Not many belonged. Our 1970 and 1980s Chapel Hill, North Carolina church membership numbered maybe 300 souls, including some babe in arms. So small that we couldn’t afford to pay a preacher. We chose ‘do it yourself’ preaching. Good idea because the Secretary of the University faculty, Professor Henry Boren, was a foremost authority on the Roman Republic. Although he didn’t deliver a sermon but once a quarter, Henry often read scripture from a Greek-language
Author: Dick Elam
Tennis in Athens Ohio
Classical movies took a TV Sunday to mark the passing of Doris Day. Reminded me when Doris’ hairdo was copied by my lady. Dateline is Summer 1970, Ohio University, Athens Ohio. I was attending a six-week seminar on political communications. I went to Ohio a week ahead of my family while Maxine waited for our daughter and son to finish their last school week at Chapel Hill NC public schools. The professor attending from Murray
Back to Sleep
Pop’s story entertained the drivers spending a rainy day indoors at Red Elam’s Abilene trucking lot. You can’t dispatch trucks to move a drilling rig when the farmer’s field turns muddy. Fellow drivers called him ‘Pop’ because he was the oldest. Pop also had logged more interstate miles—he once drove his truck twice-a-week between Texarkana and El Paso. Back when Pop said he had a wife in both cities. Back when Pop had a wreck
Captain Jack
Our crew didn’t win the sailboat race, but we recuperated on the grassy slope outside the New Berne community center, drank a few ‘Daddy Cokes,’ visited with our competitors. We had flown our orange spinnaker…decorated with the dark skull, a blackened rose in her teeth…from the Oriental, North Carolina harbor to New Berne, twenty-some miles down the Neuse River. Captain Jack had sailed his first regatta aboard the 30-foot sloop “Anne Bonny”, named for the
Ain’t for Sissies
The lady–not much younger than me–remembers humorist Art Linkletter once said, “Old age ain’t for Sissies.” Not many older, or reworked than this old man. ‘Twas 1936 when Teacher discovered I couldn’t see the words, even after she moved me closest to the blackboard. In 2000 Surgeon implanted two new lenses, but I still hunt for my glasses on the bedside table when I wake up. Hardly remember that the Surgeons at Duke University hospital, circa
Off My Chest
You don’t want to hide a gift sweatshirt in your closet, but the four presents given by my ‘darling doting’ children make me consider that possibility. I’m talking about sweatshirts with two-inch-high letters emblazoned across my chest. Just like comedian Rodney Dangerfield, the words make me wish for a little more respect. The sweatshirt with white letters on orange cloth reads, “I used to teach, but now I have no class.” Other shoppers at the supermarket
Keep Her Turning….
Everybody who ever worked, or ‘sweated,’ a 24-hour rotary drilling operation heard this admonition from the crew leaving after their eight-hour shift: “Keep her turning to the right.“ ‘Her’ was the rotary table that spun the pipe in the hole. For the record I was a ‘sweater,’ an observer watching the four men–sometimes five–send drill pipe down the hole to spin the drilling bit. Sometimes I visited the drilling rig to sell the drilling mud
The Supper Club
Each month our wives discovered, and cooked, a new gourmet recipe. They tasted at their monthly luncheon meeting. Then the ‘Supper Club’ cooked their best discoveries for their husbands to taste. The eight, lovely mothers from the same Sunday school class dressed for show, hired baby sitters, and scheduled their eight husbands for the in-home evening dinner. Coach, contractor, broadcast evangelist, trucker, mercantilist, journalist, mechanic, teacher—we were summoned to eat ‘something better’ than what the
Water Fight at Okie Lake
East of Tulsa, some sixty 15-foot long sailboats bobbed on Fort Gipson Lake. Skippers and crews competing in the Snipe class national championships sweated and waited for the wind to blow. No wind, no sailboat race. Race Committee Chairman Steve told the skippers to quit griping about the lack of wind. “There’s plenty of air out there—it’s just not moving.” This skipper and his Sweet Sixteen daughter waited in the cockpit of “TexFite”, our orange