Texas!

I have lived in Oklahoma longer than I have lived anywhere else in my life.  This summer it will be eighteen years since I became an Okie.  When pressed, I say, " I was born in Texas, but I got to Oklahoma as fast as I could."  Eleven years in Oklahoma City and almost 20 years as an Sooner football fan have built up a good-natured animosity toward Texas.  I teasingly insult Texas and Texans at every opportunity, but over the past couple of days, I had the opportunity to jump in the old time machine and take a trip back to when I proudly proclaimed, "I'm from Texas, and everything is bigger and better in Texas."

Eighty years ago, a couple of the Jernigan sisters fell in love and married a couple of the Hughes brothers and between them they had nine kids.  This passle of double cousins grew up as close as brothers and sisters in the piney woods and red dirt hills of east Texas.  This past week, Bonnie Sue Hughes McGinnis, the oldest daughter of Arthur and Essie Hughes passed away.  I took my dad and mom to the funeral in Center, Texas, the childhood home of the Hughes clan.  For me, the experience was like stepping back in time.  We visited the old "Baker place," the house that my grandparents lived in from my earliest recollection until my grandfather passed away in 1981.  It sat on 100 acres with a place for chickens and cattle and a huge garden as well as two and a half ponds, where my grandmother taught me to fish.  The house has changed a bit in the 30 years since Papaw passed on and Mamaw moved in with my aunt in Jacksonville.  The Bakers, who had moved to Houston to work in the oil business, retired and moved back to the place and renovated the house, adding on to the back and building a large garage.  They have since sold it to someone else and things have fallen into a state of disrepair.  The chicken house and the barn are still standing as reminders of the times when I would follow my grandfather out to the barn and watch him milk the old cow.  I'd gather a few eggs and we would tinker around with a few things until my grandmother would step out onto the back step and yell, "Elllllbert!," letting us both know that breakfast was on the table and it was time to come to the house.  When we got to the house, washed our hands, and sat down at the table, the breakfast was always the same.  Fried eggs and sausage, biscuits as big as a cat's head, home-churned butter, and strap syrup.  With the left overs, Mamaw would make Papaw two fried egg sandwiches for his lunch and he would head off to the plywood mill. 

For some reason the barn didn't look nearly as big as it used to, but seeing it reminded me that with all of the negative things that I say about Texas, some of the greatest moments of my life took place there.  Just across the road from the barn was the hayfield where I first learned to drive a stick shift.  I was six, and we were putting up hay.  It was a cloudy day and Papaw was afraid that it was going to rain on the hay, so he and my uncle Jerry and a couple of my second cousins put me behind the wheel of the truck and I drove while they stacked the haybales. I remember that day like it was yesterday.  My uncle Jerry was young and spry and when they came across an armadillo in the field, he chased it down and caught it for me.  He put it is a chicken coup and set it on the front porch.  After I went to bed, he found an old turtle under the front porch and he put it in the chicken coup with the armadillo.  When I woke up in the morning, the tarrapin was closed up tight in its shell.  Uncle Jerry told me that the armadillo had laid an egg during the night. I truly miss Jerry.

The old courthouse in Center, reminded me of the days of shopping trips with my Mamaw to Payne and Payne's and Beall's on the town square.  Papaw would drop us off and we would walk from store to store and then make a stop at the barber shop where I asked the barber to give me a haircut like Bro. Cravey from the church.  He was bald with tuft of hair on both sides of his head, and at six, I thought that was a pretty cool look.  It must have been because I had never seen Bro. Cravey without a broad smile on his face.

The funeral home brought back a few more fond memories.  I know that sounds strange, but the Watson family has been in the mortuary business in Center for over 30 years.  When I was 18 years old and a student at BBC, the pastor at Central Baptist Church, Bro. Roy Wallace, thought it would be a great idea to have me come down and preach a teen revival.  I'm not sure how great he thought the idea was when it was all over, but I appreciate his confidence in me at such an early age.  The Watson's were members of Central Baptist at that time and Mr. Watson had a teenage daughter, Angela.  I was talking with her after one of the services and she was playing with one of the little children.  She asked the little boy if he knew what her father did for a living.  When he said no, she said, "My daddy kills dead people."  I don't know why that funny little line has stuck in my head all these years, but seeing Bro. Watson again brought it out. 
The funeral home is located at another hallowed spot in my memory.  The graveyard where Bonnie was buried is also the gravesite of one of my greatest heroes in the faith.  In life and in death he is known simply as Missionary Bob Hughes.  It is inscribed on his gravestone and it is his legacy.  More than anything else in his life, he was a missionary.  His legacy lives on in two daughters who serve God faithfully and a wonderful church in Cebu City, the Philippines that is still changing the world, 35 years after his passing.  He is who my son is named after.
As I reflected on all of these wonderful memories, I was challenged to think of more of the wonderful things in my life that happened to me in Texas.  The childhood joys were abundant, but they pale in comparison to the fact that I proposed to my wife of 28 years in Texas, I witnessed the birth of my first child in Texas, and I spent every Christmas but one until I was 35 years old there.
I have heard old-age defined as the point in life where you see the past as having more to offer you than the future.  The older I get, the more it seems that my mind is drawn back to the days that have gone by.  I hope that I can continue to look forward as well to what God still has for me in the days ahead.  I never want to get so caught up in the past that I lose sight of the fact that God is working in me and through me right now and desires to do so for years to come.  I guess the greatest lesson learned this past few days is that life is short and opportunities are fleeting.  We need to live life to its fullest and build upon the foundation that has been laid in our lives by the past, and remember, "... pressing toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God."  The finish line is still ahead.