Just an old fashioned love song

In 1997, I met a woman who would change my life forever.

I was interviewing for grad school at Tulane University, and was about to walk into my first  interview.  Interviews, in case you were not aware, are not my forte.

This woman, who called herself Kathleen Trujillo, talked me down off the ledge.  She let me crack jokes until I calmed down.  She told me about the professor I was interviewing with.  She gave me insight into his style (...Let the pause play out.  He doesn't respond quickly.)   She was smart.  She was kind.  She was helpful.

And, as all of you know, she was gorgeous, with the biggest, brightest blue eyes I had ever seen.


Later that year, I came to Tulane, and eventually made the smart move of having my mom propose to her.  (She said yes to mom, after turning me down.)  The wedding was more fun than anyone could have expected, and the decorations we had at the museum at the Middle American Research Institute - set in the 1920s - was the backdrop for the portrait of the exquisite flapper I had married.  And, of course, Monroe Edmonson providing the a capella highlight to the wedding, and the brilliant string trio of Mary Laurel, Katie, and Andrew Lawton all gave me the music to make it perfect.

That was eighteen years ago, today.

Yeah, that is right.  Our marriage could vote.

This amazing woman has stood by my side, pushed me, suggested, nudged, let me grow, and has, impossibly, blossomed into an even more beautiful woman than the one who agreed to marry me. She has endured deployments and absences and even endured a forgotten birthday (but only one....)

I could not imagine putting up with me for a week, let alone 18 years.  But she has, and has done so with a grace that I cannot even begin to describe.  She is my partner, my translator (always necessary when I am in a public setting), my travel partner, my co-conspirator, and my friend.

Changing my life, every day, Kathe Lawton is the light of my life.

Paying your dues

When I was a boy of four, I would stop by my granddaddy's Sunday school class on my way to my own, and get a coin for the offering.  I already had mine - a shiny quarter to put in the offering plate when it was passed - but I also hit my granddaddy up for an extra.  (Also for the offering, I promise).

Granddaddy would make a big production out of reaching for his coin purse - one of those old-fashioned squeeze-the-edges-to-open-it coin purses, and pull out a nickel or a dime to add to my collection.  During Sunday dinner, knowing that I was fascinated with both the coin purse and the beauty of the money that was inside, he would let me go through his change, looking to see if there were any wheat pennies or silver nickels.

Granddaddy's coin purse was made of leather.  But it was the same principle as this.

One coin was in Granddaddy's change I never could identify.  It looked vaguely like a large English penny, but had worn down from years of being jumbled and tumbled with other coins in his pocket.

Fast forward a number of years, and dad has tasked me with splitting up some silver coins that he had in his collections - dividing up some old coins among the three siblings.  I ran across the worn blank, and asked Dad what it was.

The coin from Granddaddy's coin purse.
The copper one, that is.  The other is for scale.

"That coin?  Your granddaddy always carried that in his coin purse, but I never heard what it was".

Good internet sleuth that I pretend to be, I decided to find out what it was originally.  I looked up coin sites, used every search term I could think of.  I even decided that the faint outline on what I assume was the obverse looked something like a picture of Andrew Jackson, so I looked up coins with Andrew Jackson.







I mean, why not?  Grasping at straws was no less or more productive than guessing.   I found a number of coins, none of which seemed to fit what I was looking for.  They were either facing the wrong way, or had a different bearing, or were the wrong material..

I finally gave up.  But as I did, I put it out to the hive mind of facebook, and asked if anyone recognized the coin.

My cousin Roxana immediately chimed in, saying that she thought she knew.  Followed up with one of the best stories ever.

Granddaddy, just before he left for WWII, joined the Freemasons.  He was inducted to a guild (lodge?) in Boston, and when he did, he was presented with a coin, and left for Europe the day after his eldest son was born - the 12th of February, 1944.  Riding in the largest armada ever assembled by the US, he arrived in England and then went to France.  Once the trains were opened again, he was in the first group to go to Marseilles, and set up the supply depot north of Marseilles on a canal off of the Rhone.  As a sergeant, he was charged with organizing the freight from there to Patton and the rest of the army.

He used the coin to identify and connect with other Freemasons in the European theater, and used those connections to obtain goods and move supplies. As a fun fact, Roxana also added:

 I know the only French word granddaddy told me  he ever learned was when he was in the war. It was the word for "chicken" because he wanted to trade as they walked through towns. He said they were very underfed. 

When he got home - in late 1946 -  he began living married life, raising kids, working to build the moulding manufacturing business, serving in the church....

...and made a very early decision not to continue with the Freemasons.

He felt very strongly about one element, however.  Because he had benefited from his association with the Freemasons during the war, he felt it important to honor his commitment.  For the remainder of his life, he paid the dues.

So much of what we see in society revolves around the benefit side of the cost-benefit analysis.  What do I get out of it?  How much do I get?  What is my portion?  Is that all? When am I due a promotion?  When and how much is my raise?

And maybe it was just a generational thing.  But I look at the men and women of my granddaddy's generation, and I see a different approach.  Instead of looking at what they were owed, they focused on the debts that they owed.  And they were determined to pay that debt.  For as long as it took.  And recognized that some debts you go on paying, even past their due date.

A friend of mine from a previous life got into trouble when his business failed, and he filed for bankruptcy.  It was a rough time for him, and he struggled to have enough money to feed his family and keep a roof over their head. But the whole time, he continued to quietly pay the people he owed.  Every paycheck, he took the first cut - even when it was a small one - and gave it to the people who had trusted him, and who had taken a loss when his business failed.

For decades, he continued to pay on that debt.  And eventually, he paid it all back. Every penny.

The law had told him that he was absolved from paying back the money: filing bankruptcy meant that he no longer owed those debts.  But my friend knew something about debt that the law does not recognize.  There is power in paying.

Stories like that make me suspicious and angry towards people who owe debts and do not pay.  A teacher of mine who decided he did not owe for services his contractor rendered.  The contractor lost everything.  A retirement fund manager who takes, and then watches as the retirees suffer.  The CEO who runs the company into the ground by cutting salaries and staff, then golden parachutes to safety.  the banks that issue predatory loans, and ruin people's lives.

And the businessman who defaults on debts, leaving others to try and pick up pieces of their lives.

But just as I feel that righteous indignation, I have to also look at the other end of that finger pointing outward.

I have been given so much.  I was reared in a family that had enough to provide, and to send me to college.  They bolstered me through the interminable lean years of grad school.  I grew up solidly middle class, with every benefit given to my class, race, and gender.  (Granted, I suffered mightily because I was not popular, a plight I was certain could easily be solved by the purchase of a cool Members Only jacket,)


But I don't know that I ever saw it that way - as a debt that I needed to pay.  That I had benefited from membership in a club, and that I needed to pay dues.

I ave wanted all of my life to be called to a ministry.  But I think just maybe that my calling is to look around me and see the membership that has benefited me all along.

And find an opportunity to pay my dues.  Serving the homeless.  Standing up for those who don't have a voice.  Giving my time, my money, my effort.

Paying the debt that I owe.

Music rant

David Finley, Bruce Baker, GianMarco Beltram, Windi Sebren, and a couple of others, you are exempt from this.

Open letter to the rest of you:

I did not know you liked Prince.

I did not hear from you that David Bowie was the most amazing performed you had ever seen; that the concert of his you saw changed your life.

I did not know that the soundtrack to your life was exclusively written and performed by Merle Haggard.

You never said. I never heard you talking about going out to hear the live music.  I never got to watch the uploaded video of you screaming out the lyrics to your favorite song in a karaoke bar.

I DID watch that kitten video you posted.  It was cute.

But why did you wait until after he died to eulogize Prince?  I started watching the videos, and mercy.  I understand why I was not a fan when I was growing up.  He was too edgy, combining a raw male sexuality with femininity in a way that I did not have any mechanism to interpret.  I enjoyed his music a lot; I know all the lyrics to his popular tunes, and I
loved the sexual innuendoes that pervaded each lyric. I even went to Glam Slam the one time I was in Minneapolis (a friend was a HUGE fan).

But I did not really know about his musicality until you started sharing the videos yesterday.  I missed an opportunity to recognize his genius when he was alive... because you didn't tell me you were a fan. How had I missed this?  Sure, MTV showed the polished videos of Prince back in the 80s, but heck - even the Backstreet Boys had polished videos.

I'm talking about music, because that is a passion of mine, and because after watching the video of his induction into the Hall of Fame, I was just floored.  But for all of the fact that music floats my little red wagon, the same applies to every venue: artists, actors, gem polishers, mimes, flint knappers, all of the people who fill your life with meaning...

Please.  Let's change that.  Tell me who you listen to, who you watch, and where I should go and see the play that changed your life.

Tell me, so that I can glory in their brilliance, revel in their genius, and light up with a new-found gem that I can carry with me. I want to see what changed your life, and maybe have a chance at the same thing. And please, please, please,

Don't wait until they are dead.  Because then it will be too late.

Conflicted

Within the coming months, the church that I grew up attending will be torn down.  Developers are paying top dollar for high-priced real estate. They are building apartments - nice apartments by the sound of it. And the church is retaining a small lot on the back end of the property to use as a chapel.

I am finding myself feeling very conflicted about it.

The building is old. The ceilings are too high, and heating costs have got to be through the roof. (See what I did there?) There are unending repairs and additional needs and a diminishing population of people to provide the funds for those repairs.   

But in that church, I heard some of the most amazing music in my life, and developed a love of acoustics and pipe organ music and the raw power of a full chorus. 

I worshipped in that church with my family, sitting in the pew where my grandfather had sat for 80 years.  I heard thundering sermons by Elmer Piper (and discovered that I am not near as much of a hell-and-brimstone Baptist as I had thought I might be) and gentle sermons about a loving God delivered by Jack Causey.  I was baptised there, and played basketball in the recreation building.  I was at church for Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night meetings.  I sang in incredible choirs, taught a three-year-old choir, and even led an evening service during my senior year in high school.

I was also bullied there mercilessly by mean teenagers.  I was condescended to by pinched-faced middle-aged spinsters who disapproved of any evidence of youthful exhuberence.  I was even kicked out of one high school Sunday School class, because I got angry at a teacher for singling me out for a group infraction. (I never went back.  Later that week, I was invited to my granddaddy's SS class, where I stayed for the rest of my time there.)

I fell in love with the old people in the church.  My Sunday school class was co-taught by Harry Lee Thomas and my Granddaddy, Stick Lawton.  And every week, I learned something different about the context and the history of the scriptures from men who lived their faith. I sang with them, I shared times of prayer with them, and attended a number of their funerals.

At PSBC, I met mentors in my faith.  I learned about the Bible.  I developed a relationship with my Creator.  I felt safe and was loved.

And at PSBC, I was betrayed by a pastor, who failed to keep a confidence.

Church will always be a complicated place.  In it, there are people.  Real people. Saints and sinners.  Sweet people and mean.  Some like kids.  Some do not.  Some appreciate the difficulty of fitting in, and will hold a 13-year-old boy's hand while he cries in frustration.  And others ridicule him for not conforming.

So I have a host of mixed emotions and memories about the tearing down of my church building.  The stained glass was nothing intricate, but every time the sermon got long, I would count the number of blue panes, yellow panes, green panes. Those glass panes will be taken down, counted, and sold.  The enormous cathedral ceilings, reverberating sound, will be silenced. The halls through which I ran, the rooms where I crossed arm over arm and said with ten other boys, "As a Royal Ambassador, I will do my best...", those places will be gone. The sanctuary where my sister and I re-created the Pieta for a Good Friday service (getting white grease paint removed from the entire body is tough, in case you were wondering) will be demolished.  The place where I stole kisses from my first girlfriend in dark corners where youth leaders might not have been watching... torn down. The location of my first solo, the place where I attended weddings and funerals and lock-ins and cook-outs and Easter Sunrise services.... Gone.

But the church is not.  Whenever I see an online post of love from Kay Perry or Marty Price,  I see the church, alive and well.  When I read about Kimberly Graham's children or Candace Williamson, or the music that they teach, I know that my church - the one made up of the people who loved and served my Creator - is continuing on.

Nevertheless, I am still sad about losing the building.

Such things happen.  People have moved to other churches, and are doing God's will where they are.  I have been taught all my life that the church (like Soylent Green) is made of people. Even the church history (available on Amazon here) has on the cover "More than a Building - A Family of Faith".  But there is still a location, right there in West Greenville, that holds a sacred place in my memory.  And all those memories - both the highs and the lows - will forever be associated with 'Church' in my mind.

History of PSBC available online here.

I will miss the beautiful building that housed my church during my childhood.

 

Granddaddy's Fig Preserves

Thirty seconds ago, I heard the lid pop into place on a jelly jar filled with warm fig preserves. Looking over to the backlit jars, I can just barely make out the thin slices of pale lemon rind, candied through the process, interspersed throughout the jar.  Nostalgia that hits so hard, I can, literally, taste it.

Thirty five years ago I helped my Grandaddy Lawton for a week during the early summer.  I dug up beds for his jonquils and built gravel 'thank-you-ma'am's' along his driveway.  And I helped him with his canning.  Summer canning on Lawton Mountain was a magical thing. Grandaddy took bushels of green beans and made pyramids of quarts of canned beans.  Bushels of sweet corn yielded mason jars filled with corn for all seven families.  Tomatoes became canned tomato juice - the basis of many a Bloody Mary - although that was NEVER their intent.  Baptists, after all, never intend to make their mixers. And they made jelly and preserves.

Grandaddy and Grandmama both had lived through the Depression, and it marked them.  They were frugal, and they used things until they needed fixing, and then they fixed them.  They did not buy extra stuff just because it was available; it was a way of life that didn't dispose of things just because they got old. 

Canning was a big part of their frugality, and their way of life.  The House in the Mountains (that was the only name I ever heard it called - never abbreviated or shortened) was the site of monumental canning efforts that extended from late spring throughout the summer, and the results were labeled and set in OCD-compliant rows in the pantry.

But the two jewels of the canning crown were the muscadine jelly and fig preserves.  Each teaspoon that was ever scooped from one of those jelly jars was liquid gold - and it was rationed out as such by the miserly jelly-bean counters in my household.  Because once it was gone, it was gone forever.  Until next season.

And one year, thirty five years ago, I got to help Grandaddy make the fig preserves.

The cutting of the stems from thee figs.  The slicing of the lemon.  The cooking of huge vats of figs, sugar, lemon and water, until all that was left was the citrus aroma, and the liquid gold of reduced figs.  Ladling the syrup into jars, licking fingers sticky with sap. A little nibble of the lemon rind in between efforts.  Into the pressure cooker, watching carefully to finish the canning process without blowing it all up.

And all throughout the process, the overwhelming smell of fig.

This weekend I took Kathe over to the grounds of my work, where a colleague of mine planted fig trees a decade or so ago.  They are now enormous trees, and in fifteen minutes we had collected a couple of gallons of figs. 

And I found a recipe that seemed very much like what my Granddaddy made (appended below, from this website).  And all afternoon, I got lost in the memory of working side by side with Granddaddy.

There are moments in life that speak to you.  For me, this was one. There is nothing like the flavor of goods canned in the home. Nothing that brings the memories back like leaning over the hot stove, stirring the pot to release the aroma-heavy steam. Even roadside stand canned goods, with all of their Mom&Pop labels and support-your-local-organic-farm caché cannot compare.

All afternoon, I labored over five pots of fig-related items.  Habanero-fig chutney, jalapeno-fig chutney, cardomom-fig jam, and a fig jam that ended up as a filling for fig newtons. (For the record, the newtons could have been submitted as a 'nailed it' pinterest fail, but they were SCRUMPTIOUS.)

And a few jars of the most glorious fig preserves ever.  Just like Granddaddy and I once made.

Bayou Woman's recipe.  See her online description here.

  

Bake me a cake as fast as you can....

Patty cake, Patty cake, Baker Man.

My sister Caroline is an incredible baker.  She loves to make things for family and friends, and loves to feed them. I have seen her go from stressed to relaxed with the simple act of pulling out the flour.

She posted the picture below of a cake that she made for some friends.  And Facebook exploded. 

Wait a minute...why wasn't that backstage at OCEANSIDE?! 
OMG I want this in my face!
Family secret? Or can you post the recipe? Coconut cake is the best!
I want to make this!

Mmmmmmmm

That looks seriously delicious! Also can I please see you someday?My husband looooves that cake!!!

I'm making this for Easter! Thank you so much!

Wow! Looks so yummy!I should have had a piece when I had the chance!
I have had some of this cake that Patty makes! It is so yummy! I will have to make one for Easter.


The coconut cake is a recipe that my Mom (it is a real 'Patty Cake') has has been making for years.  And it is always a huge hit. And I have no idea whether it was just that I needed a connection to my family, or whether the feed-my-friends gene is also present in my DNA.

Or whether it is possible that there is a little competition there.

Nah. 

Whatever the reason, I decided I wanted to make the cake.  HAD to make the cake. Caroline had posted her recipe, which was really straightforward.

"Simplest recipe in the world. Yellow cake mix. Made as directed and baked in two round cake pans. Cool and cut in half (and level off tops) for four layers. Frosting = 1 pint sour cream + 2 cups sugar (stir and let sit for a few hours).