Home: Part 27

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

April 1958 

During one or another of her bible study classes, Cindy met Terry Pipes, the boy who many years later would become her first husband. He was thin, wore one cheekbone higher than the other, and had a slight twitch in his eyebrows. He was older than Cindy by a couple of years, and his parents worked one of the farms outside of town. Half of their fields were soybeans, the other half corn, and they had acreage enough to pasture a good number of milk cows. Many of my classmates lived on working farms, and I knew how hard they worked before and after school. Terry didn't seem strong enough to be of much use on a farm, but I wasn't one to question him. His brothers, whom I'd met just once, seemed stronger; perhaps Terry took care of the fields and cows, I thought.

"Terry has thought about being a minister," Cindy said one night as she and I cleaned the kitchen after dinner. My parents were in the living room watching Wagon Train on black-and-white Silverstone television set that my father had brought home from Sears one day. "He is quite enthusiastic about spreading god's word."

"What about his farm?" I asked. 

"It's not his farm," Cindy said. "Terry says that he wants to have a small church somewhere."

I thought about the farm, what would become of it and the cows if Terry left. "He could put his church on the farm," I said. "He could be a farmer and a minister."

Cindy looked at me. "You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Dry the plates and put them away. I'm going to go read."

A week or so later, a Saturday, Terry and Cindy sat at our kitchen table. They were typing up the church program, something that my sister had volunteered for and seemed to enjoy doing. "You want to help?" Cindy asked.

"There's not much he can do," Terry said.

"Maybe if we give him a task, he'll come to church with us tomorrow."

Terry looked at me. "Him? In church?"

Cindy looked at me, too, as if re-thinking what she'd said. "Sunday school, then. He could go to Sunday school."

Terry's eyebrows twitched. "No."