us.

  Tim lived on a farm. I lived in town. When we hit fourth grade, our parents let us ride our bikes back and forth to each other’s houses. Our social life increased exponentially. On Fridays, Tim would ride in to my house to spend the night. We’d go to the movies up at the Royal Rathole. The jocks would sit near the back and neck with the girls, and we’d sit behind them and make kissing noises.

  On Saturdays, I’d ride my Schwinn Varsity out to Tim’s. We’d stay up late to watch Planet of the Apes. His mom was a night-shift nurse at the county hospital. She’d bring us a tray of Cokes and Pringles, give us both a good night kiss, and head into work. She was real nice. A lot of mothers don’t like having extra kids around, but she never seemed to mind. I always felt welcome. I’m going to try and remember that when my boys start bringing their friends home.

  When we were in the eighth grade, I invited a girl named Amy to the spring dance. Tim came along. We wore plaid leisure suits and drank a lot of punch. Amy spent most of her time in the bathroom.

  Then we went to high school. We took all the same classes so we could be together. We were both girl crazy. Unfortunately, our feelings weren’t reciprocated. The prettiest girl in school was named Laura. She was a cheerleader, and Tim loved her. She was a friend of my brother’s, who was a jock, so I asked her for her picture. She signed it “to someone I really admire.” I think it’s because she didn’t remember my name. I sold it to Tim for two bucks. Friendship had its limits.

  When we graduated from high school, we got jobs. I worked in an office for an electric utility. Tim was a mechanic at Logan’s Mobil. I’d stop by every morning on my way to work for a dollar’s worth of gas and conversation. Then at night we’d get in his car and drive to McDonald’s in the next town over.

  Flush with money from our jobs, we decided to buy motorcycles. Tim bought one that had a custom paint job. It didn’t run well, but it looked good. We’d ride every Sunday afternoon and most nights. A lot of times we’d end up at the Dairy Queen, where we’d sit on our bikes and talk about stuff that doesn’t seem too important now, but was incredibly so then.

  One night, about two o’clock, I got a phone call from the sheriff’s chaplain, Joe Stump. He told me my best friend since Mrs. Worrel’s second grade class had been hit by a drunken driver and was dead. They were afraid I had been hit too, so they were calling to check on me.

  Tim’s funeral was three days later. I was a pallbearer and sat in the front row. His parents sat across from me. His mother was a knot of grief; his dad was bent and weighed. We buried him at the South Cemetery. All I remember now is the cr
ying.

  There are a lot of things about Tim I’ve forgotten. I do remember that he liked The Dukes of Hazzard and that he was taking a correspondence course on how to be a diesel mechanic. I remember his laugh. And I remember that in the fourteen years of our friendship, I never once heard him ridicule anyone.

  When Tim died, a lot of people took it upon themselves to explain to me why it happened. I would listen and smile and nod my head, mostly so they’d go away and leave me alone.

  There are some things about this life I’ll never understand. One of them is why a drunken driver dies of old age when a never-hurt-a-flea young man barely sees twenty. Someday, I’m going to see God face to face. And when I do, I’m going to ask him why that is.

  The Wizard of Is

  When my wife and I first married, we took a big camping trip every summer. We started out camping in a little tent, which worked fine, until one trip it rained five straight days and we went stir crazy. We saved our money and bought a bigger tent. It had two rooms, and we enjoyed the extra space. Then we loaned it to my sister. She packed it away wet, the seams rotted, and the tent fell apart. My sister does things like this, and there isn’t much that can be done about it—other than to remind her of it whenever we need someone to watch the kids.

  Camping is a holdover from my growing up days. There were five kids in my family, and camping was the only vacation Mom and Dad could afford. Had we been able to afford other kinds of vacations, we kids still would have chosen camping, it being high adventure.

  Someone once told me that we don’t remember days, we remember moments. What I recollect are moments gone but treasured. I’m six years old, camping with my family, and I catch my first fish on a Zebco rod and reel. Dad takes a picture, which is unearthed twenty-five years later on a Thanksgiving afternoon when my brother David hauls the picture-box down from the attic. My three-year-old climbs on my lap to look. I rub his head and wonder what he’ll remember thirty Thanksgivings from now.

  We take our son Spencer camping. It is the summer of his second year. Next to the bathhouse, there’s a yellow slide that he’s forever climbing up and gliding down. I wonder if he’ll remember how I caught him at the bottom and whirled him in the air. How once I missed and he tumbled in the dust. How that night he fell asleep on Mommy’s lap by the campfire and woke up in the morning sticky with marshmallow.

  Sometimes I make the mistake of needing everything to be a memory, of straining to make every moment a snapshot. Going through life with a camera to the eye, wanting the world to fall in step with my expectations. I forget that along with the marshmallows come the mosquitoes, and that no amount of wishing otherwise changes that. Life isn’t only about the “should be,” the moments gone but treasured; it’s also about the “is,” the tumbles and the bugs.

  I live in this struggle between myth and reality, between “should be” and “is.” Went camping once with a friend and tried to pitch my tent on granite ground. Spent a half hour pounding in plastic stakes. My friend said, “Phil, sometimes you just have to pitch your tent somewhere else.” This we call flexibility; if we’re blessed, we learn it early. If we don’t, life is immeasurably more difficult than it needs to be.

  This is the blessing of children. For all the difficulties they bring us, they bring their gifts, too. I’ve learned more patience in two years with my son than in thirty years on my own.

  Spencer, my son, cures me of my fevered pounding; this sturdy boy-man so unversed in “oughts” and “shoulds.” In truth, he is the resident Wizard of Is, giving me a heart for life on reality’s road. Life on this road is life in the slow lane, a pace beyond my fevered pounding.

  From my little wizard I learn to live the “is” and leave the “should be” to God.

  Hearth and Home

  I have a friend who’s all the time gone. Canada one month, Florida the next. Always talking about where he’s been and where he’s headed. He’s a fine man, though he makes me wonder why staying home has such low appeal.

  I’m a confirmed homebody. When I’m gone, I call home twice a day to stay abreast of things. Florida is fine, but home is better. Home is where my children are. It’s where I planted the ivy that’s next to the lilac bush that’s next to the porch swing. Which is were we sit in the evening when the shadows are long.

  Home is where my wife is, who gets up a half hour before I do to make breakfast. Not because she’s my wife and has to, but because she’s a loving person and she wants to.

  Home is where I watch my boys every afternoon when my wife goes off to work to analyze systems, a distinctly twentieth century job I know nothing about. Home is where I put my boys down for a nap, while I clean up the lunch dishes. It’s where my sons build Lego castles and gather pine cones.

  Home is where I’ve learned patience, what little I have. And love. And just about everything else worth knowing. I’ve included a few stories about my church family, too. Quakers don’t ordinarily use the terms “brother” and “sister,” though if we did, these would be the folks I’d have in mind.

  Why My Wife Bought Handcuffs

  When I was twenty-three years old, I made the best decision of my life. I asked a beautiful, witty woman to be my wife, and she accepted, against the advice of her friends, her family, and a goodly portion of the Western world. On our wedding day, the bridesmaids wore black.

  For eight years, I was the model of responsibility. I worked hard. I dried the dishes. I lowered the toilet seat. Then my wife became pregnant. I attended birthing classes and learned to commiserate. When we brought Spencer home, I rose with her to feed him. And when he regurgitated on me, I bore it with good humor.

  Three months after his birth, Joan returned to part-time work. On the morning of her departure, she cautioned me to keep a close eye on our son. My feelings were hurt, and I said as much.

  “Please, honey, haven’t I proven myself reliable?” Thus, I can only think it was the pain of mistrust which caused me to forget my son when I went to the grocery store that afternoon.

  I was on my way there and turned around to see him. He was missing! I raced home and found him in his crib, glowering, and I knew what he was going to say when he learned to talk. So I confessed to Joan myself, over a candlelit dinner and a new silver bracelet.

  Being a Christian woman, Joan forgave me and offered me another chance. And the very next morning, after she handcuffed Spencer to me, she said, “Honey, I trust you.”

  Reflection on this experience has taught me two things: First, having children causes irreparable damage to those areas of the brain having to do with memory; and second, uh, what’s the second point? Oh, yeah, the second point is this: We all feel forgotten sometimes.

  Actually, I’d learned that second lesson at an early age. My family drove off and forgot me once, too. We were on vacation—five kids, Mom, and Dad—and stopped to eat at a Stuckey’s. I was in the bathroom when they climbed back in the car and headed out. They went twenty miles before discovering they were short a kid. Took a quick vote and decided to come back for me. It was almost a tie, but at the last minute Mom changed her mind.

  So sometimes each of us feels forgotten. Saddest line in the Bible is when Christ asks God why he forsook him. If Christ felt left behind, how then can we avoid feeling forgotten and forsaken?

  Some Bible scholars say that isn’t what Jesus meant when he cried from the cross. They say he was quoting the first line of Psalm 22, because to quote the first line was to affirm that psalm’s victorious conclusion. I have a great deal of respect for Bible scholars, but they’re full of baloney on this one. I think Jesus felt forgotten.

  However, the empty tomb tells us he was remembered. And so are we all, which is what I’m going to tell my son, just as soon as I remember where I left him.

  Family Vacations

  When our son Spencer was six weeks old, I said to my wife, “It’s time for a vacation.”

  “Not a good idea,” she cautioned. But she went along because she believes in l
etting me learn from my mistakes.

  We went to a lodge four hours away. Spencer slept the whole way there. I was gloating. Checked in. Went to our room. I was gloating some more. Having kids is a breeze. Mothers are such alarmists.

  Then Spencer woke up.

  In the book of Revelation, John writes about the seven plagues of divine wrath, ranging from bodily sores to earthquakes. John missed a plague: crying kids. Spencer stopped crying long enough for us to eat dinner. Grandmother-types looked at us and smiled. Before I had a child, I thought they smiled because they liked children. I now understand that they smile because their children are grown.

  We went back to our room and went to bed. Spencer cried all night. The next morning at breakfast we tried to slip out of the restaurant without him, but the manager blocked our escape. Mary and Joseph once left Jesus behind when they were on an out-of-town trip, too. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

  What happened on the way home can only be attributed to sleep deprivation. In an effort to salvage our first family vacation, I drove home on a designated scenic route. The state calls them “scenic routes” because it can’t squeeze “twisty-road-that-adds-three-hours-to-your-trip-and-makes-your-kid-carsick route” on one sign.

  The next year at vacation time, having forgotten our previous vacation, we drove to a lodge eight hours away. Spencer didn’t cry once. He slept soundlessly every night. He rode in his car seat without complaint. We didn’t hear a peep from him, but then earplugs have that effect.

  That family vacations don’t turn out as we’d hoped can only be blamed on television and its inaccurate portrayal of family life. I remember a Brady Bunch episode when the Bradys traveled for an entire week without once having to stop to use the bathroom. Florence Henderson sang across three states without anyone pushing her out the car door. When I was growing up, we wouldn’t be out the driveway before my brother Glenn had slugged me for breathing on him.