The Path to God - The Road From Batesville

The energy and expectations of my father’s career came at the expense of whatever the normal amount of time a parent and child spend together. By the time I was six, there were no baseball games, no campouts, no three-legged races, and hardly any daddy-and-buddy time at all. He left for work at six in the morning and came home for dinner at seven in the evening. I had whatever time I could make before and after that to get to know my father. I had to be a clever boy to know him at all. Fortunately, I was.

As I became a young adult, it was clear that I would be the sort of person who was very difficult to ever know. My father realized that if he ever had a chance at this Pater familias thing, he would have to find whatever excuses he could for us to spend time together. Even though he never had the time to teach me how to put a worm on a hook as a child, as I was becoming a man, and long after I had discovered the dangers of a woman’s perfume, I learned to fish with some of the greatest political minds in the history of Mississippi.

The South Panola Separate School District passed a bond issue to improve its schools. My father’s company sold them new football bleachers, a new scoreboard, an auditorium, and several new classrooms, so he tasked the late-teenage version of me with being his navigator on a zig-zag journey through the Delta and North Mississippi to check on the school installation and other matters.

The first stop was in Greenville, Mississippi, where we had a store downtown. My father considered Mississippi Delta Tamales a very serious thing, so after a brief tour of the store, Billy Kimbrell took us for lunch at Doe’s Eat Place. They were famous for their steaks, but we were there for Tamales and saltine crackers.

When we started this trip, I was afraid Daddy had an agenda he wanted to talk about, but we mostly talked about his Uncle Luther, who he loved but died before I was old enough to know him. On the way from Greenville to Batesville, he told me stories about his time at Oxford (Mississippi, not England) and the adventures of a man named John Arthur Eves who wanted to be governor of Mississippi but was never very successful at it.

Installing a big school job like this meant broken-down cardboard boxes and shipping bands everywhere, and teams of men with allen wrenches and ratchet wrenches assembling all this furniture that had been made in other states. Daddy had dreams of manufacturing school furniture in Mississippi, and we did spend many years building laboratory furniture, but it never worked out the way he wanted.

As quitting time came upon us, we loaded his Oldsmobile and made our way to Greenwood, Mississippi, for supper at Lusco’s with our cousin Robert Wingate, and spend the night at his house since his wife Libba was away tending to her daughter and her newborn child.

Robert was generally considered the wisest member of the family. Four years older than my father, he served as a moral compass in his life and intended to do the same in mine.

“I’m concerned you’re not becoming the leader you were meant to be,” Robert said. “You’re one of the brightest boys I know. I don’t understand it.” He added.

I was named after a man who made a noticeable impact on the world, even though he died before I could know him. I’d always known a certain amount of pressure to become what he was because we had the same name, even though I never met him. Mississippi is a very poor place, and there was a very tangible need for leaders, but they were barking up the wrong tree, as far as I was concerned. Pep talks like this are part of growing up. A boy learns to let them flow over him rather than offer resistance.

After dinner, in our pajamas, Cousin Robert served up a single scoop of vanilla ice cream for each of us, as was his nightly tradition. I loved Robert with a very tangible devotion, so I decided to be honest with him.

“My biggest problem with leadership is that I don’t really know where I’m headed, so if anybody were to ever follow me, they’d be in a considerable amount of trouble,” I said.

Robert didn’t say anything for a moment, then added quietly, “You have a lot to learn about leadership yet.”

The sun rose before six. While Robert played tennis, we had breakfast at a diner and made our way back to Jackson, stopping at the Vicksburg store. The Mississippi Delta is extraordinarily flat. Much of it has been cleared for cultivation. You can see for miles in every direction, with nothing on the horizon but a few trees and the occasional barn. I began to consider what Robert said to me.

Some of the most evil things men ever accomplished were done in the name of “leadership.” They became tyrants and despots. They amassed immeasurable fortunes while millions starved. They raised armies to kill people of different beliefs or genetics. They made pretty genuine efforts to exterminate entire races of people. We talk about how it happened in Germany, but it happened here, too. What we call leadership isn’t an unassailable good. Men accomplished many horrible things because they could lead.

I had an illustrated book called “Heroes of the Bible.” There are so many threads people left me because they loved me that I let atrophy and die because I don’t know how to love. One of them left me this book, but I had forgotten who. It was a children’s book, but I was a man.

It wasn’t my beloved Martha Hammond. She usually gave me books written by someone with considerable literary abilities because she saw something in me that others missed. This was somebody who thought stories about the heroes in the bible might guide me in life.

Most of the Bible's stories can’t be verified historically, which drives some people crazy. They spend so much time seeking evidence for the Bible that they miss the point. A story doesn’t have to be historically verifiable to be important. Most aren’t. None of the stories Aesop tells are historically verifiable. There are no talking scorpions or jealous foxes, but that doesn’t change the value of the stories.

We use the word “hero” to describe someone with qualities we should emulate. Hero stories are extraordinarily important in building a culture. They define the actions we should value.

The book had very masculine drawings of the men in the Bible that a boy might be drawn to, people like Samson, David, Solomon, and Noah. They were what we traditionally consider leaders. They led people to create greater things and form great armies. Samson brought down the temple with just the strength of his arms. I’ve always been drawn to a different sort of biblical heroic leader.

Abraham offered to his god the only thing that mattered to him. In return, his son was saved, and God made Abraham the father of three great nations.

Moses was a prince and a hero to the most powerful people on earth. He gave that up to become an instrument for God’s will and serve slaves with no home of their own. It cost him everything, and he never got to live in the land God promised his people.

Jesus led by feeding the hungry and healing the sick. He had the power to subjugate the entire world, but he led by offering his own body as a sacrifice for the sins of men.

Leaders don’t always conquer the world or make themselves grand. A man doesn’t have to know where he’s going to lead by serving those around him. We lead by giving, sometimes giving all we have. My cousin Robert was right. I had a lot to learn about leadership. I still do. I think I’m still learning, though. Hopefully, I’ll learn more before it’s over.