Laughing with Friends

I was at the annual Women’s Retreat last weekend and we started telling stories. There’s always a certain combination of personalities that, when you get them together, provides the kind of therapeutic laughter that makes the stress just pour out of you. This was our tenth retreat and we think we’ve got the technique down pretty good. We offer massages, nature hikes, canoeing, dynamic worship and a great speaker. But the best part of the whole weekend is totally out of the planning team’s hands; and that’s the people who come and provide the laughter. Anytime I get a chance to be in the same room with Phyllis Hock I take it because there is guaranteed laughter. Women like Phyllis may not fully appreciate what a ministry they have in their ability to make us all find the fun in life. But it wasn’t Phyllis this time, it was Linda Peavy. We started telling stories of times we almost got kicked out of church. And this was as adults, mind you, not when we were children.

Linda and I raised our kids together. I babysat her two boys every afternoon for a while until I went back to work. In fact, her youngest son was in my daughter’s class in the first grade and was madly in love with her until she had her hair cut. After that, he moved on to the next little girl with long black hair, eventually marrying a woman with long black hair. We had a group of friends from church who would periodically get together for a glass or two of wine. We’d all bring our kids and let them play with each other while we relaxed and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I threw a party every Christmas Eve and we’d have some snacks and liquor for a couple of hours then all go to church for the midnight service. We were just a big extended family who not only laughed and drank together but worshipped God together. And now we were retreating together and sharing stories of our grandchildren along with stories of when we were younger.

Linda started out telling the story of the Sunday her son farted during the prayers of the people. Most of the people I was praying for wouldn’t have cared if the kid farted but we had one of those stern Calvinist ministers back then and he was the kind who would, and did, correct kids right in the middle of worship. I don’t know for a fact, mostly because I didn’t pay a lot of attention, but I’m pretty sure he believed firmly in the totally depravity of mankind. And Linda and I were prime examples.

It really wasn’t the farting that set us off, it was Chris' astonished expression. It wasn’t one of those smelly ones, just a little “toot.” And it wasn’t even that loud but Chris was so startled by it Linda commenced to laugh right there in the longest prayer of the service, the one time the entire sanctuary was absolutely silent. To her credit, Linda didn’t make a sound but when I saw her whole body shaking, I lost it. When I started, my whole family went off and pretty soon the whole pew, not just the people, the pew furniture, was shaking. To make matters worse, we were right in the middle and on the front row, right under the preacher’s nose and we knew it. Then our friend Kit, sitting behind us, saw what was happening, though I’m not sure how, because this was the prayers of the people and we’re all supposed to have our eyes shut and communing with the Lord and all. Maybe Kit’s mother forgot to teach her to close her eyes during the prayers of the people. When she and her son saw us shaking the pew, they commenced to laugh, too. Fortunately for all of our souls the laughter was limited to just those two pews or we would have all gone to hell for sure.

Linda got me into a lot of trouble in those days when we were trying to mature into the dignified and solemn matrons we are today. The next thing I knew it was Christmas Eve and the same group of us were all sitting in the cry room at the back of the church gasping for air between gales of laughter. Our Christmas Eve party had become a tradition by this time. We may have had a little too much fellowship that year because we got to church late. But that may have been our saving grace. The church had a glass enclosed, sound-proof, “cry room” at the very back of the sanctuary. Because we were late we just all staggered into the cry room and plopped ourselves down.

That year the choir had chosen to wear casual clothes instead of their regular choir robes. One of the most pompous and conservative old guys in the church sat there in his regular spot in the back of the choir wearing a beige turtleneck sweater. I’m sure he thought it was a festive touch but it made him look stark naked. Naked as a jaybird. Birthday suit naked. Wrinkled old man at a nudist colony naked.

The instant our group saw him we burst out laughing and laughed and laughed and laughed. We laughed right through the lighting of the Christ candle. We laughed through Martin Luther’s classic sermon and the ringing of the bell and all of it. We didn’t stop until church was over and we staggered back out into the Christmas night. If there was any question of the total depravity of mankind, we removed the doubt that year.

But I have to say that the hardest I have ever laughed in my life was at the viewing when Emma Grantham died. I can’t blame Linda for that one; it was Kit who was my bad influence that night.

In our defense, it was late and it had been a busy day for both of us and you know how giggly you get when you’re tired. Emma was old and ready to die. The viewing of the body was one of those social obligations that our mothers taught us to do. You go sign the book so the family will know somebody cared about dear old Emma. You peep in at the dearly departed, say goodbye to them and go home.

But this time when we walked into Williams Funeral Home there was a huge crowd of people in the building and we were carried along in the traffic of mourners. I thought to myself at the time that I didn’t know Emma had so many friends. As we walked along, Kit leaned over to me and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Jane, I don’t know any of these people.” We finally wove our way though the crowd and got up to the casket and looked in. After a minute of standing there looking into the casket, I quietly announced what we both knew, “Kit, we don’t know the deceased.”

With that, we lost it. We both burst out laughing. But we knew how bad it would look so we quickly covered our faces and tried to pretend we were overcome with grief. All we could think of was how to get out of the building as fast as we could. But because of the crowd, it seemed like we were going in slow motion. Gales of laughter came bubbling up as we desperately fought through the crowd. We stopped at the first Kleenex station we found and got handfuls of Kleenex to cover our faces. Somehow we went through a wrong door and ended up in the kitchen which only made us laugh harder but we took the opportunity to pick up a few paper towels to reinforce our Kleenex. After a while I was laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face so I decided I could use this to my advantage and moved the Kleenex from my eyes, still covering my mouth, as if to say “see, I’m not laughing, I’m really crying.”

When we finally got outside we sat on the curb right there at Main and Glenbrook and just Who-Hawed. I've never laughed so loud and so hard in my life. Then who should we see but our friend, Linda, looking solemn, serene and dignified as she waited to go see the real Emma. It was Linda’s golden moment of being the perfect adult as she looked down on us there in the gutter holding our wads of Kleenex and dissolved in our wet spasms.

I think that was the last time Kit and I went to a viewing together. Come to think of it, we don’t sit by each other in church anymore, either. It’s just better that way. God knows.

Valentines Day Report

My friend Ann sent around an email last week, really more of a prayer:

February 13th: Dear Lord, give me strength and "sisters" give me sympathy--for a husband who says, "I talked to the folks at Super S Grocery about what I should consider giving you for Valentine's Day."

I figure she was dreading that she might end up with maybe a smoked ham or kitchen cleansers or something. I couldn’t offer much advice since I knew I was receiving a 12-volt DeWalt cordless drill. But, in Beaven’s defense, that’s exactly what I asked for. This was a far cry from the year of “the incident.”

“The incident,” as we refer to it in family lore happened one year when I was working at First National Bank in downtown Garland. Banks are normally habituated primarily by women employees, most of who are either sleep-deprived or suffer from a lack of estrogen. It just seems like most bank employees fall into one of two or three categories. They are either new mothers with babies who keep them awake all night or mothers who get “the call” every afternoon after school and have to referee fights between siblings over the telephone. Being a mother isn’t the easiest job you get. It always made balancing a couple of million dollars in the vault to each teller's drawer seem easy. So, when Valentines Day rolls around, you figure you will finally receive some sort of reward, some token of love. Lord knows you deserve it.

The year in question, I was in the “afternoon phone call” stage of motherhood when the girls would dutifully call each afternoon to tell me that they were home from school. Then they would usually either announce that there was no food in the house or that their mentally ill sister had just committed some unpardonable sin. The “day in question” may have also been the day that the latest unpardonable sin was a younger sister riding around the street on her bicycle with her older sister’s flute dragging behind on the pavement. Or something similar.

I was in need of flowers. That Valentines Day I watched the parade of floral deliveries all day long waiting for mine even though I knew Beaven was far too practical and/or brain damaged to get me flowers. His preferred method of showing love was to change the oil in my car.

I got home that night and started our annual Valentines Day argument. I won’t go into gory details here but the evening ended with the statement, “If you would just send the damned flowers I would shut up.”

A week or so later the flowers arrived. Enough time had gone by that most of the women at work had forgotten all about Valentines Day. They twittered with questions about what I had done to deserve this out-of -season gesture. When they asked me what the flowers were for I had to glumly admit they were for “being a bitch.”

And, per my agreement, I have had to shut about flowers. It was the last delivery of flowers I ever got. In the years since I’ve learned to appreciate it whenever he changes the oil in my car. That may be the closest I ever get to flowers again.

Well, yes, there was the Vespa last year. I guess that took care of all the Valentines past, present and future. I don’t kid myself that it was purely a starry-eyed romantic gift, though. He probably didn’t even realize it was Valentines Day until the lady in the store gave him red balloons to bring home. But it was enough to score major points in the gift department. It sure beats a canned ham.

Something Like Heaven

Something special is happening here in Pearlington, Mississippi. I’m not sure I can put my finger on it. I was looking around the room during lunch at the Missionary Baptist Church one day and said to the lady sitting beside me, “I wonder if this is what heaven is going to look like.” She took a while to look around and absorb the many shapes and colors of the faces around us as well as the many different conditions of the clothing they wore and the sounds of their voices, then she softly answered back, “Maybe we’re there now.”

Lunch was served every weekday at the Missionary Baptist Church. It’s been this way almost a year now, ever since they replaced their damaged building with a fellowship hall that will eventually be joined to a new sanctuary. This is where any volunteer working in Pearlington is invited for a free lunch. It is Southern cooking at it’s absolute best. The ladies of this mostly black congregation spend all morning at the church cooking a huge variety of food. Other ladies bring dishes they’ve cooked at home. Some of the food is donated and some paid for through cash donations. We had cornbread every day. Catfish every Friday and when they cook on special Saturdays, it’s the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Most days they have slaw, red beans and rice and greens. There is always a dessert; a cobbler perhaps or bread pudding.

At one end of the room sits a couple of stoves and a long table where the food is set out. There is a door to enter and another to exit. Traffic control is vital because the room is always packed. The first people to eat usually hurry to finish and free up a chair for the people standing in line. This is a no-nonsense crowd. There are no egos here and most people are tired when they break to eat. But there is a sense of honesty; that what you see is what you get, and the only room for pride is in a job well done. There was no fashion display. Most of us wore old clothes, sometimes ones that we would throw away as soon as we got home, knowing when we packed that the paint and joint compound would never be washed away.

When you enter the building the first thing in line is the hand sanitizer. While this might kill germs, it doesn’t do much for any paint or joint compound on your hands. But by putting on a whole gob of the stuff and rubbing for the few minutes it takes for the line to get to the food, you can end up with fairly clean hands. Along the left hand wall are boxes of canned food stacked waist high with napkins and boxes of plastic eating utensils. After you go through the food and dessert lines there’s a refrigerator with sodas and water. Then you sit at one of the six or seven long tables to eat.

If you get there right at 11:30 you are in time to have Rev Rawls bless the food and welcome everyone. He usually asks for a representative of each group to stand and say what state they are from. I figure he uses this to help us connect with each other and show how many people from so many different places are coming to help. By the time Rev Rawls had welcomed you, you felt seriously welcomed. I seldom saw him without a smile. He has a booming voice and would tell you right off the bat that he wanted you to come visit them that Sunday and to be there at 9:30 in the morning.



This is my third trip to Pearlington and I notice more and more people are on their second and third trip, also. And there’s something else that’s not only startling but true. Some people have basically moved here to help with the recovery. Yes, packed up clothes and came to Pearlington for an undetermined time. Some are retirees or folks who don’t need to work because there’s no paying work here, to speak of. Most of them eventually find a used FEMA trailer to stay in but there are several work camps they can stay at for a short period.

On most days there is such an assortment of people at lunch that it’s understandable if I confuse it with heaven. There might be a clump of Hispanics men in one corner, I think they are usually roofers; then there is always a group of elderly black men sitting with Rev. Rawls, who is the clear host of the meal. At the serving end of the room there are a variety of black women hovering over the stove and serving line. The rest of the room was filled with white faces: some wearing blue PDA shirts, some in the Methodist yellow shirts, some in the red shirts the Salvation Army wore. There were other individuals in worn paint-spattered clothes and scuffed work boots and tool belts worn so thoroughly that they were limp. Then in the middle of the room sat a group of Mennonites. They were easy to spot because the women all wore long calico skirts with their clean long hair gathered up on top their heads and covered with distinctive white caps. I never saw a hair out of place on any of these women. As the pastor of the Southern Baptist Church said at their building dedication, “They may look a little funny but they sure do good work.” It was common knowledge around town that the Mennonites didn’t have any experience in electricity or plumbing but no one could surpass them on carpentry.

photos by Judy Hain, February, 2007

I met Dorie and Luther, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee who are both retired and do mission work full-time. They go to the Mexico border part of the year, then return home to catch up on their mail, wash clothes and head back out to Mississippi. I think Dorie said their five weeks here has been the shortest time they've spent here. Luther is one of those guys who can do just about anything. We met him at Miss Mary’s house. He was laying ceramic tile while we painted. He and Dorie work as a team and she knows exactly what Luther will need as he prepares the floor for the tile.

What you couldn’t see as you look around the room at lunch because they look like everyone else is how many Canadians are here. Yes, Canadians. I think that has been my biggest surprise. This is an American problem yet the Canadians came to help. Some are staff at the PDA camp. Graham is a young adult volunteer from Ontario. Brian and Wilf and Mary and Charles are all from Canada. Kyra brought her daughter for the week because she didn’t have classes that week back in Canada. Kyra is on the staff with the Presbyterian church as a trauma counselor. Some aren’t getting paid to be here- maybe none of them, I never knew. They just came. I was sitting and talking with a group of people back at camp one day and realized I was the only American at the table; everyone else was Canadian. And they are such nice people I couldn’t help but think this is what Americans used to be like before we started being afraid of terrorists and global warming and world financial crises. They were easy going and generous but humble people.

On Friday I was helping build the rails around a two-story deck for a lady and she invited me to the special service they would have at the First Southern Baptist Church that Sunday. Kristian D’Ambrino would be there to sing the song she wrote for the town when she was Miss Mississippi in 2005, “Pearlington’s Prayer.” I already had a copy of the song and was impressed enough to want to attend the service.

At the beginning of worship the minister told the congregation that he had invited Rev Rawls and the Missionary Baptist church to join them in the dedication of the new sanctuary. Sure enough, about ten minutes into the service the doors opened and a crowd of about 20 or 30 people came in. After church was over I saw Shirley Thompson whose house we worked on in October. I remembered she goes to the AME church elsewhere in town but she had come for the dedication. This made for a solidly multi-racial crowd.

Sitting there watching so many people visiting for the dedication I thought a little about visiting. When you invite people to visit you have to be prepared to explain the way you do things and be ready to welcome them with open hearts and arms and make them feel welcomed. You are saying, “I will make room for you to sit where I usually sit. I will welcome your worship style and will give thanks to God for the wonderful differences between us.” This is what the white congregation said when they opened their doors with such love that day.

But I also learned a little about the compliment you pay when you become the guest and visit another church. I realized what a generous act that is. You are effectively saying, “I will worship the way you choose. I will sing your songs. Any money I put in the collection plate will be yours and I give up control of how you spend it. Your prayers will become my prayers. I will care about your concerns.” This is what the blacks of Pearlington were saying that day when they visited the all-white First Southern Baptist Church.

I couldn't help but notice how the races acknowledged each other with such love. Pearlington, I have been told, still has a KKK presence in the community, although I never saw any evidence of it. Certainly that hate group has a strong history in this tiny Mississippi town. At the end of the service the white minister looked over at Rev Rawls and said, “I’m glad these walls got knocked down so that across the racial lines we can gather and worship together.” As soon as he said this there were “Amens” from the black Missionary Baptist congregation and wild applause from the whites of the Southern Baptist church.

It was the surprises on this trip that impressed me the most. The people who came to help that you never thought of: the electrician from Las Vegas, the couple from Tennessee, the Canadians, the Mennonites. Is that what heaven will be like? Surprises? If heaven is anything like eating lunch at the church, I can’t wait to get there.

PDA Camp Life

OK, I only lasted two weeks. I probably could have stayed longer but they had a huge crowd coming in this week and with the camp still not moved I figured I would get out of the way.

But I got an answer to the two questions that were the main reasons for my trip. Yes, one person does make a difference. And I'm not so sure anymore about having the town back to normal by the second anniversary of the storm.

A big part of the rebuilding of Pearlington is the question of what normal means. Will it be when the buildings destroyed by the storm are rebuilt? Or will it be when the yards are greened up and cleaned up? Will it be when the stores and restaurants reopen? When everybody comes back?

To me, their new “normal” has so much potential that I’m willing to hold out for them to take their time for some other important things. In terms of race relations alone, this town has now become much more than it ever was and a big part of that process was working together after the storm. I don’t want to hurry that process.

During the two weeks I was in Mississippi the weather was cold and wet. If I thought I was going south for the winter I should have thought a little bit more. It wasn’t really freezing; it was usually in the mid-forties. But that’s a miserable enough temperature, don’t you think? One day it rained the whole time we were outside working. Also, you have to know that the camp is heated with kerosene stoves and kerosene is expensive, so they were pretty stingy with it. They don’t turn the heat on in the dining tent until dinner. And they don’t turn on the heat in the tents until around 8pm. So I was really limited on places I could go to be warm. I had brought my goose-down jacket with a hood so some afternoons I just wore that to lay in my unheated tent for a little nap before dinner.

On the job site there was seldom heat. Remember: this is what we’re here for—to rebuild houses that were washed away. If a house had heat it was probably ready to move into and there was no reason for me to be there. Our greatest luxury came when a house had a working toilet. Otherwise we had to scout the neighborhood for a porta-potty or just wait.

Since I was there for two weeks I got to watch two different teams come and go. The first team I worked with was from Iowa and the second was from Pennsylvania. It was interesting to be with total strangers. By the time I learned names of the Iowa crowd they left. With the Pennsylvania people I worked harder at getting to know them quickly and did a better job of it.

I also had the opportunity to help move the camp. The land Hancock county loaned to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for their camp is the former site of the community center. The storm blew it away and PDA built a huge camp on the land. Huge means 30 tents on wooden platforms, three storage containers (the kind that eighteen-wheelers carry), a six unit shower tent, a kitchen building with adjoining pantry tent, a dining hall, an office building, two travel trailers for the camp managers and ten porta potties.

A couple of months ago the county got a grant to rebuild the community center and they had to start construction by February 1st or lose the grant. So they offered PDA the land next door where the post office was before the storm. (At the moment there isn’t a post office and people have to go to another town to send a package. During the move I stumbled on a pile of red bricks and realized that was all that was left of the post office.)

I got there in the middle of the move. Fortunately, the new site was only about a hundred yards from the old one and on the same side of the street. This was important. There was a huge issue with water. Here’s the problem, and it was a common one: the storm blew away all the landmarks.

After the storm hit if you remembered that your well and the water pump were next to the old live oak tree behind the house but the hurricane blew away not only your whole house but the tree as well, then it was kind of hard to find the well. And that was the case when they went to hook up the new camp to the old well at the post office. It wasn’t so much the storm blew stuff away as it was the bull dozers that came two weeks later and scooped up all the rubble. The only thing left of the post office was the foundation and the concrete parking lot. When they scooped up what was left of the post office they got the well pump as well. Without the pump or anything else above ground nobody could tell where the well was. And when I say “nobody” that includes not only the post mistress but the county supervisor and all fifteen or so guys who ever mowed the grass at the post office, the ones who had to trim around the well pump every week. And it seemed like every able bodied man in Hancock county had mowed the post office over the years because we had a parade of men come by to help locate the well. They came by and stood around to stare at the ground and scratch their heads. They called in a back hoe which dug deep trenches in every direction. No one ever found the pipes or the well. So, when I left they had made arrangements to dig a new well.

When we couldn’t get water at the new site the water gurus just ran a pipe from the old camp. We never could have done that if the new camp was anywhere else than just right next door. The only drawback was that there was deep drainage ditch between the two camps and anytime you went from one to the other you had to balance on a four by four thrown across the ditch to make an extremely skinny bridge.

After the Iowa team left on Friday we were mostly moved out of the old camp. They moved all ten of the potties except for one. You might say that I would have had my own private bathroom that weekend.

The camp managers have travel trailers that had already been moved to the new camp. I knew they would have trouble justifying $35 worth of kerosene to heat one person so I bailed out and went to a hotel for Friday and Saturday nights.

In my two weeks there I spent two days dry-walling a house, two days mudding another house and two days painting a third one. I also spent a day helping build the rails on a deck. All of this was in addition to helping move the camp. Moving the camp involved a lot of plain old lifting something up and walking somewhere with it. But this wasn’t boxes; it was huge and heavy platforms of lumber, usually with something on top of it. We would get about twelve people around the sides and lift on the count of three. After moving the object the hardest part was letting go. You don’t ever want to be the last person holding onto something that heavy when the others decide to let go.

I got my own closet to drywall. I’m sure this is a huge no big deal to other people. But most of these projects turn into a bubba thing and women usually get relegated to carrying nails or something. This time none of the guys knew who I was or cared so they pretty much left me alone. I staked out a closet and did it all by myself. Well, yes, it did take me two days but that counts finding the right equipment and the right technique. Then there was the fact that the walls were over twelve feet high. Well, OK, maybe I didn’t do the whole closet. But if it had been eight foot walls I know I could have gone all the way to the ceiling by myself.

I’m not finished telling you about my trip but I have to stop for a while. In the next couple of weeks I want to tell you about the really important things I saw and did. The town of Pearlington, Mississippi has crept into my heart and set up housekeeping. I will never forget them and you need to know why.