The Washer
My maternal grandfather, I called him Papaw, operated a small business delivering sand, topsoil, rock and fill dirt to patrons in and around our little east Texas community. He had sources for topsoil and fill dirt locally, but had to travel well outside our general area for specialty rock and sand. When I was just old enough to stand in the truck seat next to him with my arm draped around his shoulders, I’d often travel with him. Before you ponder it, the year was around 1969, so seatbelts and car seats weren’t yet a requirement. Since Papaw’s window was always rolled down, my long brown hair whipped in the breeze. Any day with my Papaw was a good day!
The inside of his truck was always the same. He wrote the invoices for his orders by hand at time of delivery. The invoice forms were in a thick tablet that required a sheet of carbon paper to duplicate the invoice. If his fingertips were blue, business was good. A row of invoice tablets were secured to his sun visor with big wooden clothes pins. They flapped in the breeze like my hair. The heavy scent of Juicy Fruit gum hung in the air. It’s the only kind we chewed. There were always small paper bags of peppermint sticks and lemon drops folded up on the seat. He smoked Kent 100’s and I stood next to him smoking peppermint sticks. Life was good!
Even though it was to a supplier we visited often, there is one trip to Louisiana for decorative pebble stone I’ll never forget. I don’t know if it was the actual name of the facility, but Papaw called it the washer. After a long trek down a washboard dirt road, we would settle in line behind other dump trucks on hold to be loaded. Papaw didn’t mind waiting. He utilized the down time talk shop, Dallas Cowboys, hunting… with the office crew and other drivers.
The name “washer” is a perfect description of the process required for mining rock. A huge dragline tractor scoops dirt from a pit and places the scoops of dirt atop a tower of stacked metal screens. The diameter of the opening in the wire mesh was large at the top and grew increasingly smaller as you neared the bottom. A powerful spray of water rinsed dirt from the rock as it filtered down through the tower of screens. Each level had a conveyor leading from its side. As the tray reached capacity, the sorted rock was carried away by the conveyor to small piles. Tractors scooped up the rock from the small piles and placed them in even larger holding piles. Front end loaders transferred the rock from those holding piles as required into the waiting trucks. There was a special location off the beaten path where small black pebble stone was stored. These small shiny stones were expensive so activity around that storage pile was minimal. Papaw allowed me to play around the base of the pile “looking for treasure” while he visited. However, I was not allowed to climb on the rocks. I often daydreamed of climbing that mountain of rock. You guessed it, on this day I did just that…
I reached the peak quickly to be greeted with a spectacular view. A large blue lake reached almost to the base of my black rock mountain. Some ducks flared their wings and landed with a splash nearby. I sat back and wiggled my bare feet into the tiny black stone as I watched the ducks splash and groom themselves. The stones were warm on the surface, but much cooler beneath. I wiggled my feet even deeper. Time ticked by and a stillness settled in. I began feeling bad that I’d broken the “do not climb” rule. When I tried to pull my feet from rock to begin my descent, I discovered any movement caused me to sink deeper into the pebbles. It was as though something had hold of my feet countering my every move with a downward tug. When the stone’s grasp became tight around my waste, I began yelling for my Papaw.
I don’t know how he did it, but he pulled me from the grasp of that dark pile of stones. We slid from the peak on our bellies all the way back to the solid ground at its base. We both wept as I told him how sorry I was for climbing on the pile of rock. He held me for a long time…
We often find ourselves so tight in the grasp of sin that we are tugged deeper and deeper into its depths regardless of our efforts to separate ourselves from it. That is when we must cry out for help. Where does our help come from. It comes from the Lord!
