FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 64
I walked Corrina to her door, moving slowly up the herringbone brick walkway and up the old red-brick steps to the front porch.
“Do you mind if I holler at your mom and dad?” I asked, coming to the door.
“Oh, they’d be offended if you didn’t,” Corrina said, opening the door and looking in before asking, “Mom, Dad, are ya’ll decent? Pup wants to say hey to you.”
When I knew it was safe, I leaned in. Her dad was sitting reading a book, and her mom stitched a colorful quilt that sat in her lap and hung to the floor three feet in front of her.
“Jus’ wanted to say hey to you,” I said, “and thanks for lettin’ me borrow Corrina Belle tonight.”
“Oh, good night, thanks for getting her home safely,” Mr. McClain said.
Mrs. McClain looked up with a smile, and added, “Pup, you be careful going home now.”
“I will,” I said, pleased that she said ‘Pup,’ “and again, thanks.”
Corrina squeezed my hand and said softly, “Be careful” when I turned to go. I held onto the hand as long as I could but finally released it and stepped out to the world without Corrina. She stood in the doorway until I got to the car then made sure she gave me a little wave and watched to see me off.
I drove quietly through the classic Roanoke downtown. About the only thing moving was a flashing Coca-Cola sign in the window of Mr. McClain’s hardware store. A few other lights shined in the windows of the Main Street shops, but the town was still. Everything was dark and lonely on the outskirts of town, too; there was not a car on the road, just a few stray dogs. I wondered why downtown had not looked so dark and lonely when Corrina and I drove through it just a few minutes before. I knew why.
I turned on the radio to keep me company. It wasn’t Corrina, but it helped the dark road to be less scary. There were a good many songs of the 60s and early 70s that would have made me scarier than I already was on that dark road. There was Bobby Picket’s “Monster Mash” – it was more funny than scary – but “Bad Moon Rising” could send a chill up your spine, especially on a dark rural Alabama road. Fortunately, I won the gamble, and nothing of that sort popped up on my car radio. If it had, there wouldn’t have been any stopping at stop signs or red lights, I promise. I had to hit a couple of the buttons before I landed on the Carpenters and the world became peaceful again. Nothing the Carpenters sang fit into the scary category, and even if it were, Karen Carpenter’s iconic voice would’ve soothed it all over. She was like Corrina in that.
I turned onto the Roanoke Road, and she was singing:
“Sing, sing a song, sing it loud, sing it strong, sing of good things – not bad, sing of happy, not sad, Sing, sing a song, make it simple to last your whole life long. Don’t’ worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear, just sing, sing a song. La-la-la-la-la. La-la-la-la-la-la. La-la-la-la-la-la-la …”
I’ve wondered how many times I had heard the song filling the air in the summer of ’73. It would be years before I would realize how new it was, that it had come out in May and had been playing for only two months before my lonely July night drive home. I welcomed my lovely companion with me on that spooky road that separated a young lady – who, like me, was still discovering herself and life’s miracles – and a mama looking back in quiet stillness at all the miracles of 42 years.
Ms. Carpenter was right. Some songs are an odd mixture of happy and sad, good and bad. What we learned that summer was that, come what may, the best we could ever hope to do was keep a soothing song close to the vest–a good and happy one. When life’s crowd gathered around us in all the years ahead on a sometimes lonely road, we had learned with Ms. Carpenter not to worry that our song’s not good enough for anyone else. It’s our song.
The world would’ve had no way to understand the life song of this 16-going-on-17-year-old in those days, even if Tom T. Hall had put it into a ballad and sang it. Some things are so deep that only God can peer into them. He’s the One who searches us and knows us, Grandma would say. Outside of Him who could search the hearts from the plains to the mountaintops, it would only be two Southern belles – one on either side of the Georgia line – who could peer deep into this cracking clay vessel.
Miles of the dark road now lengthening behind me, I hoped the next day would pass quickly, even though it was a Saturday and a short reprieve from the non-stop hoopla of Doocy and Red. The two leading ladies of the summer had agreed to get together again on Sunday evening. Mama wanted Corrina to go to church with me again. That gave her comfort, knowing we were staying close to the Lord. She knew she wasn’t getting any stronger – each day more difficult than the previous. I felt some urgency, too. I hoped Mama might feel up to telling her the rest of Daddy’s story. I needed to hear it more than Corrina, even though she was a lovely go-between.
Saturday was a long day. It was the first day I hadn’t seen Corrina Belle in a week, but the day mercifully passed with a hard three hours of basketball down at the Y and some time with Mama.
The night crawled by, but eventually, the sun shone through early Sunday morning, and I found myself again in front of that Roanoke house, picking up my Southern belle from that side of the Georgia line.
Soon, we were sitting again at the church where my grandfather preached a thousand sermons. He would preach that Sunday, too – sermon number 1001, I guess – but the preaching wasn’t the only blessing of the day. The singing was, too.
Brother Lynwood from Mississippi, well-known in the Southern gospel music arena, put out a new songbook every two years for churches of Christ and even some Baptist churches across the country, and the newest one had been out even before we knew Mama was sick. It was an orange book. I liked it since basketball orange became my favorite color by the time I was six, along with sky blue; but it also contained a song I loved the most, one about heaven, called “All Things Are Different in Heaven.”
Mama’s sickness made that song become more real than before.
My favorite song leader, Lew – the brother of my best friend I call Coca-Cola – led the song with his deep bass singing voice. He had no more than got the song started that I knew I would have to be careful not to let the tears get loose.
The song talks in one verse about a blind man, and its words are poignant:
“A blind man had lived for his Savior, in a world filled with darkness and fear; Then he opened his eyes, in that land beyond the skies, and said, ‘I’ll not be a blind man up here.’”
When the second verse comes, the song begins to transform into a ballad, saying:
“A lame man had tried to be faithful, just a cripple, his glad hard to bear. Then he stepped thru the gates, where his loved ones now await, and he will not be a cripple up there.”
The ballad romanticizes a traveling pilgrim in the final verse:
“A pilgrim I’ve traveled for Jesus, and my burdens have weight-ed me down; but when trav’ling is o’er, and I land on Heaven’s shore, this heavy load I’ll exchange for a crown.”
As hard as I tried that morning, the tears refused to be boxed up. One got loose before I could catch it. I looked away from Corrina, but when I stopped singing and turned away, she noticed. She reached over and squeezed my hand.
I knew she knew.
I squeezed it back, then got up and went to the bathroom. That was one of the first times I had to do everything I could not to lose it that summer. But a tear army pushed the troops past the brink when I heard Lew stepping up powerfully in a powerful crescendo in the chorus:
“For all things are different in Heaven, lovely city Christ went to prepare. For the blind man will see, the cripple walk, the bound are free, for ev’rything will be dif-f’rent up there.”
I washed my face and waited in the bathroom until the chorus had ended – and the rain stopped – before I eased back into my seat beside Corrina. She gave me a reassuring smile and scooted over closer than usual, abandoning her normal decorum that Sunday morning. She looked back down at the songbook, still open in her lap, and read over the words of the song. After a minute, she closed the book but held it in her hands, then glanced up at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen from her.
I marveled at the dark-haired young lady again that morning.
She knew.
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.