Sunday at Lolie's
With the help of my wife, we have pieced these 43 year
old memories together.
Lolie
drove a 1953 Ford like the chariot of Jehu over the
blacktop and gravel roads of North Central Missouri . In 1970
Schuyler was a poor county with no Mounties so she got away with it. She was a septuagenarian at the time, and the most active member of my very first pulpit
assignment. I don’t think she was ever married, but the church
treated her as a “widow indeed” according to I Timothy 5:5. I think she
had a brother but I knew not of his whereabouts. She and the church lived in symbiosis, and
methinks the church came out on the better end of the deal. They helped Lolie with groceries and house
repairs, and kept that car running, and she reciprocated with all her might.
I was still in
college, and made the 90 mile
drive on Sundays. I
preached both morning and evening, and drove back to school Sunday night. I didn’t have to worry about not being there
all week, for I knew that old black Ford would be roaring around, evangelizing and pastoring. When I got there, Lolie briefed me about her
week’s exploits and advised me of people that
needed my attention on Sunday afternoon.
One day
I got a phone call from one of the elders.
“Well, she’s finally
done it! I kept tellin’ her to slow it
down. Shor ‘nuf, she
put that car in the ditch and broke her leg!”
On Sunday, I was first to arrive at the old church building back in the white oaks. I was stunned to hear the gravel crackling
like bacon grease and pinging in the wheel wells. Before I
looked, I knew it was Lolie. There she
came, followed by a cloud of dust that completely limed some lucky farmer’s
field. The mighty ‘53 had come through
with the passenger door slightly cavitated and a lot of grass stains and mud
but otherwise as ornery as ever. The grill had a big horizontal piece of steel a few
inches above the bumper that looked like a smirk. It seemed to be saying, “Is that all you’ve got?
Bring it, baby!” Lolie emerged,
complete with crutches and cast. I think the Ford had a manual transmission
and I couldn’t figure out how she drove it with a cast. Evidently, it’s possible. “Well, ya beat me here today, preacher!” I put my arm around her shoulder and said,
“Lolie! I thought I’d be seeing you in
the hospital this afternoon!” “Aw,
nah. Ah cain’t sit still. Folks calls me ‘the unsinkable Molly Brown!’”
After
worship, it was the custom to eat dinner at one of the members houses. It was a small congregation so we had been in
all of the members’ homes several times;
all except Lolie’s. One Sunday
after the sermon the men approached me with a
solemnity that aroused my apprehension. “We thought we’d ought ta warn
ya, preacher. You’re eatin’ at Lolie’s
house next Sunday. She’s been a
pesterin’ us ta let her feed
ya. We been puttin’ her off
‘cause…..well….she ain’t like normal folks.
She ain’t slow or
anything; she’s just a little
different. She’s so good hearted and
does so much for the church that we finally said ‘OK’. We
figured it’d be alright so long as you were prepared.”
That next week wore my
imagination out. I had driven by her
house in Lancaster several times and knew it
was sort of ramshackle on the outside.
The grass in the little front yard was
knee high and headed out. I assume she preferred it that way because
I’m sure the church folk offered to mow it.
It would have taken only ten minutes.
Well, Sunday came and
for some reason, after preaching I was as hungry as a black hole. Lolie had left a little early to go home and
get everything ready. We drove to her
house and knocked on the front door. We
could see her inside waving us around to the back. By the way, we were on Summer break and it
was a blistering Missouri day. She had
no air conditioning, not even a fan. All
the windows were shut and covered on the outside
with plastic. We walked around to the back and there was a chicken coop
and several fowl clucking around. For
some reason, that sound comforts me. It
reminds me of happy, sweaty, lazy days on my grandma’s farm. The back door opened and I
beheld a tunnel. Old newspapers and
magazines, tied into bundles with baler twine,
completely filled what was presumably the living room. Every
inside wall in the house had been torn out. I could see why the roof sagged. No
support except for the outside walls.
The bales of papers went all the way to
the ceiling and I figured that was the only reason it had not collapsed, but I wondered how the joists held under what must have
been tons of papers. I scooted
sideways through the narrow canyon, finally emerging into…..the bathroom/aviary. There were large areas where the ceiling plaster had fallen
off the lath. The walls had been torn out around what used to be a
bathroom and all that was left was a toilet perched on a pedestal squarely
in the middle of the house. It was truly
a “throne”. Mercifully, a tattered
shower curtain hung around it. There was
no shower or sink. Just that
commode. I
don’t know how, or if Lolie bathed herself.
Surrounding the throne were cages and cages of Parakeets. “My goodness, Lolie! How many parakeets do you have here?” “About 50” she said. I saw a couch sitting propped
against the mountain of papers, as if to prevent a landslide.
The ceiling above the bathroom and kitchen was festooned
with…..model airplanes! Big ones, small
ones, biplanes and tri planes, fighter jets and commercial liners, even a huge Saturn V rocket complete with command
module. Men had landed on the moon the year before. “Lolie” I said “Who made all
these for you?” “Oh! I made ‘em.
I just love to make model airplanes!”
I didn’t ask but it was a safe bet that she had never been on an airplane.
Dreams. That’s what they
were. Dreams hanging from her ceiling. And birds that
could fly. Something I’m sure Lolie
never could do until she left this life;
though I bet she got that car airborne a time or two topping a sharp
hill.
I walked to the couch
and sat down. It was a good thing I sat
before my wife because my rear hit the floor so hard that the window panes rattled. Had my wife sat first, her dress would have
flown clear over her head. There I sat
looking between my knees with my wife balancing tentatively on the very edge. I reached around and pulled one of the papers
out of the pile. My jaw dropped when I
saw that it was a perfectly preserved 1956 “Life” magazine. I was amazed at how old it was, but now I
know she probably had a fortune there.
Collectors will pay good money for stuff
like that.
Lolie worked busily at
the kitchen sink washing dishes. My wife said, “Can I help?” “Oh yes, honey. Can you get the gravy down?” “Where is it?” “In that cupboard above the sink.” My wife reached
high and opened the door. A “grand daddy long legs” scurried away and
my wife was done. There,
inside that high cupboard was a huge roaster almost brim full of chicken
gravy. I
don’t know how Lolie got it up there. I stood on one of the rickety wooden chairs and carefully
pulled it out and lowered it onto the table.
“My, Lolie!” says my wife.
“That’s an awful lot for just us three.”
“Oh, honey, we won’t eat it all today.
It’ll last me for a week!”
That was our
meal. Mashed potato buds smothered in
chicken gravy. Not bad. “Now, I’ve got some dessert.” says Lolie.
“Frozen cream pie.” My wife got up to get it out of the ancient refrigerator. It wasn’t
in the freezer. There on the lower shelf of a refrigerator
that didn’t work were two cream pies….. liquefied. She brought them to the table and we ate them
with soup spoons. Not bad.
We
sat and talked a while and Lolie gave me my assignments. We walked out to the car and headed out. My wife said, “Let’s not go see anyone just
yet. Take me out on a country road
because I don’t feel so good.”
Funny. I thought it was “Not
bad.”
Now
I hope you have enjoyed Lolie’s story, but don’t miss the application.
Instead
of disqualifying herself, Lolie saw her purpose in the kingdom. God doesn’t throw us on the scrap heap, but
we cast ourselves there. We don’t see
many results from our efforts and we censure ourselves. We may quit serving, we may quit praying, we
may turn our backs on our profession of faith altogether. Or we may view God as a W. C. Fields in the
sky. We feel He has said, “Get away,
kid! Ya bother me.” We look at ourselves and say, “No wonder God
has benched me. I’m not that smart. I’m not pretty. I just can’t seem to win friends and
influence people. God, if you only want
to bless the ‘elite’, then I guess Idon’t belong. I’m out of here.”
Lolie
was an eccentric old woman who evidently never had those thoughts. She kept on stroking. Perhaps she had read 1 Cor 1:27-29 But God hath chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the
world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God
chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.
C. S. Lewis was already a celebrated author
and educator. He and his brother,
Warren, walked each Sunday to a little stone church building not far from his
English country home outside Oxford.
There sat one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century, humbly
listening to simple sermons from comparatively simple men; because they quoted the wisdom of God which
is beyond all the wisdom of men.
I have always had a heart for the “underdog”
for I am one. I make no secret that I
am uncomfortable with “consumer oriented” congregations. This is an age of narcissism, and these
congregations only feed it. How shall a
man die to himself there? It is too easy for a person to think he is
being a Christian there without divesting himself of his pride. Some people
are there to be seen by others, not to commune with Christ. Humility is the first attribute one must
assume in order to be saved. Unless
Naaman gets down off his high horse, he shall remain a leper. That’s why God often hides His jewels in a
brown paper bag. That’s why Jesus said, Matt 11:25 I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes . That’s why Paul said, 1 Cor 1:26 For
ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble , are called: Of course Paul was master of “tongue in
cheek” and Jesus used metaphor. They
were jabbing barbs at the “fleshly” or secular world’s estimate of Christians.
And
that’s probably what God was doing when He carried good will and the benign
influence of the kingdom all over Schuyler county with an odd old lady in a ‘53
Ford. If you would be truly wise, you
dare not overlook people like these.
