“Grandpa wore his suit to dinner nearly every day, no particular reason he just dressed that way.”
John Prine– American country folk singer-songwriter
E.P. Sloan was an extraordinarily humble man of God. He absolutely loved everyone as far as I could tell. But to be quite honest, most of the time that I saw him, I was in an altered stated of mind saturated in the world, or just stoned. For the most part, I admired him from a distance, as he lived a couple hundred miles from Baton Rouge in Booneville, Mississippi.
He was married to a rather simple woman named Ruby. She was a quiet housewife who lived to cook, clean and dip snuff. I remember almost every time I saw her, whenever she smiled (and that was often), she would have a dab of dried snuff drool in the corners of her toothless mouth.
She wore what appeared to me a flour sack gown and watched soap operas all day, every day, oblivious of the world outside. I rarely ever saw her in regular clothes unless she was coming to visit us, as I believed she skipped church most of the time and never shopped.
Her home was her sanctuary.
Ruby, from my perspective at the time, simply existed. She rarely spoke, maybe because she had no teeth as she covered her mouth when she did attempt to say something. She loved when her daughter Dorothy visited, as Dorothy would completely clean the entire house and especially the refrigerator where there were bowls of old food waiting for someone brave enough to eat their contents.
It could only be described as scary stuff with green wool growing on it!
Dorothy also brought orange juice with her, and it was the only time Ruby drank orange juice, as her daughter doctored it with a dash or deep pour of vodka. Dorothy never travelled without her vodka as she lived a totally inebriated life at the time. Ruby could only get a good buzz on when her daughter came to visit.
How E.P. didn’t figure it out blows my mind as they would both get way past tipsy but he appeared oblivious.
I said E.P. was a humble man of God, and that he loved everyone.
Well that may not be totally true as his son-in-law was a real thorn in his side. Len treated E.P. poorly most of the time that I can remember and taunted E.P. about his faith almost every time they were together.
E.P. carried his Bible most everywhere he went and lived a life of continuous praise contentment. He was praising God in most every breath and had a persistent smile on his face.
It bewildered me!
And it pissed Len off as he rarely experienced true joy, but like his wife Dorothy, he lived a saturated life carrying Jim Beam most everywhere he went. Len knew how he could get under E.P.’s skin faster than anyone I had ever seen. He would bring up some belief he had gotten from his Catholic background, which he probably either modified or totally distorted, and challenge E.P. with it as a Biblical truth.
And the argument was on. That is until E.P. would tell Len that he was headed straight for Hell and Len would guffaw laughing, knowing he had accomplished his objective; he had pissed E.P. off.
E. P. was half the man physically that Len was, but a giant dwarfing Len in the spirit realm.
When I think of E.P., I remember the times I saw him tilling his truck garden in his backyard. He would be walking behind the tiller wearing a suit complete with his church hat and shoes, sweating and smiling. I never saw him without a tie, ever. He loved his garden as he couldn’t wait to load his old truck with boxes of fresh vegetables that he either sold on the roadside in Booneville or gave to his neighbors who were too elderly to grow their own.
E.P. lived in a shotgun house… that’s a house you could shoot in the front door and kill everyone in it. And he lived across the tracks in a predominately black neighborhood where all the houses resembled one another and the people lived a quietly joyful life, mostly out of sight of the white folks.
E.P. was considered so much a mighty man of God that he was considered a member of all their families. They loved him like nothing I had ever seen before. When E.P. died, his church and neighbors threw a party and held an all-night vigil in the front room of his home with his open casket in the middle of the room.
It was a real celebration!
I don’t want you to believe that E.P. didn’t have some challenges in his life, cause in the forties, he had to leave his beloved Booneville when he went broke as a share-cropper to work in a toy factory in Chicago. He was stuck in the poverty end of the city for 30 years. Kind of reminds me of Moses in Mississippi terms, but E.P. eventually got to go home to Booneville to live out his remaining 20 years.
E.P. had five children and there were no angels in the group.
One son spent most of his life in prison for an assortment of felonies, another son spent most of his life addicted to one form of drug or another and was incarcerated occasionally, and his other two sons both died of alcohol toxicity.
And finally, his daughter, Dorothy, who loved him and cared for him till he died, also succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver gained from the same addiction.
She was my mother.
I don’t want you to think I was the innocent one observing from the sidelines, as I was completely lost in my own sin, almost always stoned on reefer and associated drugs during this entire time. I actually found it humorous when Len tormented E.P. The guilt didn’t hit me till I was given my grandpa’s Bible a few months after his death.
I was overwhelmed in grief!
I hope E.P. knows I’m saved now and that I love Jesus. He witnessed to me in the right way, and was someone that revealed what real joy is supposed to look like. I know if he could see me now that he would be crow-hopping in Heaven screaming hallelujah!!!
The seeds E.P. planted in the spirits of his grandsons took hold, with one of them being my brother Mike, who is with him now in heaven.
And the other one is me…still on the journey “in pursuit of something Real”.
By the way, crow-hopping is a crazy Pentecostal dance resembling the stubbing of a toe! Ha!
It’s hard for some to believe, but I’m one of His favorites!
THOUGHTS OF THE HUNTER KIND:
When I think back about those unique people in my past who had offered me light when I was totally lost in darkness, I think about one common characteristic, joyfulness. I couldn’t understand it at the time, as my cup was usually half empty and wanting. But no matter what their circumstances were at the time, they were always overflowing with joy!
PRAYER OF THE HUNTER KIND:
John 8:12 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Lord, I can only hope that I reflect Your light, as others have reflected it on me.
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