Posted on 06/10/2005 10:36:35 AM PDT by Liberty Valance
Blessings don’t always come gift-wrapped. Sometimes they are found in nettle patches.
That’s how it was for Edgar.
He was the black sheep of his family. His brother Elmer plowed black loam fields that stretched across a green valley north of town, where Cold Spring Branch tickled its way to the Osage River.
Elmer was tall and thin and quiet. But his wife was a hatchet-faced woman with a razor tongue. And she couldn’t stand the sight of Edgar.
His other brother was named Simon. He worked on the assembly line at the Ford plant. It was a noisy, monotonous job. And he came home grimed with grease and dead tired.
But whenever Simon was tempted to complain about his hard life, he thought about Edgar. At least his life was better than his brother’s.
Edgar owned 40 acres of thick brush and rocks around the corner from the row of shacks on South Street.
He lived in a small clapboard cabin without a porch, scratched vegetables out of the stony soil, and kept a small herd of goats with tiny black hooves that clicked over the stones in the pasture. Now and then, he also bought runt pigs to raise and butcher from a farmer down the road.
Edgar was too poor to afford a car. So through sunshine, sleet or snow, he walked two miles to town each morning to pick up his mail at a little white post office next to the feed store. If he needed groceries, he walked back in the evening through slices of sunlight that slanted through the trees beside the road.
Now and then, someone would stop and offer Edgar ride. But not very often. Most of the time the cars whisked on by, leaving Edgar in a cloud of gravel dust.
But Edgar never seemed to mind. He walked with a spring in his step and a smile on his face.
He married a woman with a soft voice and quiet ways. They buried two babies before Eddie was born.
The boy was as dark as his mother with button black eyes and hair like a raven’s wing. He was a silent, solemn boy. Neighbors driving by would catch a glimpse of him herding goats beneath the maples that leaned over the Edgar’s little pasture.
In the evenings after supper, Elmer and Simon watched television. But Edgar couldn’t afford a television. So his family read books or told stories until bedtime.
Elmer never had any children. But Simon had two sons. Both of them found jobs working at the factory with their father.
Years crawled by. Elmer and Simon both retired. But Edgar couldn’t afford that either. So he kept on hoeing his garden and walking to town for groceries.
By the time he was 70, Elmer was already old and sick. He shuffled around his big house for a few years. Then his wife died, and he moved to a nursing home.
Simon didn’t do much better. He crippled along with a cane until a stroke put him in bed for good.
And Edgar? Well into his 90s, he was still walking to town and hoeing his garden.
But health wasn’t the only blessing poverty brought Edgar. Years of reading honed his son’s mind like a whetstone.
When he graduated from high school, scholarships poured in. A few years later, he was awarded a master’s degree in engineering. A consultant in the oil industry, he spent most of his life in air-conditioned offices in the Middle East.
The Bible commands Christians to give thanks when our paths are straight and when they are stony. The reason is simple. Sometimes blessings sting a little and curses seem soft and smooth.
So be careful what you complain about. Those briars just might be blessings.
Jack Eggers is a Kerrville resident and can be contacted at pkspop@ktc.com.
I miss my great grandmothers stories of her childhood in northern Michigan in the years before WWI.
I agree. There are many lessons to be learned from our grandparents and older folks in general. Sometimes we are so caught up in our little worlds that we forget the simple goodness and grace that life can offer.
Her stories were true teaching stories. Usually they were about responsibility or doing the right thing. Often the stories were the result of us kids doing something wrong. She wouldn't scold us for what we did wrong, instead she would launch into one of her stories and teach us.
We were lucky to have her nearby till she was nearly 100 years old.
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