Getting Loose

The Mecca of Methodism

You could hardly be a Methodist and come to London and not see Wesley’s Chapel, right?

Well, we did the very thing! 

We even got to take Holy Communion in the Foundery Chapel.  We sat on pew benches which were part of the original ones used in Wesley’s lifetime.  We got a private tour of Wesley’s home and saw the room in which he died.  We saw his grave.  Across the street his mother is buried and next to her is Isaac Watts.  Also in that Bunhill Fields graveyard is Daniel Defoe.  It was all astonishing. 

The Foundery was once upon a time way outside of the city limits, but that is not at all true today.

It was like being at Mecca for the Muslims.

Rolling on the River

It used to be the case a long time ago, that the best and easiest and cheapest transportation to get around from certain points in London was by using the Thames River.  (I always thought the British pronounced it “tims”, but I think it is closer to “tams”, Love).

The Thames is a tidal river.  By that I mean it truly ebbs and floods like the sea.  I did not know that.  Going to our destination we were on a high tide, coming back we were in a low tide. 

There are river islands all over the place, and for some of them, the only way you can get to them is by boat.  And people live there like that.

Harold and Linda took us on a cruise down the Thames.  I do not know how to describe it adequately.  One thing that both Harold and I talked about was that when you travel by water, it is somehow more soothing and at a much slower pace.

For example, when we got to theTeddington Locks, there was either a broken lock, or there were not enough personnel available to make sure that both sets of locks worked, hence we were tied up there for more than an hour trying to make our way further west. 
Harold pointed out, “You know, had we been in a car or the tube or a bus and had been tied up in traffic for this long, people would have been screaming mad.  But here, we just sort of take it in stride.”

He was right.  I opined that maybe it was because when we take those other kinds of transportation, we are already running late for some appointment that we think we just have to get to, and we depend upon the time approximation or schedule to be spot on, and when taking the river there is no such expectation.  We are just more willing to go with the flow.

I guess I had been told, but I thought we were just taking a cruise down the river and back.  It turned out not to be so, but I thoroughly enjoyed the boat ride.

In England, things tend to occur at a more genteel pace it seems to me.  Not every deadline is an urgent life or death situation. 

The Golden Triangle

A friend of mine, Ted Campbell, a Beaumont boy, asked me what was distinctive about Southeast Texas.  This is some of how I responded:

    Houston claims to represent SE Texas, but as anyone from the Golden Triangle knows, it just ain't so.  The ethos of Southeast Texas truly is much more likely to be found within the confluence of the Trinity, Neches, and Sabine rivers that wind and twist through its very soul.

    At first I wanted to say that what is distinctive is its geography.  But that is not  accurate.  Even though a geologist could map out the convergence of the piney woods with the coastal plain, what is distinctive is much deeper than what can be seen or touched or heard.

    I think that at root and core, what is distinctive is an intangible nexus of the raw bounty this land had to offer in making a fortune—or at least a way of life—from fishing in the waters of the bay or gulf, to the timbers of its mighty forests, to the fertile land yielding a rich bounty of rice, or the drilling for black gold and its many spin-off industries.  Long before derivatives were some arcane financial component to a corporate back page, it was alive and well in Southeast Texas with its magnetic siren call beckoning to those looking for a higher wage, a better standard of living, than could be found from its contiguous geographic cousins.  It was a call that few could resist.

    The promised yield was nearly mesmerizing.  The opportunity for a better life was appealing.  The conjoining of the rich and poor, the black and white, the educated and the uncultivated, provided a rich brew that bequeathed to the residents of Southeast Texas, a malt in which friendships could be forged, in which ideas could be distilled, and in which memories could be sifted endlessly—whether through the turbulence of parsing junior high alliances or the sophisticated pastiche of people bent on improving not just their economic lot, but the very heart of their social fabric as well.

    The environment, the context that engenders southeast Texas is unique to itself, and yet like so many other areas, is a rich loam from which could be fashioned and formed lives that made a difference—contemporaneously, as well as historically.

A Colossal Bust

Here is Ramesses the Great.  The Mrs. is below to get an idea of the size.  Coutesy of the British Museum.

Lost in the Translation

I’d heard of it for many, many years.  I’d seen pictures of it.  But today, I got as close as I would ever get to it—the Rosetta Stone. 
Before the discovery of this stone, modern man did not have a clue as to how to pronounce, much less interpret or translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.  They were simply a mystery to us.  But after this stone was discovered that had the same text written in three different languages (whereof the Egyptian hieroglyphs were one), we could finally begin to unlock the mysteries on ancient Egypt.  Being that close to it was almost like being on holy ground.  People were flocked to it constantly and taking pictures.  I was very surprised at the number of Asian people who were so interested in it.  I was also amazed at how large it was.

And what can you really say about the British Museum that hasn’t already been said before so many times in so many ways.

I could not believe that we were able to see some of the actual friezes from the Parthenon

of all things.  I did not have a clue that parts of that Temple would be there.

There were also these amazingly detailed Assyrian Lion Hunt reliefs. 

The Museum is just overwhelming in a lot of ways.  We spent maybe 4 hours there, but I think we saw a pretty good sampling of many different cultures—Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Assyrian, Babylonian, American Indian, African, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Egyptians, Indians, early Christianity, et al.

Brecon

It absolutely for me, was a coincidence.  An off chance.  I had never heard of Brecon, Wales before I came to England.  It was the closest town to the Boys Brigade encampment.  But the three older gents—Graham, Dave, Les—and I decided at about 11:30 a.m. to go into town.  It wasn’t a requirement, but it would be a mini-outing.  Besides, I thought I might get to hear some Welsh being spoken.

It was, in many ways, a typical small town, though the buildings, while old, looked far more substantial than I see in most small towns in America.  We stopped at a little café to have a spot o’ tea (though, I was the only one drinking tea—the rest of them had coffee), and the leader of our group, Graham, was eyeing a substantial wedge of chocolate cake.  He kept trying to hint to me that perhaps I might want one myself.  I declined, thinking after all the ridicule about cream tea, I’d much rathe’ ‘ave a scone, thou knowest, but I knew that we’d be back at the camp in a little over an hour, and for once in my life, I decided to have some scruples against gluttony and forgo the food.  My, aren’t I the ‘oly one?

After a nice conversation around the table, we decided to walk through town.  The central focus of the town in some ways was the cathedral.  Now over here in Wales, they do not have a covey of radical Protestant churches like we do in America.  The main church is the Anglican Church.  And it was old looking indeed.  I feel quite certain that it was over 200 years old. 
And that is old contrasted to the standards of a culture from which I come in which anytime a building gets over 50 years old, there is some real doubt about its viability.

Well, it was decided to walk up one side of the drag, and then down the other.  We went down town, and then on our way back up, we passed by the outside of the church, which as I stated was quite old looking.  There was a nice little fenced in lawn beside it and a plaque and a marker commemorating those who had been killed in WWI from the village of Brecon.  I glanced at it and walked on.  But Les stayed behind and was reading some plaque on the outside near the church.  I really hadn’t given it a second thought.  But I decided to go back to where Les was, to see what was so interesting about the plaque.

As I looked closer, I could see it was a plaque about a Thomas Coke (that’s pronounced Cook in these parts).  I thought, “How interesting.  I know that name.  Couldn’t possibly be the man of whom I knew a little.  After all, what good ever came out of Wales? (besides coal and slate)”

Well, reading the marker a little closer, and in the middle it read, “ . . . a supporter of the Methodist movement.”  Then I looked closer still, and it said, “ . . . founder of the Methodist Episcopal Church of U.S.A. . . .”

I said, “Holy cow!  That man was one of the two general superintendents that John Wesley ordained to come to America to begin the Methodist Church.  I know who he is!  He is a very important man in the tradition of Methodism in which I was reared!  And you mean to tell me he was mayor of this town at age 23?  And he was baptized at this church? 
I cannot believe what I am seeing!  I NEVER knew he was of Welsh origins!”

Absolutely serendipitous!  I would have never guessed that a treasure like this awaited me in Brecon, Wales!

Mildred Campbell Yates, 1920 - 2010

Back in 1934, Thomas Wolfe wrote a book, You Can’t Go Home Again. It is a book that has haunted me in some ways for many years wondering if, as its title suggests, it could possibly be true. Is it really true that you cannot go back home and find life much as you knew it or remembered it?

I never knew the answer until one day I realized that you could never really go back, because of death. Death ultimately, permanently changed the landscape of what I had once known and cherished, however much I did not appreciate that at the time.

Death has once again changed my landscape. It has made it even more impossible to go back home, because one of the giants of my life is now gone. My 5^th grade teacher, my most favorite teacher. A teacher that nourished me, and fed me, and praised me, and encouraged me. A teacher who never had a discouraging word, but who rather would stand on the sidelines and cheer me on to enter into a journey of my own self-discovery—education in the very truest sense—leading out that which is within.

Mrs. Yates is gone.

Oh, she is not really gone. Her physical body has died. But she is still very much alive. And not in some hallucinatory way through some group memory recall. I will one day meet up with her again. Of that I am positive. But man, what an impact she had on my life in this physical sphere.

* * *

I remember early on she wanted us to write a paper about some experience we had had on vacation or one we had had the summer previous to entering the 5^th grade. I wrote about being on the farm of my 5^th cousins—Monty & Karen Diew—up in Nauvoo, Illinois. I remember writing about how Monty and I got on the roof of a little chicken coop early in the morning and with a BB gun started shooting at the tin water pail from which the chickens were drinking and how they would run and flap from being scared and how much Monty and I laughed at that.  I also remember writing how their water was so mineral laden that it tasted like poison to me, and I really emphasized that terrible stench of a taste. She just loved my budding writing talents and gave me an A.

* * *

I remember Jon Seaux. I had always interpreted him as a quasi miscreant from the other side of the tracks who knew how to draw bawdy pictures that with a few lines could be turned into something innocuous on Miss Rogers’s black board at James Bowie Junior High School when she was out of the room. Jon Seaux had a wicked smile, an impish grin. Who knew how to just barely stay on the right side of respectability, but whom you never wanted to cross. And that is the way he was etched into my mind, until one day, many years later, I was talking to Mrs. Yates.

As she and I began to sift through halcyon memories of old, she asked me if I remembered him.

Well, of course I did, but I was shocked he would even stand out to her.

She reminded me of a time when one of my classmates, and thankfully the mists of time through these 50 years has blotted out his identity, had had an accident in class with respect to bladder control. Of course that misfortune was the object of snickers and eye-rolling. But what was Jon’s response? Without being prompted, Jon went to the janitor’s closet, and got a bucket and a mop and proceeded to clean up the accident in silence as we all watched in wonder. He moved some desks to do a better job, and when he had finished, he looked us all in the eye and said, "This could have happened to any of us sitting here. I don’t ever want you to remind him of what happened, nor should you ever speak of it again." And with that, Jon left the room to return the janitor’s tools to their closet.

Mrs. Yates said, "I was so proud of Jon that day. He was years ahead of his time in maturity."

I had never stopped to contemplate what that action meant—the compassion, the initiative, the sensitivity of Jon Seaux until Mrs. Yates interpreted it for me.

Way before his time, before he ever graduated from high school, Jon died of a brain tumor.

* * *

And then there was her beloved husband, Reed. Oh how she loved to talk of his mischief, and how different they were from each other, and yet how so very much she loved him and his ways.

* * *

It had been rumored that when she was a girl, Mrs. Yates had read every book in the Tyrrell Public Library on the second floor. She was a voracious reader. She would read to us from time to time. She knew how to interpret and inflect and put in pregnant pauses.

I remember one book she read, whose name I have forgotten about a man who supposedly hated the United States back in the early 19^th century. His punishment was to be put on a ship where he would never again be allowed back into the country.

But it was only in the later years of his sentence that he began to understand how wonderful of a country the United States of America was, and that he was so hungry for any scraps of information as to what was happening to our great land. Finally someone drew a map for him of how the country had expanded to the west, and his eyes were wide with surprise and shock and he cried for having missed out on some of the greatest adventures and dream making ever given to any country in the world.

* * *

Mrs. Yates could fire your imagination with a very ignited illustration that would burn in your mind. One day she said to us kids, "And what would you do if a madman with a machine gun came in at our door and started firing?" I never forgot that image, for it frightened me. It scared me. I did not know what I would do. I did not want to think about death.

* * *

From time to time she would pass out supplemental hardback readers for us to read from. In the front of the book, there was the template like there were on those of the standard issue books in which you were to sign your name to the textbook you were to study from all year. Except in these temporary texts, books of years gone by, I started to sign in ink mind you, every time one was given to me, even though I knew that within an hour we would be handing them all back in.

One day Mrs. Yates opened her text and saw my name, written in ink much to her surprise, and then she asked the class to all turn to the very front of their texts. She then asked "How many of you have Allison Cambre’s name in your book?" Probably ¾ of the class raised their hands. I was shocked and embarrassed. "Allison Cambre why have you done this?"

I had no answer.

She said, "You have got to get some ink eradicator and remove your name from these books."

I broke out in a cold sweat. I had no idea what that word meant, nor did I want to tell my parents the trouble I was in. So out in the garage that night I had my name written several times on a piece of paper and tried all sorts of solvents and chemicals to see if any of them might magically remove the ink. Much to my astonishment, I discovered that bleach would do the trick. And so the next day I brought a vial of bleach to school to undo the damage I had done.

* * *

I remember the time of her telling back in the late 40's or early 50's that she had broken her leg. She started crying not because of the pain, but rather because she had ruined some expensive silk stocking hose that she was wearing. None of us boys could possibly understand that.

* * *

Mrs. Yates said she used to smoke. And as a kid I had a hard time believing that! I mean she was like a high, benevolent priestess to me. And priestesses don’t smoke!

* * *

I remember the day I inadvertently saw Mrs. Yates’s letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal. She was hanging up her hat from teaching. She, many years later, had left the 5^th grade environs of Eugene Field Elementary School, to go across the street to French High School to teach English. How I wish I could have had her for that course! But what disgusted her was the ignorance of some of the faculty with whom she taught referring to the Civil War as the Silver War, etc. She had had enough.

* * *

Imagine to my surprise that one day, I discovered that her own brother, Jeff, like me, was a clergyman. I just could not believe it. I got to meet him one time before he died. I went to a gathering knowing that he was in this room with over 100 people, and I began to look around for someone who looked like Mrs. Yates in the face. I found that someone, and I approached him by asking, "Did you ever live in Beaumont, Texas?"

* * *

Well . . . maybe you get the picture. Many of these memories are 50 years old, but they shine as bright for me as the very day I experienced them the first time.

Mildred Campbell Yates. Her passing means that Beaumont is forever, inextricably changed. I thank God that our paths crossed, and I thank God for the beneficent impact she had on me. There will never again be anyone like her in my life.

Walter Eugene Meredith

Time has a way of mellowing things out.

I went today to the funeral of our 1967 senior class president from French High School in Beaumont, Texas—Gene Meredith. Believe it or not, he was actually younger than me, and I was one of the youngest people in our class. He died from the effects of a brain glioma. He was a valiant fighter, lasting longer than anyone thought possible.

But it was interesting mixing and mingling with different class mates. While 40+ years ago, there was such class striation with the top group, the "in" crowd, the goat ropers, the athletes, etc., now it seems more to me than we better relate, we are friendlier because we are all survivors in one sense or another.

One of our high profile people in school, Marilyn Dent, died a few years back. That shocked me. She was way too young, but then her older brother Gilbert had been killed at an even younger age than she. And I remember thinking at the time, "If Marilyn can die, then so can I."

But now it was Gene. In some ways, he and his wife Peggy, were the glue that held our class together. Gene was so personable, happy go lucky, full of enthusiasm, interested in the plight of the overlooked or less fortunate. I remember a mild dirty joke he told in high school in one of the portable air conditioned buildings, maybe Mr. Wilson’s class, that made me laugh, and I will not impugn his memory to tell it here, but he had a ready smile and was one of the better looking guys in our class.

His brother Bill has to be the best preserved specimen of anyone I have ever seen looking so very nearly like he did in high school. Still nearly jet black hair that is just now starting to grey. He’s got to be 61! And his wife DeEsta looks pretty nearly the same from high school

I saw Libby Ruysnaars there. I hadn’t seen her in over 40 years. Amazing.  And Rodney Sheffield, and Jerry Rials, and Nancy Budd, and Sandra Golding, and John Wynn, and Suzy Poole, and Steve McAdams, and Jerry Lynne Webber, and Frank Rao, and Bubba Pate, and of course Bruce Gary, and the girl that cut me down to size some 50 years ago—Donna Jo Anderson. I figure I’ve licked my wounds about as much as I can over that rejection.  She decided that she did not want to be my valentine after all.  Talk about the pain and loss of self-esteem!  But I rode with her to the graveyard, so it can’t be all that bad now.

The world is a very different place now in so many ways . . . but then my parents and grandparents have said the same kind of thing with respect to the world in which they grew up. Who knows what the future holds?  I surely do not.

Beaumont

Well the Church Lady tells me that my blog has gotten boring again. She said, "We already know how fast you ran in three miles. And it was impressive at first, but it’s old hat, old news, stale subject. I’m tried of looking at it."

OK. I get the hint. Time for a change. Something new. Something fresh.

That’s a tall order.

Some days ago I agreed to be one of the sponsors to take a group of junior high kids to an event called Big House. We loaded up two vans with tools and headed out for Conroe, Texas, and for 5 hours a day for two days, we worked on two rural churches who had a very elderly congregation, the Salvation Army, and a nursing home, doing fixIt type jobs—scraping, painting, different kinds of work that old folks can’t reach because they don’t like ladders, landscaping, etc. Our group joined maybe 6-7 other church groups in accomplishing these tasks. All in all I thought they did a pretty credible job. The four days that we spent were a lot of fun for both adults and kids alike. In addition to the work, we had other activities like movies, going to Lake Conroe, games, snacks, worship services, etc. An emphasis was put on service—not just in helping those who could no longer help themselves, but also service as far as meal preparation, cleanup, etc.

It also gave me some time to bond with a younger fellow who had graduated from the same high school in Beaumont, Texas that I had—French. Turns out he knew of a couple of my siblings and we had some of the same teachers. On the way to Conroe, I was laughing so hard I was crying about some of the antics we could both remember with respect to common teachers and just life in general in Beaumont.

You know, I used to think that Beaumont was one of the most boring towns in which a person could possibly grow up, but golly how my perspective has changed there. There are lots of good things that are in Beaumont and that came from Beaumont. 40+ years ago, life was different. That at which I used to chafe, I now see in the long run, wasn’t really all that bad. I am thankful for the friends I made, the relatively safe environment in which I grew up, and the opportunities that came my way.