The Journey of My Father's Son

My fondest memories are woven around the setting of the sun and mother going to the edge of the back porch and calling out to all of us kids that it was time for supper. I can still recall her voice as she yelled out for us to wash up and come on into the kitchen to the big dining table daddy had made with his own hands out of rough sawn lumber he had bought at the sawmill. The red and white oil cloth table covering had been on the table so long that the roughness of the saw blade was showing through on the top of the table cloth. Each evening was sort of a homecoming celebration when each of us would find our assigned place to sit. Big glasses of sweet ice tea had taken a prominent place to the upper right side of each dinner plate and mother placed big steaming bowls of vegetables, such as pinto beans, boiled cabbage, fried potatoes, and maybe some sort of meat, in the middle of the six foot long dining table. The table was set for a time of fellowship and an atmosphere of celebration was established. Plates were passed around the table with requests for food items to be filled. Whoever had a particular item close to him would serve that item onto the plate and then pass it along to the next bowl.

Most often, as we sat at the table filling ourselves with good food prepared by the loving hands of my mother, the sun would sink below the horizon and the evening would turn into darkness. The peace we found around the supper table was the kind of peace that would set the standard for the kind of peace I have longed for since then. After supper, food remaining on the plates would be scrapped into a bucket and set aside as food for the hogs that would be slaughtered around Thanksgiving.

Each season of the year brought about a different kind of experience to be shared at the supper table. Daddy used supper time as a chance to ‘read’ the faces of his children to determine if intervention was needed. Supper time was a time for sharing victories and setbacks. Daddy always had an answer to any problem we may have had. He would identify the one who seemed most down and catch him away from the rest of the family and ask, “Do you have something you need to tell me?” Supper time set the tone for confessionals. It was a time of healing of anything that was causing pain. It set the tone for the rest of the evening. We felt free to unload our burdens and to gain insight from a man who had survived the Great Depression.

The evening time was a time for spiritual healing and most often, during the summer months this would include attending revival meetings at a church nearby. We attended revival meetings as often as possible. Oftentimes one of the services would include a sermon about that great banquet hall in Heaven. Walter Bryant, the father of my mother, was often the evangelist for local revival meetings. During his sermon about the great banquet hall, I could visualize the setting of the table and I could feel the presence of saints who had passed on. He presented the Great Banquet in such a way that the person sitting in the pew did not want to miss it. Enon Baptist Church was my favorite place to go on a hot August evening for revival services. It was located in an isolated place away from the hustle of city, as well as country life. Revivals were scheduled for August when all the crops had been laid-by, that is they required no more labor and were allowed to mature without human intervention. It was a sweet time to be alive on the farm.