Up On Blocks

I am now a Son of the South. I do not hunt. I do not fish. I do not even play golf. I am an English professor for Pete's sake which means that I fit a certain stereotype.  I like to read a lot.  I write novels.  I have weird neckties that I sometimes wear.  None of these things qualifies me to consider myself now a bona fide, yet transplanted, Son of the South. So what does qualify me?  This:  I have an old pickup truck on blocks!  My Lord, I feel so accepted now, after decades of living in Dixie, I have come of age.  It didn't take a dog fight, moonshine (no comment), or even my own special road kill barbecue recipe.

It was having that truck up on blocks.

I came out one morning and the truck was leaning a tad to port, so took a look and there it was - a flat tire.  I needed to fix it, but the jack I had to use was for our Altima, and it didn't lift the truck high enough for me to take off the tire.  So, I got a big block of wood and put the jack on top of that and jacked that old pickup higher and higher until I could remove the tire.  then I took the tire in and picked it up two days later and put it back on the truck.

My old pickup was up on the block only a couple of days, but I'm counting it, even though it wasn't on cinderblocks, or even in the front yard.  Son of the South? That's me!

Students in the Hands of an Angry God?

Today I was outside for a couple of hours in the Quad at the college where I pretend to be a learned professor. Campus organizations were holding a "Student Involvement Fair" and I represented "The Write Minds," a student-led organization for writers to whichI am the Faculty Advisor. Anyway, things were slow as far as interest was concerned, but it being a beautiful day outside, a wide variety of young ladies abounded. I'll get back to them, just wait.

 

To pass the time, I was rereading Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," a powerful sermon delivered in 1741 in Connecticut (no, I was NOT there!) that I have assigned to my American Literature class. The premise was that, if you weren't saved, you could at any moment die and go to hell. That is, if one did not change one's ways and turn their hearts and minds to Christ immediately, the danger of dying and going to a place much worse than Niger was very real. 

 

The sermon is powerful, and Edwards delivered it in a monotone; yet, people were weeping and wailing and falling out and completely forgetting about their iPads. And text messages.

 

So, as I gazed about, obliquely noticing leggy girls with nice suntans and clothes that didn't have enough cotton to make a decent placemat, I wondered what Jonathan Edwards would think or say if he were sitting next to me. And then I wondered about what trades the Red Sox might make this winter, and the Iowa-UNI football game, and food.