Another Ride to Centerville

The Yazoo River is only seven tenths of a mile from our house and when we drove up onto West Claiborne Sunday morning on our way to church, we noticed the water was touching the base of the levee. It only gets this high once every three or four years. Was that an alligator down there or a log? I wondered as we drove by the out-of-bank river towards Highway 82.

"There's Frog," Penny said just before we turned onto the highway. Frog is a nice guy, but he is two cards short of a full deck. He rides a bicycle, the old fashioned, no speed, big tire kind, every where he goes. Now, probably in his mid sixties, he was dressed in a blue business suit, presumably on his way to church.

We motored under rain-threatening skies over the dis-repaired road on our way to Humphrey's Highway where four miles later we turned south and continued our leisurely drive towards the hills and all the delights we experience on this joyful weekly journey.

Five miles after that, we turned east onto a nondescript gravel road. This is where the drive gets really good because it is here we begin to see the signs of life God created and cares for. Often we see rabbits, deer, crow, squirrels, snakes, buzzards, and a dog or two. Always we see fields of crops, a horse or three in a pasture, the hills up ahead, trees and trees and trees. Bonnie Borkowski, one of my former church members, once told me, "God was having a good day when he created trees." Indeed He was.

On that gravel road, we first drive by an ancient white frame church that has two really neat-looking old bell towers that lean like that tower in Italy. Then we round a curve where the road is sandy and we pass a cane patch that is in the movie, The Reivers. Next we see the old Ben McCarty house and then our vet, Andy Johnson's, home. A little past that and we come to the sheep pasture, always a delight to us. On this day, a dog was working three of the babies while a man stood in the background watching. Training? I reckon.

Now the trees consume us and our path is a small slit in a vast ocean of woods. This Sunday, we saw no other animals. The drive is always peaceful, relaxing. We arrived at the church which sits across the road from a cemetery on a hill. The church building, like its people, is beautiful in its simplicity. We are here. We climb out of the truck and hear the Blue jays and Mockingbirds singing their praises to God. He is good. He is good all the time.