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Memories of a Foster Daddy

photo of young girl and one of her and her foster dad.

I started reading Frances Liardet’s novel, We Must Be Brave, this week. It’s about a woman who falls in love with a lost girl whom she cares for during the chaos following the German bombing of Southampton, England during World War 2. The story reminded me of something I experienced and wrote about over 30 years ago, before our other kids came along. At the time, I had the article approved by the social worker, making sure I wasn’t breaking any rules or leaking confidential information,, then submitted it for publication. A magazine accepted the piece for publication, but then they closed down the presses before it was published. So, it sat in my files. This evening I dusted it off and presented it here.

MEMORIES OF A FOSTER DADDY

photo of Becky
Becky, photos are copies (this was before digital)

The first of September 1994, one of the saddest days of my life. 

I waved good-bye to Becky for the final time as the social worker’s car backed down our driveway. But the sadness didn’t take away the joy of the previous six months as I experienced how precious life seen through the eyes of a toddler can be. Becky taught me the importance for adults to spend time with children, caring for them and helping them to discover the world. From Becky, I learned a lesson which everyone needs to experience firsthand. Children need responsible adults in their lives and, as adults, we need children in our lives if we are to experience life to its fullness. Perhaps that is why Jesus was so insistent on the disciples allowing children to come to him (Mark 10:13).

Becky was just a little over a year old when she came to live with us. At first, she seemed so small and fragile. The previous month, she lived in a shelter for children and came complete with a cold. She struggled to go to sleep in a strange place while hacking and coughing. My wife and I took turns holding her, patting her back and saying, “it’s okay,” while praying she would eventually fall asleep. After regaining her health, Becky still had a hard time going to bed. Only then, it had to do with her fear of missing out on something exciting. She was at the age where she wanted to experience all that life had to offer.

Church was a new experience for Becky. On that first Sunday, she seemed stunned to hear my voice from the pulpit and started to run down the aisle. My wife caught her after a couple of steps, and we introduced our foster child to the congregation. Becky came with only a few clothes, mostly worn hand-me-downs. Before her first church service, my wife brought her a lacy pink dress. Becky looked stunning in that dress and she knew it. After worship, she came to me expecting to be held. Acting shy, with her arms tightly hugging my neck, she charmed everyone during fellowship hour.  Soon, however, she lost her shyness and became the terror of the fellowship hour, running around like a wild cookie monster. No one seemed to mind, everyone loved her.

During our time together, Becky and I developed a special relationship. She would get up in the mornings with me, and we would eat oatmeal together.

This was so long ago I was skinny and had hair!

On the days my wife had to work, I would take her to church with me. Even though the nursery with all its neat toys was next to my study, Becky would insist on playing with my books. She would take them off the shelf, rearrange them on the floor, and then put them back in another location.  Sometimes she would demand that I read to her.  I think she found Augustine as boring as I once did. At other times, I would take Becky visiting. I know my parishioners were glad to see us coming, and I’m sure they were just as glad to see us go. Having an energetic toddler along assured me that a short pastoral visit wouldn’t take up the whole afternoon.

In a way Becky became my guardian angel. Taking the suggestion of Family Services, we didn’t teach Becky to refer to us as mother and father. Instead, we allowed it to happen naturally, and Becky quickly took to calling me “da-da.” Becky showed concern for her daddy when my wife dropped me off on a backroad for an overnight backpacking trip. According to my wife, when Becky realized I was not in the car, she panicked and cried “ah-da-da” all the way home. In addition to looking out for me, I found myself looking forward to coming home early so that I could spend time playing with her. Having her around made life less stressful.

at the table

From the beginning, my wife and I made it a point to include Becky in our prayers at mealtime. With her sitting in a highchair between us, we would each take one of her hands and say grace. At first, Becky was not at all cooperative with what must have seemed to her a strange ritual. Instead, she was ready to eat as soon as her food was placed on her plate. Having just come from a children’s shelter, Becky learned not to wait too long when food was available and would stuff herself with whatever placed in front of her.

However, as the months passed, Becky calmed down at the table. She waited for us to sit down while holding out her hands in anticipation of the prayer. Before she left, she had added to word “amen” to her vocabulary and would boldly proclaim it at the end of the prayer.

Although Becky was a foster child, we held out hope that we would be able to adopt her. Becky’s case worker assured us it was unlikely she would be allowed to return to her original family.  Our dreams were shattered when another family member decided to accept custody. We were given two weeks notice, two weeks to say goodbye to her and our dreams, before the social worker moved Becky to her new home.

Running in the backyard

On our last full day together, we took a picnic and went up onto Cedar Mountain. Becky seemed so happy. No longer a fragile sickly little child, she had blossomed into a healthy toddler. She ran around enthusiastically, only to occasionally stop and examine nature. While on that picnic, Becky collected several rocks and sticks and gave them to me for safe keeping. I still have those mementoes, in a small glass case, as a reminder of what a small child considers special in our world.

During the final week of Becky’s stay, I found myself drawn to the passage of her namesake in the Bible. I read and re-read the story of Rebecca in Genesis. I came to understand Rebecca had done all she could to prepare Isaac for life, but in the end, she had to let him go. With Esau out to kill Isaac, Rebecca could no longer protect him. Isaac fled and as far as we know Rebecca never again looked into the eyes of the son she loved so much. It suddenly dawned on me the pain that she must have felt, and the pain that parents everywhere feel when they lose a child.

The Apostle Paul reminds us of how some plant, and others water, but God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6-9). In a way, my wife and I had an opportunity to water and nurture Becky. We cared for her, loved her, and allowed her to love us. But Becky didn’t belong to us, and in the end, we had to let go. We could only pray and trust God, the one who gives the growth, to watch over her.

A few weeks before Becky left us, a fierce thunderstorm in the middle of the night woke her up. I went into her room, picked her up out of the bed and held her. She quickly calmed down. With the thunder rumbling and lightning flashing, Becky started patting me on the back, saying, “it’s okay, it’s okay.” Among other things, she learned to trust and to love.  

I still get tears in my eyes when I think about her; however, I am thankful I had the opportunity to be her daddy, even if only briefly.

Becky had a serious side. At the groundbreaking for the new church facility, Summer 1994.

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December Reviews and a 2025 Reading Recap

title slide with book covers

Stephen Starring Grant, Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home 

Book cover for "Mailman"

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024), 285 pages. 

At the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020, Steve Grant found himself without a job. At age 50, with a family to support and in need medical insurance for cancer treatment, he leaves behind his white-collar life and becomes a mailman. This book humorously recalls his training for and then delivering the mail. He did this for a year, after which he accepted a position like the one he held before the pandemic.  During this year, working with all types of people, he comes to appreciate the constitutional mandated role the Postal Service plays in America.

Grant grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia. His father, who would die before he finished the book, worked as a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech. Grants spends a lot of time discussing his parents, especially his father who had been his Boy Scout leader and introduced him to the outdoors. Before the pandemic, Grant mostly lived in major cities. But with young daughters, he decided to move his family back to Blacksburg, thinking it was the perfect place to raise children.  

At several places he discusses firearms. Grant grew up hunting and fishing and understand that many (if not most) of the people living in the rural areas around Blacksburg packed guns. His father had been shot but survived in the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech. Grant, himself, had also been glazed by a bullet from a drive-by shooter while working on a project in Austin, Texas.  The Postal Service has strict laws and don’t allow guns on Post Office property, including their vehicles. Private vehicles which Grant and most rural carriers drive, is a gray area and at times Grant carried a gun, not on person but stuck between his seat.  

With the rhetoric around the election of 2020 and the role the Post Office played in delivering absentee, he felt himself in danger. Thankfully, he never had any problems but noted that there one postal worker in the nation did mishandle ballots. This was in New Jersey and the mail carrier, a Trump supporter, tried to avoid delivering ballots to those he suspected to be Biden supporters. 

While he may have overestimated the danger of transporting ballots, the Post Office is a dangerous job.  Today, it’s more dangerous than coal mining.  Only loggers, workers on oil wells, and garbage collectors have higher rate of on-the-job accidents. Seven out of every 100 employees experience some kind of injury each year.  From repetitive injuries to dog bites, to vehicle accidents to wasp swarms, mail carrying can be dangerous. 

As for the knowledge of one political leaning, Grant let his readers in on a not too secret fact. We think Santa Claus knows the naughty from the nice, but it’s really the mailman. They know what magazines you read, what sex toys you receive, and a lot of other stuff about each person along a mail route.  And while lots of stuff come in brown envelopes for conceal, the post office has a good idea of what’s inside. And occasionally things such as sex toys are not concealed. He told about the morning as all the mail carriers were sorting their mail, on oversized sex toy in a clear plastic bag appeared in a woman carrier’s delivery for the day. She lifted it up for everyone to see, bragging that she’d be delivering someone a good time. 

While Grant delivered the mail in 2020 and early 2021, the volume increased. By July 2020, they were surpassing the Christmas rush. Then, when Amazon and UPS got into an argument and the online retailer shipped everything through the Post Office, things got even busier. Most of this time, Grant just delivered packages, freeing the regular mail carriers to get the mail out.  Having come out of a corporate world and with an understanding of logistics, Grant made suggestions. He quickly learned no one was interested. The only interest they had in him was delivering mail. He learned his lesson.

While admitting the job was difficult, Grant also came to appreciate the role the Post Office plays in the American experience. The Post Office has a mandate to treat everyone the same, unlike other package delivery folks. While it is a bureaucracy, they try to treat their clients as citizens, not customers. And, as he reminds us repeatedly, they don’t receive money from Congress and are self-funded. 

Grant appreciated those who thanked him for delivering the mail. From a cookie or a cup of coffee to passing on old magazines, many people showed gratitude. Of course, there were others who blamed him for delayed packages. And then there are dogs. These best friends seem to be DNA-wired with a dislike of mail carriers. In training, they taught them how to defend themselves and were provided pepper spray. 

Reading this book, I gained empathy for the challenges of those who deliver our mail. I also appreciated Grant’s insights into the job and how, even though each carrier has different ideas and political points of view, they form a family and look out for one another. While some may bristle at some of Grant’s political views (he’s a liberal with a concealed carry permit), he strives to rise above politics and offer a vision for everyone to get along in a time of political chaos.  I recommend this book. 

Kiki Petrosino, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia 

Cover for "White Blood"

(Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2020), 107 pages

This delightful selection of poetry reflects on what it means to be mixed race in Virginia. Petrosino divides the poems into sections, some of which appear to be based on a DNA sample such as “What Your Results Mean: West Africa 28%” or “Northwestern Europe, 12%, or “North and East Africa, 5%. The two larger sections are based on places. Albermarle contains many poems about Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. Some are set in the present, as the poet tours the home, and others look back to when it was a working plantation In Louisa, the poems are drawn from courthouse records and information of those long gone including free blacks during the time of slavery.  

Most of these poems I found easily accessible, except for three sets of poems whose titles are the DNA percentages. Each percentage section contains several pages consisting of words positioned randomly across a page. I have seen a few other such poems, but I just don’t understand them. Did she write these poems by taking a part of her DNA description and selecting words and deleting all the rest to make the poem?  

I decided to read these poems because the author will be a featured speaker at Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing this year. Kiki Petrosino teaches poetry at the University of Virginia. I recommend her book for white readers to learn how those of mix race descendants must feel in a society which seems to focus too much on racial supremacy.  

Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word:  A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany 

(Norwick, UK: Canterbury Press, 2015), 158 pages.

Guite is an Anglican priest and a poet who lives in England but has a large following around the country.  I was first introduced to him in 2022 at the HopeWords Writing Conference in Bluefield, West Virginia. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of the man. His appearance reminded me of a hobbit who had groupies following him all around.  Since that time, I have read several of his works. I find him to be not just an engaging poet, but a scholar with a deep knowledge of poetry, the Bible, and language. I have also learned of others who appreciate his poetry such as Russell Moore, who comes out of a Southern Baptist tradition which is far from the formality of Anglicanism.

In this book, Guite offers a poem a day from the day of December through January 6, Epiphany.  While some of his poems are his own such as Refugees, which I recently used in a sermon, most are from other poets. These include both contemporary poets such as Scott Caird and Luci Shaw to more classical poets such as George Herbert, John Donne, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and John Milton. After each poem, Guite provides several pages of commentary in which he draws from his vast knowledge of poetry and Scripture to help make the poem more accessible. 

This is a perfect book to read and reread as a seasonal devotional. 

Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation 

(Audiobook, 2025), 13 hours and 30 minutes. 

I listened to this book mostly while driving down to Harkers Island to fish with my uncle and siblings. Sorkin approaches the Wall Street crash of October 29, 1929 from the perspective of the major players on Wall Street, in banking and in the government. He also includes a few outside of financial circles such as Charlie Chapin and Winston Churchill, who was an invited guest to stock market in October 1929. 

I tried to reserve this book from the library but I’m behind several people and was not able to obtain a copy to review the names of the characters (of which their are many) within the book.

 The times were different. Before the 1920s, only a small percentage of Americans invested in the stock market. Then during the boom, bankers offered deals for more common people to invest, especially through buying stocks on a 10% margin. This worked fine as long as the stocks rose. As more people invested in a market, stocks rose beyond their value. But when the bubble began to bust and the stocks lost value, banks began to demand more money to meet the margin people had invested. And when people couldn’t make the margin payments, they lost as well as the banks. Soon, the market was in a freefall.

Lots of money was lost, but not everyone lost. Those who sensed the market was overvalued had shorted their stocks.  One man, already rich, made a huge fortune by betting against the market. He came home that day, with his wife having already moved their stuff into the servant’s quarters, thinking they could no longer afford their house. Then she learned his good fortune as he’d made 11 million the day of the crash. But he later lost his fortune as he continued to play the market like a casino. 

While I enjoyed listening to this book, I felt Sorkin could have tied together better what was happening in the world. Especially the issue of German repayments for the Great War, which he writes about in detail, but I felt he didn’t tie it to the general economic conditions of the world economy. Also mentioned but not in detail were the problems with tariffs. Instead, Sorkin captures the lives of bankers during this time of economic turmoil. The book primarily covers from the end of Coolidge’s through Hoover’s and early into Roosevelt’s presidency. 

2025 Reading Summary:

I completed 46 books in 2025, about the same number that I read in 2024. However, in 2024, I spent much of the summer bogged down in Augustine’s City of God. This year, I didn’t read any book with 1200 pages of small print, but I did read several serious histories and biographies. Here’s the breakdown and comparison to the past couple of years:

20212022202320242025
Total Read5453534546
Fiction84867
Poetry56135
History/
Biography		1317131221
Theology/
ministry		162215119
Essay/Short Stories83613
Humor41324
Nature6913103
Politics3351014
Memoirs101141410
Writing how-to22111
Women authors147161410
Read via Audible2020261922
Books reviewed3034393246

The numbers don’t add up because many books appear in multiple categories.  

2025 Recommendations

This year, I did a monthly recaps in which I reviewed all the books I completed in the previous month, so I won’t give you a yearly recap of all the books. Instead, here are some of my favorite books that I recommend:

Best fiction:  Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Grow While this novel sometimes pushed believability, I really enjoyed it. Part of that comes from having grown up around the salt marsh in North Carolina. 

Most enjoyable read: Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto This short book about the cocktail hour had me laughing throughout its pages. Who’d thought a western historian could be so sarcastic and funny? 

Best Theology: Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word (reviewed above). While not heavy theology, it was a pleasure to read and connect poems with scripture and theology. 

For understanding America: Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland. Indiana in the 1920s was a hotbed for the Klan. Controlling the state government, they looked to expand nationally, but thankfully due to the sexual appetites of the leaders, they fell from grace. Racism and sexism are still with us today. 

For understanding the World: Alexander Vindman, The Folly of Realism. Vindman, whose family fled Ukraine when he was a child and who later became an army officer working in international relations, has a unique perspective for understanding the situation in Ukraine and how it relates to America.  

Reading summaries from other blog friends:

Bob’s Fiction

Bob’s Non-fiction

Kelly’s

Pace, Amore, Libri

AJ Sterkel

Jacqui

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An End of the Year Letter

Title slide with photos from 2025

Dear Friends,

Chrismas tree
This year’s tree

I didn’t get out a Christmas letter in time, so this will have to suffice…

It’s the 29th of December as I begin writing this end of the year letter. This morning, I took down the 16-point Moravian Star which hangs on my front porch from the first week of Advent through Epiphany. I know it’s not yet Epiphany. But that punched tin star with dangling chain could easily become a weapon if it broke loose in the near hurricane force winds currently blowing outside. And the temperature has dropped significantly. It was 50 degrees when I got up this morning and at 9 PM, has dropped to 20 degrees F.  By early morning, it’ll be in the low teens.  Before I’m blown off this ridge, let me share a bit about the year coming to an end and the new one about to begin.  

Personally, 2025 has been good. I’m still in decent health and walk quite a bit each week. I still enjoying serving the two rock churches along the Blue Ridge Parkway. This year, I finished preaching through the gospel of Mark at Easter, then switched to Psalms as I picked out those I have yet to preach on in the past 37 years.  Then, in the fall I did a series on the Nicene Creed, as this year marks the 1700th year of the Council of Nicaea. Since Advent, I have been preaching from Matthew. This ministry has been a blessing.

I have become more involved in the community, serving on the Laurel Fork Community Board, Carroll County’s Litter Task Force, and helping once a month on the ministerial association’s food bank. And my garden produced enough tomatoes for sandwiches along with soups and salsas canned and stored in the pantry. Unlike 2024 when a groundhog ate my cucumbers, I got enough to make two batches of lime pickles. And stored in the basement are plenty of winter squash. 

In May, I set off with my brother on a bicycle trip from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC. The first of the trip was on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) and was lovely, even though we had rain! But once we hit Cumberland, MD, things fell apart. The rain caused flooding along the C&O Canal which was our route to Washington. The trail flooded and at places washed out. With my Achilles tendon hurting and more rain forecasted, we gave up. Hopefully, we can do the C&O part next year. 

 In June I spent some time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and took a four-day solo paddle around Drummond Island. This was a lot of fun, and I got some solo wilderness time in, but three nights wasn’t enough. Coming back from Michigan, I was able to spend time in Ohio’s Hocking Hills. 

In October, I attended my 50th high school reunion. Where did the time go? It doesn’t seem that long ago we dressed in blue caps and gowns and marched out onto the football field at Legion Stadium.

In early December, I spent five days with my brother, sister, and uncle, on Harkers Island, North Carolina. We fished off Cape Lookout. While we caught enough fish for a couple of dinners, that was about it.  But being there with siblings made it worthwhile.

My biggest complaint of the year is continual delays in construction. Don’t get me started. A garage started a year ago will hopefully be completed with doors at the end of January.

But I can’t complain too much. I knew from the time I first saw this place that we were buying a view. However, I never knew we’d be living in a construction zone for five years. Yet, I still love living here. 

In addition to the above grievance, I’m troubled about the direction our country and our world. But without going into politics, let me say that I’m getting old and probably on my way to becoming a curmudgeon. Despite Jesus’ command to love everyone, I find myself despising litterbugs and with no tolerance for jerks and bullies. I wish people were more responsible and would show concern for their neighbors and strangers.

While I’m far from perfect, it appears the lives of many who claim to follow Jesus miss key points of our Savior’s teachings. I know hypocrites have always abound, but why can the message be about love. And we could all be a bit humbler. After all, our hope in life and death isn’t in what we do, but what Jesus has done for us. While none of us, by ourselves, can end wars or solve poverty or racism, we can make things better for those around us and hopefully this will encourage others to join in and make the world better. And if enough join in, we just might make a difference. 

My reading this year seems heavy, but unlike 2024, I didn’t delve into a monumental 1200-page book of fine print like Augustine’s City of God. I read a lot of civil rights works. I finished Taylor Branch’s America in the King Years trilogy, Jon Meacham’s biography on John Lewis, Derwin Gray’s Healing Our Racial Divide, and Timothy Egan’s “Fever in the Heartland,” which is about the Klan in Indiana in the 1920s. Egan’s book is one all Americans should read as there are many parallels to the present. 

I also discovered a new “favorite” author, Leo Damrosch.  His book, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and Friends Who Shaped an Age was wonderful. Can you imagine being in a “club” with people like Gibbons as he wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? And then there was Adam Smith writing  The Wealth of Nations, and Edmund Burke, who would became the father of what, until late in the last century, we called conservativism. I also delved into Damrosch’s biography of a favorite satirist, Jonathan Swift.  By far the most entertaining (and short) book) I read was Bernard DeVoto’s The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto. This year I reviewed all the books I read in my blog,.

My big news is that I am quickly moving toward retirement. I have always held out age 70 as the time to retire. God willing, I’ll reach that birthday in January 2027, so this will most likely be my last full year of ministry. Looking back, I feel very blessed. And I know there will be other opportunities for ministry even after I retire. They may not pay as well, but that’s okay (if there are few required meetings). Hopefully, when I retire, I will fill my time with writing, woodworking, gardening, paddling, hiking, amateur radio, and travel.  

In 2026, I plan to attend again attend the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University. I also hope to do some paddling, head back to Michgan’s Upper Peninsula, and maybe make a trip out West. I still have sagebrush in skin. And hopefully we’ll soon be done with the construction work around the house and can start gardening more as well as take more naps in a hammock on warm days. And, while I have had many articles published over the years, I learned this fall that this Spring I will have my first poem published! 

As for the rest of the family… Donna continues as Communication Director for a presbytery and remains very involved on the board of Tri-Area Health Care. She has lately taken up watercolor painting. Caroline still works in the cork business and does incredible work with fabric. She made me a wonderful “Bear” quilt and spins her own yarn and has made most of her sweaters. Thomas and his family are now living in Las Vegas.

May God’s grace shine upon you in 2026. 

Blessings,
Jeff

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Christmas Eve 2025

title slide with photo of candles leading into sanctuary

Jeff Garrison
Christmas Eve 2025
Mayberry Presbyterian Church

The sermon was recorded the morning of Christmas Eve.

A few years before I moved up here on the Blue Ridge, I lived on an island outside of Savannah where you could have the Wall Street Journal delivered every morning before sunrise. One morning, a few days before Christmas, I picked up the Journal and began to scan the headlines. One title caught my attention. “The Salvation of the Napalm Girl.” 

I knew immediately who the article was about. She’d never sought fame, but her photo was captured on film when I was a Junior High student. I expect many of you may also remember the tragic photo of her, a young girl with her clothes burned off, running and screaming. It became an iconic image of the Vietnam War. Napalm burns and leaves the victim, if they survive, scarred for life. She became bitter. I read the article almost 50 years after the tragic events. She still requires treatment for her burns.

Her name is Ms Kim. A decade after the photo was snapped, when she was 19, she attended a small church in Vietnam on Christmas Eve. She heard the pastor deliver a Christmas message which would be familiar to us. Christmas is not about gifts carefully wrapped and placed under a tree. Christmas is about the gift of Jesus Christ; God wrapped in human flesh. A change came over her life and for the first time she experienced peace. 

The story we heard tonight for the umpteenth time has that kind of power, the power to change lives. And the story is about people every bit as overlooked as Ms Kim. 

Bethlehem wasn’t known as a thriving town. The village sat off the beaten path. It’d seen its better years as Jerusalem grew and became the place to be. When you entered the city limits, there might have been a commentative sign acknowledging their favorite son, David, who went on to be the King of Israel. 

There may have been some who still harbored ill feelings toward David. After all, he was the one who put Jerusalem on the map, which would soon eclipse Bethlehem. David positioned the Ark of the Covenant on the spot where Solomon would build the temple and the rest is history. Since those two, David and Solomon, almost a 1000 years earlier, Jerusalem prospered while Bethlehem slipped into obscurity.

Bethlehem was the type of town easily by-passed or driven through without taking a second glace. It might have had a blinking stoplight, or maybe not. It’d be like the towns we pass through when we get off the interstate and head down an old highway.

Bethlehem could have been a setting for an Edward Hopper painting. Hopper is mostly known for “Nighthawks,” a painting of an empty town at night with just a handful of lonely people hanging out in a diner. It’s often been parodied in art, with folks like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley sitting at the counter. This sparse painting creates a sense that time has passed the town by. 

Or maybe the town could be a setting for a Tom Wait’s song—the scratchy roughness of his voice describing lonely and rejected people, struggling through life.

In many ways, Luke sets up Bethlehem by placing the birth of the Prince of Peace in a historical context. In Rome, we have Augustus, the nephew of Julius Caesar. Some twenty-five years earlier, he defeated his enemies, and the entire empire is now at peace. The glory of Rome far outshines Jerusalem and makes Bethlehem seem like a dot on a map. Yet, Caesar’s power reaches out to places like Bethlehem, even though he probably never even heard of the hamlet. And, of course, the peace Rome provides is conditional. It’s maintained at the sharp points of its Legion’s spears and swords. Those who would like to challenge the forced peace face the real possibility of crucifixion. Luke also tells us Quirinus is the governor of Syria, another Roman, a foreigner, who control events of the region.

Those rulers in high places dress in fancy robes, eat at elaborate banquets, and live in lavished palaces. They aren’t bothered by the inconvenience their decrees place on folks like Mary and Joseph. This couple is one of a million peons caught up in the clog of the empire’s machinery. If the empire says, jump, they ask how high. If the empire says go to their ancestral city, they pack their bags. It’s easy and a lot safer to blindly follow directions than to challenge the system. So, Mary and Joseph, along with others, pack their bags and head out into a world with no McDonalds and Holiday Inns at interchanges. For Mary and Joseph, they set off south, toward Bethlehem.

If there were anyone with even less joy than those who lived or stayed in Bethlehem, or those who made their way to their ancestorial home, it would be the shepherds. These sheepherders remained at the bottom of the economic ladder. They spend their time, especially at night, with their flocks grazing. The sheep are all they have. They must protect them. They can’t risk a wolf or lion eating one of their lambs. So, they camp out with the sheep, with a staff and rocks at hand to ward off intruders. They don’t even like going to town because people look down on them and complain that they smell.

You can’t get much more isolated than this—a couple who can’t find proper lodging in Bethlehem, with the wife who’s pregnant, and some shepherds watching their flocks at night. But their hopelessness quickly changes as Mary gives birth and places her baby in a manger. There is something about a baby, a newborn, which delights us. Perhaps it’s the hope a child represents. Or the child serves as an acknowledgement that we, as a specie, will live on. While birth is a special time for parents and grandparents. An infant child also has a way to melt the hearts of strangers. We smile and make funny faces and feel especially blessed if the mother allows us to hold the child for just a moment.

This child brings joy. Joy comes not just to the parents, but also to the angels. The angels share the joy with the shepherds. The shepherds want in on the act, so they leave their flocks and seek out the child. All heaven sings and shares the song with a handful of folks on earth. The shepherds also are let on the secret that, so far, only Mary and Elizabeth and their families share. This child, who is to be named Jesus. His name is the same as the Old Testament is translated as Joshua. Joshua saved the Hebrew people after Moses. Jesus saves the world. Soon, in a few generations, Jesus’ message will spread around the known world.

And for this night, the sleepy hamlet of Bethlehem, a stable is filled with joy. The darkness cannot hide the joy in the hearts of this young mother and father and the shepherds. Something changed. Yes, a child has been born. But more importantly, God is incarnate in this child. God comes in the flesh; in a way we can understand. God comes in a way to relate to all people, from lowly shepherds to the oppressed people living on the edge of an empire, and to all the world. This child, whose birth we celebrate, brings joy to the world.

And now, for this moment, although they don’t realize it, Bethlehem eclipses the important towns like Jerusalem and Rome. Truly, in God’s economy, the last will be first. 

Friends, as we light candles and recall this night in song, may you be filled with the joy of hope which comes from placing our trust in Jesus, who was born in stable. He would grow and teach and heal. The only crown he’d wear would be one of thorns as he was being mocked on his way to his execution. But death couldn’t hold him. His kingship continues. It survives all earthly kings. We continue to worship him long after the Caesars of the world have been forgotten. Amen.

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The Lights on Harkers Island

Title slights with photos of anchor lights and trees on Harkers Island at Christmas

You must want to go to Harkers Island to get there. There are no major highways running to the island. Instead, you exit US 70 near its eastern terminus, drive south through marsh and over a bridge to reach the island. To go further, you must take a boat or be an excellent swimmer. Once you’re on Harkers Island, you’re closer by boat than car to Beaufort or Morehead City. 

Cape Lookout Lighthouse from Harkers Island (roughly five miles away)

People come to Harkers Island in order to get to Cape Lookout lighthouse or the old lifesaving station near the Cape Lookout shoals. Others come to walk the beach along Shackleford Banks where wild horses roam. In the fall of the year, most people come to fish for blues or trout in sight of the lighthouse or to hunt ducks and geese in the marsh along the Atlantic flyway. And if you come in December and hang around till dark, you’re treated to an incredible light show as the island decorates itself for Christmas. 

Decoy ornaments

The people on Harkers Island are creative. Known for carving duck decoys, they also know how to put on a good Christmas light festival. Homes and utility poles on the island often sport anchors created by Andy Scott and Richard Gillikin. During the holidays, blue lights accent these anchors. Lights decorate old boats abandoned on empty lots. Lights decorate docks and homes.  And outside the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, flapping geese pull Santa’s sleigh. Behind the sleigh, porpoises jump. And you can’t miss the huge Christmas tree built out of stacked crab pots. 

During December, dozens of crab pot trees are showcased inside the Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. Local families, businesses, churches, schools, and community organizations sponsor and decorate the trees. Trees recall those who died from cancer and old ghost towns like Portsmouth, now a part of the National Seashore. One tree celebrates the dark skies around Cape Lookout. On a night with clear skies, the stars seem more brilliant without much light pollution. One tree celebrated the life of Alma, who baked hundreds of wedding cakes for the community over the year. Other trees celebrate those who worked on the waters around Harkers Island for a living, families who built boats, and the Jim Dandy’s family who stores is one of the oldest businesses in Carteret County. 

The museum, located on the east end of the island, has more than Christmas trees to offer. The main floor contains an outstanding collection of duck decoys along with history of hunting along the Core Sound. The second-floor exhibits highlight the folks who made up the small “down east” communities such as Bettie, Cedar Island, Davis, Lola, Sealevel, Smyrna,  Stacy, and Williston.  And for those who are healthy, there is an observation deck two stories higher, providing views of the marsh around Harkers Island. 

My father started to come up to Lookout to camp and fish back in the late1980s. At the time I was tramping around the country and either living in Nevada or Pittsburgh. But every few years I tried to get home during this time to enjoy a few days of fishing. As everyone aged, they stopped camping and instead rented a house on Harkers Island, which became a base for fishing.

This year, my time on the island began with a gale (my sister and I did some shopping in Morehead City and visited Fort Macon on Emerald Isle. It’s been at least 40 years since I was at Fort Macon. On Tuesday, the rains came and we along with my brother checked out Beaufort. Sadly, we found the Maritime museum closed but we could watch them work on such boats across the street and toured galleries and stories along the waterfront.

On Wednesday, we were up earl, running through Barden’s Inlet for a day of fishing around the jetty on the southside of Cape Lookout. We caught a few trout that were not of legal size and had to be thrown back, along with some blues. We talked a lot about my dad during the four days I was on the island. It was good to be back in familiar waters.

Other Lookout Posts:

2020: Last time fishing with my dad on Lookout

2022: Solo kayak trip to Lookout

2024: Fishing with my siblings

Cape Lookout Lighthouse coming back in through Barden’s Inlet
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Reviews of my November readings:

title slide with book covers

Phillip Cary, The Nicene Creed: An Introduction

Book cover

 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2023), 231 pages including a subject and scripture index. 

Cary provides a thorough overlook of the Nicene Creed, breaking it up into three articles (Father, Son, and Spirit). He then provides a short chapter on each phrase within the Creed. He also brings in the history behind the creed, the debate with Arianism during the 4th Century (was Jesus God or had he been created by God). At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, that was the main issue and is why the second article within the creed (God the Son) is the longest. In 325, the creed abruptly ended, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Later councils (especially Constantinople in 381) expanded the third article. 

I found his discussion of the filoque clause in the third article very helpful. The West (Roman Catholic and Protestants) say the Spirit descends from the Father and the Son. In the East, they only say the Spirit descends from the Father. One can debate it both ways, but I was surprised to learn one of the main issue with the East not accepting the clause was that it decided at the Council of Toledo in the 5th Century. This was a regional council and didn’t involve the whole church. The clause came from the teachings of Augustine which found a receptive ear in Spain. 

In September, I read a short book by Kevin DeYoung on the Nicene Creed in preparation for preaching a series of sermons on the Creed. DeYoung’s study was too brief and not nearly as helpful as Cary’s work. While titled “An Introduction,” Cary goes into much more detail than DeYoung and if you are interested in the Creed, I highly recommend his book. 

Erin Wilson, Blue: Poems 

(Richmond, VA: Circling Rivers, 2022), 114 pages, black and white photos included. 

Erin Wilson used to blog, posting stark black-and-white photos with quotes and poetry.  I picked up this book of poetry when it was published and then lost it. I’m glad it’s found. These poems center around the challenges of motherhood and raising a son who appears to love fried eggs yet struggles with depression. The stark words capture her struggles as well as providing glimpses of grace. She expresses her frustration with the situation such as when her former husband took her son shooting. The winters of Canada, where she lives, often provide a backdrop for her poems. And as one comes to the end of this collection, she’s writing on the cusp of the pandemic, expressing what many felt as we wondered about our future. 

Are you kidding me,
we got through those 
tough years,
and now there’s going to be
a pandemic?   b

(from the poem, “Blue, Redux”)

As with her blog, mixed among the poems are black-and-white photographs. If you’re into modern poetry, I encourage you to check out this book. 

Notes on my Russian reading


I spent most of late October and early November reading (and listening to) a massive biography of the second half of Joseph Stalin’s life. I read some Russian history in college (mainly looking at the end of the 19th and early 20th Century). In this blog, I have also reviewed books on Russian history including Anne Applebaum’s Gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and John Burgess, Holy Rus’.

But I knew nothing about Stalin. This was brought to my attention recently in Rebecca Solnit’s book, Orwell’s Roses, which I read back in the summer. Solnit saw Stalin as Orwell’s muse, providing the background for his greatest works (Animal Farm and 1984). While Stalin was the type of man Orwell feared, both enjoyed roses and gardens. Stalin also attempted to grow lemons, which didn’t grow well in Moscow’s winters. Stalin’s love of gardens stands in sharp contrast to his evil and brutality.  

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar 

book cover

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), pages including Source Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Index.  Audible, 27 hours and 50 minutes.

Montefiore begins with the evening of Nadya’s death in 1932. Nadya was Stalin’s second wife, (his first wife died, Kato, had died of natural causes 1907).  There had been a party at the Kremlin that evening. Between Stalin’s flirting and picking on Nadya for not drinking, she left the party upset and returned to their apartment. Later, she was found by the housekeeper, dead from a gunshot. The gun, a pistol which had been a gift of her brother, was at her side. While it is assumed she died of suicide (and her death was reported as from an infection), some think she was murdered. 

Nadya’s death occurred as Stalin was cementing his dictatorial control of the Soviet Union. Over the next few years, he became an absolute dictator.  The last group with a chance to curtail his power was the military, which he handled by executing the top military leadership in the purges of the latter half of the 1930s. According to Montefiore, after Nadya’s death he no longer trusted the wives of those around him and during the purges had some wives killed while allowing their loyal husbands to live. 

Stalin could be arbitrary as to who lived and who died. A mark on a sheet of paper was all it took. But Stalin never took part in the killings, allowing others to carry out the execution and then later having the executors killed, creating a culture of fear and mistrust. 

Stalin was a late-night person. He often threw late dinner parties which involved drinking and then movies in the early morning hours. Then he wouldn’t come back into the office until mid-day, often to repeat the same cycle.

I found it interesting the Soviet leadership knew Germany’s plans to invade several years before the war began in June 1941. Oddly, as late as January 1941, long after the Nazis had blitzkrieg across Western Europe, those in the Kremlin were debating the merits of tanks over artillery pulled by horses. 

Russia hoped Germany wouldn’t invade until 1943, giving them time to build a more modern army.  Stalin felt he could trust Hitler even when his own intelligence knew the German plans. When Germany launched the invasion, at first Stalin froze and was almost immobile, seemingly overwhelmed and not sure what to do. Then he took command. He significantly reduced his alcohol consumption during the war. As Germany advanced, he stayed in Moscow even when others suggested he leave. This action encouraged his troops and helped stop the German advance. Early in the war, one of his sons was captured early in the war. After Stalingrad, when Russia captured a German Field Marshall, there was an offer to trade his son for the Field Marshall, but Stalin refused suggesting there were so many other families who had captured soldiers. Stalin had no respect for those who surrendered and felt honored when he learned of his son’s suicide by running into a German electric fence.

Stalin also had an interesting relationship with both Churchill and Roosevelt, preferring the later to the former even though his late-night lifestyle was probably closer aligned to Churchill. As a master of understanding humans and knowing how to create conflict between those around him, Stalin hoped to create a rift between the leaders of the United States and Great Britain. 

Toward the end of the war, as the horrified reports of Germany’s treatment of the Jews became better known, there was some thought in the Kremlin offering the Crimea as a Jewish homeland. Russia was also supportive of Israel and became the first nation to offer the full legal recognition. But it upset Stalin as Israel became closer to the United States.  After the war, Stalin’s policies became more anti-sematic. While Jews suffered during the purges of the late 1930 along with everyone else, Stalin’s policies shifted to more systemic persecution of the Jews after the war. 

Once Stalin’s armies conquered Berlin, Stalin resumed heavy drinking and all-night parties. But as he aged, he spent more time away from governing, even reconnecting with friends from his youth. But he also became lonelier. Having killed or had so many people killed, including those who had once been close to him, people were afraid of becoming too close to him. 

Through the book, Montefiore refers to Stalin unique background. Unlike most of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, Stalin came from a working-class background. And he was not Russian, but Georgian. I found this book very helpful for learning more about Stalin, a man who caused more suffering and pain in the 20thCentury except perhaps Hitler. At times, Montefiore humanizes Stalin. While he was a brutal man, he could also be kind to old friends and children. And he loved gardens. 

While not its intention, this book provides insight into Russia today. While there was an attempt to wash Stalin out-of-history, his harsh legacy remains. We should understand our enemies. Stalin himself invested time in studying history and understanding the leadership of his enemies. Montefiore also provides the reader with many mini-biographies of those around Stalin, which was helpful. Montefiore mentions Stalin’s policies which lead to the widespread starvation in Ukraine in the early 30s (see Applebaum’s Red Famine, but throughout this time period, he shows that Ukraine’s desire for independence caused problems for the Soviet state. I would only recommend this book for those deeply interested in Russian history. 

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin 

Book cover of "Young Stalin"
Version 1.0.0

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 460 pages including Source Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Index. 

After reading the first book, I turned to Montefiore’s book on Stalin’s young life which was published 3 years after his first book. I still have a gap to read, from 1917 to 1932. 

Stalin’s mother wanted him to be educated and to become a priest. His father thought education a waste of time. He wanted his son to follow him into the cobbler business. The mother won out and his father became an alcoholic. And while Stalin attended to school and later seminary, he also was involved in Georgian gangs and street fighting, which played a role in his rise to the head of the Bolshevik party.  

Stalin excelled at school. But as he began to become a Marxist, he became more of a rebel and was often punished for reading prohibited literature. Several of his fellow seminary students also became Marxists and would follow Stalin’s rise within the Bolshevik party.  Early on, Stalin became a chief source of finance for the party, raising money through bank robberies and possibility even piracy.  In much, it is hard to know how much he was involved as he had others doing the actual deeds.  He also spent time in prison and in Siberia, but only his last exile to a northern village was extreme. Yet, there Stalin began to thrive, enjoying hunting and fishing and continuing to be involved in revolutionary activity. 

While in exile, he and other exiled prisoners were sent West to serve in the army against Germany during the First World War. Russian armies were losing and they needed men (kind of like today as Russia emptied its prisons to send men to fight in Ukraine). Stalin ended up not being chosen for the army due to an injury to an arm. As he learned of Russia’s potential collapse, he headed back west for the revolution. 

Montefiore notes many inconsistencies in Stalin’s story such as other possibilities as to Stalin’s father. Stalin even claimed on occasion that his father was a priest and there was at least one addition candidate for his faither, but the cobbler seems most likely. 

I had never considered Stalin to be an intellectual. While he dropped out of school, he never lost his love for learning and continued to learn, using his knowledge as he began to siege power in Russia. Unlike other biographers, Montefiore emphasizes that Stalin rise to power came early, before the Revolution of 1917. 

I found it odd that according to Montefiore, Stalin disliked Trosky from the first time they met. Yet the two of them were chosen for key positions in the government by Lenin, who like Stalin pitted leaders against each other. 

One of the difficulties with this book was keeping all the names Stalin used straight. For much of this part of his life, Stalin worked underground. Helpfully, the back of the book listed all the aliases used by Stalin, which was not his real name. While Montefiore emphasizes Stalin’s interest in Marxism, it seems he was more interested in power and using it for his own benefit. 

Cape lookout Lighthouse.
I’m currently on Harkers Island on a family fishing trip. This was a photo of Cape Lookout Lighthouse last night.
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Thankful for a childhood with plenty of room to wander

Title slide with a photo of the crown of longleaf pines

Happy Thanksgiving. Today I am thankful for a wonderful childhood.

Sheba, our English Setter, barked incessantly in the drainage ditch behind our house. Investigating, I found her moving around a pocket in the clay wall of the ditch. Draining water created these small caves which were common along the ditch bank. 

“What is it girl?” I asked. I rubbed the dog’s head and leaned down to peer inside the hole. A good-sized turtle appeared to be hiding inside. Its head barely stuck out of what seemed to be a black shell. “Good girl,” I said, grabbing a stick. I slid the stick underneath its shell and tried to drag the turtle out when all a sudden its head, fangs flashing, struck the stick just below my hand. Dropping the stick, I jumped back. The snake’s body recoiled. Sheba barked even more frantically. She knew danger lurked. 

I was ten years old and had come inches from being bitten by a water moccasin. Leaving the dog to guard the snake, I ran inside and told dad who came out, grabbing a hoe, and killed the snake. It was too dangerous for something that poisonous to be at the edge of our yard. A year or so later, a snake bit Sheba. Her snout swelling twice it’s normal size. The vet drained the poison and she convalesce a few days. Thankfully, she was soon back to normal. 

Longleaf forest. Photo taken in Carolina Beach State Park, about 8 miles from where the story took place
Longleaf Forest. This photo was taken in Carolina Beach State Forrest, about 8 miles from where my memoir is set. You can see wiregrass along with prickly pear cactus in bloom. I took this photo in May 2024.

We moved to into a neighborhood called Tanglewood in the Myrtle Grove Sound area when I was nine years old. This was before the big building boom in Wilmington, which started around 1970 and hasn’t yet let up. There were only seven houses on our street, each sitting on a half-acre. Ours was one of the few exceptions. My father brought two lots, not wanting to be “crowded in.” In addition to the woods behind the house, we could cross the street and ramble through more swamps and pine forest until we came to the headwaters of Whiskey Creek, which I thoroughly explored after I purchased my first canoe when I was sixteen. 

The woods across the street were the first to go. They built houses up and down the road. By the time I entered Roland Grice Junior High, all the lots had been sold I don’t remember just when the woods behind my parents succumbed to the great urban sprawl of the Southeast. My last trip exploring the bays and pine forest was during a break from college. A few years later, when visiting, I discovered the ditch filled in and houses standing where woods and bays once existed.

The drainage ditch behind our house was a wonderful place to play as a kid. When we first moved here, there was always water flowing. I didn’t realize this being an ominous sign as they were draining the swampy areas to the south of our house. As kids, we played in the ditch, hunting salamanders and turtles, and caught a few small, red-finned pike. 

Also exciting were the carnivorous plants, especially the Venus flytrap with trigger-hairs in its cupped hands which snapped shut, imprisoning an unlucky insect as it feasted on its decaying body. The ditch also served us as a trench for us to re-enact Civil War battles. Having moved here from Petersburg, Virginia, I knew trenches played a major role during the Civil War. We fought our battles with friends, unaware that just a mile or so away our ancestors skirmished with Union soldiers. This was early in 1865, in a last ditch effort to delay the fall of Wilmington. Lee’s troops, hunkered down in the trenches around Petersburg, needed the provisions blockade runners brought into the city. They held back the Union soldiers long enough for most of the stockpiles at the city’s wharfs to be transported north.

Behind the drainage ditch were several square miles of woods and swamps. These swamps, known as Carolina Bays, consisted of an oval shaped depression filled with peat moss. In all but extremely dry periods, water filled the mossy depressions. Ringing these oval depressions were thick undergrowth including live oaks bearded with Spanish moss, bay trees, and pond cypress. The rest of the land, which was only inches higher than the bays, consisted of white sandy soil in which grew long-leaf pines. Occasionally, one came upon a patch of winged sumac or blackjack oak. Wiregrass covered the ground.

In ages past, these pine forests of eastern North Carolina supported a thriving industry for naval stores and turpentine. Evidence remained of such industry. Slash marks on the trunks of mature trees indicated someone had drained sap from the tree. There were also mounds, which we at first thought were Indian burial grounds, only to later discover they had something to do with burning pines while extracting pitch. But that was all in the past. By the time I explored the woods and bay, they were waiting development. But for a few years, they made a great playground.

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Moving to Virginia (the first time)

title slide with photo of the author with his brother in sister and a parent in 1962 and 1964

It may surprise some that I had lived in Virginia once before. I spent my first three years of school in Petersburg, Virginia. Between the third and fourth grade, I moved with my family to Wilmington, North Carolina, where I would live until I was 24. This memoir piece draws on my recollection of that first move. Most of these pictures I found last fall as my sister and I cleaned out my parent’s house.


The phone of the kitchen wall in the house on Doubs Chapel rang. Mom answered. She sounded excited. 

“We’re moving to Virginia,” she said with her hand over the mouthpiece. “Do you want to talk to your dad?“

It may have been my first long distant phone call. In my five years, I hadn’t met anyone outside the local calling district. I placed the receiver to my ear and asked Dad if Virginia was another country.

Mom and us kids beside the house on Doubs Chapel Road
Mom and us kids at the house on Doubs Chapel (between Pinehurst and Carthage, NC) .


Dad had started a new job that summer. He spent six months in Baltimore, wherever that was, in training. He occasionally came home for a weekend. We picked him up at the train station in Southern Pines. When he returned, he took an overnight sleeper on Sunday evening, arriving back in Baltimore early on Monday morning. 

Once, when Mom wrote him a letter, which she often did, I decided to write one, too. The only words I knew how to write were the names of gas stations. We called them “filling stations,” back then. On a piece of paper, I wrote Esso, Shell, Sinclair, Gulf and Texaco. I even drew a dinosaur beside Sinclair. As the time to move got closer, Mom went up to Virginia with Dad and the three of us “youngins,” as we were called, stayed with my grandparents. I turned six then and my grandma threw a party for me and my older cousin Marie, who shared my birthday. Her dining room was cramped with cousins and friends from church.

That’s me at 6 years of age


We moved to Petersburg in late January 1963, just a week after my sixth birthday. I don’t remember much about the move, except for a long drive. Uncle Frank helped and all our stuff was loaded onto one of his farm trucks. I assume, since Dad had just started to work for the company for whom he’d work for the next 45 years, they didn’t provide expenses for the first move. When we’d move to Wilmington, North Carolina in 1966, we’d use professional movers.

It was after dark when we arrived at the rented cracker-box house on Montibello Street, overlooking toll booths along the Petersburg-Richmond Turnpike. A row of houses on the south side of the street, with our backyards dropping down to a small creek. Across the street was a chain-link fence which kept us from running out into all the traffic the moved between the Northeast and Southeast. Just south of town, I-85 and I-95 (although neither one was completed at this time) merged. If you headed north from New Orleans, Atlanta or Miami, you drove right by our house.

Being close to the freeway didn’t seem such a problem that January night as we moved in. But come spring, when we opened the windows, as there was no air conditioning, we heard a constant roar of trucks and cars. Those heading north braked for the toll booth while heading south accelerated as they continued their journeys into the night. That night, as we moved in, we heard the sound of music coming down the street. It was the ice cream man who also sold milk. We didn’t get any ice cream night, but would, in warmer months, look forward to his visits.

I have only snippets of memory about the house on Montibello Street. A gas floor heater in the hallway warmed the house. When heating, you could stand on the grate and watch the fire through a small window in the metal heater below. Shortly after moving in, it snowed. My sister placed her wet shoes on the heater and turned it up. When my mother discovered this, her shoes were well-done and curled. 

Out back, the yard slopped down and there, my father taught me how to ride a bike. He had installed training wheels on the bike and blocks of wood on the paddles so my feet could reach them. After I got to where I could keep it upright, he took the training wheels off and I’d ride it down the hill and then turn and try to make it back up but generally gave up and walked the steep hill back to the house.

My grandma gave me some seeds. Corn and peas if I remember correctly. That spring before I started school, I planted a small garden on the hillside. I was proud of the handful of peas that I harvested. I don’t remember if we got any corn.

Our next-door neighbors, to the west, were the O’Neils. Mom was always telling us to be quiet when we were outside and they were home. I didn’t understand. They seemed stuck-up as they never talked or waved. I assumed that was because they were Yankees from New York. I knew they had a boy a few years older than me, but I only saw him in the backyard once, laying in a lounge chair, sunning. Mom wouldn’t let us go out and meet him. 

Then, to my surprise, he died. We had to be especially quiet. Mom made pecan pies and took them over and afterwards they became good friends. About a year later, after we moved to Bishop Street, my brother and I was surprised to have a second Christmas several months after the holiday. There were all kinds of army stuff and an electric train in the living room one morning. The O’Neils had cleaned out his toys and given them to us. Years later, I learned he died of cancer.

On the other side of the O’Neil’s, at the last house on the street, lived a kid my age. His name was Robert and we became friends. His dad was in the Army and worked at Fort Lee. About the time school started, his family had a big party and Robert invited me, but my mother wouldn’t let me go because the adults were going to be drinking beer.

I should say something about church in Petersburg. Coming from Scottish Presbyterian stock, albeit over two hundred years since leaving the motherland, we first attended Second Presbyterian Church. Maybe we tried First Presbyterian, but I only remember the second one. There, in the sanctuary, someone took pleasure in showing us where a Yankee cannon ball crashed through the roof a mere 98 years earlier. The church had a big bell tower, but no steeple, the story being that the Yankees shot off the steeple during the Civil War. Afterwards, they rebuilt it only to be blown off by a tornado. They again rebuilt the steeple, but nine years earlier, in 1954, the winds of Hurricane Hazel once again removed it. I’ve always thought the church played by baseball rules and decided three strikes must mean God didn’t intend them to have a steeple. 

It surprised me in 2004, when I was in a meeting in Richmond and drove down for an afternoon to see the church had a steeple,. Looking up the church history, it appears they added the steeple in 1984. And the only part I remembered correctly of the steeple story was that Hazel blew one off. The first steeple fell during construction which was early in the Civil War, a few years before the siege of Petersburg.   

That September, I entered the first grade at Walnut Hill’s Elementary School. As there was a shortage of teachers and classrooms, so I was told, first graders only attended school half day. I pulled the morning shift and came home at lunch, passing by those going for the afternoon shift. Mostly, my parents took me to school and picked me up when it was time to come home. Once, I rode the city bus with Ellen. Mom had given me what she thought was the correct change, but I was a nickel short. I volunteered the nickel I had for milk, but the bus driver said I could pay him later. I never rode a bus again while we were in Petersburg. Well into adulthood I carried guilt with me for having cheated the bus company out of a nickel. I was in my 20s, when I told my mother about it and she assured me that she sent Ellen with the money I owed the next day. I’m not so sure, but it was a nice attempt to alleviate my guilt.

Once we moved to Bishop Street, we began attending St. Mark’s United Methodist Church. While my parents didn’t join, they did help out teaching Sunday School. The next church they joined was a Presbyterian one but that was after we moved. I assumed they knew we would not be longterm residents of Petersburg. The Methodist Church also had a Cub Scout program which I joined when I turned eight. I would earn my wolf and bear badges while being in a den where the den mother was a former Miss Virginia.

Ellen

We and the O’Neils moved about the same time. The next summer, when I was between the first and second grade, Ellen invited me to go with her to the city pool. She introduced me as her “boyfriend,” which made me a pretty proud kid having a girlfriend twice my age.



That fall, my parents brought a house on Bishop Street in Walnut Hills. At the time, it seemed large, but looking at photos, it wasn’t. Before moving in, Mom and Dad painted and fixed the house up. We were still in the process of moving the day my father picked me up at school. When we got home, Mom had the TV on, which had already been moved to the house, and was very upset. The President had just been shot. I will always associate our new house with Kennedy’s assassination.

family in fromt of a house
My dad with the three of us at the Bishop Street house, maybe Easter Sunday, 1964
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Reading in October (and a puzzle)

Title slide with covers of both books I reviewed the story

Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search of the Nile

Cover of "River of Gods"

 (New York: Doubleday, 2022), 349 pages including notes, bibliography, and an index.  In addition are 16 pages of prints. 

It’s amazing that in the middle of the 19th Century, vast areas in places like Africa remained unknown, including the source of the Nile. . In comes Richard Burton, the English explorer, who put together a team to find the source. While he didn’t succeed, one of his assistants and nemesis, John Hanning Speke did discover and document the source of the Nile in a later trip. To put this in context of what was occurring in the world at the time, the first trip was when the Indian Mutiny occurred. Speke’s later expedition was during the American Civil War.

This book is filled with excitement and misadventures. One such event involved an attack attacked in what is now Somalia, which was just as dangerous then as now. In the attack, a spear pierced Burton’s cheeks, leaving him with a lifelong scar. 

I have had this book has been on my radar for several years, but I found myself questioning if it was worthy to read. the time in to read it. But having read the other three books by Candice Millard (The River of Doubt, Destiny of the Republic, and Hero of the Empire), all of which I enjoyed, I finally decided to give this book a try.  I’m glad I did.  

Millard provides biographical information not only of Speke and Burton, but also several others involved in the expedition. One of these, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, was most interesting. An African, his village was attacked when he was a child. Taken to India as a slave, upon the death of his master, he came back to Africa and helped with all the expeditions.  

Burton and Speke’s relationship was always tense. At the end of the expedition, Burton fell ill which delayed his returni to England. Speke, who went ahead of him, claimed credit for the expedition’s finding. The story of Burton and Speke ends tragically. The two were to have a debate, but hours beforehand, Speke died from a gunshot. Was it an accident (as he was a skilled and safe hunter) or did he do it on purpose? 

I found myself interested in Burton and may have to read more about his life. Burton mastered languages. As a non-Muslin (he was mostly agnostic), but with a master of Arabic and having studied the Koran, he traveled to Mecca and participated in the Hajj. Dressing the part, he passed himself off as Shaykh Abdullah. He lived to tell of his adventures which he published in a book. 

 Unlike Speke and most Britains, Burton preferred native dress. He also didn’t see himself as superior just because he was British but respected the people and their customs. However, some things he abhorred such as the Arab slave trade through Africa, which was still going on in the middle of the 19th Century.  However, his interest repulsed many in Victorian England such as translating the Karma Sutra into English. 

A side story in this book is the relationship between Burton and his young wife, Isabel Arundell. To the horror of her mother, Isabel fell for Burton when she was vyoung. They had a long relationship, but because of Burton’s travels and her family’s disapproval, they didn’t marry for some time. Not only was Burton not affluent, the Arundells were Catholic. Isabel had even considered becoming a nun if she couldn’t gain Burton’s interest. She was willing to travel with her husband on his journeys, but Burton was beginning to slow down by the time they married. She remained devoted to him and helped him with his writings. 

 This is an exciting book and, somewhat like the first book I read by Millard, River of Doubt. In River of Doubt, she explores a 1914 expedition by Teddy Roosevelt down one of the uncharted rivers in South America. Both books are good stories with lots of insight into the time and what those involved in the expeditions endured. 

James M. Dixon, Things I’ll Never Forget: Memories of a Marine in Viet Nam, 

Cover photo of "Things I'll Never Forget"

Malcolm Hillgarter, narrator (2018, Brilliance Audio),9 hours and 36 minutes.

Graduating from high school in 1965, and not sure what he wants out of life, Dixon joins the Marines. Describing the dinner where he broke the news to his parents is well told. His mother drops her coffee cup and leaves crying. His father congratulated him, but then you learn the family are Quakers, even though his father had served in World War 2. Dixon had initially wanted to join the Army rangers with a friend. But they discovered he was slightly colorblindness and the Army refused to take him. Leaving, he and his friend talked to the Marine Corp recruiter, who promised all kinds of things which turned out not to be true. Unaware of the lies, the two signed up. 

The first part of the book tells of his experiences in boot camp at Parris Island. I didn’t realize they had shortened basic training and advance infantry training as the war begin to heat up. Humor fills training experience..  After completing these two courses, he heads to school in Camp Pendleton, California, to be trained as a MP (military police). From there, he travels by ship to Vietnam, with stops in Hawaii and Japan.  This was certainly no cruise with the overcrowded ship swaying in the high seas they first experienced leaving the West Coast.

Dixon’s first half of his Vietnam tour was as an MP, mostly guarding the Danang airbase. Then, as happened to many Marines MPs, the Corp transferred him to the grunts. This was much more dangerous as they ran missions into enemy held positions where they set ambushes (and at times found themselves ambushed). He tells the stories straightforward, without glamorizing or glorifying them. Some things he did and saw are hard to stomach. In one battle, he saw a VC dressed figure duck. He shot and then realized it was a boy without a weapon.

On another occasion, they dropped charges into a tunnel, thinking it was a VC hideout only to learn it contained a mother and children.  Once, on an extended mission, they captured two VCs. The Lieutenant had the interpreter to ask one about enemy position.  He refused to say anything, so the Lieutenant pulled his pistol and shot the man in the head. The other captured soldier began to tell them everything. When they felt they had learned what they could, they let him go, only to shot him in the back as he fled.  

Dixon later became a radio operator. This was even more dangerous as radio operators were one of the three most likely positions to be shot by snipers (officers and corpsmen or medics were the other two). He didn’t like this position but when his platoon’s radio operator when down, he was nearby and ordered to pick up the radio. 

During his time in Vietnam, he lost a lot of friends and several of their deaths stick with him. One of the saddest involved two buddies who had spent their time together. One was killed and then booby trapped by the VC, so when the other found his deceased friend, he rolled his body over only to take the bast of a grenade that had been planted under the body.  

I am still not sure about this book. I can’t understand a Quaker who tells such stories without judgment. However, the book is well written. The author, after Vietnam, taught school for over 30 years. 

After a period of dryness, the end of October turned cool and rainy. And, with watching an incredible World Series, it was time to pull out a puzzle. This is “The World of Jane Austen,” and is the third such puzzle we’d done, the other two focusing on Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

Puzzle,"The World of Jane Austen"
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Funerals on the Comstock Lode

Funerals on the Comstock title slide with photos of the Combination Shaft and the Virginia City cemetery

Earlier I wrote about my presiding over the funeral of Emily Giggs in the play, “Our Town.” You can find that story by clicking here. In this article, I discuss the two funerals I conducted as a student pastor in Virginia City along with some historical funerals.

During the year I was in Virginia City, I had the unfortunate opportunity to officiate at funerals.  These, however, were not on a stage, at least not the one in the old high school. Both were for women who died of cancer.  We held the first funeral in the church, and it featured the best musical talent Virginia City had to offer. Rudi, a former opera singer who had done studio work for Pink Floyd, lifted our spirits with a stirring solo. At the end of the service, Red, an eighty-five-year-old banjo picker, who hung out at the Bucket of Blood, warmed our hearts with “Amazing Grace.”  

“Boot Hill” in Virginia City

In The Protestant Clergy in the Great Plains and Mountain West, Ferenc Morton Szasz suggests funerals were one occasion in which 19th century when Westerners sought out tradition. At the time of death, they sought the services of clergy. This kept ministers in the mining camps busy. David Henry Palmer officiated at five funerals in his first ten days in Nevada. Shortly after arriving in the territory, Palmer wrote his parents, saying he conducted three funerals in the past two days. “The first an awful drunkard, the second one of the greatest gamblers and the profanest man in the territory and the third was murdered.”

Palmer and William Mulford Martin, the first two Presbyterian ministers in Virginia City, officiated over several funerals for prominent residents who have become part of the city’s folklore. Ironic, but the deceased became legends while the ministers faded into oblivion. Palmer conducted the farewell service for John Jenkins, better known as Sugar-foot Jack.. Tom Peasley shot Jenkins. Peasley was well-known and a jury acquitted him of any wrongdoing without leaving their seats for deliberation. 

Two years later, Martin officiated over Peasley’s funeral. His death occurred after a gunfight in the Corner Bar in Carson City’s Ormsby House. Newspapers lamented Peasley’s demise. His funeral, held in front of the Fire Department, became one of the largest held on the Comstock. Mark Twain immortalized Tom Peasley by casting him as Buck Fanshaw in Roughing It.  According to Twain:

 He was a representative citizen. He had “killed his man”—not in his own quarrel, it is true, but in defense of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing helpmate whom he could have discarded without the formality of divorce. He had held a high position in the fire department and had been a very Warwick in politics. When he died there was a great lamentation throughout the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society.

Mark Twain, who never wanted truth to get in the way of a good story, took some liberties with Peasley’s life and demise. Peasley did “kill his man” but, according to all accounts, it was not in the defense of others. Peasley was, however, involved in politics, owned a saloon and an opera house, and had served as a fire chief. Also, Peasley’s helpmate was Julia Bulette, a local prostitute. He certainly would not have needed a divorce to rid himself of her.

Twain continues Peasley’s story with the selection of Scotty Briggs to “fetch a parson” to “waltz” Buck Fanshaw into heaven. The encounter with between Scotty and the young bookish pastor “fresh from an eastern theological seminary” doesn’t sound like Martin, who officiated over Tom Peasley’s funeral. Martin was in his 50s and was a well-seasoned pastor before coming to Virginia City. However, Twain could have replace Martin with David Henry Palmer, who had graduated from Auburn Theological Seminary three months before arriving on the. Comstock. 

First Presbyterian Church of Virginia City. Photo taken my the author in 2018.

A year after Peasley’s funeral, Julia Bulette was murdered in her D Street crib. Having been made an honorary member of the Fire Department by her deceased lover, they also held her funeral was held at the fire department. Again, Martin officiated. It is hard for a minister to know what to say at such an occasion, but according to Alf Doten, the editor of the Gold Hill News who attended the funeral, Martin’s words were “comforting and appropriate. He must not have been too condemning or Doten, who frequently visited prostitutes, would have felt the heat.   

Virginia City from “Boot Hill”. 2018

Twain left Virginia City shortly after Tom Peasley’s funeral. He first stayed in California, then made his way to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). On his way back east, Twain, who by this time well known for his humorous writings, stopped in Virginia City. His first morning back coincided with execution of John Millian,. Millian had been convicted of Julia Bulette’s murder. The hanging occurred north of town and witnessed by a large crowd including Twain,. who found the spectacle troubling.   

While her murderer has been all but forgotten, Virginia City has immortalized Julia Bulette. Today, a bar on C Street that bears her name. Locals can point out what some say is her grave to tourist. Someone occasionally paints the wooden fence around the faux grave white, making it easily visible from town. Even though Julia died over a century and a half ago, it seems her heart and status keeps growing. Today, most any resident in town will tell you stories about her concern for the poor and the sick and how she could demand a thousand dollars a night for her services. Today, you can find many books portraying her in a saintly fashion. One must wonder if they are talking about a prostitute or Florence Nightingale.  

Folklore often twists history. A frequently told tale about Julia is that her funeral was held at the fire department and burial on Flowery Mountain because the Father Manogue, the Catholic priest, wouldn’t conduct the services for a prostitute. It’s not true. As we have already seen, a Presbyterian minister officiated at her funeral. Furthermore, Father Manogue officiated at funerals of others whose lives were a bit shady.

Her burial at the cemetery on Flowery Mountain raises questions about her wealth. Although she probably would not have not been allowed burial in the Catholic portion of the regular cemetery, she certainly could have been buried in another section. Even the fire department had a section reserved for their members. Burial at the Flowery Cemetery was reserved for those who were unable to afford a plot in the cemetery on the north end of town. Furthermore, the customer who killed her was a common miner and certainly would not have been able to pay more than a couple dollars for her service.

Sign in the Fireman’s Cemetery

The story of Julia Bulette’s burial is an example of how the church and clergy responded to the needs of those outside their religious community. I, too, found myself called on for such a task during my last month in town.

A well-known Comstock resident who was not a member of a church died. I was contacted early the morning of her death and asked to call upon the husband of the deceased . While I was given a phone number, I was also informed I would most likely find him at the Ponderosa Bar at the corner of C Street and Taylor. When the man didn’t answer the phone, I headed down C Street in search of him.  It was about 10 in the morning. Sure enough, he was sitting on a stool at one end of the bar, nursing a beer. I sat down beside him and ordered a cup of coffee.

He requested a simple graveside service. At ten o’clock, a couple mornings later, we all gathered on Boot Hill. I read a few Psalms and said prayers. After saying the words of committal, the husband stepped up the grave site with an urn containing his wife’s ashes. Bending over on loose dirt, he slipped into the hole. I tried to catch him and nearly slid into the hole beside him. I am sure the whole event provided for humor for the throngs of tourists who had gathered on the hill overlooking the graveyard and, for a moment, I felt as if I was on stage. Thankfully, a sheriff deputy held the crowds back until the service was over. Otherwise, those watching from a distance would probably have thought the service was staged like the shoot-outs which are occasionally staged on C Street.

The service ended with him pulling a pint out of his pocket. He took a swig and dropped the bottle in with his wife’s ashes. Then he a few other men filled in the grave with the dirt piled up beside the grave.

For more insight into the Twain’s story on Buck Fanshaw along with source notes, see Charles Jeffrey Garrison, “Of Humor, Death, and Minsters: The Comstock of Mark Twain, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly ,#38,3 (Fall 1005), 189-212.    

For information on how Julia Bulette became a popular hero, see Andria Daley Taylor, “Girls of the Golden West,” in Comstock Women: The Making of a Mining Community, Ronald M. James & C. Elizabeth Raymond, editors, (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1998), especially pages 274-278. 

More stories about my time on the Comstock:

Arriving in Virginia City 

David Henry Palmer arrives in Virginia City, 1863

Virginia City’s Muckers presents Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town”

Doug and Elvira

Matt and Virginia City

Driving West in ’88

Sunday afternoon drive to Gerlach 

Riding in the cab of a locomotive on the V&T

Christmas Eve

Easter Sunrise Services (a part of this article recalls Easter Sunrise Service in Virginia City in 1989)

The Revivals of A. B. Earle (an academic paper published inAmerican Baptist Historical Society Quarterly, part of his revivals were in Virginia City in 1867)

Head frame for the Combination Shaft located on the south end of town. The Flowery Cemetery is a few hundred yards to the east of this structure.