A Bear Ended Their Picnic

Pictured above are Frances Hawkins Crain (left) and Fred E. Crain. This photo was made in the 1940s.

(This story, “The Bear,” took place in 1946 and was told in 2015 by Fred E. Crain to Larry Steve Crain, his nephew.)

Fred E. Crain and Frances Hawkins Crain, who married in November 1945, took a trip to the mountains with some of Fred’s relatives. All these folk lived in the Sandy Flat and Mountain View areas of Greenville County, S.C. They drove to Gatlinburg, Tenn.

“Our trip was either in the spring or fall of 1946,” Fred says.

The group included Fred and Frances and his mother and father, Lillian and Carl Crain, in Fred’s car. Lillian’s brother, Hovey Parker, brought his wife, Genelia, and their only child, Marian (now Marian Lister, age 85 in 2015), in their car. Lillian’s sister, Lucille Langley, rode with her husband, King Langley, in their car with their only child, Sarah Jean (now Sarah Jean Talley, age 85 in 2015).

Newfound Gap is on the line between N.C. and Tennessee, Fred says.

“Newfound Gap (el. 5048 ft./1539 m.) is a mountain pass located near the center of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of the southern Appalachian Mountains in the U.S. …Situated along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, the state line crosses the gap,” according to “Wikipedia.”

“Cherokee is on this side,” Fred notes, referring to the South Carolina side. “It’s 16 miles to the top from Cherokee and 16 miles on to Gatlinburg. It’s 16 miles to the top, each way.”

They stopped at Newfound Gap but drove another eight or nine miles, toward Gatlinburg, to a picnic area. The party was “in short sleeves,” according to Fred, and planned to eat at outdoor tables.

“I drove a 1940 Chevrolet, 4-door, black,” Fred says. “King Langley was driving a green 1935 Ford. It was polished. King worked at Southern Bleachery. He had his hair parted in the middle and was always neat. He called Lucille ‘Lude.’”

They all enjoyed a picnic meal and were talking as they continued sitting at tables.

“King saw a bear coming down a hill, toward us,” Fred says. “We all ran and got in our cars and watched as that black bear ate from our tables. When he finished, he made his way back up the hill. We all got out and cleaned up the picnic remains.”

If Jesus Came to Your House

Lois Blanchard Eades’ poem titled “If Jesus Came to Your House” touched me when I heard it on the radio in the 1950s.

Woodrow Wilson “Red” Sovine partially sang but mostly recited Eades’ poem on the 1956 recording I heard. Sovine died in 1980, after recording many sentimental “trucker songs” such as “Teddy Bear,” a tale about a crippled boy who lost his truck driver father in a highway accident and kept his father’s CB radio to contact truckers. Sovine recited the popular “If Jesus Came to Your House” with great feeling and with heart-rending, instrumental music playing in the background.

Here are some of the words in that poem:

“If Jesus came to your house to spend a day or two, if He came unexpectedly, I wonder what you’d do? Oh, I know you’d give your nicest room to such an honored guest, and all the food you’d serve to Him would be the very best.  

“And you would keep assuring Him you’re glad to have him there, that serving Him in your home is joy beyond compare. But when you saw Him coming, would you meet Him at the door, with arms outstretched to welcome in your heavenly visitor?

“Or would you have to change your clothes before you let Him in, or hide some magazines and put the Bible where they’d been? Would you turn off the radio and hope He hadn’t heard, and wished you hadn’t uttered that last loud nasty word.

“Would you hide your worldly music and put some hymn books out? Could you let Jesus come right in, or would you rush about? Oh, I wonder if the Savior came to spend a day with you, would you just go on doing all the things you always do?”

In her poem, Eades asked if the listener would talk his usual “talk,” if Jesus was sitting in the living room, and she asked, “Would you find it hard each meal to say a table grace?”

Eades continued, asking “If Jesus came to your house, would you sing the songs you always sing and read the books you read, and let Him know on which things your mind and spirit feeds? Would you take Jesus with you everywhere you planned to go, or would you maybe change your plans, for just a day or so?”

Eades ended “If Jesus Came to Your House” with these thoughts: “Would you be glad to have Him meet with all your closest friends, or would you hope they’d stay away until His visit ends? Would you be glad to have Him stay forever on and on, or would you sigh with great relief when He at last was gone? It might be interesting to know the things that you would do, if Jesus came in person to spend the day with you!”

When I first heard that poem, I was nine years old and pictured Jesus walking up the driveway of a typical 1950s house. I imagined Jesus with a dark beard and wearing a light-colored robe and carrying a shepherd’s staff. I thought of his image as being right out of the “Sunday Pix” illustrations I had seen in Sunday school.

I imagined the lady at that 1950s home looking out her window and seeing Jesus headed up her driveway. I could mentally see and hear her say, “Have mercy!” Then she began scurrying and hiding magazines and books and turning the radio dial from a station playing “Your Cheating Heart” to one playing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

I imagined that she cautioned her young son and daughter to be on their best behaviors. I wondered if she hoped her husband wouldn’t return from work until Jesus left, because hubby wasn’t too humble and might let slip a bad word. I felt sorry for the bedraggled woman that I imagined.

Today, as I recall (maybe in a more spiritual way) Eades’ “If Jesus Came to Your House” poem, I envision Jesus visiting the “house” of someone who has not accepted him. I imagine Jesus standing at the door of that person’s “house.” That “house” is that person’s “heart” (the place of deepest meaning, thought and emotion in each individual). I think of Jesus’ words found in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup (eat) with him, and he with me.”

If you have truly accepted Jesus as Savior, he is already inside your “house,” and he wants to live in every room of your “humble abode.” Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Milk and Bread When Snow is Forecast?

With snow predicted for Friday night, I hit Harris-Teeter in Aberdeen, N.C., on Thursday afternoon. Serious, snow-scared shoppers had scooped up bread and milk. As usual, those products “get gone” when snow is in the news.

Ohio songwriter Josh Woodward penned a song called “Give Me Milk and Bread.” Here are some lyrics: “Within a day, I will be dead / The snow is falling on my head / So gimme milk and bread.”

I guided my buggy here and yon in search of our usual staples. I considered buying pecans.

“Might be good for munching during icy weather,” I mused.

Price: $8.99 for a 10-ounce tray of shelled pecans.

“No way,” I thought.

Years ago, we used to throw sticks and knock pecans out of a tall tree at Ma Crain’s farm. We had all the pecans we cared to eat. Old-timey pecan pies sure were good.

I picked up a loaf of “Country White Bread” produced by Arnold. Carol and I also like “German Dark Wheat” made by Pepperidge Farm. She likes that dark bread with Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

I passed up some products that need to be refrigerated because snow sometimes causes pine trees to fall on power lines. Pine trees all over the place in our area. They don’t call our town “Southern Pines” for nothing.

We have enough stuff in our fridge, right now. And we have canned goods. We keep plenty of cans of soup, mostly Campbell’s Tomato Soup and Progresso Vegetable.

Our residence is all-electric. I never have bought gas logs, though there’s a copper tube in our fireplace that’s ready and waiting for gas logs to be hooked up. We have no generator. I keep a broken-down charcoal grill in our garage, and I’ll use it to warm soup if, as the old folks say, “worse comes to worst.” We rough it if the electric goes out.

I bought one gallon of milk instead of two, as I usually purchase each week. I was thinking still that the power might go out and a second gallon would be wasted.

I placed items in my buggy – cheddar-flavored potato chips, snack foods, cheese, a good-sized bag of M&Ms, etc. – and headed for checkout. I don’t usually buy M&Ms, but comfort food might be needed if the TV went down.

“Some of the shelves are depleted,” I said at checkout. “People are gearing up for snow, I guess.”

“It’s been busy,” said a middle-aged, slightly graying checkout lady. “Yesterday was busy. Today, we’ve had every cash register running all the time. Maybe it won’t be as bad as back in 2000. We had 17 inches of snow, then. My power went out, and I took milk out of our refrigerator and put it in a hole in the snow.”

“I remember that snow,” I said. “My wife and I were without power for five days. One night, the temperature got down to six degrees. It was just as cold in our house as it was outside. I let the pipes drip so they wouldn’t freeze.”

As I loaded groceries into the trunk of my car, I laid that large bag of M&Ms on my car bumper, thinking I might take them with me into the car and eat a few – just a few, mind you – on the way home. A 30-something lady passed by, smiled, and said, “That’s all you need – M&Ms.”

I grinned and said, “You’re right!"

She caught me with my comfort food. Funny, how we who harbor a weakness for comfort foods will look for any excuse. But, hey, who wants just plain old milk and bread when snow is forecast?

Working Out

On Tuesday, around 2:45 p.m., I drove to the gym near my home in Southern Pines, N.C. I hadn’t been there since Saturday. I’ve lately been going three times a week to Gold’s Gym. I seemed to lack time to get there four times a week, as I used to.

I sometimes wear earplugs to help keep out noise of the music Gold’s plays. I think there are a few talk-free stations gym attendants like, and one station plays “heavy metal.” Increasingly, the young lady clerks at the gym front desk seem to tune to that station. That’s why I’ve begun wearing plugs while in the gym.

I found some foam earplugs in my dresser drawer. They were left over from my carpet manufacturing plant days. We were supposed to wear earplugs in noisy areas of the Gulistan Carpet manufacturing plant. Yarn-winding machines generated lots of noise – a steady hum, sort of like thousands of bees working, working, working. The huge yarn-winding room was a place I would not want to spend eight hours a day in. I’d have felt trapped in a prison of white yarn and humming “bees.” I imagine that workers in that area wanted to get to quiet rooms with couches when they got off work. Well, that large room is silent now. No machines sit there. The Gulistan plant lies sprawled like a vacated city – a city long ago evacuated because the people fled from an enemy. Yes, there was an enemy that rose up against Gulistan. That enemy was “debt Gulistan incurred because of the 2008 recession in the U.S.” The company groaned and tried to survive, but the doors (the gates of the city under attack by an economic downturn) closed as company citizens left to find other ways to survive economically. The fellowship of kindred carpet minds was disrupted. The bond that held together about 400 Gulistan associates dissolved as the year 2013 began. People who had workplace bonds said their “so long, it’s been good working with you” kinds of things and drove away from a worn Gulistan parking lot.
 
So, I had some earplugs left over from those carpet-making days, and now I use them at Gold’s Gym to help shield me from heavy-metal music. The earplugs don’t hold out all the sound, but the plugs muffle vibrations enough that I can stand the mind-afflicting “music.”

On Tuesday, I wasn’t in much of a mood to “work out,” nor felt physically attuned to working out, at Gold’s. But I continued plodding from machine to machine and lifting weights and levers and handles on weight machines. My feet hurt badly because of neuropathy. I just had to keep on working out on one machine at a time. After 50 minutes, many of my muscles had stretched and tightened until I felt a sense of accomplishment. I felt good that I had “done” my Gold’s Gym routine.

Day by day our lives are lived, and sometimes we just have to be pleased to daily accomplish some little thing. I often think of this Chinese proverb: “Many things you do are not important, but it’s very important that you do them.”

I thank the Lord for each day’s tasks and the strength to do them.