image source: www.olemiss.edu
This weekend, I went camping at "Lake Sardis". My non-native friends say it this way. Otherwise called, "The Dam". I've adopted the charming new name which sounds exotic to me.
LARRY BROWN was a writer from Oxford.
I thought of his book, FAY and what might have inspired his story while I was staying in the area that he wrote about.
Weaving my bike across the back of the camp grounds in and out of the sounds of other campers offered some clues:
"Woke up 3 or 4 times this morinin', I mean wringin' wet"...
"What's real fun is goin' down there where they got the"...
"reckin' we kin fry ish catfish, wool I got sum innare froze"...
As I rode past huge uniform piles of chopped down trees other campers had brought from home, I felt I'd cheated myself, having bought my much smaller pile from Tater Bug's country store located just a few miles up from the lake, right next to the church made from two trailer halves. Recounting the five dollar bill I'd handed over to his lovely wife for my little bundle of sticks.
No singing joyfully around little bundles of burning wood, or telling big fish stories to one another. Just bursts of fragments, loud like honking horns, whipping through the oak trees above, dragging squirrels along by their tales, sacheing in persistence down to my ears with a well deserved slap in the face.
Tater, must have been touched by the generosity of Spirit of the Lord swelling over from the church next door, when Dad came back that morning with his $3 bundle of sticks, twice the size of mine. My humbleness grew.
Keith, a local, pastor, prayed a few nights ago, that we would all see that, each of us come to God, from different walks of life. None better or worse, just different backgrounds and different places along the journey.
Larry Brown wrote so wonderfully about people and their stories and places. Tater Bug. The little white church next door to Tater Bug's. The two double wide trailers joined together to make the church marked by a steeple on the roof. The precious souls gathered there. Maybe like Fay, to meet Jesus for the first time. The seemingly shallow conversations, and my inability to process my surroundings as articulately as Larry Brown did, reminded me that I should read more of his books. I would highly suggest reading Fay. Then, visit Lake Sardis where you'll find many of his characters, appreciate the brilliance of how he told their stories, and hopefully begin to appreciate the differences.
