The
Preacher’s Corner
By Rev. Dr. Milton Winter
The caring
ways of small town folks
My friends
lost track of me briefly last week and sent a search
party over to investigate. I had been under the weather
and was glad to be missed. I remember stories when I
lived in Chicago of people that were found in their
apartments after being dead for weeks. That never
happened to a member of our congregation there, but there
was the case of poor Miss Bott.
Miss Louise
Bott was a faithful member of my Sunday school class, a
feisty little woman who always dressed in black. She
always reminded me of “Momma” in the comic
strip of that name.
Miss Bott
had no one to help her in old age and so the church
deacons had to take charge and move her up to the
Presbyterian Home in Evanston. She resisted mightily, but
the health department condemned her apartment, so she had
to go. They had to carry her out kicking and screaming.
One of Miss
Bott’s friends in my class was also getting along in
years. When a minister-colleague innocently asked if she
wanted to ride with him up to visit the Presbyterian
Home, this lady thought it was a conspiracy to move her
out also, and she slapped poor Mr. Donovan with her
umbrella!
Another
member of my Holly Springs circle of friends was also
missed recently and searched for. This gentleman has been
really ill with pneumonia, but is recovering. Someone
came to his door at a very early hour, and my friend is
not an early riser. Not wishing to come downstairs and go
scruffing down the front hall in his fuzzy slippers, my
friend told his visitor over the intercom that he was not
feeling too well and would receive him later that day.
That visitor
happened to remark at the hardware store that he did not
think the first gentleman was feeling very well. Of
course, by the time this delicious bit of intelligence
had gone around the square a couple of times, our friend
was nearly dead. (We have so little to talk about in
Holly Springs!)
Meanwhile a
second friend came in from hunting and was dispatched
from the square over to see what was going on, call the
ambulance, summon the coroner, or whatever was needed
because someone was either dead in that house on Salem
Avenue, or gone to the hospital — or strangled,
kidnapped, or otherwise in a terrible predicament!
It was at
this point that I entered the picture, strolling into the
City Café with my colleague Bruce McMillan, and we
spotted our hapless friend having lunch with one of our
city’s loveliest ladies.
Had we all
known what a desperate search was going on outside, we
would have quieted the alarm, but none the wiser, we each
went to our tables and enjoyed a quiet repast. (My friend
then went to his house and found that the searcher,
having found his door unlocked, had gone inside and was
searching the premises high and low for any evidence of
catastrophe or foul play. They surprised each other and
the much-relieved searcher, I’m told, uttered some
curse words that cannot be re-printed in this newspaper.
The dead are supposed to stay dead, or finding them is
not any fun.)
None of
these stories can compare with what happened to me in the
second or third week of my pastorate here. It was late on
a Saturday night, and I still had not gotten a Marshall
County tag for my car. I had been to Memphis and came
home with one of my awful migraine headaches. I decided I
needed uninterrupted rest for the Sunday services to
come, so I unplugged my phone and went to bed.
Meanwhile,
the police were checking license plates outside, and
having noticed my “foreign” (Illinois) tag,
they decided to check this out. Meanwhile another squad
car was working a terrible wreck out on the Highway 78
bypass, in which someone was killed. Those who listen to
the scanner (and there are many who listen to the scanner
— we have so little to talk about in Holly Springs!)
— were evidently treated, therefore, to a jumble of
conversations about Milton Winter’s Illinois license
plate and the gentleman in the car wreck who was lying
out on the highway dead.
The lady in
my congregation who was “tuned in,” fearing the
worst, did the sensible thing and phoned me. But I lay
a-sleeping, with my telephone unplugged. From her
receiver, it sounded as if it was ringing, but in my
apartment, not a creature was stirring, not even the
mouse.
Not one to
take things passively, my church lady worried all night,
and first thing the next morning she got on the telephone
to inform our congregation of my absence from home and
feared plight. I still had not plugged in my phone.
So when I
strolled over for Sunday school, I beheld a much larger
crowd than usual, all milling about outside and concerned
that their new minister had not lived even unto his
formal installation day. They were glad to see me, and I
them, and it was one of the best attendances for Sunday
school we have recorded before or since.
Having said
all this that is intended to compliment the caring ways
of small town folk, I do recall that when there was a
small fire at “McCarroll Place,” several of my
fellow Rotary Club members did notice and remark to the
assembled group about the fire trucks and smoke pouring
from the dwelling where I then lived.
However,
none of them were bestirred to abandon their lunches and
come see what had happened, except for Curtis Greer and
Bob Carrington. They held the insurance policy on the
house.
As I say, I
do not mind being missed. It did not seem right in our
big Chicago church — as happened to me one day
— to go strolling past our chapel and see a funeral
under way for the mother of a close friend, and I did not
even know the lady had been sick.
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