small brush shouldn't fuck with big timber

Death's Door, the view from the Spanish announcers table: from the archives.....road trip

Wednesday, August 29

from the archives.....road trip



This is a step-off from what I usually write about, but my head got to wondering and my Grandfather came to mind. He always dug me for what I was all about and I think he’d dig reading this site.

Grandfather was a Baptist Preacher all his adult life. He wasn’t your fire and brimstone type of preacher, but he sure enough got old school about it.

He came from the Lone Star state by way of Louisiana and he preached all over West Texas in his day and was well received and respected. Back then he preached on what was called the circuit.

He’d hit a different town every Sunday or so, cause back then a lot of the smaller towns didn’t have a regular everyday man of the cloth. So they had to rely on the circuit preacher to make do.

He’d hit town, save the sinners and spread the word of God, then in the evenings the old church women would cook him Sunday dinner.

Odd thing, in that part of the world lunch was called dinner and dinner was called supper and the trunk of a car was called the turtle.

Anyway a few years ago I was working for the Man in the Missouri Boothill country and I walked into this roadside store to grab a pack of smokes.

The old man behind the counter kept staring at the federal Id that hung around my neck.

“Beck, huh? I used to travel with a preacher named Beck years ago in West Texas”. We got to talking and he told me he used to be a circuit judge years way back in the day and on accession he’d hook up and travel with a preacher named Beck. Talk about your small world. How cool was that?

As well as I can remember my Grandfather moved to the big city in the early seventies and lived here until he passed some years ago.

I think one of the best things I’ve ever done had to do with him.

Sometime before he passed he took to missing his old stomping grounds back in Texas and the family hatched a plan where he could revisit all the places where he used to preach. Think of it as the Old Preacher Reunion Tour and yours truly was picked to be the bus driver.

Here’s the picture. My grandfather, grandmother, and my mother plus myself stuffed into a reconditioned, souped up, full blown ex-highway patrol car. That was all me and my father drove back then, sorry.

My Grandfather was so pumped for this trip. We blew into West Texas like the mob and I’d drop them at whatever church he was visiting and he would always say; “well, grandson, I gonna see to my brethren. What about you?”

My mother always hated this but he dug it so I’d say; “well, we passed my brethren a few miles back. You remember that sign I showed you that said “Cold Cocktail & Nude Dancers”? I’m gonna go in there and spread the faith”.

He would then slide me a five spot and tell me it was for the offering plate. I don’t think that he knew that a couple of times I wasn’t kidding.

The road trip lasted only a few days but he really enjoyed it. He got to see old friends and places, plus spread the Word one more time and I got to do a good deed that I’ll never surpass.


"and the monkey flipped the switch"

2 Comments:

Blogger Spyder said...

Great story Greg!

2:59 PM  
Blogger Xavier Onassis said...

That's a really cool story and a really touching thing you did for your grandfather.

I wish I could spend more than five minutes with my family before wanting to strangle them all.

'sniff'

8:06 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home