The Calling Dream

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I discovered I was called to preach the day I woke up with a hard-on and the smell of fried chicken in my nostrils. I must have been about ten years old back in 1945.

I lay down on the back porch for a nap after church on a summer Sunday afternoon, and I had the strangest dream. I was standing there by the pond in the barn lot of our family farm over in north Arkansas. There were no cows around, and it was like the barn wasn’t there anymore, but I knew it was. The pond water shimmered silver like a pool of mercury. All around the pond stood tiny little Roman soldiers, each one about a foot high. Their breast plate armor was notched with scroll-like designs, and each one had a metal spear and a shield. When I approached the pond, they all stamped one foot and stood at full attention with their spears pointing up to the sky and their shields pulled round in a defensive position.

I knelt down by the water’s edge and reached two fingers into the water. The water shimmered on my fingers as I brought them to my lips. When I touched the water to my lips, the pond began to stir. Then the waters parted from side to side like Moses had parted the Red Sea. When the water parted, up from below came the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her dress was white and thin, like gauze, like pure white window sheers. As she walked toward me, the fabric flowed back as if it was blown in a soft breeze. I saw the full outline of her body, taut breasts, and perfect womanly hips beneath her thin waist. Her hair was red like fire embers, and it flowed back off her shoulders in the breeze. She came walking straight up to me out of the parted waters. She was tall like a grown woman, and her lips were red like communion wine. Then she leaned over, cupped gentle hands on both sides of my face, and kissed me. I felt her soft lips gently touching mine. Then her tongue went into my mouth, and I woke up, startled.

I found myself lying on our back porch cot. The overhang shaded me from the hot summer sun that gleamed a golden soft shimmer across the grass in our backyard. I realized that my little soldier—that’s what Momma always told us to call our p***s when we were little—was standing at full attention. It was pressing toward the front of my britches like it was trying to get out. It pushed firm and hard against the contour beside my zipper, but the fabric held it captive. Then I smelled fried chicken and I realized Momma must have a meal about ready to serve.

I got up and went in the back door leading to the kitchen. There was Momma turning crispy chicken in the cast iron frying pan, and it was sizzling hot, browning up. I walked up to Momma and said, “Momma, I just had a strange dream.”

“Ronnie, go wash up for dinner,” she said in a hurry. Now let me explain something here. Hill folks in those days had no word for lunch. You didn’t have breakfast, lunch, and dinner; you had breakfast, dinner, and supper. So Momma was fixing the midday meal right after church that morning.

“But, Momma,” I said, “I had this dream where I was down at the pond, but it was filled with water that looked like liquid silver, and all around the pond was these little Roman soldiers about a foot high, and they was all standing at attention. Then the waters parted, like Moses parting the sea, and this beautiful woman came up out of the waters, and she walked straight over to me and kissed me right on the mouth. What do you think that means?”

Momma looked at me sternly while she was forking chicken from the frying pan to a bowl.

“What do you think it means, Momma?” I asked again.

“I think it means you were called to preach,” she said as she wiped hands on her apron then carried the bowl of chicken to the table. “Now go wash up. Find Teddy and Hannah. Get them to wash up too, and go call your daddy for dinner. He’s out in the garden.”

Now, our house was on a farm near Ravenden, Arkansas. That’s where the Ozark Mountains begin to melt into the Mississippi delta. It ain’t exactly flat, but it ain’t exactly hill country either. The house wasn’t much. There were four rooms inside a square. There was a living room and a kitchen on opposite corners with a doorway between them slightly overlapping in the middle. The kitchen was rudimentary at best, and Momma cooked on a woodburning stove that made the kitchen awful hot in the summertime. Nonetheless, our table was in the kitchen, and that’s where we ate our meals whether it was hot or not.

On the other corners were two bedrooms. One corner was Momma and Daddy’s bedroom with a door off the living room. My older brother, Teddy, and I slept in the other corner bedroom back on the north side of the house, and it also had a door off the living room, but the kitchen door was right next to our door. Teddy and I shared a bed, and Hannah, my baby sister, had a little cot on the opposite side of Momma and Daddy’s room. Hand-cut cedar posts held the porch roofs up. There was a porch in the front and one in the back. The back porch was on the north side, and it was also shaded, so good for summer naps.

I went straight out the back door again and saw Daddy off in the distance past the yard fence. He was working a hoe in our garden, cutting weeds back from the vegetables. “DAADDDDYYYY!” I shouted. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Go round the side of the house and get your brother and sister!” he shouted back. “I’ll be right there.”

When I went around the house, Teddy was leaned up against the northeast side reading a book. Hannah was three years old then. She was lying there on the grass with her homemade doll, fast asleep. Teddy looked up at me and asked, “Dinner ready?”

“Yeah,” I said as I walked over and started picking Hannah up off the ground. “Come on, sissy. It’s time to eat.”

She moaned a little bit and sat up with her rag doll. I picked her up and carried her on my hip. Then we all went around the house to get washed up. Normally, Daddy would’ve had me and Teddy working with him in the garden, but he gave us a break on Sunday.

My daddy was a preacher at a little country church, and you would think he would not be doing work on the Lord’s Day, but he said it wasn’t a sin for him to work the garden on Sunday because he had such a good time doing it. He said it was fun and relaxation for him instead of work, but it sure felt like work to me and Teddy.

On the porch, next to the kitchen was what they used to call a dry sink. We moved it inside in the wintertime. We didn’t have running water, so everything had to be pulled up with a zinc bucket from a rock-lined well. The well had a wood brace over the top and a pulley for lowering the bucket into the water with a rope. A couple of buckets sat on the dry sink next to an enameled wash pan. One of the buckets had a dipper in it so we could get ourselves a drink of water, and the other was for washing. Teddy took the wash bucket and poured a little bit into the wash pan, and then we all took turns picking up the bar of homemade lye soap and swishing it around on our hands in the pan of water. Sissy couldn’t reach the pan, so I took a washcloth and got some soapy water to wash her hands.

Inside, Momma had the kitchen table set for dinner. The big bowl of fried chicken was in the middle, and there was a mashed potato salad that Momma had made before church that morning and kept in the icebox till dinner. We didn’t have electricity in those days, so Daddy had to buy block ice in town and put it in our icebox to keep food cold. The ice would last the whole week in the wintertime, but it didn’t last but a couple of days over the summer. Momma had sliced salted tomatoes from the garden, and she made a wilted salad from lettuce, green onions, and hot bacon drippings. She baked some cornbread while she was frying the chicken, but most of it she had put together before we went to church that morning. She warmed over a pot of pinto beans she had made earlier in the week. The more they were reheated, the better they got. It was a downright feast.

We all sat down quietly at the table and waited for Daddy to get washed up and come in. We weren’t allowed to talk till after Daddy said prayer. Before we sat down, Momma had us hold our hands palms up then flip to the back so she could see that we washed up before we ate. If she wasn’t satisfied, it was right back to the dry sink and only come back when they were clean.

After a while, Daddy came in and sat at the head of the table. Momma always sat on the opposite end, and we kids sat between. Daddy reached out his hands to each side, and we all held hands around the table. Hannah sat on a wood box in a chair next to Momma so Momma could help feed her. Everybody held hands on either side except for Hannah. She couldn’t reach Daddy’s other hand, so she just held Momma’s hand. After all hands were clasped, Daddy looked around the table and bowed his head. That was our cue to do the same. With my head down, I watched the flower patterns in that china plate and wondered what I was going to fill it with, then Daddy started to pray.

“Dear Lord, we thank Thee for the bounty that is before us this day and for this food that will nourish our bodies. Dear Lord, we thank Thee for bringing Teddy some wisdom so that he knows when he ought to behave. We thank Thee, Lord, for little Ronnie and for how he always tries to be good help. Lord, we thank Thee for little Hannah and for bringing her sweet countenance into our family, and yes, Lord, I thank Thee for Marylee, for her faithfulness and for being a hardworking, good wife. Lord, we thank Thee for the health and well-being of this family and for the blessings we are about to receive. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

Now, after prayer, everybody sat quietly, and nobody said a word till Daddy acknowledged us. He would start with a fork to the chicken bowl, serving the oldest child first. That would be Teddy. He was thirteen years old when I was ten. “Teddy,” he would say, “what kind of meat would suit your liking today?”

Teddy always asked for the same thing. He picked up his plate and held it out toward the chicken bowl. “I believe I would like thigh and leg please, Daddy.”