When I was growing up in Plainview, Louisiana, one of the significant dates on our yearly calendar was the Saturday before the third Sunday in August. That Saturday was Memorial Day at Prewitt’s Chapel Cemetery. All of my folks who had died on Daddy’s side of the family were buried in that cemetery. Each August we made our annual pilgrimage to that cemetery to pay our respects. We visited the graves, went inside the church for a memorial service, went to stand by the graves of family members for a prayer, and then had a big dinner-on-the-grounds beneath the trees. The dinner was complemented by Ottis Brown’s coffee made in an iron wash pot. I never did like coffee, but since it was a chance to act grownup, I sometimes would drink a little of that bitter brew.
On the way to the cemetery, my brothers and I always liked my dad to take the dirt road that ran from our house by Cleo Alford’s. The reason we liked this route was because it had two fords on the road. At the bottom of the hill by Cleo Alford’s, there was no culvert or bridge over the branch that crossed the road. You forded the shallow stream. The bottom was firm with a layer of sand on top. It was a lot of fun and a real attraction if we had any of our city cousins visiting us. The other ford on the road was right before you got to Leonard Slaughter’s house. It too was a shallow steam with a good bottom, and wagons and cars had been fording the stream there for years.
Eventually, some energetic politician insisted that the streams ought to have culverts instead of fords, although the bottoms were still sound. So in the name of progress, they did away with one of our sources of entertainment and one of our links with the past. Today when we go that way, we no longer get to ford the streams.
And, my parents no longer carry us to Prewitt’s Chapel Cemetery. Both of them are now buried there. My dad made his final journey there in 1971, and my mom made her final journey there in May of last year.
In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, two travelers, Christian and Hopeful, were on their journey to the City of God. As the City of God came into view, the two were separated from that shining city by a final dark river. Hopeful, as hope always does, led the way into that dark river. From the midst of the stream, he called back to Christian on the banks of the river, “Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom, and it is sound.”
This Saturday, the Saturday before the third Sunday in August, we will go back to Prewitt’s Chapel Cemetery for Memorial Day. My mom and dad forded those streams by Cleo Alford’s and Leonard Slaughter’s many times and always found the bottoms sound. And I believe that when they came at last to cross the final river, by the grace of God they found the bottom sound. On Saturday we will gather and give thanks.
