Home to Harmony (7 page)

O
n the third page of the
Harmony Herald,
opposite the editorial page, is the “Years Past” column. Every week, Bob Miles Jr. sorts through the boxes of old issues of the
Herald
and reprints articles from ten, twenty-five, and fifty years ago.

Because I prefer what has been to what will be, the “Years Past” column is the first thing I read when the
Herald
lands on my doorstep. The past is my sitting at Grandma's table eating rhubarb pie, with Grandma hovering over me, spooning another piece on my plate. The future is the bank repossessing my house and my having to take my family to live with my spinster aunt in the next town over. So I love opening the
Herald
and backing up twenty-five years.

The first week of August I was reading the “Twenty-five Years Ago This Week” section about when I was a child and the Harmony Little League All-Stars won the state championship. It all came back—how that September the All-Stars had paraded down Main Street,
riding on a float in the Corn and Sausage Days Parade, just behind the Sausage Queen, with Bob Miles Sr. snapping their picture, which he ran on the front page of the
Herald.

Twenty-five years later, Bob Miles Jr. reprinted the picture. Skinny boys with big ears and buzz haircuts. The boys were my age—I knew them all—and though I had played Little League, I hadn't made the All-Star team. I was extremely farsighted. My mother wouldn't let me wear my glasses for fear they would break. I would stand in the outfield and squint toward home plate, praying for God to direct the ball away from me.

The other players on our team would crouch and yell, “Hey batter, hey batter, hey batter…” They sounded like crickets. I never yelled because I didn't want the attention. I didn't want the batter to sense my presence and hit the ball my way. I would watch the pitcher wind up and hurl the ball. I could see the ball leave the bat. I could see it sail through the air in a high arc. I could hear Coach Kennedy yelling at me to catch it, but as the ball came closer I'd lose sight of it. I would stab my hand in the air, and more often than not, the ball would strike me in the head. After a while, I learned to drop to the ground and cover my head whenever the coach called my name. This saved my head but wrecked my chance to play on the All-Star team.

 

N
ow, twenty-five Augusts later, it is a slow news month. We sit on our porches and drink iced tea
and don't generate much news. The only thing for Bob Jr. to write about is the heat, which we already know about. So Bob ran an extended version of the “Years Past” column. I read it in reverse, starting with fifty years ago, then twenty-five, then ten. I got to the “Ten Years Ago This Week” section. There was my name: “Samuel Addison Gardner and Barbara Ann Griffith were joined in holy matrimony this past Saturday…”

I stopped reading. I counted back on my fingers. A panic gripped me. My tenth anniversary was the next day and I had forgotten it.

I heard the phone ring, heard my wife yell that she would answer it. I could hear her talking, faintly. “Yes, it's ten years tomorrow, but I think Sam's forgotten. I'm not saying anything. I'm just going to wait and see what happens.”

I had not done well with anniversaries. On our fifth anniversary, which was the “wood” anniversary, I went to the lumberyard and bought two wooden posts and built Barbara a clothesline and gift-wrapped some wooden clothespins, which I thought was a creative gift. I thought everyone liked clotheslines and falling to sleep on line-dried sheets. I was wrong.

On our sixth anniversary I gave her a personalized license plate with her initials, which spelled out the word
BAG,
which did not occur to me until I took her by the hand and walked her outside with her eyes closed. I positioned her in front of the car and said, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

Barbara opened her eyes and looked at the license plate, then at me, then back at the license plate. I could
see her lips move. “Bag,” she was saying. Then she turned to me and said, “I didn't think you could do worse than the clothesline. I was wrong.”

Now our tenth anniversary was one day away and I had nothing planned. I called a gift shop in the city to find out what to buy for tenth anniversaries. I couldn't call the local store. They knew my voice. They'd say, “Is that you, Sam Gardner? Why are you just now asking?” and it would get back to my wife. There is no privacy in this town. Your stupidity is laid bare for all to see.

Since my fifth anniversary, gift giving had grown more complicated. The saleslady told me I could choose between giving a traditional gift or buying a modern gift. The traditional gift for tenth anniversaries was aluminum. Aluminum was within my budget. I liked that. The modern gift, the lady told me, was diamond jewelry. I didn't care for that at all. I wondered who changed it.

I'm a traditionalist. I don't do something just because it's a fad. I went with aluminum. I bought Barbara ten cans of diet soda in aluminum cans. One can for each year. I gift wrapped each one. She'd like that, unwrapping ten separate gifts. She'd think it was creative.

That night as we lay in bed, she asked, “Should I make plans for tomorrow, or did you maybe have a little something in mind?”

“Nothing special,” I told her. “Just another day. Got to go to the office, then do some visitation. But I'll be home for supper. Could you maybe make some of that
good meat loaf you make? We haven't had that in a while.”

It was dark in our bedroom. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear her let out a sigh, then a snort. It was resignation working its way toward anger. I couldn't wait for the next day. Wouldn't she be surprised! Ten cans of diet soda. What a fun surprise!

 

W
hen I woke up the next morning, Barbara was gone. There was a note on the table saying she'd gone for a walk. A long walk. She had underlined the word
long
and had pressed down hard with the pencil. I could see where the lead had broken.

I waited for her to get home. I heard her in the kitchen. She was standing at the sink. She turned to face me, and I held out a wrapped can. She smiled a big, pretty smile, then hugged me and said, “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered,” I told her. “I'd never forget our anniversary.”

She unwrapped it, then looked at me.

I smiled. “Aluminum,” I told her. “The tenth year is the aluminum year. Isn't that great? I got you ten of them. Get it? Ten cans of soda for ten years of marriage. Isn't that great?”

She didn't say anything. She unwrapped the other cans. She was working her way from resignation toward anger. She got to the last can. That was the can I'd taped the diamond ring to. When we'd married, I didn't have enough money for a diamond ring. When
she agreed to marry me, I promised her that someday I'd buy her one.

She'd told me, “You don't have to. It wouldn't make us any more married. I'm not marrying you for a ring.” Which made me want to buy it for her all the more.

A couple years after we married, my grandmother died and left me two thousand dollars. I put it in the bank. It was our emergency money. It was money for desperate times. With our tenth anniversary only one day away, I was desperate. I took the money and drove to the city and bought the ring.

Barbara unwrapped the last can. The ring was taped to the top, bright and shiny.

She began to weep. This beautiful woman who had worked to put me through school, who had borne our children, who had told me she liked the license plate after all and had taken it off the car when we'd sold it and bolted it to our new car.

“Times have changed,” I told her. “The traditional tenth anniversary gift was aluminum. But the modern gift is diamond jewelry. You know me, I like to keep up with the times.”

 

L
ate that afternoon I went up to the attic and looked through the boxes for the champagne glasses from our wedding day. It took two hours to find them. It was August-hot. I called my mother to tell her that she wanted to take her grandchildren for the night. I washed the champagne glasses and took a shower and
put on my suit. Barbara was out at the clothesline. I called her into the house.

She walked in, wiping the sweat from her brow. I handed her a champagne glass of diet soda.

“It's can number one,” I told her. “I've heard it's a good year.” Then I kissed her. Then we did something else, on which I won't elaborate because I'm a traditionalist.

Afterwards, we talked. She said, “You're a piece of work, Sam Gardner. I had my doubts about you, especially after the clothesline and the license plate, but you're doing better.”

I told her when you've been hit in the head with a baseball as many times as I have, it takes a while to get over it.

I love my wife. I can't believe she chose me. When I was growing up, no one ever chose me for anything. We would pick teams for baseball, and the captains would argue over me.

“You take him.”

“No, you take him.”

I would stand, squinty eyed, staring at the ground, digging at the dirt with the toe of my shoe.

Then I went to college and met my wife. She sat next to me in the dining hall. I thought maybe she'd lost a bet and that sitting with me was the penalty. The next day she sat by me again, so I asked her name.

“Barbara,” she told me.

“That's a pretty name,” I said.

“It means
stranger,”
she confided.

Sitting there, looking at her, I felt smooth and witty.
I said, “Hello, stranger. Pleased to meet you. My name is Sam,” I told her. “It means
one who listens.”

So we sat together and she talked and I listened.

I still can't believe she married me. I look up from the pulpit and see her in the fifth row, just behind Miriam and Ellis Hodge. I watch her push her hair behind her ears, how it sweeps over her shoulders. Watch her eyes. She has one blue eye and one brown eye. People look at her and suspect something is a little different, but can't quite put their finger on it. When she was a child, it made her self-conscious.

 

S
he isn't perfection, but then I've never been drawn to perfection. When I was twelve years old and watched the All-Stars riding in the Corn and Sausage Days Parade, I saw how perfection went to their heads. It ruined them. Fifteen boys who, before perfection visited them, were easily tolerated—but in perfection became unbearable. Having tasted perfection so young, they assumed perfection would be their life's pattern and have been disappointed ever since.

But since I was acquainted with failure from an early age, I made my peace with it and am pleasantly surprised when life goes well. Ten years in a wonderful marriage, with two healthy sons. It shocks me to think of it. So blessed.

It is easy, in these aluminum years, to believe in a loving God. It's the only thing that makes sense. It isn't skill and pluck and hard work that get us where we are. It's grace, nothing else.

It's God, pointing the divine finger our way, saying, “You there, with the squinty eyes, digging your toes in the dirt, it's
you
I want.”

Sometimes I feel like I'm sitting at God's table and I've just finished one piece of blessing, and God smiles and says, “Here, Sam, have another.”

That's how it feels. That's exactly how it feels.

A
s far back as I can remember, Dale Hinshaw has been an elder at Harmony Friends Meeting, even though the rules say you can serve only six years. You serve six years, then are paroled, having done your time. But Dale keeps volunteering, and we keep letting him, even though some of our most half-witted decisions can be traced back to Dale Hinshaw—including the decision to buy a used bus from a rock band and use it as a church bus.

The group was named Venom. They wore leather pants and went without shirts and had rattlesnakes tattooed on their chests. They writhed on the stage and hissed at the audience. It was hard to make out the words to their songs, except for the cuss words, which they spoke loudly and clearly and often. No one mistook them for a gospel quartet.

Venom was driving through Harmony when their bus broke down. It was towed to Harvey Muldock's garage. It took Harvey two weeks to get the parts, by
which time the members of Venom were gone, to the great relief of our town. Harvey Muldock was telling about their bus during an elders' meeting, which was when Dale Hinshaw suggested the church buy the bus for the cost of the repairs—three hundred dollars.

“We could take the money from our missions fund. It could be the start of our bus ministry,” he said. “We could drive to the nursing home and bring the people in. We can use it for mission trips. The devil has had that bus long enough. Let's see what the Lord can do with it.”

So that's what we did.

Dale painted it himself, with a paintbrush. Royal blue. On the sides of the bus he painted the church name, and on the back he painted
Follow Me to Harmony Friends Meeting!

Now the paint is faded, and if you look closely you can make out the word
Venom
and the faint outline of a rattlesnake. The bus was used two Sundays before it broke down again. We now understand why the members of Venom never bothered to come back for it. This was five years ago, and the bus still sits in the meetinghouse parking lot, a monument to shallow thinking.

There is one window in my office. When Dale Hinshaw parked the bus five years ago, he parked it right in front of the window. The next Sunday the bus wouldn't start, and it's sat there ever since. Instead of looking out at sky, I look at the bus. It is a strong discouragement.

 

O
ne Monday morning, late in August, I was sitting in the office reading the newsletter from the
Quaker headquarters. The front page was the superintendent's letter. He believes in the power of words, that we are one newsletter article away from vitality. He uses nouns as verbs and writes about impacting the world and visioning our objectives and imaging our destiny. He reveres numbers. There are newsletter articles about “Eight Ways to Impact Our World!!” and “Ten Steps to Visioning Our Objectives!!” He makes extensive use of the exclamation point and bold print.

On the next page were the prayer requests. I scanned the list. Prayers for our leaders. Prayers for various sick people. Then, there it was: “Prayers for Brother Norman as he ministers to the Choctaw Indians!! Needs transportation for youth programs!!!”

Brother Norman was a nice guy, but not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. When he'd graduated from seminary, no church would have him, so our superintendent talked with him about impacting the world as a missionary to the Choctaw Indians and sent him to Oklahoma, where Brother Norman began a building program.

Each month Brother Norman wrote the Quaker headquarters to report his prayer needs. Electricians one month, plumbers the next. Before long, the meetinghouse was built. Now he was praying for a bus to transport the Choctaw youth.

I raised my eyes from the newsletter and peered out my office window. The tires were dry-rotted and stuck to the pavement. The bus wouldn't start, but Harvey Muldock could fix it.

The week before, I had suggested that the men of the church needed a ministry. Dale Hinshaw had proposed
a baseball ministry. His idea was to repair the bus and drive to the ball games in the city and invite other men from the town to join us. Then on the way home to Harmony, we could witness to them.

He had come across this strategy in the Quaker newsletter. It was idea number four in the “Eight Ways to Impact Our World!!” article.

Dale said, “We'll have them right there on the bus. They'll have to listen. We'll drive slow and wear 'em down.” Dale thought the gospel was not compelling in and of itself, that people needed to be coerced into believing it.

I suggested donating the bus to the fire department so they could burn it for practice. Or maybe towing it to the county fair and charging people a dollar to hit it with a sledge hammer. Better yet, we could sell it to a rock band.

I said, “The Lord has put up with this bus long enough. Let's give it back to the devil.”

Then, the very next Monday morning, I read the Quaker newsletter about Brother Norman and the Choctaw youth in need of transportation.

I called Brother Norman on the phone to tell him his prayers had been answered. Then I phoned Harvey Muldock, who towed the bus to his garage. It took a couple weeks, but he got it running. Dale sanded off the snake and
Follow Me to Harmony Friends Meeting!
and the word
Venom.
He painted the bus red, with a paintbrush.

I walked over to Dale's house to see it.

“It needs a Scripture passage,” he said. “Something that might bring people to the Lord if they happen to
glance at it. I've narrowed it down to two verses—John 10:14 about the good shepherd, or Revelation 13:16 about the mark of the beast.”

“I've always been partial to John 10:14,” I told him.

Dale frowned. “I was leaning toward Revelation,” he said.

“Let's flip a coin,” I suggested. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”

“Fair enough,” Dale said.

I flipped the coin. It was heads.

“You win,” Dale said.

“Then we'll go with John 10:14,” I declared.

So that's what he painted down the side of the bus:
I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me.

A fine Scripture.

 

T
hat Sunday I announced from the pulpit that Dale and Harvey and I would be driving the bus to Oklahoma. After church, the Friendly Women's Circle surrounded the bus and prayed for our safe journey as we went forth onto the mission field. Then they counted out six hundred dollars into Dale's hands, money they'd raised at their annual Chicken Noodle Dinner. Six hundred dollars! Cash!

“You be sure Brother Norman gets that money,” Fern Hampton warned him. “Don't be spending it on wild living.”

I looked at Dale in his plaid shirt, seed-corn cap, and orthopedic shoes. He didn't strike me as a candidate for wild living.

We left for Oklahoma the next day. By late afternoon we were crossing the Mississippi River into St. Louis. There was the Gateway Arch, rising up from the west bank of the river. We'd never seen it before except on television when the St. Louis Cardinals played.

Dale was driving. “Let's stop,” he said. He veered the bus across four lanes of traffic and just made the exit.

We parked the bus, went into the Arch and rode the elevator all the way to the top. We crowded against the windows. We could see all of St. Louis, including the baseball stadium. It was beautiful, like an emerald. We felt like angels looking down from heaven. We could see the groundskeepers rolling the diamond. A trickle of ant people was moving into the seats.

Harvey said, “I think there's a game today.”

A man standing next to us said, “That's right. The Cardinals and the Cubbies. Mark McGwire's going for the home-run record. Number sixty-two.”

We climbed back in the bus and drove past the stadium. There was a man out front scalping tickets. He held up three tickets and yelled, “Six hundred dollars!” which we took to be a sign from the Lord.

Harvey said, “You know, we could pay it back. The Friendly Women would never know. We could write Brother Norman a check. Wouldn't that be something to see the record home-run hit? My father was there in 1961 when Roger Maris set his record, and he never forgot it. Whenever we'd watch a ball game, he'd say, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Roger Maris hit number sixty-one?' Then he'd talk about that ball
sailing over the fence. He never forgot it. He talked about it on his deathbed, about seeing that.”

Dale said, “We'd be a witness to history. We'd never forget it. Then we could drive through the night and be at Brother Norman's in the morning.”

So that's what we did. We bought the tickets and found our seats.

It was a hot evening. The late sun beat down, right on us. A vendor walked down our aisle.

“Cold beer,” he yelled. “Get your cold beer.”

It was unmercifully hot.

I looked at Dale and Harvey. “I drank a beer once. I was in college. It didn't taste bad, either.”

Dale said, “I haven't had a beer since I became a Christian.”

Harvey said, “You know, the apostle Paul once advised Timothy to refresh himself with an adult beverage.”

Dale declared, “I know that verse. The Epistle of 1 Timothy. Chapter 5. Verse 23.”

I could feel the sweat trickle down my back and into my underwear.

It was cruelly hot, and what was one beer? That was no big sin, was it? Harvey yelled at the vendor and held up three fingers and passed our money down the row. Back came three beers. We sat in our seats and watched the game and sipped our beers. It was such a thrill, getting away with something.

Then Mark McGwire came to bat and the crowd grew still. It was like church. Like the silence after the first hymn when we're waiting for the Lord to inspire us. It was that kind of quiet. The pitcher glanced at first
base, then at third base, then reared back and hurled the ball toward home plate. Mark McGwire brought the bat around in slow motion. We heard a
crack!
and that little white ball sailed over the fence and into the crowd.

Everyone in the country was watching their television sets—even the people in Harmony. So when the camera swept the roaring crowd and paused on us, standing and holding our beers, people from Harmony said, “I thought they were on a mission trip. What are they doing there? I thought they were in Oklahoma with Brother Norman and the Choctaw youth. And what is that they're drinking? That doesn't look like soda to me.”

Before long it was all over town. Everyone knew, including our wives. Some of the men in the church wondered why they hadn't been invited on the mission trip, and weren't too happy about being left out.

 

A
fter the game, we climbed on the bus and drove through the night, talking of Mark McGwire's home run and how we'd never forget it.

“I can't wait till we get home,” Dale said. “Won't it be fun telling people we were there?”

Harvey said, “Dale, don't you dare say a word about being there. If those Friendly Women find out we were at the game, they'll kill us.”

That smothered our elation. We'd seen history made and couldn't brag. What a bitter disappointment.

Early the next morning we pulled up in the church
parking lot and sounded the horn. Brother Norman was waiting with the Choctaw youth.

“We were expecting you last night,” Brother Norman said.

“We stopped to do some birdwatching,” Harvey told him. “Saw some lovely cardinals.”

Brother Norman smiled. “Isn't it nice to enjoy God's creation?”

“It's wonderful,” Harvey agreed. “Simply wonderful.”

Brother Norman and the Choctaw youth walked around the bus, admiring it. Brother Norman read the Scripture verse Dale had painted:
I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me.

“A fine Scripture,” he said.

“It wasn't my first choice,” Dale allowed.

Brother Norman showed us the meetinghouse: the red carpet, the bathroom, his office, the folding wooden chairs with the Bible racks on back, the Choctaw youth room with a Ping-Pong table and beanbag chairs. So proud of his ministry.

Dale took pictures. “This'll make a fine slide show,” he said. Dale felt called to the ministry of slide shows.

Harvey said, “Brother Norman, you're doing a fine work here. We'll be sure to tell the folks back in Harmony all about it. Oh, by the way, we wanted you to have this.” He pulled a check for six hundred dollars from his pocket and handed it to Brother Norman.

Brother Norman beamed. Then Harvey said it was time to leave, that we'd done what we came to do.

I remember that moment distinctly, how each of us thought the very same thought at the very same time.
It was the thought that while we had given careful attention to getting to Oklahoma, we had given no thought whatsoever to getting home.

Harvey said, “Maybe we can call one of our wives. Maybe one of them can come get us.”

We crowded into Brother Norman's office to use the phone. Harvey dialed his house. His wife answered. Harvey didn't do much talking. Mostly he listened, though every now and then we could hear him ask a question.

“Game?” he asked. “What game?” He was trying to sound indignant. “Cardinals and Cubs? Did they play?…You say you saw us there? Well, you know people look different on television. Television does that to people. Makes you look like someone else.” Then he said, “Well, after forty years of marriage, I'm just sorry you don't trust me more.” He sniffed as he said it, sounding hurt.

That's when Harvey's wife said she was too busy to come get us, that maybe we could stay with Brother Norman for a few days and learn what it meant to be Christian.

Dale and I called our wives, who offered similar suggestions and, coincidentally, were also very busy.