Читать книгу Live Forever - Mylon Le Fevre - Страница 20

God’s goodness doesn’t always show up in a blaze of glory. Instead, it sneaks up on you. It wraps itself in the

ordinary and turns you toward your destiny when you’re not looking. At least, that’s how it happened to me.

Long before I heard the fanfare of fame, or jammed in castles with millionaire musicians, God’s grace set my

course on my Aunt Maude’s farm. Every Thanksgiving all the Le Fevres gathered there for our family reunion. The

farm was heaven on earth for me when I was a kid. It was a beautiful homestead about five miles down a dirt road

in the rolling hills outside of McMinnville, Tennessee. My Uncle Othel, and his brother, Homer Parsley, (No city

slicker names for us; my family was definitely from the country!) inherited it from their father who divided it

between them.

I’ll be forever grateful for that farm. For me, playing hide and seek in the hay barn, shooting my BB gun at

everything in sight, swimming in the creek, and catching crawdaddies with my cousins, was the best kind of fun.

And it got even better when my Uncle George would show up with a box full of firecrackers. Cheap as dirt back

then, firecrackers were illegal in Georgia but not in Tennessee. So when Uncle George brought Cherry Bombs,

M-80s, TNTs, sparklers, and Roman Candles to Aunt Maude’s, we freaked out. We blew up stuff for days and lit

up the Southern sky at night.

When the fireworks were over and the grownups were finished playing rook, I’d head for Aunt Maude’s attic.

That’s where I always slept, with three or four of my ornery cousins, under piles of homemade quilts in a big old

feather bed. It was the best place on the planet to sleep—with occasional exceptions, of course. Like the time I

woke up in the middle of the night and realized nature was calling. Tossing and turning as the rain danced on the tin

roof overhead, I debated the risk. It was so cold in that unheated attic and so cozy under all those quilts! When I

couldn’t stand the discomfort any longer, I finally decided to brave the dark and run as fast as I could in my long

johns and boots to the outhouse. It seemed to me, a city boy, to be at least a mile away, but I made it.

Then I had to face the return trip.

That was the scariest part. Terrorized by the thought of unseen spiders, snakes, and other critters crawling around in

the pitch dark outhouse and tormented by the sounds of the night creatures outside, I tore back to the house in such

a panic that I trampled down the perfect rows of my Aunt Maude’s prized tomato patch.

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