Faith, Folklore, and Friends

Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your lives. The teaching that I ask you to accept is easy; the load I give you to carry is light. . . .Jesus speaking in Matthew ll, v28, 29, 30, New Century Version

Violet Beatrice Gean Stricklin October 26, 1917-November 11, 2007 It's my mama's birthday. The Earth revolved and seasons changed ninety times while she was here. Uneducated, but wise. Beautiful, work-roughened hands never still. Her life was taking care of her family, and that she did well, even when the road was hard. She did massive amounts of laundry on a wringer washer; her clothes lines full every sunny day expect Sunday. She could coax nutritious vegetables out of tired clay soil, rising with the sun to do battle with weeds. Her quilts still warm our beds and our hearts. Known for her incomparable biscuits, she made enough in her lifetime to completely fill a Cracker Barrel. More familiar with pain than joy, she endured. She lived to see adult children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. We are educated, talented, well-traveled, scattered. She lives in all of us. In heaven, we are promised a mansion, blissful rest. I'll bet my mama's has a clothesline, white rob...

I was about ten years old when we first heard of a cotton picker---a big red machine that would pick cotton for you. We laughed at the idea. We could not imagine a time when we would not pick cotton. We didn't know how big the world was. It was only a few years later that the machines completely replaced hand labor, which we viewed as a blessing too good to be true; surely something would go wrong and we would have to pick cotton again. Because this cotton picking era ended before I was an adult, I didn't really understand the hardships of cotton farming that my parents and their parents endured. They worked from spring to late fall to produce a crop that might or might not be sold for enough to pay the bills and have a little extra. I would like to say that the good years were enough to keep them going, but it wasn't that at all. Cotton farming was all they knew; what they kept doing because there was nothing else to do. Good years just made their lives better for a while....

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. James 4:14 KJV

It is hard to find words majestic enough, beautiful enough to describe October. October is wind chimes singing in the cool northwest wind. Clean linens wave in the breeze, storing the smell of October for days when we are needy. Under an incomparable blue sky, trees don their showiest apparel for a grand finale before they stand naked, limbs drooping with winter. God has blessed us with a glorious harvest, and the pantry shelves and freezers are bursting with summer's bounty. We watch the squirrels in the backyard as they frantically gather hickory nuts, sensing a barren time ahead without any weather forecasts. We stack the stalks of spent okra and rake the detritus of tomatoes and squash as we plan next year's garden. Sweatshirts and flannel pajamas have replaced shorts and tees, and we add quilts to the bed. We snuggle under them while the open windows invite breezes to cleanse the stale air-conditioned air that we have breathed all summer. The ten o'clock train whistle ...