Sometimes You Read the Darndest Things #T

I was doing a web search last evening, a search that had nothing whatsoever to do with school girls, surgeons, pins, rheumatism, or Pennsylvania when I happened upon this, from sixty-seven years ago.

Surgeon Removes 13 Headless Pins From Leg of School Girl

KIRKSVILLE, MO.  Dr. Paul R. Koogler, surgeon-in-chief at the hospital of Kirksville college of osteopathy and surgery, said he had removed 13 or 14 headless pins imbedded in a leg of Mary Serena Beach, high school junior, of Sigourney, Pa. Miss Beach registered at the hospital with symptoms of rheumatism. Pictures disclosed the pins, which the girl could not explain.

 Jeffersonian (Jeffersontown, Ky.), April 4, 1947

And sometimes you witness something just as weird.

It was, I think 1948 or about a year after the needled leg incident in Missouri.  This happened in Colorado.  Al, a lad of fourteen, was an attendee at a camp, escaping Kansas for a week or ten days in Colorado's scenic surroundings. 

Suddenly one evening he reported to a camp counselor with an extremely swollen hand and excruciating pain.  Clearly, a trip to the emergency room at the local hospital was required.  The surgeon ascertained that some foreign object was embedded in the flesh at the base of the thumb.  The offending intruder was surgically removed and proved to be the tip of a pair of sewing scissors, perhaps an inch in length.  Now, how did that happen?

The boy told this tale.  Many months ago, nearly a year ago, in fact, he and his sister had gotten into a contretemps, the upshot of which was a stabbing inflicted to the hand by the sibling.  "We knew the scissors had broken, but we couldn't find the missing piece."

Nasty, rusty thing.  Successful treatment for the infection, though, and the wound eventually healed.

Poetry and Red Onions #T

My father was a minister of the gospel, which I have mentioned numerous times on this blog.  Thus, when I was a lad, I got acquainted with many preachers.  Some of them made a lasting impression, most of those for all the right reasons.

A memorable individual in my life was Rev. Mr. Howard K. Busby of Lamont, Kansas.  Mr. Busby was a dear friend of my father.  He was six years older than Dad and in addition to their profession, they had much in common.  Though both men were pastors, and each served the church in administrative capacities at various times in their lives, they both conducted revival meetings on occasion.  One year when I was in my late teens, a camp meeting in New York State scheduled both men as the evangelists for the ten-day meeting.  Dad took his family with him for that meeting. This did not happen often.  Usually, Mom stayed home with the kids, the kids went to school, life lived much as usual.

The trip across country, New York State, and meeting new people were all interesting.  The camp meeting itself was run in the more-or-less typical pattern of such camps in that day. There were "preaching" services morning, afternoon, and evening with the preachers alternating pulpit duties.  So it was that if Dad preached an evening service, Busby would be on the next morning, and that evening, with Dad speaking in the afternoon.

Brother Busby (all the church people were known to one another as "Brother" or "Sister") had a routine whereby he eschewed the evening meal on those nights he was scheduled to preach.  But after the meeting we would meet with him in our cottage, or in his, and it was in this setting that he introduced me to one of his favorite after-service snacks.  Oh, salivating now, just remembering!  Mr. Busby would make himself a sandwich, and one for me, since no one else in the set cared to partake.  He would slice one of those big, sweet red onions, slather a generous portion of butter on the bread, and enclose the onion slice between two pieces of said bread.  What deliciousness!  What wonderful memories of munching and talking late in the evening!

Mr. Busby committed to memory vast amounts of scripture and many, many poems as well.  He sprinkled these gems liberally throughout his sermons, a technique which my father also used.  All these memories came back in a flood when I espied a book on my shelves entitled "The Busby Scrapbook of Poems that Touch the Heart."  It is a compilation of poetry he collected and loved, and finally had published.  I can still hear him quoting "The Touch of the Master's Hand" or "The World is Mine."

Mr. Busby died at age 93, just two years before my father passed away.

Sadly, I can no longer eat raw onions in the evening, nor any other time, for that matter.

Here is a short poem from Busby's collection:

                    TIME

When as a child I laughed and wept                      

    time crept.

When as a youth I dreamed and talked

    time walked.

When I became a full-grown man

    time ran.

Soon I shall find in traveling on

    time gone.

                                   

    

Tin Cup. This Time, Honest

Saturday we were at camp meeting, ostensibly telling the tale of the tin cup.  Yet the cup appeared only pictorially.

Camp meeting ran for ten full days, actually starting on a Thursday night and ending after the evening service on the second Sunday next.  Plenty of time for prayer, praise, preaching, potatoes, and palaver with many from near and far.

Now our camp meeting typically started in mid-June, running, for example from the sixteenth through the twenty-sixth.  The days were long, without doubt, and could get hot, more than likely.  Thirst, and not speaking here of spiritual thirst, could get intense.  But provisions were made!  On the south side of the kitchen, on the outside wall, was a standard bib, or faucet, which one could turn on to obtain water.  Yet a container for the refreshing elixir was required, so hanging on the bib was a tin cup.  A beautiful, standard tin cup was placed there for the convenience of one and all.

Thirsty, we never gave it a second thought.  One wonders how so many of us survived, even unto old age.  Yet even in that unenlightened (and probably better for it) time, there were one or two who did give it a thought.  I am thinking of Mrs. W, wife of one of the pastors on the district, a lady always dressed just a tiny cut above the run-of-the-mill "outfits" worn by most of the women.  So Mrs. W gets thirsty, as do we all.  She traipses up the walk to the spigot, reaches into her beautiful black calfskin purse and pulls out a ring-like object about two inches in diameter.  She grasps the nether portion of the ring in her left hand, the upper part in her right, and pulls.  Behold! it becomes a drinking cup!  She runs the water, quaffs her refreshment, takes a hankie from the purse and wipes the cup dry, folds it and returns it along with the handkerchief to her purse.  She ambles away.

Three of us kids standing nearby watched this little skit play out.  Just as she was, we hoped, out of earshot, two of us started snickering.  "Some people are too good for their own good," said Wes.  "Yeah," I chimed in, "I hope there was snot on her hankie."  "No, no.  Now stop that," said Andy, who was two years older than we, and therefore presumably wiser in the ways of the world.  "You should be grateful that she was considerate enough not to smear her cooties on our cup."

Gleeful laughter as we all skipped off to see what other wonders might appear to further enhance our day!

.

This was not our tabernacle, but it is a look-alike.

The Tin Cup

Seven decades ago we attended camp meeting.  Every year.

Camp meeting was held on the camp grounds.  The campgrounds had facilities for lodging.  It had a dining hall with kitchen.  And most importantly, it had a tabernacle.  A tabernacle is a huge roof supported by posts such that the effect is an outdoor meeting place, but roofed in to keep out the sun and the rain.  But not the birds and insects.  In fact the birds rather liked to nest in the rafters, and the mosquitoes rather liked the people, both of which made for some interesting occurrences during service from time to time.

The tabernacle had a gravel floor, but it was tiered such that everyone, more or less, had a good view of the platform which was elevated in the front of the auditorium.  Just before one got to the platform, there was a tier which was covered with wood shavings, sawdust, if you will, with the mourner's bench between this level and the platform.  This was called the altar, as in the song, "Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?"

Evangelistic preachers would come to hold the meeting.  The workers usually consisted of two preachers who alternated platform duties, and special singers, usually a young man and his wife who were talented in music.  Sometimes they were not so young, and had their whole family with them.

Now the routine went like this.  The bell-ringer traipsed over the entire grounds, missing none of the lodging places, ringing the rising bell promptly at six in the morning.  This gave people time to rise, say a few prayers, and be at the breakfast line by seven.  Stuff happened between breakfast and the first service at ten o'clock, but for us kids it was mostly a time to do stuff without the interference of adult supervision.  Though to be sure, the grounds were patrolled and mischief was not on the agenda.  Ten o'clock:  church service, the whole nine yards, and usually out by noon, except when the people that responded to the altar call were still trying to pray through.  Then the workers and a few of the faithful had to stay with them, trying to break through to heaven.  The rest of us went to lunch.

Church service again at 2:30.

Then supper in the dining hall at five-thirty.

Then the bell-ringer went about, announcing ring meeting.  Ring meeting was held outdoors, as if the tabernacle were not sufficiently outdoors.  People stood around in a ring on the lawn, sang songs, and gave their testimonies.  There was considerable shouting going on.  "Glory!"  "Hallelujah!"

The evening service began at 7:30.  This one was likely to last until well after bedtime for a normal nine-year old boy, because it was in this service that the devil's grip on people's souls must be broken.  The more people that could be swayed to come to the altar, the better.  Sometimes the "invitation" might require the singing of "Just as I Am,"  and "Almost Persuaded," with the "Sad, sad that bitter wail, almost, but lost" lines sung over and over, the preacher having long since worked himself into a lather, falls exhausted in front of the altar to pray, even as the singing continues.  The fellow-worker and the superintendent then are left to close out the invitation and get the prayer-meeting started for real.

This is the story of the tin cup.  To be continued Tuesday.