FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: 25 years headed to ‘Australia’

Welcome back this week to the ‘front porch.’

Well, friends, we’ve finally come to the end of our Yellowstone journey; and I owe you my thanks for traveling along every step, all the way until we walked out of that wilderness unscathed.

The good news – at least from my perspective – is that the story does not end there, and we’ll reflect back on those weary, amazing days for as long as we write, I am sure.

I suppose it is fitting that we have something as dramatic as our ‘Lost in Yellowstone’ story to bring us now to this place.

The Yellowstone saga brought us right up to the threshold of a special anniversary of column-writing. What you’re reading here all began in 1997, and the first paper was the paper I grew up reading as a boy, the LaGrange Daily News, a paper for whom we continue to write.

So, it seems natural that looking back at our six-day life-altering Wyoming crisis should begin the journey back a quarter of a century to commemorate a thousand reflections many of us have shared.

I was young back in 1997, younger than I am now, as Mr. Twain would say, younger than I’ll ever be again. Oh, it’s not that I’m old now, not at all, although I have a little hip issue since we last spoke that may say otherwise.

But we’re old enough, even in my own estimation, for me to wonder where we go from here after 25 years of giving your view of life every week. Ah, it has been quite a journey, one of examining life from every angle, of telling every story that can be told – omitting some accounts for the protection of the guilty – and sharing about every thought from earth to heaven.

I would have thought the pen would’ve run dry by now.

Sometimes people ask me about that, about running out of things to write, at least things that are worthy to be written and read. But I’ve never felt the well would go dry at all.

The bigger problem is getting to the well, slowing life down enough to get there and let your mind stop and rest and remember and contemplate and consider, slowing down all that traffic up and down the cluttered road, looking up instead of looking out, looking inward instead of toward all those mundane issues make the biggest splashes in the paper.

Maybe what we’ve done is more significant for what we haven’t written than what we have. There is a void in our writing, and I hope you’ve noticed it.

There is a profound emptiness – a vast empty-place in the north, as Job writes from way back – when it comes to many of the world’s issues and its politics.

Perhaps that omission is like the stolen portrait of the Mona Lisa many years ago. More visitors came to see where she once hung than came to see the actual portrait, they say. I hope that’s true here, that you’ve come to read what is missing, perhaps to get away from what is all around us for a minute or two in order to let your mind rest.

That may be the biggest point. We are all better off – aren’t we? – whenever we find our way clear to slow down and make it to the well and draw from a funny story or a nostalgic event that we remember – whether, in our case, it be about those ol’ basketball boys down at the Y, or about the amazin’ blonde’s perseverance, or about some shenanigan my old friend Mr. Coca-Cola Mike has pulled.

Speaking of which, even though we made him somewhat of a legend down in the South, he still doesn’t fully appreciate the version of the story he reads in the paper, thinking, somehow, that he gets the short end of the stick, which he may, but I’ll never admit it.

But, you know, whenever we’ve shared one of those stories through the years, before you know it you had forgotten all about the 17 problems you’ve had on your mind – at least, I hope that’s happened. I think there’s virtue in that, and I thought that 25 years ago, too.

I’m wondering if maybe one day somebody will do a documentary and narrate the best of the best moments we have spent together this past quarter of a century.

If they do, we’ll need the right voice to narrate it. It can’t be just anybody. Maybe Morgan Freeman, but if he’s not available I have another thought. I’m going to go with an old voice from the past, Mr. Jack Elam, from those westerns from way back.

The amazin’ blonde and I have been watching some of those old westerns lately. Jack Elam, the actor with the lazy eye, you may remember, is the sidekick for James Garner in ‘Support Your Local Sheriff.’

Sheriff McCullough, who is Garner, makes it clear in the movie that he isn’t going to be able to be sheriff in town long, that he’s only on his way to Australia. At the end, Elam does a monologue, and he points out that Garner never made it to Australia; but he did read a lot about it and went on to become governor of that state and one of the most famous men around.

You know, I think that fits. Ah, when I started with this pen, I didn’t plan to stay around for 25 years, either. Why, I might have ‘got discovered’ long ago and ended up one of the leading syndicated columnists in this ol’ country. But, alas, it never came to be.

As Mr. Elam would say in his backwoods style, “The ol’ writer never made it to get syndicated and famous all over the world, but he did write for his hometown paper for 25 years and counting; and he picked up his hometown Texas paper, too, and a couple of others. And that’s somethin’.”

And, so you’ll know. I’m good with that. Who wants to go to Australia anyway? I think I’ll just stay here with you a little longer.

Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a full-time writer and preacher of the gospel. In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text (972) 824-5197.