FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 44

Cheyenne and I were equally enthralled with this story of ’73. We took it all in as though it all happened yesterday. Tears and laughter, they would be there, promises and clouded dreams, they, too, all a part of the summer. It’s life.

For those who are reading the saga via the newspaper, that you are experiencing inward and outward miracles, real miracles, miracles as real as God. We tell this story, only a part of which can really be told, to show young men and young women of any generation how real God is, and how miraculously he weaves the events that make up a life. Much of it all is unexplainable, but that’s why it's a miracle.

You do not know whether you’re telling the story of a tragedy or that of a comedy. Truth is, if it reflects life at all, it is a little bit of both. I remember its being said that Shakepeare’s tragedies began as comedies but they ended in tragedy, and his comedies began with tragedy but ended with comedy.

So it is here in 1973.

“Really,” I said to Cheyenne, “I always say that this story is a comedy, a tragedy, and a romance, all rolled into one, kind of like Grandma’s rollin’ the dough and flour into homemade biscuits.”

Cheyenne liked that illustration, even though he was born just this side of Grandma’s time, the great-grandma who lived down the road from my Juniper Street home and whose claim to fame was that she was Preacher Miller’s wife as well as the best cook that side of the Mississippi.

We continued telling the story to a grandson,  switching back and forth between the miracles of 2023 and of 1973. Cheyenne came along three decades after much of the water had flowed under the bridge, but the water that flowed really was ever so calm and deep, and choppy. But that's life.

The night that I took Corrina to meet Mama, I continued, was about as perfect of a night as I can remember. That night was – along with a good many more – was such a one we put in a bottle and reach to hold in our hands from time to time to glance back at as the ages roll gently on.

“Sure, it was a difficult night,” I said, “but, somehow, Mama and Corrina’s connection seemed to put the world aright, just for a moment. I’m still not sure I can explain it. That night helped me figure out that all the small things in life, the good things, the miracles of sorts, helped to offset the difficult.”

There was more, I continued, that I needed to say to Corrina about Mama, but I didn’t know if it was going to be that night. A type of satisfaction seemed to come over Corrina as we got back to the red Nova. I walked over to the passenger side of the car to open her door before I noticed she was walking over to the driver’s side; so, I came around behind her and skipped a little to beat her to the door, and she slid in the car from that side.

I stepped in right behind her, and when I reached my key to turn it on, she was right up beside me, not over by the other door as when we started the night. I didn’t put my arm around her, because she had already taken her arm and rested it up on my shoulder, allowing me to use both hands to drive her safely home. It was like the old story when the yyyyytpoliceman stopped the boy with the girl pressed up against him as he drove, his arm wrapped tightly around her. “Sir,” the policeman said, “I’m going to have to ask you to use both hands, please.” And the boy replied, “I would sir, but I need one hand to drive with.”

The thought of that old story made me smile a little as I reached to put the key in the ignition; but, as I did, Corrina stopped me.

“Pup, can we just sit here for a minute?”

I obeyed, not saying anything but just leaned my head against the back of the seat and looked at the final remnants of the sun, a mixture of grays and blues and a touch of orange still visible in the horizon above the Rowe’s house. She seemed to be watching the last colors fade away, too, and we sat for a minute without speaking, soaking in the moment.

I knew that the half of an hour with Mama had affected Corrina, more than she could ever have expected. Perhaps it was that she saw a great deal of Mama in me and felt that immediate connection just as we had from the first time we met. Corrina and I became friends immediately, starting almost the second she bounded out of her daddy’s black Studebaker and walked to the front of the house shielding her eyes from the sun as she surveyed the progress of the new house.

“I said we had an immediate connection,” I told Cheyenne, “but that doesn’t mean that our friendship or romance, or whatever it was developin’ into, wasn’t goin’ to be complicated. Of course, that goes with being sixteen, seventeen years old.”

Cheyenne seemed to understand, so I didn’t elaborate beyond that, not then.

Corrina’s seeing Mama in such a weak state was something she had never really seen before. Without its being said, she had to know that we could lose her before the summer was over.

“And you don’t know how a girl of sixteen thinks, either,” Cheyenne said, astutely. “At that age, girls are more emotional anyway, and you two being connected the way you were made the connection with Grandma Louise come very easy, I imagine.”

I nodded.

We were all changing before our own eyes, she as much as me, probably. I was learning to grow into a man by tryin’ to survive out on a man’s job. And she, unknowingly, had entered into a young man’s world that was far different from the little Roanoke world she knew.

I wanted to get back to describing the last hour of our date, so I picked up with something Corrina said.

“Tell me, Pup,” she said, sliding back toward the passenger door so she could look at me, “what’s going to happen with Ms. Louise?”

I didn’t answer the question verbally, but I think my look told her what she feared.

Her demeanor changed, immediately.

“Billy Ray,” she said, switching to my formal name and raising the intensity in her voice, “that’s just not right. That’s not the way life should be. Why is this happening? Why does the Lord allow that?”

Her questions were far too deep and encompassing to answer at that moment; so, I tried to reassure her with a “I don’t want you to think about that. It’s goin’ to be all right, I know it is.”

I knew those words were a bit of a lie, even as I said them.

The next thing she said caught me off guard a little:

“And what’s going to happen with you?” she said, the intensity still in her voice, even some hurt. Pup, I know we haven’t known each other very long, but that doesn’t matter to me. It’s not the length of time you know someone, it’s the depth with which you know them. That’s what matters. And what worries me is that after sharing all the things we are beginning to share and so much more up ahead that we cannot even imagine, it worries me that I’m going to look up one day and you’re going to be gone, too.”

For the first time, Corrina began to lose control of some of her own tears, something she managed not to do in her sweet talk with Mama. But now, she lost that battle. I didn’t know how to answer her, even though what she said was not really a question.  I still could not leave it where it was.

I managed a little smile, and what I said next sounded more like Doocy than it did me, but it may have been the perfect response for the moment. As Huck Finn once said, sometimes you just have to lean on Providence.

“Well, Corrina,” I said, “I don’t know where you’ve been gettin’ your information, but I’m here to tell ya that you’re gonna have a lot harder time than that to get rid of the ‘Pup’ heah, a lot harder.”

I even sounded more like Doocy than I intended, but it made her laugh, and the tension seemed to disappear in a moment, like the colors of the sunset had just disappeared as we peered through my Nova’s windshield. She wiped the tears with her shirt sleeve as she laughed, and said, “Billy Ray, you always know the right thing to say." 

I appreciated the compliment, even though I knew that it wasn’t exactly the truth.

“But, as I said,” I told Cheyenne, “this night was perfect, and at that moment it really was the truth.”  

A youthful joy filled the night air that Georgia evening, and, in a moment two of life’s innocents, sixteen-year-olds just starting out in life, somehow turned tears into laughter. I believe that moment was one of the Lord’s great miracles. 

Soon, the two found themselves back on the Roanoke Road, driving along peacefully, without talking. Corrina sat close, even leaned a little on the young man, in more ways than one. Together, they soaked in the night on that dark road.

After a mile or two, the Pup reached over and turned on the radio in the red Nova; and the two, Pup and Corrina, let the Carpenters take them on home down that long but not lonesome Roanoke highway:

We’ve only just begun, to live

White lace and promises

A kiss for luck and we’re on our way

We’ve only begun

Before the risin’ sun, we fly

So many roads to choose

We’ll start out walkin’ and learn to run

And, yes, we’ve just begun

And when evening comes, we smile

So much of life ahead

We’ll find a place where there’s room to grow

And yes, we’ve just begun …

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 6:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text (972) 824-5197.