Town Common

Town Common

By Clevis O. Laverty

Twisting and waving across the country side, Route 10 dodges a mountain, sidles up to a stream, circles a clump of pines, and perversely doubles back upon itself. Then, coming suddenly upon a railroad track running through a gully, it hesitates before making the leap. While hesitating, the tail or the road writhes behind it and two commons appear in emerald green with white fences enclosing new mown grass and protective maples.

On one side sprawling unconcernedly sits a yard good store like nearsighted old maid with horn-rimmed glasses, a dingy poolroom, a snappy drug store with black tile and glass front, a discourage garage with even more discouraged jalopies littering its front yard, a hotel with no tenants, and an old brown post office look lazily across the bisected common at the Cape Cod homes, the brick homes, and the miscellaneous homes huddling and clutching desperately at the brink of the precipice, lest they slide down and be devoured by the shoddy mill that squats in the gully.

From their perch on a rusty, worm-eaten bench, three pimply-faced youths wink knowingly at one another as they whistle at a poor-man’s Marilyn Monroe twitching self-consciously out of the drug store—a square box in plain wrapping tucked under her arm.

Head tipped at an impossible angle, one arm dangling down over the end of the bench, the other thrown limply over the back, a drunk sits and stares stupidly at the three Elvis Presleys. Still on his feet, the drunk’s partner staggers through the opening in the fence, starts across the road toward the other common. Halfway across he turns and comes back, the squealing of brakes attesting to the nearness of eternity. A nondescript hound scuttles between his legs; the man buries his face in the green grass and stays there.

At the far end of the common, a group of youths in black, leather jackets surround two girls in billowing skirts and inaccurately lipsticked faces. There is pleading, gesticulating, and a roar of hollow, forced laughter. Boys leading the way with cat calls and jeering, they leave the common and disappear into the gully.

Where is the spontaneous laughter and friendliness of the common? Time was when youngsters would come swarming out of the then not-too-modern-looking drug store, spill into the common, and an old beat-up football would miraculously appear. A game of scrub was on. Nothing was important to them except an end run or a plunge through center with its resulting bruises and black eyes. Back and forth they would shriek and yell across the green grass until darkness hid the ball.

Older youths would limber up along the side with baseball and gloves, while the younger ones gathered in groups along the fence playing mumbletypeg.

Reserved by unspoken agreement, old men used to gather in the second common, watch the antics of football, baseball, and of kids letting off steam. They would reminisce, predict dire futures for the younger generation, and discuss the state legislature. Here also would be placed the “town tree” at Chirstmanstide, and the whole town would turn out to see one antoher’s faces reflected in the twinkling lights and exchange gifts with the help of a stuffed Santa Claus.

When night came, Briggs’ popcorn stand appeared too. Summoned by the compelling odor of hot, buttered popcorn, carefree boys and pert young girls would congregate and laugh and tease—and eat popcorn. Promptly at eight they would crowd into the town hall at the end of the common, where the road hesitated, to cheer their heroes. Whether it be tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, or Rudolph Valentino seemed to make no difference.

Overcoming its hesitancy, Route 10 leaps the railroad track with a bridge. Frightened by this aspect of reminiscence and change, it speeds straightaway without a backward glance for four or five miles before renewing its twisting and weaving and dodging mountains.

The Delayed Generation

This is another college term paper by the middle aged man who went back to college:

The Delayed Generation

By Clevis O. Laverty

“My parents do not understand me” is a modern complaint of youth; it is an ancient one, too. Youth looks at pa and Ma and that is all he sees: No concept of their having been youths at one time, too. Oh, perhaps they were in some far distant past, but things were different then. It was ever thus. No age is unique in this attitude.

In my attempt to bring to life, by discussion, the youth of the early thirties, I would like to address this discussion to today’s youth. Perhaps, in all ages, our parents understand us better than we realize. Perhaps it is the parent who is not understood. It is possible to read and understand the trends of the flaming twenties, the series of events that contributed to the Great Depression, and to visualize Hoover, Roosevelt, Hopkins, and a host of others as very real people, and still not be able to associate Pa and Ma with it. We do not associate history with the people next door, much less with those with whom we have shared three meals a day for eighteen or twenty years.

Volumes have been written exposing the prosperous twenties as prosperous only to a chosen few. To those who grew up in that age it seemed to be a comfortable period, although there was an awareness of class distinctions; a select monied class, a class of the great majority, and an extremely poor class. Luxuries were few to the many, but there were few who lacked the necessities. The World War was just far enough away to make every boy believe that he had been born too late to participate in an exciting adventure which was related in pulp magazines in much the same manner as a football game, highlighted with a mixture of modern sportsmanship and medieval chivalry.

Our history books bring us a picture of feverish financial activity in the time preceding Tuesday, October 29, 1929, and we get the impression that everybody was following the stock market as it climbed—climbed—dipped a little—climbed some more. The enthusiasm of the rich for getting richer, the idealization of the business man, and the unwillingness of the United States to become involved in international affairs make the financial instability of the late twenties a dominant feature of the era to those who look back in study. John Q. Public was apart from most of this and to his children who were in or were entering high school in the early thirties, the panic that resulted from the crash of 1929 was a bolt from the blue.

To the average young person making a current events report in school, it appeared to be a world gone mad. To him there appeared to be a mad scramble by people to get into line in order to jump out of a hotel window—money must be terribly important. The school boy who had taken security for granted became very much aware of how much faster his shoes wore out when he scuffed his feet, and a pair of new ones became a milestone in his life.

As he progressed in high school the news was a succession of accounts of financial failure, political inability to do anything about it, bread lines, and astronomical unemployment figures. He imitated his elders in blaming the whole mess on the man occupying the White House, because that seemed to be the adult thing to do. If he had to draw his belt a little tighter and make things last a little longer, he didn’t blame his own individual parents; everybody on the street was in the same boat. His elders discovered that it was easier to blame the whole business on the government than it was to try to explain their own shortcomings to their children and, incidentally, to themselves.

I remember a high school graduation in 1934 very clearly in some respects and vaguely in other respects. The speaker’s voice, name, and appearance escape my memory completely, but the message he gave to that class of 185 hopefuls, who for four years had reported faithfully in their classes on the internal affairs of the nation and who had seen despair strike in some of their own homes and in the homes of their neighbors, I remember well. He followed a time-honored formula of telling this group that this was truly a commencement, and that the world was their oyster. He told them that perhaps the world was in tough shape, but it was only waiting for this class to go out, grasp the reins, and guide the team through the rugged terrain. Listening to this man repeat memorized maxims were the parents to today’s youth; some listened in rapt attention ready to do battle with the nearest windmill, while others wondered if anyone had told this man about the birds and bees.

Any good text will provide you with detailed information and lists of figures concerning the drop in the national income, the number of unemployed, an estimate of juvenile delinquency, and the number of bowls of soup handed out in the soup kitchens of some large city during some particular month, but their figures become very impersonal. It is difficult to think of Dad as one of sixteen million unemployed, he is much more important than that. He has been referred to as a member of the lost generation, but I imagine that he will be quick to say that it was just a generation that got a slow start.

After he left high school, what did this youth of 1930 do? Perhaps he went on to college, but chances are that he did not; and if he did, it is more than likely that he did not finish. We know a lot about him as an individual. He resented bread lines and soup kitchens. He made fun of the QPA as an army of men leaning on shovels, but he got his shovel and leaned on it, too. He read so many articles and heard so many speeches reminding him that his generation, born during a world war and making its debut during a world catastrophe, had not had a fair shuffle that he almost believed that his was a lost generation. He listened to reformers and social workers tell him that youth must be served and that his youth was his greatest asset. Then when he applied for that rare opportunity to secure employment, he was told he was too young and to come back when he had some experience.

Although the majority of these youths who became the fathers and mothers of today’s youth did not and will not make a line in recorded history, it will be eternally to their credit that with equal provocation they did not react in the same manner as the youth in other countries.

It was not the prospect of ease and plenty to eat that was the bait with which Adolf Schickelgruber, the mad paperhanger from Austria, lured the youth into goose-stepping groups all over the Third Reich or enticed young Italians into becoming enthusiastic young Fascists in a Mussolini dominated Italy. It was the prospect of having something to do and the prospect of being an essential part of the future of his country. The lure was potent and was not an insult to their intelligence, to become a useful member of society—although we know that usefulness was woefully misdirected and horribly distorted.

Our youth not only did not fall for Nazi, Fascist, and Communist propaganda, he was amused by it; he pointed his finger at the strutting, goose-stepping, arm swinging, heiling young snobs and yelled, “Sucker.” Opportunities for being distracted were all around him. Whenever there was a gathering, there were those who were ready to climb up on the soap box and expound on the wonderful cure their ism provided for the ills of an oppressed and betrayed people. Playgrounds and parks were infected to some degree with political misfits looking for a ready-made audience of unemployed and discouraged. In one of the colleges, a German exchange student organized Mein Kampf reading groups to include anyone who was studying the German language. Mein Kampf in the original German was the lure to a book hungry and lean purse student body, but it never got off the ground.

All was not peaches and cream, nor was our hero a hero to himself. Thousands of people saying no to his job applications, tramping the streets with burning feet inside of thin shoes, and the daily reminder that he was living off of someone else were definitely no encouragement to his self respect. There were periods of self pity and the periods of gloom were frequent, when it seemed as though politics and government were just so much alphabet soup. It was this reaction that Maxine Davis ran into when she asked a lad what he thought about the new National Youth Administration and why didn’t he associate himself with it.

“Naw, what’s the use?” he answered. “The politicials run everything, the dirty crooks. They’ll run this youth administration, too. We won’t get nothin. An’ the big boys run the politicians. I’m wise, Lady, I’m wise.”

There were many who were generous with their criticism. What is strange is that the older generation’s criticism of the younger generation of the thirties, in the middle of a general depression, was the same as the older generation’s criticism of the younger today in times of comparative prosperity. Maxine Davis cuffs them with one hand and pats them on the back with the other. She sounds very much the same as a 1959 parent when she says that the kids are spoiled and soft. Every generation thinks that the one following is getting softer and softer; yet the Olympic records go up and up. Miss Davis sums up her observations with: “Anyhow, here they are: —Sitting.”

Some of this sitting, I suspect, was conservation of energy and in other cases justly accused as apathy. The feeling was prevalent among youth that it was who you knew and not what you knew that was important in getting on in this chaotic and a bit unfair world. This was largely true. So many qualified people were after every job that knowing someone on the inside was a remarkable assist in getting the job. But it must also be remembered that it was, on the other hand, what you knew that kept you on the job. Competition among labor was at its highest point and few employers would penalize their business because you knew someone when they knew they could have the best in the labor market for subsistence wages.

Another criticism we heard was that they were quitters. The going got too rough so they left home and went on the bum. In some quarters we get the impression that they roamed the countryside in bands as a number one menace. Thomas Minehan compares them with the wide children of Russia. He obviously has the besprisoryni in mind. Although he goes no further than to liken American youth on the bum to “wild children of revolution-racked Russia” he leaves the implication that the United States was overrun with the same kind of problem that the besprisoryni presented to Russia with their wild bands of homeless children who roamed the countryside and ravaged cities with begging, stealing, and drinking.

There are always those who have less stiffening in their backbones than others and during this period of economic paralysis many did give up and make their way about the country walking, riding the rods, or hitchhiking from one “jungle” to another. Far from being marauding bands of looters, they became pitiful, half-starved singles, pairs and trios who lived by panhandling and petty theft.

There are many stories of these young tramps taken under the wing of a professional and taught the ways and codes of the open road. There were many attempts to glamorize the life among themselves. In the first place, it didn’t attract those with a potential for good citizenship. There were those who in more prosperous times would have been content to hang around home, but now that was unpleasant because the “old man” didn’t have a job. It attracted the sex pervert who was a misfit in society anyway, proponents of free love, and, unfortunately, those who ordinarily would have become decent respectable citizens but for whom the stresses and tensions became too much. Rather than becoming the glamorous free knights of the road, they were generally fed and sheltered by local police or by a refuge and hurried on the following day.

The more we look at this youth of 1930 to 1940, the more we wonder why he wasn’t lost. He doesn’t seem to have been encouraged to go to school or in any way better himself. In many parts of the country schools were shut down, resulting in the crowding of others. Some schools were further restricted as to length of term and size of their teaching staffs. Others were instructed to get rid of the frills, referring to music, manual training, Americanization classes, night schools, vocational schools, and medical care—all of which had become more necessary than ever before. Industry had practically closed its doors to any new help. During the years 1932 and 1933, General Electric took no new employees into their organization.

Miss Davis paints a dismal picture of the youth in regard to their faith. She compares her own youthful anticipation of church socials and Sunday School picnics which were looked forward to and well attended to the cynical attitude which she says she found prevalent among unemployed youth. She says they would observe another youth going to church and say that he was going just to be sociable. If he didn’t go to church he had no faith. It almost seems as though she started her trip with a negative attitude about some areas and her mood was catching.

The picture brightens with the advent of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and it would appear that many of America’s youth accepted it on faith. It was one of the most important measures that President Roosevelt was able to put over at an early date, and it clicked. It attracted thousands and thousands of more youths than were eligible—a boy had to be from a family on relief or a war veteran on relief. Regardless, many scrawny ill-fed boys from the city were transported to countrysides from the Atlantic to the Pacific to reclaim lands and to conserve the nation’s forests. They were given back their self-respect and their health. They were taught trades that would be of use to them as semi-skilled laborers.

In June of 1935, the National Youth Administration came into being with a capital of fifty million dollars for the purpose of finding employment for the unemployed, to train and retrain young people for technical and professional opportunities, to provide assistance for those who wanted it remain in high school or college, and to provide work relief on projects developed to meet the needs of youth.

Miss Davis and Ernest Lindley meet this NYA from entirely different points of view. Miss Davis says that this organization, which was the brain child of Aubrey Williams, deputy administrator of the FERA, was supported by only one qualification—that it had good intentions. She says of Williams that he was a visionary when he placed the administration of the NYA in the hands of youth with the comment, “youth shall serve youth.” She goes on to further state that these youthful administrators were not interested, had no experience, resented by older people with whom they had to deal, and lacked the human experience to discern what is good and what is bad. But she gives us little to substantiate her criticism.

Lindley, in his book A New Deal for Youth, goes through the entire 48 states relating the progress and programs of the NYA. With names and places he takes us into a group building a schoolhouse or a recreation center, converting unsightliness into beauty, uselessness into usefulness, and putting idle hands to work. These worked in small groups rather than armies of men.

Other organizations were at work. Youth had not been forgotten nor had youth arrived at the point where they would not help themselves. The YMCA was not as effective with the boys as the YWCA was with the girls, but it did work at finding something to do with free time, something constructive and at the same time interesting. They worked to promote health and healthy activities, and to educate the youth to the current social and economic questions.

This has not been nor was it intended to be a comparison of the youth of one age to the youth of another, but rather to show that the American youth of any era will meet the problems he faces and whereas he may be delayed, he will not be lost. When next you complain that the generation of your parents does not understand you, you are probably right; but his parents did not understand him either, and for a very different reason. His parents were so busy trying to find enough work to keep his healthy appetite under control that there wasn’t time to understand him. We are not now in the midst of a depression, but the times are not without their stresses and strains and it is there that the men are separated from the boys.

Davis, Maxine, The Lost Generation, New York, 1936.

Lindley, Betty and Ernest K., A New Deal for Youth, New York, 1938.

Minehan, Thomas, Boy and Girl Tramps of America, New York, 1934.

Saul/Paul

Saul/Paul

By Clevis O. Laverty

The old caravan road that led from Jerusalem to Damascus once had a distinguished traveler making haste over its dusty and rock strewn surface. Rich robes graced his slight figure; the overbearing manner of the Sanhedrin emphasized his erect posture. Dust coated his face, but did not conceal the eyes blazing with murderous intent. He breathed threats of violence against the disciples of the Lord and impatience clenched his hands into tight fists. Anticipation of the havoc he would create among the followers of The Way, in Damascus, made his strut like a bantam rooster. He fed his anger and hi impatience with the memory of a church destroyed at Jerusalem, razed to the ground. Satisfaction he gained at the image of charging from house to house, breaking up family groups of men and women who screamed in pain and anguish as they were dragged off to fill filthy, vermin infested prisons. All these things he remembered with relish; he was a man with a purpose. He had been commissioned by the high priests to arrest these fanatics in Damascus and bring them back to Jerusalem in fetters.

Suddenly, without warning, a blazing light splashed across the heavens and directed itself toward the traveler—a light of knowledge and understanding that lighted the earth and the way of men. Terror struck at the heart of the traveler. He was blinded and he fell to the ground; whereupon a voice that needed no ears to be heard boomed into his consciousness, “Why do you persecute me?”

When Saul of Tarsus arose the terror was gone. The man with a purpose, the destruction of the Christian Church, was also gone. Eyes no longer cruel gleamed with understanding from a face no longer harsh. Rich robes still covered his slight figure and he was still a traveler on his way to Damascus—but wait, there was one change. God had revealed unbelievably wonderful truths to him; and a task, to preach the unequaled riches of Christ, had been entrusted to him.

Representation of Evil in Ancient Art

Note: My father went back to college in 1956. Despite having had two years plus in the 1930s, he chose to start all over again as a Freshman at the University of New Hampshire. He went to school, commuting from Cape Porpoise Maine, three days a week, did his homework, and served as the minister of the Cape Porpoise Methodist Church. This paper is one of his research papers for college:

Representation of Evil in Ancient Art

By Clevis O. Laverty

When thou risest in the eastern horizon
Thou fillest the land with thy beauty,
Thou art beautiful, great, gleaming and high over every land
Thy rays, they embrace the lands to the limits of all thou hast made.

Thou are Ra and bringest them all,
Thou bildest them for thy beloved son
Thou art afar off, yet they rays are on the earth;
Thou art in the faces of men yet thy ways are not known. . .

So wrote the Pharoah Amenophis IV more than a thousand years after the first pyramid was built. Transition from a modern to an ancient culture stretches endlessly into oblivion to the imagination and presents a physical impossibility. Yet, a five-mile ride from Cairo across the Nile ends in the ancient city of Giza, sprawling on its bank. An open streetcar careens and bumps along uneven rails, through broad, paved avenues, past imposing white residences surrounded by green lawns to come to an abrupt halt at the very edge of Egyptian antiquity. The paved avenue disappears into the desert sands from which rise the Great Pyramid of Cheops with its streets of mastaba-tombs, Khafre’s Second Pyramid guarded by the Sphinx, the Third Pyramid of Mycerinus with those of his Queens, reaching for the sum whose rays they emulate in structure.

Standing at the base of Cheops, the mystery of the Nile and centuries of forgotten magic formulas overpower the observer. Its hugeness, purpose, and magnificence emphasize the ineffectiveness of the onlooker. It is majestic and haughty. It is foreboding. Is a structure evil? Was it built for evil purposes? No, just a tomb built to satisfy a king’s ego; yet on entering, chills run up and down the spine. An unnatural silence transports the modern back to antiquity, and evil spirits abound. A bat flutters in the darkness, and one can almost hear an ancient curse being intoned that would trap the intruder’s soul within the evil atmosphere to be pursued by mummified incarnations for an eternity.

Stepping out into the bright Egyptian sun again, the presence of evil falls off like an unwanted mantle, and there is just a pyramid of huge stone slabs rising out of the sterile sand.

We are told that the ancient Egyptian of the Old Kingdom could not conceive of any evil in himself, only good. However, good and evil are relative to one another; perhaps ancient evil is represented by its omission or by the insistence in depicting good in his architecture, paintings, steles, amulets, furniture, sculpturing, and writings. His innate belief in magic, whereby he drew pictures and made models on the walls of his tomb, showed that he was seeking protection. Protection from what: good?

The very tombs he built depicted evil; the evil lies in the hearts of men who would pilfer them. He constructed solid mastabas and then went to considerable pains to disguise the location of the burial chamber. Several entities made up a man, he believed, and evil would befall him if they were permanently separated. Every precaution was taken to insure that the ka, aakhu, ab, sahu, hkaib, and sekhem remained together in the hereafter. His art, therefore, was utilitarian: to protect his several entities from the evil forces which were at work to destroy him. The ka soul was painted or modeled in his burial chamber so that it would be handy to the sahu body when it was awakened for the trip through the underworld. Every burial chamber depicted the ka in some manner; every funerary painting shows the importance of the ka in the hereafter. For if it were to be destroyed, a man would be placed in the evil position of having no soul and the trip would be impossible.

At the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, there is a boatpit and in it are the remains of the funerary boat of Cheops. Although the construction of the boat is not in itself an object of evil, it was built so that Cheops could make the trip to the underworld. It leaves the impression that without it he would be stranded and thereby denied his proper position in the hereafter, an evil happening.

Many slate palettes have been found dating from the First Dynasty. One of these depicts the enemies of the king as evil and the Bull Palette shows the enemy of the king being gored to death by a victorious bull, evil lies prostrate. Other slate palettes actually show the ass, crocodile, hippopotamus, and gazelle as evil because they ravaged crops. The first three are shown in connection with Set who according to the myths attempted to destroy his brother, Osiris, by cutting him into fourteen pieces and scattering them far and wide. Isis collected the pieces and Osiris’ son, Horus, avenged his father by defeating Set and banishing him to the desert country. While Set is not actually set up as god of evil, things that are evil are connected to him. the ass head appears on figures of Set and festivals are shown where the ass is sacrificed or starved in hatred of Set.

Throughout the Old Kingdom and during most of the Middle Kingdom, there was a continued inability to look at evil, at least in the paintings and writings in the temples and tombs. However, there appeared to be an almost desperate reaching out for immortality and even in the scenes of the hereafter it can only be presumed that the good man fared better than the evil man. This early Egyptian did not want to see the evil within himself whereby immortality might be denied to him.

Grant thou that I may enter into the land of everlastingness, according to that which was done for thee, Osiris, along with thy father Tem, whose body never saw corruption. Let not my body become worms, but deliver me as thou didst thyself. I pray thee let me not fall into rottenness even as thou didst permit every god and every goddess, and every animal, and every reptile to see corruption when the soul hath gone forth from them after their death.”

During the 13th Dynasty at the end of the Middle Kingdom and through the Hyksos Period, a definite change took palace in the provision for a future life. A strong Asiatic influence is shown in the depiction of the hereafter, the recognition of evil forces and the need to prepare defenses against them. From this point on through the New Kingdom, the Book of the Dead is used profusely to illustrate the journey of the departed in the netherworld.

Egyptian paintings of the New Kingdom were primarily utilitarian, their burial chambers were seldom decorated except with texts from the Book of the Dead. The visible part of the tomb was the chapel, the dead man’s future home, whose walls were adorned with scenes of his earthly life, his life beyond the grave, and the rites performed over the dead body. Following the rules of the priests, the artists showed little originality and although the religious symbols and divinities are flawlessly drawn, they do not come to life or have any emotional effect on the viewer.

These painting divide themselves into three categories, mythological, ritualistic, and biographical. Later on these divisions will be shown in connection with paintings from the Book of the Dead where they are more intertwined than separated.

The mythological paintings show the spirituality of the Egyptian, full of hidden meanings known to the priests and the initiates. Concepts of evil symbolized by darkness and fire are overcome by the gods through the use of charms, charms which they also use to repel the Great Serpent, Apap, the evil force who would draw them toward their execution.

The evil of a decomposed corpse is signified in the ritualistic paintings by a greenish skin. At this time great care was taken to preserve the body; the ancient Egyptian thought he would need that body in his after life. Half-human-half-animal forms supervise the ritual in which the heart of the dead man is weighed on the Scales of Truth to discover if he be good or evil, whether he should have immortality or eternal death. These ceremonial scenes are enacted on an earthly plane and their purpose is to glorify the individual in death. All stages of the funeral are represented, but the purification of the body is significant along with its glorification, for it is to wash the evil from the deceased in order that he may be better equipped for the judgement.

No evil which is not biographical in the strictest sense is depicted in the biographical paintings, but an idealized version of life. An attempt to bring more evidence to bear in favor of the dead man would be defeated by the inclusion of evil in his lifetime.

A complete about-face in the New Kingdom opposed to the Old Kingdom is the concept of the location of the future life. Rather than the east, it is the Kingdom of the West to which the dead man must arrive. The paintings show the king following in the footsteps of the god, Ra, traveling in the sunset of his life to the west where the sun has fulfilled its course. Along the way, the evils that can befall him are denoted by darkness, fire, the Great Serpent, and the reluctance of the boatman to take the new passenger. When these evils have been surmounted, the pharaoh is united as one with the god, to sail in the “bark of millions of years” to the netherworld.

In the burial chamber of Tuthmosis III, the king is shown being suckled by the Sycomore Goddess, Isis, to insure that no evil will be found in him.

The murals on the four walls of the sepulchral chamber of the Tutankhamen picture the funeral processions already mentioned ending with the purifying rite of “the opening of the mouth.” The evil removed, the goddess of the sky welcomes the pharaoh.

Female mourners betoken their grief in the tomb of Userhet with tears and putting lower lips.

The representation of the overpowering of evil is probably best illustrated in the colorful and well-drawn vignettes of the Book of the Dead. A few scenes from the Papyri of Hunefer, written during the reign of Set I, will illustrate the concept of evil of the Egyptian of the New Kingdom. His belief is that the more evil ways a man follows in this life, the more difficulty he will have in gaining immortality. The paintings also show that even the good have many evils placed in their path to test them and to be overcome before attaining unity with the gods. The scene of the Weighing of the Heart of the Dead is impressive. Led by Anubis, god of the dead, Hunefer enters the Hall of Truth where his heart (conscience) is placed on the scales. The heart must be very free from evil for it is balanced by a feather which is the law. Judging over this are fourteen gods who take no part in the interrogation, but they pass judgement on the results. The jackal-headed Anubis tests the tongue of the scale to make sure that Hunefer gets a “fail shake.” Standing close to the scale is the monstrous evil Amemit, “Eater of the Death,” represented as a crocodile-lion-hippopotamus, ready to pounce if the conscience outweighs the feather. The Scribe, Ibis-headed Thoth, stands behind the scale recording the result. Evil is defeated as Hunefer is found to be just, whereupon Horus leads him into the presence of Osiris to take his place among the immortals.

The scene of the funeral procession to the tomb is actually a succession of scenes in which the representation of evil is very definitely taken into account. In the opening scene, the mummy of Hunefer lies in his coffer which has been placed on a standard in the bow of the boat. Standing before him in the bow, the jackal-headed Anubis recites the funeral service. In the next scene Hunefer is being embraced by Anubis who then leads him to Osiris. He is then identified as Osiris Hunefer as they are inseparable in all of the accompanying festivals. Here Thoth is shown in a cartoon-like drawing making Hunefer victorious on the day of the Weighing of the Words.

The next few scenes involve the overpowering of evil. Hunefer and Osiris slay the enemies of Osiris, and the fiend Sebau, the symbol of evil, is kept in bonds. Then the egg is shown and the force arising from the egg to quench the Flame of the Pool of Fire. The rite of the opening of the mouth is performed four times, once by Horus, once by Thoth, once by Sep, and finally by Seb. By this rite, Hunefer is purified of evil.

Hunefer is pictured going both ways, symbolizing his power over the underworld, and then his soul stands on a pylon-shaped building, proclaiming its triumph. Two lions are shown standing back to back, symbolical of the fact that Hunefer has gained all knowledge of Yesterday and Tomorrow. Yesterday he knows through Osiris and Tomorrow through Ra. With this knowledge, the enemies can be destroyed.

The concluding scenes deal entirely with evil and with the enemies of Hunefer and Osiris. Kneeling before seven gods, or judges, armed with knives, the deceased waits for them to cut away all evil that may be clinging to him and float it away on the water, and the Flame, no longer evil, is brought under his control to destroy the souls of his enemies. Symbolizing his enemies is the serpent with the Great Cat cutting off its head. The final scene is triumphant; five ram-headed gods hold aloft the symbol of life which has conquered the fiends of darkness; evil is represented and defeated.

The Pyramids of Giza, who were ancient even to Cleopatra rise out of the sands reaching for the sun; the mysteries of thousands of years locked within their Kas. They have a bond with the Nile they overlook, in whose bosom lies the solution to the countless enigmas of ancient Egypt.

The Gods that were aforetime rest in their Pyramids,
Likewise the nobles and glorified, buried in their Pyramids.
They that build houses, their habitations are no more.
What hath been done with them?

I have heard the discourses of Imhotep and Hardedef
With whose words men speak everywhere.
What are their habitations now?
Their walls are destroyed, their habitations are no more,
As if they had never been.

None cometh from thence that he may tell us how they fare,
That he may tell us what they need, that he may set our hearts at rest,
Until we also go to the place whither they are gone.

In His Own Words: Tribute to My Father

Preface

In His Own Words

Clevis Owen Laverty was born on April 18, 1917 in Westbrook, Maine, the elder child of Merton and Mable (Buzzell) Laverty. Through his parents, he could trace his lineage back to two of Maine’s oldest families. On the paternal side, he descended from the successful but colorful and litigious Merrills whose early history can be traced through court documents; on the maternal side from the Morrells, also successful but a quiet, highly respected Quaker family. In addition to the sense of adventure and the sensitivity that he inherited from these roots, he inherited a love of teaching and a gift for storytelling from his father’s family, the Laverty’s, who immigrated to Canada from Ireland in the early years of the nineteenth century.

Born during the First World War, Clevis grew up in the more stable, if not prosperous, twenties and came of age at the height of the Great Depression. The son of a teacher, he was supposed to go to college, etc. But the real world had other plans. He entered Colby College in Waterville, Maine after graduating from high school. When his father’s business went bankrupt, he had to leave college. After that, he worked at a series of odd jobs—dishwasher, waterfront reporter for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald—before entering the U.S. Army, serving in the last mounted unit of the U.S. Cavalry and riding guard duty along the Panama Canal. After he left the army, he married—on June 3, 1939—Marie Lucy Gravel, a vivacious young woman from the St. John Valley of Maine whom he had met before enlisting. He then entered the Massachusetts Radio School in Boston, Mass. and after finishing his studies there, he was hired as a navigator by Pan American World Airways in Florida.

His days at Pan American and his experiences during the Second World War were the truly great adventures of his life. Before the Second World War, Clevis flew regular flights to Latin American destinations. After the United States entered the War, Pan American was leased to the U.S. Armed Forces and he flew survey flights as well as transporting supplies and prisoners around North Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan. Health problems—he suffered from ulcers—grounded him, and although Pan American gave him a desk job, he was unhappy. He left Florida and joined the Merchant Marine, serving on the Boston-Murmansk run until the end of the war. After the war, he tried a radio job with a railroad in western Massachusetts and even returned briefly to Pan American. Neither job satisfied him. Again, there was a succession of jobs, this time in sales: a wholesale bread salesman for Bond Bread, a retail salesman for another bread company, a parts salesman for the Pontiac dealership in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and finally an insurance salesman for Metropolitan Life.

During this time, he came under the influence of Arthur Hopkinson, a Methodist minister serving the parish in Greenfield. Hopkinson came from Wales, and although his parishioners knew him as a proper English cleric, he told colorful stories of his days in the Welsh coal mines when he could “outcuss and outfight” virtually anyone. After Hopkinson’s death, Clevis decided to enter the ministry, and with the help of Norman Porter, the new minister at his church and a son of a District Superintendent in Maine, in 1957, he was appointed lay pastor to a small church in Cape Porpoise, Maine. At the same time, since he could not become a full-time minister without a college degree, he entered the University of New Hampshire as a freshman. He also completed ministerial training and classes at Boston University during the summers. In 1961, he graduated from UNH and was ordained a minister in the Methodist Church. In addition to Cape Porpoise, he served parishes in South Portland and West Scarborough, Maine.

After the tragic death of one of his Eagle Scouts, Clevis became disillusioned, left the ministry and became a teacher. His first appointment was as an English teacher at Peekskill (NY) Military Academy (PMA). When PMA closed in the ‘60s, he returned to Maine, teaching English at the high school in Norway, Maine until his retirement. He also returned to his love of radio communication, becoming very active in amateur radio activities such as the Pine Tree Net and editing The Yarn. A thirty-second degree Mason, he entered the Order of the Shrine, becoming very active in the Kora Temple of Lewiston, Maine.

From 1957 until 1977, Clevis wrote. He wrote essays, short stories, sermons, research papers, and curriculum proposals. None were ever published: he never sought to publish them. But they, more than any other thing, bear testimony to the strength, the temper, the interests, the sense of adventure, the courage, the understanding of people, the sense of humor, the passion, the vulnerability, the insecurities, and this man’s intellectual capacity. This collection of his writings is unedited—in his own words.

I want to thank my sister, Nancy Strubbe, for helping me collect these writings, my sister and her daughter, Christina, for helping put the genealogical information together, and my husband, Gene Wolfe, for patiently reading many of these articles for textual inconsistencies and typographical errors.

Pakistan Fisherman

By Clevis O. Laverty

Pakistan, land of snake charmers, belly dancers, and sacred cows, lay steaming under a blistering sun, screened by Oriental mystery. Fantastic funeral processions twisted and wound their way through the dirt-littered streets of Karachi, where untended sacred animals foraged, a menace to traffic.

Shopkeepers stood in uninviting doorways in open competition for the prospective customers who strolled casually down the cracked and uneven sidewalk, a sidewalk that was littered with soiled newspapers, torn paper bags, spittle, dead cats, and ragged little urchins who held out grubby knots of hands for stray coins.

Conspicuously contrasting with these surroundings, two American Air Transport officers appeared; their freshly laundered khaki uniforms reflected the orderliness of the wearers. Their voices were animated and crisp, and their eyes wanted to miss nothin and darted excitedly from shop to sidewalk to street. As if by signal, the shopkeepers came to life and rubbed their hands together in anticipation.

The officers stopped at a shop to peer into the gloomy interior, and the merchant wasted not a moment. He sprang in front of them, grasped an elbow, and gestured toward his shop. He extolled the wares of his establishment with a diarrhea of words that fell here and there and tumbled one over the other.

The officers shook their heads and looked down the street. The shopkeeper grew frantic; his gestures, wilder. He pleaded. He threatened. He begged. Dubiously and reluctantly, the two Americans went into the shop.

When the shopkeeper entered the shop, his frenzy fell from him like a cloak, and he became the host, the businessman, the proprietor. He picked his way among narrow tables and past full shelves of sandalwood figurines, ivory knickknacks, water-buffalo-horn carvings, and bolts of silk cloth distributed in reckless abandon. He beckoned his visitors to follow him, making sure that he led them past all those items that attracted the eye of the tourist.

After traversing the length of the room, the host bade his guests sit down and relax. He clapped his hands, and a short fat, untidy woman appeared out of the darkness in the rear, bearing a tray with an ornate teapot and eggshell teacups. Turkish cigarettes were passed around, and the host made polite conversation about the war, American politics, baseball, and Mahatma Gandhi as the two men sipped their tea and inhaled aromatic tobacco.

As one of the Americans finished his tea, he pointed a piece of silk cloth and inquired for the prices.

Ah..h..h the fat was in the fire. The host became the businessman. He knew what interested his customers: no more shadow boxing. He girded himself as a gladiator for the fray. There would be haggling, but that was part of the game, a game at which he would bow to nobody.

The fish had taken the bait, and a master fisherman was handling the reel.

Teaching Writing: Position Paper

Clevis O. Laverty

POSITION PAPER

My Position on the teaching of writing at the senior high school level remains fundamentally unchanged at the end of this institute: students must write in the light of their own experiences or valid vicarious experiences. The basic Procedures have been supported by enough speakers to give me, perhaps, more confidence that pre writing writing, sharing, rewriting, sharing, rewriting, and editing are valid points along the hard road to producing a finished manuscript.

My purpose is to help students communicate their and feelings and reactions to an experience to someone else in such a way that it will touch a responsive note somewhere in the reader's experience. This can be done in a step by step procedure in which the student comprehends one step before going to another and then uses them as tools in shaping the finished product.

Prewriting stands as a natural first step, and in this very important preparation I have received several ideas that have not occurred to me before. The idea of brainstorming is so simple and powerful that the wonder is that it has eluded me until now. The many forms of brainstorming augment the idea notebook, which is a form of brainstorming but not as concentrated.

All narratives include a setting, people, action, points of view, and often include dialogue to give them reality. The student visits a place with which he is familiar and then learns to describe it. He learns that he does not need a complete description to touch base with his readers. If he mentions a farmhouse, the reader has seen farmhouses. If he alludes to that farmhouse as rundown or carefully tended, the reader has seen these in his own experience.

The writer then applies the same method to introducing a person. He reminds the reader of a person the reader has seen or knows, and an instant image appears that is meaningful to the reader. He describes a person in the light of that person's dominant characteristics.

At ease now with people and places, the budding writer now experiments with putting people into a place where there is action. This becomes a little more complicated because he now meets the five senses and must communicate sensory detail that the reader can identify. But with people and places out of the way, he can concentrate on this new experience.

Studying, discussing, and writing about points of view serve two purposes. For one thing he can make his narrative more interesting by seeing the incident through the eyes of a particular character or by changing to the point of view of another character. In the second place the teenage writer is no longer the center of the stage, and he sees the same incident through the eyes and feelings of several different people. He discovers that different people with different experiences in their backgrounds see events differently.

The student discovers dialogue. He can reveal personalities. He can save time by starting his narration in the middle of the action and bring his reader up to date as the characters communicate with one another. It becomes a valuable tool in giving realism to a story or an account.

These steps do require time, patience, and a certain amount of hard work for both the student and the teacher, but the reward to the student is in discovering that people know exactly what he is writing about. As he goes along he shares his experiences in each step with his classmates, and together they go on to share other experiences with the whole narrative involving irony, flashback, and limitless possibilities.

How To Snap Roll A Chevrolet

Clevis O. Laverty

HOW TO SNAP ROLL A CHEVROLET

Do you think that there ought to be an investigation of a man who could get up in the middle of the night in order to go for a horseback ride in the rain? You do? There is no record of any such investigation of Paul Revere. Of course, the absurdity here is in the arrangement of the question. But I was once accused of flying eleven thousand miles in order to get into an automobile accident.

The preceding paragraph is absurd; the incident I’m going to relate was absurd. Always a source of amazement and amusement to me is the frequency of the occasions whereby a series of absurd little incidents evolves into the center of tragic potentialities and finally resolves itself into absurdities.

It was true; we had flown eleven thousand miles from Miami to Karachi. We were suppose to have been a most efficient crew of a most up-to-date airplane making a survey flight of Near East landing fields to find out whether or not the C-54 could be accommodated. Efficient? We had had more troubles than Carter has pills. That modern aircraft had developed trouble with everything but the passengers; there weren’t any. We had been due back in Miami by Christmas; we spent Christmas in Gura. And now with the New Year almost in sight, we were at the apex of our trip at a hotel in Karachi. The name of that hotel: The Killarney, and all the tea in China wouldn’t have purchased an Irish stew there.

Needless to say, we were all anxious to see an end to this farce from which we felt no good could come. Word came on our second night that we would leave for Habbaniya the next morning. We overslept, then made a mad dash for the dining room. The Killarney dining room! As you stepped into it, you half expected to see Gunga Din scurrying around filling the water glasses from an old goat intestine. We filed into the dining room just in time to see the captain finishing his breakfast; he admonished us to “get on the ball.” He left. We sat down. We felt we had plenty of time, and so we leisurely ordered, waited, and prepared to eat.

Lo, that series of absurdities hadn’t ended: the table broke down and spread itself in all directions as though it too were in on some diabolical conspiracy. By the time another table had been prepared and another breakfast brought in, we finished in time to observe the captain disappear down the road in the staff car.

I dashed back into the hotel and called the airport for another staff car. I should have been a little suspicious when it arrived so soon, but we were in a hurry and merely congratulated ourselves on its early arrival. Then we had the temerity to tell the driver to step on it. How that car ever got through the streets of the city of Karachi without solving their overpopulation problem, I’ll never know.

Almost instantly, we were shrieking down a long, narrow ribbon of concrete flanked by steel telegraph poles. Up to this point, our driver’s good luck, rather than skill, kept us on this side of eternity.

Then they happened. The events piled up. There was the RAF truck lumbering along or appeared to be. We later discovered it was traveling sixty miles an hour. Our driver was a real Barney Oldfield; he zoomed up behind the truck swerved to the right to pass. The absurdity of absurdities was right there in front of us: A great big unconcerned camel pulling one of those ridiculously small carts.

We made a ninety degree left turn between the front of the truck and the camel, taking the truck’s right front fender with us. I don’t know how many of those ninety degree turns we made; I have a fleeting recollection of steel telegraph poles approaching us first on one side and then on the other. Then they all got mixed up as we rolled over and finally came to rest right side up.

Shaken but unhurt, we emerged from the remains. My memory of the ride ends with this final absurd scene and my own crazy thoughts. There was the flight engineer dancing around in the middle of the road, unable to remove a pith helmet that had been jammed down over his ears; the camel standing there with his nose turned up as though the whole thing stank; and the driver standing there wringing his hands and telling us that it just didn’t handle like his old man’s tractor in Kansas.

My own thoughts: What a crazy bunch of people to go out and snap roll a Chevrolet so early in the morning.

Cold Call

Clevis O. Laverty

Note: for a time, my father sold insurance for Metorpolitan Life. This story seems to catch his feelings on his first call.

Cold Call

By Clevis O. Laverty

A small late-model automobile slowly slid up to the curb in front of the well-manicured lawn of the prosperous-looking ranch style house in the suburbs. It came to stop hesitantly and the motor idled unevenly as though sensing the driver’s reluctance to shut it off. It stopped and was silent.

Frank Brown sat for a moment in a quiet torment of indecision. Sooner or later he would have to take the bull by the horns, now is as good a time as any. Very deliberately he removed the key from the switch, opened the door, placed a foot outside, and then frantically jammed the key back in the ignition and groped for the starter. But wait, suppose he had been seen by the people in the house. They would speculate about such unorthodox actions. He began to feel about as conspicuous as a tail on a rabbit. The shiny new brief case on the soft blue upholstery beside him caught his eye, reminded him he had a job to do, mouths to feed, car payments to meet.

As he started up the walk with the key safely in his pocket the bright yellow sun warmed him. The sun shone on Casey and the Mudville Nine too. The long thorns on the briar hedge menaced him, a threat to any intruder. He looked hopefully ahead at the door. Two long narrow windows on either side scowled at him and the letter slit in the door frowned. He clutched the shiny new brief case tighter with its brand new rate book and collection of visual aids that the home office had guaranteed would sell insurance. The home office ought to be here. He couldn’t even compare himself to Daniel going into the lion’s den; Daniel had no doubts. Perhaps there isn’t anyone home, but the car is in the driveway. They will surely sense his newness, his insecurity; scoff at his inexperience and send him packing. At least there wouldn’t be any physical violence, still about now he would welcome that.

Abruptly his steps brought him to the forbidding door and with an apology framed on his lips he let the knocker fall with a sepulchral thud. The door was opened by a lovely young woman in whom surprise and pleasure were mirrored in her eyes and echoed in her voice as she said:

“Why Frank, how nice. We had heard that you had gone with acme Life and we are so happy for you. Only the other night Tom and me were saying that we ought to get our insurance untangled. You are just the man we want to see. Please come in.”

Visit with Bill

Visit with Bill
Rev. Clevis O. Laverty

“That’s pretty deep stuff, Reverend.”

This observation was made by a man nearly eighty years of age whom I visit frequently, a pastoral call that I enjoy. There is nothing very complex about Bill. He is in very poor health; it infuriates him. He is near death; he accepts the fact. When I call he loves to lean back in his easy chair, light his pipe, and turn the conversation in a direction that will lead to a superficial theological discussion. He is a man of unwavering faith and feels that he is thoroughly at peace with God.

On this particular visit he steered the conversation around until it arrived at a point where he could ask me how I as a preacher could be so sure that there is a God; not how I could convince him because he knew. I thought for several minutes, Bill is in no hurry in this game of stump the preacher, and told him that I could think of about three reasons, off-hand.

The first one must be lived rather than proved, that belief in God is a characteristically human experience. It is natural and normal for people to seek after Him. While this desire is not positive proof, it is strong evidence. Look at other human urges. We hunger, there is food; a sex impulse, we have mates; there would not be this urge to find God unless there were a God to satisfy it.

The second reason is the kind of life that comes from a belief in God. It is true that not all great men were Christians, but it is true that they were all rooted in a religious faith. The people whom I know that face calamity, suffering, and adversity with the greatest poise are those to whom faith in God is vital. When you meet one of these people your own doubts fade.

In the third place I would go to the sciences. Those who attack the authenticity of the Bible from the standpoint of evolution provide me with the clearest evidence. For me or anyone else to assume that all these things about us evolved from stardust to amoebae, to man, to Jesus just by accident is stretching the imagination beyond its elasticity. I can only agree with Tennyson, “Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs.”

I settled back in my chair just a little bit proud of the on-the-spot sermon, but still on the alert for whatever bomb Bill might choose to drop.

Bill puffed a little on his pipe, winked at me and said, “It’s pretty deep stuff, isn’t it reverend?”

When The Minister Comes to Call

When the Minister Comes to Call

By Clevis O. Laverty

When the minister comes to call, it is an event in the lives of some people. As the minister drove into the rutted and boulder-strewn driveway of the home of “Cappy” Perkins, he wondered if he was attaching more importance to his calling than was warranted. Perhaps he was taking an egotistical view of his own worth. But that wasn’t so. He was coming in a very humble capacity—a servant. He was serving as a link between these people, who were unable to leave their home, and the church they desperately needed in their declining years. He was not Mr. Laverty; he was Mr. Methodist Church, God’s ambassador.

With his capacity squared-away, the minister unfolded his long frame from behind the wheel, strode across the lawn, picked his way through the shed and knocked on the kitchen door. What would the reaction be here today? What would he say and how would he say it? He had not called since Cappy’s brother died a week ago today. Would they be resentful? Resigned? He hoped neither, but rather he hoped to find a positive and creative reaction to the circumstances. The circumstantial will of god; he had preached on that subject that morning.

The door opened and at the sound of his voice—instant recognition by Mrs. Perkins who was nearly blind. There was unconcealed happiness in her voice as she invited him in. Any doubts the preacher may have entertained concerning the importance of this visit were immediately dispelled.

“Cappy, come see who is here, the minister has come to call,” she bubbled in one long breath filled with excitement.

The Sally M

THE SALLY M
by Clevis O. Laverty

The wind, reduced to an unimportant breeze, drifted wearily across the pier. It curled around the barrels of decomposing bait, huddling under the open shelter at the west end. It saturated itself with the putrefied odor of thousands of rotting red fish, and then permeated the rest of the pier.

As the sun burst into full view from behind Goat Island, the lobstermen, in boots and oilskins, arrived at the pier. Oblivious to the gagging smell that oozed from each barrel, and without confusion, they selected their barrels of bait, and end-rolled them to the edge of the pier for easy loading. Forty or fifty lobstermen provided eighty or ninety barrels of bait for their forty or fifty boats without any apparent haste, yet in an hour only the sea gulls remained on the pier.

The Sally M chugged in from her night moorings and tied up at the pier. Although it lacked only a few minutes of high tide, the lobster boat floated a good fifteen feet below the pier floor. The sole occupant of the craft, after securing her fore and aft, clomped clumsily and surely up the ladder on the piling. Finding his two barrels of bait, he attached grapple and line to one, and lowered it over the side into the Sally M with a hand winch. Then the other followed, cleverly guided into place beside the first on the bottom of the boat. This lobsterman was ready to start his day’s work.

The man descended the ladder with deliberate steps, dropped heavily into the boat, left one barrel aft, and slid the other forward under the half roof of the open wheelhouse. Wiping his hand across his red, leathery face, the man squinted at the sun, peered around at the now empty harbor and cast off. He opened the throttle and with a tip of his cap to the circling sea gulls who belabored him with angry raucous circles from overhead, he steered the Sally M to the east’ard into the channel.

The Sally M was not a big boat, eighteen or twenty feet long. She was not a new boat, twelve or fifteen years old. She represented a woman’s dream of a comfortable home without the specter of failure haunting her, a boy’s dream of a good education which would promise him a future without barrels of bait, early rising, frozen fingers, sunburnt face, and unpredictable weather. To the man, there was no dream, just day to day drudgery. If the weather was good, he fished, and wished he was somewhere else. If a storm blew up, he stayed ashore, and cursed the weather that prevented him from fishing.

Up and down the coast of Maine, gruff-voiced fishermen will tell you that a boat has a personality. The Sally M, like the fallen, high-born lady with dirty skirts, seemed to have none; she just was, and she didn’t care. Perhaps the daily baptism of maggoty red fish had dismayed her, maybe the clomp of sea-stained boots injured her fine feelings. Did the daily struggle with choppy seas close to the rocks, and out guessing the reefs frighten her, and break her spirit. No, she just didn’t care. But perhaps she did once, perhaps there was a day when dead, dry hermit crabs didn’t lie around her deck a dew feet from the snail shells they had pre-empted. Did she, at times lying hove to at her moorings, remember days when scratches in her paint were not allowed to remain like festering wounds? Was she so far beyond care that gleaming brass work was no longer even a memory? Why didn’t she care?

People often develop personalities from those with whom they associate. Perhaps it was so with the Sally M. Still, other lobster boats skipped lightly over the cold Atlantic with clean, white paint gleaming in the golden rays of a friendly sun. They strained eagerly into crisp nor’easters, proudly displaying shining brass and washed decks. Many barrels of decomposing red fish had been slid into their hulls, yet they remained uncontaminated by them.

The man shaded his eyes from the sun just passing its zenith, signaling to him the middle of the day. Dropping the bait he held, back into the barrel, he wiped his palms on scale and brine encrusted pant legs, and unwrapped a huge sandwich from the basket at his elbow. Half-chewed bites were noisily followed by copious draughts from a battered and scarred thermos bottle. He cast a baleful glance at his haul; two bushels of lobsters are certainly not a big catch, but he seemed satisfied. Baiting the trap that lay on his deck, he dumped it over the side, and the Sally M headed listlessly for home and anchorage.

The round, yellow sun was still high in the pale blue sky when the Sally M made her way into the still empty harbor and tied up to the floating lobster pound where the man would sell his haul. This haul and other hauls from which a woman dreamed of a pleasant home. and a boy of an adequate education.

“In kinda early fer a nice day like this, ain’tcha Jake?” asked the pound owner. “Wassamatter, ain’t they runnin’?”

“They are runnin’ pretty good, Seth, but I got enuf fer the week’s groceries.”

Quotes

The DC-3

It was the first airplane . . . that could make money just by hauling passengers.
-- C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines.

The DC-3 specifications were shaped by AA.

I came to admire this machine which could lift virtually any load strapped to its back and carry it anywhere in any weather, safely and dependably. The C-47 groaned, it protested, it rattled, it leaked oil, it ran hot, it ran cold, it ran rough, it staggered along on hot days and scared you half to death, its wings flexed and twisted in a horrifying manner, it sank back to earth with a great sigh of relief - but it flew and it flew and it flew.
-- Len Morgan. The C-47 was the U.S. military designation for the DC-3.

. . . four other pieces of equipment that most senior officers came to regard as
among the most vital to our success in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the
jeep, the 2½-ton truck, and the C-47 airplane. Curiously, none of these is designed
for combat.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Give me fifty DC-3's and the Japanese can have the Burma Road.
-- Chiang Kai-Shek

We badly need an aircraft which will provide the DC-3's reliability, its same ease of
maintenance, and a similar low cost. One approach could be to marry a modern
turboprop engine to a modern airframe. Surely our design capabilities are great
enough to create a plane as advanced . . . as the DC-3 was in its day
-- U.S. Senator A.S. 'Mike' Monroney. This former chairman of the Senate
Aviation Subcommittee isn't the only one to have this thought, lots of planes
have claimed to be "the next DC-3." None have succeeded.

. . . as you approached Arnhem you got the impression that there wasn't wingspan
room between flak bursts, not to mention the small-arms fire! To my right a Dakota,
I think flown by Flt Lt Lord, caught fire. Having dropped our load, we banked and
weaved as violently as possible to avoid fire from the ground and headed home . . .
I never ceased to be amazed at the damage the Dakota could sustain and continue
to fly. One came back home with a hole in the fuselage large enough to push a chair
through.
-- Flt. Lt. Alec Blythe

It doesn't look nearly as big as it did the first time I saw one. Mickey McGuire and I used to sit hour after hour in the cockpit of the one that American used for training, at the company school in Chicago, saying to each other, 'My God, do you think we'll ever learn to fly anything this big?'
-- Ernest K. Gann, quoted in 'Flying' magazine, September 1977.

TRIBUTE TO THE DC-3

In fifty-one they tried to ground the noble DC-3
And some lawyers brought the case before the C.A.B.
The board examined all the facts behind their great oak portal
And pronounced these simple words "The Gooney Birds Immortal"

The Army toast their Sky Train in lousy scotch and soda
The Tommies raise their glasses high to cheer their old Dakota
Some claim the C-47's best, or the gallant R4D
Forget that claim, their all the same, they're the noble DC-3.

Douglas built the ship to last, but nobody expected
This crazy heap would fly and fly, no matter how they wrecked it
While nations fall and men retire, and jets go obsolete
The Gooney Bird flies on and on at eleven thousand feet.

No matter what they do to her the Gooney Bird still flies
One crippled plane was fitted out with one wing half the size
She hunched her shoulders then took off (I know this makes you laugh)
One wing askew, and yet she flew, the DC-3 and a half.

She had her faults, but after all, who's perfect in every sphere?
Her heating system was a gem we loved her for her gear
Of course the windows leaked a bit when the rain came pouring down
She'd keep you warm, but in a storm, it's possible you'd drown.

Well now she flies the feeder lines and carries all the freight
She's just an airborne office, a flying twelve ton crate
The patched her up with masking tape, with paper clips and strings
And still she flies, she never dies, Methuselah with wings.

-- Submitted by Mark Dinan, original poet unknown.




Maps and Charts

I didn't start out to chart the skies; it's just no one had done it before.
-- E. B. Jeppesen. Captain Jeppesen drew the first approach charts to airports,
and founded the company that now supplies them to airlines around the world.

I didn't start the business to make a pile of money. I did it to preserve myself for old age.
-- E. B. Jeppesen

I am drawn to the new chart with all of its colorful intricacies as a gourmet must
anticipate the details of a feast . . . I shall keep them forever. As stunning exciting proof that a proper mixture of science and art is not only possible but a blessed union.
-- Ernest K. Gann, 'Fate is the Hunter.'

\To the IFR cognoscente, it's a serious misunderstanding of instrument flying to think of an approach plate as a mere map for dropping out of the clouds in search of a runway, at the very least, a plate is a work of art and for the true zealot, it's a
symbol of man's continuing struggle against the forces of nature.
-- Paul Bertorelli, 'IFR' Magazine.

The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the
map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.

-- Count General Alfred Habdank Korzybski

Sacrifice on the Macoris

Sacrifice on the Macoris

By Clevis O. Laverty

Crackling static vibrated the radio receiver and warned that a major storm was approaching. Hazardous for ships and deadly for aircraft, a Caribbean hurricane had been reported sweeping through Mona Passage. One hundred-and-twenty-mile-an-hour winds that could snap a mast or fold a pair of wings swirled and twisted in unleashed fury off the west coast of Puerto Rico.

Less than a hundred miles to the west, a small seaplane glided down through calm air and settled gently on the quiet waters of the Macoris River. The figure of her radio officer appeared out of a hatch in her bow. He expertly scooped up a line from a buoy and attached it to the bow before the airplane’s speed had slackened perceptibly. The propellers stopped abruptly as the engine’s were cut; the flying boat quickly lost headway and settled down listlessly among the buoys. Even as Slim, the radio officer, disappeared into the maw of the ship, the “bathing beauties” were pulling it toward the dock.

At dockside, eleven passengers went ashore; some had reached their destination, and the others, cameras poised, wanted a twenty-minute look at the flora and fauna of picturesque Dominican Republic. The crew of the two motored Sikorsky S-43 busied themselves with preparations for the last leg of the flight from Miami to San Juan. A gasoline hose swung into position to fill the wing tanks; mechanics unhooked nacelles and checked connections and made sure that all was secure; a squad of brooms went to work in the passenger compartment.

Arms waving, coattails flying, an excited airport manager scampered down the dock, clutching a sheet of paper and screeching, “Capitanito! Capitanito!”

“Simmer down, Pasquale, I’m right here. You got another revolution going?”

“No, no! Important message, Capitanito! You no fly to San Juan, Miami say! She is hurricane!” gasped the excited little Dominican between breaths.

“Okay, Pasquale, so we stay. . . relax,” the pilot admonished. He turned to his crew. “Guess you fellows heard the news. . . an extra night’s sleep and a hot meal. But it also means we will have to anchor the boat out in the middle of the river, so she won’t bash herself against the dock if the storm breaks. We’ll draw straws to see who sleeps on the plane.

Slim felt his skin crawl, and he had a sudden tendency to itch. He had spent one miserable night in the hotel at San Pedro de Macoris. Bed bugs and cockroaches in formations and columns wouldn’t let a man sleep in that place. And the food. . . he gagged at the recollection.

“Never mind the straws, Skipper, I’ll stay aboard,” he volunteered. “Besides, I can man the radio in case of trouble.”

“Thanks, Sparks, that’s real decent of you.”

“You’re a prince, Sparks; I’ll remember you in my will.”

“We’ll make it right with you, Sparks, when we get to San Juan.”

“Sure you will. . . see you in the morning.”

Vignette 11: December 8, 1941

Eleven—December 8, 1941



The flight radio officer of the Pan American DC-3 enroute from Miami to Panama City, was busy checking his radio bearings and dead-reckoning data, preparatory to sending a position report back to Miami.

He could hear the ground operator at Kingston, Jamaica impatiently calling him. The signals were so loud they were blocking the receiver, indicating that Kingston was very close. When his report was ready, he would answer. These English operators took themselves very seriously: the problems of the world rested on their shoulders.

Nothing was wrong today. The motors synchronized reassuringly; the sun was high; they had a twenty-mile tail wind and not a cloud in the sky. The pilot held the airplane steady at 270 degrees without a quiver as Sparks completed radio bearing on Camaguez and Kingston. He checked the compass deviation, made his calculations; and as he had thought, they were abeam of Kingston.

He set the transmitter on the Kingston communication frequency in order to send the position report there to be relayed to Miami. Kingston was still calling him; his keying was so excited now that he could hardly be called intelligible. Sparks flipped the transmitter switch and tapped the Morse key in answer to the Kingston call.

The response was devastating. Kingston fell all over himself, unburdening the important communication he had to make. The DC-3 operator had no time for light conversation and instructed Kingston to stop his nonsense and relay the position report.

He thought to himself that this particular Limey must have heard that the British were reputed to be devoid of a sense of humor and was trying to remedy the reputation. So Pearl Harbor had been bombed by Japs!

What a sense of humor!

Vignette 19: Dawn

Ten—Dawn



With the arrival of dawn, a friendly sun peered over the horizon, silhouetting the islands and casting golden beams that skipped over the rippling water stroked by a gentle breeze. In the space of a breath, the silhouettes vanished and an early-morning goldness flooded the islands and the pier jutting from the cape. Triggered into bustling activity, the pier vibrated with the heavy footsteps, growls, and calls of rubber-booted lobstermen, clad in wraith-like yellow oilskins, buying gasoline and half-decomposed, odorous, redfish bait.

Oarlocks rattled, dinghies bumped dully against one another, and bailing cans scraped irritably against uneven bottoms amid muffled curses. The even lap. . . clunk. . .lap. . . clunk recorded the progress of two-score skillful seamen rowing toward two score lobster boats.

With activity transferred from pier to harbor, marine engines coughed sullenly, sp7ttered coldly, and sprang to life fatalistically. One by one, the lobster fleet chugged out of the harbor in search of delicacies to grace American tables.

A few desultory sea gulls, searching for spilled bait, glided and winged about the empty, sun-drenched pier.

Vingette 9: Moment of Truth

Nine—Moment of Truth

From the moment he stepped off the boat, Hunefer wanted to run, but thick darkness pressed in on both sides of him. Striding silently in front of him appeared the broad back of his guide. Behind him the silent river crouched and the boat quietly disappeared in the murky shadow.

He thought there was something odd about the boat ride. It was too quiet; not a ripple reached his ears. It was night, too. Why would he be taken to trial at night? The guide had told him that he was appearing before the fourteen judges. The guide. . . there was something odd about him, too. But for the life of him he could not think what it was.

Not wishing to be left behind, dreading what lay ahead, he kept pace with the guide until a huge doorway appeared before them. At the guide’s signal, Hunefer went in and stopped. Horror stamped itself on each bulging eyeball, too-thick sweat oozed from too-small pores, drums throbbed inside of his head, and a tongue-filled dry mouth could not utter a work. Fear-filled dawning of knowledge ties a knot around his middle; he couldn’t breathe; this was it, the Hall of Truth!

Standing in the middle of the room, a huge set of gleaming balances taunted him with a tiny feather on one golden tray. Something funny about that guide? Just that he had the head of a jackal. Even now the jackal-headed Anubis was testing the tongue of the balances; Hunefer stared with glazed eyes. Eyes that saw and reared that awful monstrosity; Amemit drooled and was expectant; Hunefer’s heart was going on the other golden tray. . . to balance the feather.

Hunefer was dead!

Vignette 8: Routine Test Flight

Eight—Routine Test Flight



Feathered, the prop on the port engine of the plane protested the operation with a hideous noise. Frantically working the hydraulic controls, the pilot failed to bring the prop back to normal. He cut the engine back to idle. Posing mechanical difficulties, a routine test flight had soured.

The pilot turned to the radio officer. “Send a radio to Operations, Sparks, and find out what gives.”

“Okay, Skipper,” and he turned on the dynamotor. The Morse key clicked, hesitated, clicked out its message and was silent. . . then a few more clicks. “Got it, skipper, Operations says that the hydraulic system is only designed to defeather once. You will have to bring her in on one engine.”

A heavy silence filled the cockpit momentarily. Bringing a two-motored DC-3A in on one engine presented control difficulties.

With the offending engine cut, the pilot began the descent. . . took a lot of right rudder just to keep it in a straight line. As the airplane neared the Miami International Airport, Sparks wondered how much of a job this would be. Routine test hops had a way of being anything but routine. Still, Operations had sounded confident. Good. As he looked out of the window, a procession of fire equipment and a “meat wagon” met his eye as they lined up along the runway. Not so good. Operations could sound confident; they weren’t on the airplane.

Relief flooded over him as the wheels touched the ground, rolled, swung the airplane around in a wide circle and came to an uneventful halt.

Vignette 7: The Irish Sea

Seven—The Irish Sea



Men die; causes die; the most pathetic sight was seeing a ship die.

One bright sunny afternoon during the latter stages of the war, we were sailing in a convoy up the Irish Sea, bound for Murmansk by way of the River Clyde, the Shetland Islands, and the coast of Norway.

The rolling green coast of Ireland slipped by on our port side; the indistinct coast of England lay on the starb’d. A convoy of fifty assorted freighters, tankers, and motor launches sailed unconcernedly somewhere in between. I was on a freighter, a Liberty carrying a dozen locomotives. Highly maneuverable British corvettes flitted about the perimeter of the convoy like herders on a sheep run. Their presence induced a feeling of security.

In the midst of this complacent scene, the alarm “U-boats” flashed over fifty radio receivers and clutched at the hears of fifty crews. Fifty crews wondered where it would strike; fifty crews prayed that the corvettes would get it first.

As if in answer to these wide-spread and unspoken questions, a blinding explosion shattered that quiet afternoon. A gasoline tanker in the middle of the convoy, placed there because she was so vulnerable, had exploded like a giant firecracker; her insides had gone up in one big blaze, raining little bits of fiery debris on the calm Irish Sea. The blazing tanker settled back down on the water; she rested for a minute.

Then, poised like a sprinting swimmer at the starting line, she dipped her prow beneath the surface. . . for a minute. . . maybe two. . . maybe a lifetime. . . and plunged out of sight. Gasoline burned angrily on the surface, marking the tanker’s watery grave for a short time, and then was snuffed out.

Seven minutes had elapsed since the alarm was given. Now there were forty-nine ships who had not even had time to change course, and there was no evidence that there had ever been a fiftieth. Only an empty space in the convoy existed to speak for her.

Men my die, but their souls find “an house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens,” guaranteed by the Supreme Architect. A good cause may die, but little bits of its intent and purpose become incorporated in other causes; thus they live on. A ship plunges to the bottom; she neither has a soul nor leaves behind any part of her to carry on. . . her memory? Memory is very short; she dies.

Vignette 6: The Hotel Grande

Six—The Hotel Grande



The Hotel Grande in Belem pulsated with life and activity. Lights shone dimly from wall brackets in the long, narrow foyer where a fawning clerk squinted at the register as he handed the pen to a new guest. Lights blazed harsh and triumphantly in the dining room. Clusters of naked bulbs in sparkling chandeliers revealed correctly attired dinner guests, and an energetic, if not melodious, three-piece orchestra. The dining room could not contain all this light; it spilled out through tall windows onto the broad sidewalk in from that carried a continuously moving burden.

Along this sidewalk passed representatives from every strata of Brazilian society; the light touched them all for a fleeting moment. A dog of unknown antecedents stopped to scratch his fleas, and two lovers giggled through its democratic rays. A thickset man wearing a dinner jacket and a stern visage strode through with a fat dowager, arrayed in evening gown and pearls, on his arm. They ignored the light.

A slim woman of undetermined age, but whose occupation was no secret, slowed perceptibly to advertise her wares. She was unaware that the same light, which emphasized her too-tight dress over rounded hips and breasts threatening to burst out of it, revealed watery eyes, slack features, and uncombed, greasy black hair. Three dandies in zoot suits with shoulders much too brad, narrow pant legs, and broad-brimmed hats followed closely behind, looking for a bargain. The light embarrassed them as it cast their ridiculous shadows the full width of the sidewalk. They hurried on.

Traffic thinned on the sidewalk as the great lights in the dining room dimmed and then let the blackness in, unaffected by the lives it had touched. Only the dim lights in the foyer remained, and a bell had replaced the fawning clerk. The Hotel Grande went to sleep.

Vignette 4: Fog

Four—Fog



A cold, damp misty morning has an air of mystery and foreboding. It threatens to shrink a man’s very soul and leave him a breathless empty shell. The waterfront, a beehive of industry all day, is the most desolate on such a morning.

The fog rolls in from the sea in that half-dawn world between night and day. Silently it swirls about the masts of the ships at their moorings. They stretch their hawsers until they creak like an ancient rocking chair on a pine wide-board floor in protest against associating with this evil apparition.

The fog continues to envelop the ship at the wharf, not a might dismayed. It reaches clammy fingers about the face and neck of the mate who stands watch on her bridge. He pulls his knitted cap down over his ears, rolls up his thick collar, shivers, and disappears inside the wheelhouse.

Silently and stealthily, the fog encompasses the wharf, blurring the outline of warehouse and elevator. Clammily it oozes between the buildings, sucking the life from all that stand in its way: donkey engines, trucks, and loaders that have been resting for the night, now lifeless deserted carcasses strewn about the wet slippery wharf in confused disorder.

Silently, the fog rolls on, but not in silence. A foghorn moans even as the murky substance clutches at it. Bell buoys peal notes of the impending doom which lies beneath them. Canvas flaps dully in time with the swell on hatches not made secure with battens. Dinghies, set in motion by the rising tide, bump tiredly against the pilings; their oarlocks rattle cheerlessly. Two snarling tom cats fight noisily and unseen undaunted by the damp cold shroud.

The ship’s cook, concealed by the fog, swings out of his galley. Pots and pans clang a discordant note against the side of the ship as he empties his refuse and mistakes into the harbor.

Vignette 3: The Famous Shepard’s Hotel

Three—The Famous Shepard’s Hotel



Cairo enjoyed a reputation as a city of intrigue and passion with the Shepard’s Hotel as its nerve center. When the Desert Fox barked at the gates of Cairo, it was easy to imagine conspiracy and cunning running riot among the polyglot jargon heard in the lobby of that internationally known hotel. Everybody gathered there. In fact, it was often stated that if one hung around long enough he was bound to meet someone he knew.

The Shepard did not live up to expectations in appearance or accommodations. Compared with the better New York hotels, it was strictly third rate. It was like a remittance man, putting on a big front and having holes in his socks, but with a trace of elegance in his bearing.

Large and pretentious on the outside, redecoration was sorely needed on the inside. In the lobby, potted palms made a half-hearted attempt at elegance, and so, too, did the immaculately dressed clerk behind the desk. He sniffed and gave thanks that he was not as other men. The dark, dull woodwork, undiscernible color scheme, and brown leather-covered chairs and divans all in a row around the large lobby were unimpressive and flat.

That group over in the corner sounded as though they were speaking Spanish. What infamous stunt was Franco up to? The two men who stood by the pillar conversed in barely audible, guttural German. They fired suspicions. A slinky Russian-looking woman flowed past them. Did they exchange a sly look? Was Uncle Joe changing sides again? At the center table, a mixed group who had lapped up considerable wine gestured excitedly to one another and spoke in rapid Italian. Still, nobody worried about Il Duce anymore. This certainly was not an atmosphere were one was likely to encounter old acquaintances.

A hand grasped my shoulder, spun me around, and clasped my hand. American words came out of an open Yankee face: “What the hell are you doing in Cairo, Slim? I thought you were in Miami.”

“Frenchy, you old sonovagun. Let’s get out of here; we’ve got five years catching up to do.”

Vignette 2: Cairo

Two—Cairo



Transition from a modern to an ancient culture stretches endlessly into oblivion in the imagination and presents a physical impossibility. Yet, a five-mile ride from Cairo across the Nile ends in the ancient city of Giza, sprawling on its east bank. From the center of the city, an open streetcar careens and bumps along uneven rails, through broad, paved avenues, past imposing, white-pillared residences surrounded by green lawns, to come to an abrupt halt at the very edge of Egyptian antiquity.

The paved avenue disappears into the desert sands from which rise the Great Pyramid of Cheops with its streets of mastaba tombs, Khafre’s Second Pyramid guarded by the Sphinx, and the Third Pyramid of Mycerinus with those of his Queens reaching for the sun whose rays they emulate in structure.

Standing at the base of Cheops, ancient even to Cleopatra, the observer feels the overpowering mystery of the Nile and centuries of forgotten magic formulas. The hugeness, purpose, and magnificence of Cheops emphasize the ineffectiveness of the beholder. Majestic, haughty, and foreboding, it overlooks the Nile with whom it has a bond, to keep mute the solution to the countless enigmas of ancient Egypt.

Vignette 1: Guanabara Bay

One—Guanabara Bay

Many fine lines have been written, extolling the beauty of Guanabara Bay, of azure blue water, of stately Royal Palms, and of majestic mountains rising in stalwart protection of the city of Rio de Janeiro, nestling in ivory brilliance at their feet. The scene that greets a visitor from the ocean on a moonless night is especially breathtaking.

Approaching Rio from the sea at low altitude, one sees the narrow one-mile opening to Guanabara Bay softly appearing out of the darkness. Pau de Asucar looms up on the left like a loyal sentry, that none may pass who would harm the treasure within. The sun, long since depriving the city of its warmth and light, frames the towering ring of mountains like a corona; so that as the entrance is passed, the presence of a queen with a golden tiara is sensed.

Inside that entrance, a new world in a very old world welcomes the traveler into a giant eleven-mile-wide horseshoe. It invites him. It invites him to rest, to play, and to partake of all that is pleasurable to him.

There is no searing gaudy splash of light to jar the sensitive; rather there are thousands of tiny twinkling diamonds set in blue-black butterfly wings to appeal. It disarms, refreshed, and soothes. It whispers, “Wherever you are from, you are home. Here you can find your heart’s desire. . . perhaps your soul.”

Vignette 1: Guanabara Bay

One—Guanabara Bay

Many fine lines have been written, extolling the beauty of Guanabara Bay, of azure blue water, of stately Royal Palms, and of majestic mountains rising in stalwart protection of the city of Rio de Janeiro, nestling in ivory brilliance at their feet. The scene that greets a visitor from the ocean on a moonless night is especially breathtaking.

Approaching Rio from the sea at low altitude, one sees the narrow one-mile opening to Guanabara Bay softly appearing out of the darkness. Pau de Asucar looms up on the left like a loyal sentry, that none may pass who would harm the treasure within. The sun, long since depriving the city of its warmth and light, frames the towering ring of mountains like a corona; so that as the entrance is passed, the presence of a queen with a golden tiara is sensed.

Inside that entrance, a new world in a very old world welcomes the traveler into a giant eleven-mile-wide horseshoe. It invites him. It invites him to rest, to play, and to partake of all that is pleasurable to him.

There is no searing gaudy splash of light to jar the sensitive; rather there are thousands of tiny twinkling diamonds set in blue-black butterfly wings to appeal. It disarms, refreshed, and soothes. It whispers, “Wherever you are from, you are home. Here you can find your heart’s desire. . . perhaps your soul.”

First Sermon

By Clevis O. Laverty

It is with mixed feelings that I stand before you this morning in this our first service together. First, I am glad of the opportunity of being with you and serving you, and I am trusting that I shall have your support and understanding. We are all workers in the vineyard of the Lord, let us labor together for the advancement of His Kingdom on earth.

Many of you, no doubt, came here this morning wondering what kind of man the new preacher might be. So let’s get acquainted. First of all, we are no stranger to the coast of Maine. Maine was my birthplace, and I love it and am happy to be back. I have had experience in several fields of endeavor but now I am in that field that has been calling me for some time. My family and I are happy to be with you. We want to work with and for you for the advancement of His work. “I was a stranger and ye took me in” may be true at present but I trust we shall not be strangers long.

Much can be accomplished by us if we work together and pray together. I want you to feel free to come to me and I want to feel free to consult with you.

For the topic of my first sermon with you, I have chosen “The Three Doors: Welcome, Worship, and Work.”

Have you ever stopped to think what a symbol the door has become to us? I know many churches picture a door on the cover of their bulletin that looks very inviting. Opportunity is pictured as knocking at a door. A groom carries his bride over the threshold through a door. Companies wishing to give prospective employees the idea of advancement picture the door of success.

In the third chapter of Revelations, John the Divine writes to the church at Philadelphia, “I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut;” or “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

Let us take the door of welcome. It works both ways, the welcome that I give to you who are already here and the welcome with which you greet me when I enter through the doorway to come to you.

Did you ever stop to think how intriguing this door of welcome can be? You go to a strange house, approach the door and lift your hand to knock and a steady stream of thoughts go through your mind. What’s going to be the response to my knock? What kind of a greeting am I going to get? Will I have to fight off the dog? Will I get a welcome or the bums rush? What kind of people are on the other side of that door? It’s almost like preparing to enter another world with which you have no familiarity.

I am minded of an experience a friend of mine had after he had accepted a new pastorate. He said that he started out on his pastoral calls to meet the people of his parish and at one home he went to, he knocked on the door. A man’s voice from within bade him come in. However, he knew that this man did not know him because he had never seen him before so he knocked again, and the voice again told him to come in. Still he knew that the man had no idea who he was inviting into his house so he knocked again that that seemed to be the signal. From the other side came a long steady stream of oaths followed by “I said come in, now come on in or go away.” He went in and saw a man sitting there watching a baseball game on TV who looked up in amazement and said, “Who are you?” My friend said he stood there with his bare face hanging out and said, “I’m the new preacher.”

What kind of a welcome are we going to give at the door? Is it to be a come in you’re out indifferent attitude or do we go to the door with a happy anticipation for whomever is on the other side? They are both a welcome at the door. The one gives the welcomed a warm feeling that hi is about entering on a delightful adventure, the other a cold feeling of just being tolerated.

Then there is the door of worship. “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”

All men everywhere instinctively worship something or someone. Even the natives of darkest Africa have their god or gods whom they worship. In times of stress or danger, people turn to a greater power.

The worship that I refer to is not one of merely lip service consisting perhaps of attendance at church on Sunday and serving on boards and committees but it is a worship that we carry with us wherever we go and whatever we do.

I do not mean by this that we are to be solemn and gloomy. Far from it, Christian experience should be and is a happy experience and the Christian people should be the happiest on earth. We can carry our worship into our daily lives without making ourselves obnoxious to our fellowmen.

Faith we must have. Faith that will sustain us and keep us even when things look dark and gloomy. In this regard I am minded of the maiden lady who took her first ocean voyage. A few days out there was a terrible storm and she went to the captain and asked if there were any danger. He told her to see what the crew was doing. She went forward and found them playing cards and cursing. She was shocked and reported to the captain who said, “If there was any danger, they would be praying.” The storm continued and if anything got worse. Once again the elderly lady went forward to see what the crew was doing. She observed them a few moments and was then heard to remark: “Thank heavens, they’re still swearing.”

Faith we must have but by itself is not enough, which brings us to the door of work. Work is going to be necessary. In fact, faith without work is of no avail. We have faith when we pray but the true Christian will go out and try to answer his own prayers. We must give as well as receive. In no other way can the Kingdom of God be established on earth. Christ said I must be about my Father’s business. We are all in the same business as the shoemaker who remarked when asked his business: “My business is serving God, but I mend shoes to pay expenses.”

Then there were the two men who hired a boatman to row them across a river. On the way over they argued about faith and work. One said faith was more important, the other said work. In the heat of their discussion they noticed that they were going in circles and called the boatman’s attention to it. He said, “one of these oars is faith, the other work, just now I am using faith alone and getting nowhere.”

And so must we, as we begin our Christian experience together, open the door to give the proper welcome, exercise our faith through the door of worship, and then put it all to work as God intended. Then and only then can we attain that peace of mind that satisfaction of a job well done.

In a certain Yorkshire township a squire of a large estate had lost his hired hand so he went into the village as was the custom to find another one. After due looking around he spied one who seemed to fit his specifications, who looked as though he could do a good days work and asked him if he were available. The man lowed as maybe he was. When asked his name, he replied that it was John and that he was a good farm hand, so the squire asked him what he could do. “Well,” he said, “among other things I can sleep on a windy night. The squire thought that this was quite an original answer and hired him.

Several weeks later, a bad storm arose and the wind became very strong. The squire became worried, so he went to the foot of the stairs where John slept and called him. There was no answer. He went up the stairs and called some more. Still no answer. The squire figured that John really could sleep on a windy night so he dressed and went out around the estate to make sure that all was well. He went to the chicken house to loci it up and found it all locked. He went to the barn and found the gates all barred, all the equipment put away and secured, found the haystacks all covered with canvas and tied down. Everything was in order for any emergency. John knew how to sleep on a windy night because he had his work done and done right.

Welcome, worship and work. How do you sleep on a windy night?