FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 59
“Two things I can say about the summer of ’73 Cheyenne,” I said, “it definitely gave me a taste of some good downhome humor, and it gave me some tough skin, too,” and then I added with a smile the biblical, “and the last more than the first.”
Cheyenne laughed. The mention of tough skin began taking me back to those hard, hot days, and I reminisced to the grandson more of the specifics about the events on the top of that Rock Mills hill.
It clearly was one of those jobs where you could never do anything right, and when developing a thick skin is one of the highlights out there, then you know fun and games weren't on the itinerary.
I remember “wantin’ to take on a man’s job,” as I’ve said, but I don’t know exactly what brought me to that kind of mindset.
Maybe it was my big brother Squatlow’s stories about working with the chain-gang boys, and I saw him as kind of a man’s man, just like Pee Wee, and I wanted to be a man’s man, too.
Or it may have been simply something in my make-up, I don’t know.
But crawling back into that 16-year-old mind, I can sense there was something going on that the shoe store would not fulfill, even as nice as it was in the air conditioning and working alongside somebody as real and true as Ms. Billie, one of my first balcony people.
“Balcony people?” Cheyenne interrupted.
“Oh, yeah, that was a concept I came across many years later. Balcony people are always cheerin’ for you; they’re up in the grandstands in the rain or snow or blusterin’ heat, cheerin’ you on, no matter what. Everybody has to have those people in their lives.”
“So,” Cheyenne said, his mind churning almost ahead of my own, “who would you say would be your balcony people that summer?”
I had to think about that one for a moment.
“Truth is,” I said, slowly, “I’d have to say that almost every name we’ve recorded in the tellin’ of this story would find themselves up in those grandstands. I don’t know if I could leave any one of them out, because they are in the story for a reason.”
“Even that boy in the blue truck?”
I smiled.
“Now, Cheyenne-man, I’ll have to think ‘bout that one. You hang onto that question, and when we get to his next surprise visit out on that job site, maybe I’ll have an answer.”
I had to toss that question over in my mind quite a bit as we drove down the highway, and while I didn’t come to a conclusion then, it occurred to me that everyone in the story served a purpose, if only a sort of distraction.
At first, I doubted if Red would fall into the category of a balcony person, but he did hire me, and he never did fire me, although that was as much because of Doocy and Pee Wee, and maybe Squatlow as anything, I suspect. Plus, the risk of taking the first-ever reality “Days of Our Lives” show off the air could have proven disastrous. In short, every one of the chain-gang crew would have quit and held out until Red put it back on the air.
Yes, Red and everybody with whom we crossed paths played a big role. They were all a God-send, as Grandma Belle often would say.
Because of them and their affinity for excess hoopla, I guess I never had time to wallow in self-pity.
Of course, in addition to that distraction – and receiving a check on Fridays that was $100 if we didn’t get rained out during the week – there was the little something special about the work environment that outweighed every one of those hard-to-get-along-with companions.
Theirs was a heavy load to bear, no doubt about it, but even they could not eclipse the streak of sunshine that shined through those dark clouds sometime along the way almost every day.
“Cheyenne,” I said, knowing I had to bring this segment to a close, for the time being, “some things you may not understand until you look back years later. This one part, however, wasn’t one of those things. The value of seein’ that black ’51 Studebaker raising red dust up almost all the way to the top of the tall pines as it made its way up the driveway – that’s somethin’ you could not overvalue, not in two-and-a-half million years.”
I paused.
“It’s jus’ somethin’ God does that we’ll never figure out, not until we step out onto a better shore than this.”
We smiled, knowing that sounded a great deal the way Preacher Harvey would’ve said it.
But, say, I continued, just for argument’s sake, that I started to forget about this dark-haired ray of sunshine one day. I couldn’t have, because at least five times a day, on a slow day, Doocy Dew would walk by me pushing a wheelbarrow and pretend he didn’t even see me, and he would burst out in song, “Corrina, Corrina – Corrina, Corrina – Corrina, Corrina – Where ya been so long? Corrina, Corrina – Where ya been so long? – Ain’t had no lovin’, since you been gone… Corrina, Corrina…”
He wouldn’t turn his head and look at me during his little impromptu musical, but about the time he got even with where I was, he’d cut his eyes my direction to the point where I could see the whites of ‘em, and he’d find something suddenly humorous in his big head and grin like a crazy man, one of those grins where his mouth was gape wide open and he would show you every one of his missing teeth as if he were as proud of them as if he had a mouthful of pearly whites.
I would just shake my head at the big fella in those moments – or I might pop off and say, “Doocy, I promise ya that you wouldn’t have any kind of life at all had it not been for Corrina and the Pup, none whatsoever. It’s pitiful.”
His responses were always as curious as the Breeze himself: He could ignore me go on grinning, he might burst back into song as if he didn’t hear me, or it could be a “But I’s do, Pup, the Breeze do has you and li’l Corrina, yes he do,” then carrying on as if he was the happiest person in this big ol’ whole wide world.
The evening Corrina and I went down by the creek – “the evening of the ‘red bird,’ Cheyenne,” I clarified – I had washed up in the water barrel at quitting time, dusted my clothes off until my jeans looked almost brand new (the way Pee Wee would do), and grabbed a sheet out of the back seat of the Nova and thrown it over the driver’s seat to keep the sweet Nova clean. While I was out at the car, I leaned in where nobody could see me and sprayed down with a bottle of Hai Karate I had stashed in the dash of the car. As luck would have it, as soon as I walked away and ambled by Doocy, who was finishing loading the truck, he smelled the cologne and felt it his civic duty to tell it to the world as if he was Paul Revere himself who had to shout to the world, “The British are coming, the British are coming.” That’s exactly how Doocy carried on, and it was a production that could debut at any moment.
“Aw, Willum,” he said, “you gotta get a whiff of this, Li’l Pup done poured a bottle er sweet-smellin’ stuff all ovah hisself.”
On the way toward the truck, Willum went way out of his way to walk really close by to me. I was leaning down, looking in the red Nova’s side mirror, combing my hair, and he sniffed real loud so everybody could hear him. He looked at Doocy climbing in the back of the truck, and shook his head really big to show his approval, smiling bigger than a possum the whole time.
I tried to escape the scene as fast as I could, so I hurried over to the front brick steps with a new black railing they had just put up, where Corrina stood waiting for me. The chain gang had all loaded into the truck by the time I got over to Corrina and were ready to pull out. But every drama has to have an Epilogue, so Doocy, from the back of the truck, pointed at Corrina and me with that white-washed webbed hand of his as we walked up the front porch steps to the front door, leaned over the side of the truck to holler to Pee Wee in the driver’s seat, and said, “Pee Wee, we sho did raise us a gentleman in baby Pup. Look how he opens thet door for his young lady, and you can smell ‘im all the way t’Canada, he sho do smell like a gentleman if I ever smelt one.”
Corrina walked into the house through the door opened by our Southern gentleman, and as she did, it allowed him a moment to glance back at the strangest bunch of balcony people he’d ever seen. He flashed them all a million-dollar smile, all for free, and he and she could hear the biggest racket as they laughed and talked over one another, the curtain closing mercifully behind Corrina and me.
Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a writer and preacher of the gospel. And, after a ten-year hiatus, he’s also returned to work with students at Ferris High School as well.
In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text (972) 824-5197.