"Like a generation of leaves, so it is with humankind. The autumn winds scatter leaves on the ground
and with the season of spring the burgeoning wood buds forth the new. So one generation comes forth as another passes."
It's been a hard day. I awoke to the political news, and after lunch I went to a funeral at my church
He had been a barber, a man around the age of my parents, one of those quietly unassuming people unlikely to win mention in any history book, however much they accomplish in their own way
More than a few of them have lived in this town
Decades before I moved here, and when I was still a child, a minister at a local Methodist Church was actively fighting segregation, and in 1957 organized a sit-in at a ice-cream parlor, several years before the famous sit-in at the Greensboro Woolworths. That case went through the state courts, and the forces of progress found no justice. That ice cream parlor has now become a parking lot, owned by a large African American church, where I have attended several funerals
Martin Luther King Jr was originally scheduled to be visiting here for the sixth time on 4 April 1968 but at the last minute decided it was more important to go to Memphis; on King's earliest visits, people went to meet him because they thought they should, even though they were scared out of their wits and kept the kids at home
I spent part of yesterday talking to someone more my age than that of the barber, while we handed out literature to folk coming to vote. I met him, too, at church. He's retired now. A while back he had told me how much anxiety he feels about political trends, which he fears are running backwards. He grew up in a rural area and can remember some bad times. When he was a child, there was a big sign at the outskirts of his home-town welcoming the Klan. He remembered the sign was owned by the same guy who owned the local store and who gave candy to the black kids on Halloween. "Everything was fine, as long as you smiled and stayed in your place, and otherwise all bets were off"
I think the barber was the friendliest man I've ever met. He was also the very first person to open a business in this town that would serve both black and white; and he caught some grief over that. After various eulogies, one of his sons, who has become a Pastor, stood up and said that sometimes he'd hear funeral eulogies and not be able to recognize the person from the description. He said that his father was sometimes a crazy fool, and worked three jobs to keep his family fed and clothed; that if we really love people then we love them with their imperfections; that his father had really loved his family and they had all loved him; that his father was a very sweet man who was often hurt by the things he saw and heard; and that he would miss him. Then we prayed again and sang another hymn, not one of my favorites, and the family went off to the cemetery, and I have no rational reason to think I will ever see the barber again, but I hope I will because I miss him too
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