The Non-Fiddling Campbellites, The Mary Parker Saga, Part 2

[Originally published in the July 11, 1990 issue of the Camden Chronicle]

Dear Editor:

There are a number of reasons why I write these letters to the Editor. First, I enjoy writing them and, if the letters and phone calls I receive are a true indication, there are some subscribers who enjoy reading them. That pleases me to no end. Then, sometimes other rewards come in surprising ways. Two days ago I answered the doorbell to find a man standing on the porch.

"Are you James Parker?" he cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. Since he carried no net nor wore a badge, I admitted that I was.

"I'm Shannon Parker and the Mary Parker you write about, the one that escaped from her grave at Mt. Zion Cemetery, that was my grandmother." I invited him inside and there followed an hour of animated and enjoyable conversation.

Shannon Parker said he was born in 1919 and spent his early years in Carroll County, mostly in Bruceton. Later, he went to high school in Holladay in Benton County. In 1940, his family moved north, first to Ohio, then to Michigan and, except for a few years making war on the Germans, he has been in the Detroit area since.

He talked of his immediate family.  His wife's picture showed a motherly looking lady with features that must have made her a stunner as a teenager. He passed me pictures of his son, daughter and grandchildren -- beautiful people, blonde and intelligent looking young folk you would claim for your kin, whether they were or not. Only one flaw showed up in Shannon Parker's otherwise perfect character: he belongs to the Church of Christ. A Campbellite! Or, if you remember the vernacular, a "Camelite!"

Now, most Parkers are Methodists, defending and promoting that religion from the rising of the sun til the bats go to roost. Shannon was probably influenced by his wife, who is an English girl and strong-willed, as English girls are wont to be. I can say this because my earliest recollection of going to church was to the Cedar Grove Church of Christ!

Alexander Campbell, ca. 1855

The Church of Christ was founded by a man named Alexander Campbell.  In 1906, a rift over music developed among the adherents of the faith. One group said only the human voice could make a joyful noise until the Lord. Others maintained that the noise would be a lot more joyful if accompanied by an organ or a piano. They split with the No Instruments group referring to the Musical Instrument group as "fiddling Campbellites."

Cedar Grove Church used no instruments; all singing was a cappella. My mother belongs to the faith and was determined that the souls of her children were going to be saved without music. "She believes," said my father, "that music-saved Christians will have to sit on a nail keg in the back row of the Heavenly Church."

They went round and round about that issue, but neither gave in. Dad died a Methodist and Mom, though old and unable to attend the services, still retains her beliefs and her joyful noise is all her own.

I didn't get Shannon Parker's sect affiliation but the next time we meet, I'll ask if he plays a fiddle or uses a tuning fork.

Basketball. Pfft.

Originally published in the July 4, 1990 edition of The Camden Chronicle

Well, guess who won

If there are some Benton Countians whose lives are so dull and uneventful that they are interested in professional basketball, they know that the Detroit Pistons (a team that does not play in Detroit at all, but in the far northern suburb of Auburn Hills) and the Portland Trailblazers (a team that represents a small town in Oregon) are currently locked in a play-off contest to determine who is the best there is in that game. This might be likened to to a contest to see which creek bed is rockiest, which waterfall is the spillingest, or which dandelion patch is the yellowest.

The basketball season and play-offs last for such a Methuselah-like period and the games are so much alike in execution that the sportswriters in this town are running out of cliches and redundancies to describe the action and events. No doubt the problem is the same in that one horse town of Portland, so writers in both cities have stopped writing about the games and the players and have begun to insult the locations to which each team ostensibly belongs. One Detroit paper referred to Oregonians as "Californians who couldn't cut the mustard." That same writer said Portland was so foggy that on a clear day you could see the bathroom and "Oregonians didn't know what a baked potato was until Mount St. Helens exploded." The same article referred to Portland as a suburb of Seattle, while calling it a "jerktimber town" rather than a jerkwater town.

The small town writers from Portland were not intimidated by our Detroit scriveners. In an editorial, one Portland paper described Detroit as a halfway house on the way to Houston. The same editorial said that Antoine Cadillac was accompanied by an Indian when the transmission gave out on his canoe. Cadillac, this writer asserted, had to stop at a place that later became Detroit before continuing on to Montreal, leaving the Indian behind to start the city. Another writer said, "Henry Ford was prospecting for rust when he struck a Model T. He convinced the world it was a Toyota and the Tokyo of the West was born."

I find reading this far more enjoyable than reading about "post ups" and "technical fouls." Reading about setting the picks and scoring triple doubles excites me not at all.

The best line I read was by a man who was asked if he would watch the play-offs on TV.

"Watch the play-offs?!" he exclaimed, "if they were playing in my backyard, I wouldn't raise the shade."

Memorial Day, 1990

Originally published in The Camden Chronicle, June 6, 1990


We walked, the woman I consort with and I, among the fresh cut flowers and small American flags waving every so slightly in the light breeze. Memorial Day 1990. While reading the names and dates on the headstones, the silence in the cemetery reminds me of an outdoor library with each deceased person's history given in short bursts.

As we approached the grave we came to honor, the consort held back a little. The grave is not fresh; it is near a small river now muddy and swollen with spring rains. Grandpa would have liked this place where he has been placed for all eternity. You see, his boyhood home was in the hills of North Carolina and, like thousands of migrants from the hilly southeastern United States to the frozen North, he never quite made peace with the floor-flat Great Lakes terrain.

This is one of those post-war cemeteries that doesn't permit above ground memorials, only flat ground level stones are used. Grandpa's says, "Born 1902. Died 1988." That, along with his name, is all that is there. It explains nothing about the times he lived through, of the worlds he conquered, small and insignificant as they might seem. As the poet pointed out, each man is a general, his family is his army and in the war of subsistence, to rise above is to conquer and to build is to gain. He built, he conquered, and he gained. Because he was here, the woodpile is a little higher.

We moved, talking quietly, along the path, a narrow road, to another part of the cemetery and to another grave we came to honor. As we approached the maple tree and the small plot of ground burned so painfully in our memories, our conversation ceased, our thoughts busy un-jumbling each other. Here the dates on the headstone were "1964-1968."  Our littlest, killed in a tragic accident twenty-two years ago. Some things never change. The grab in the throat and the kick in the stomach are just as real as the day we laid her here.

Someone had visited a nearby grave earlier in the day and had too many flowers to fill the vase of their loved one. They lovingly placed them in the vase of the grave we came to visit. We arranged the flowers we brought along side the ones already there, silently thanking the unknown donor for their kindness. We left.

We don't come here often or stay long when we do. Some loves will last forever and some pains are too much for a mortal man to bear.

Clyde McKinley Cornett (1902-1988) and Janice Elaine Parker (1964-1968),
October 1967