I've been doing some math. Prompted by a question on the ETBU Alumni message board I realized this startling fact: Since I became legally eligible to work at the age of 16, I have been employed at over 24 different places. That's a lot of places.
With these numbers in hand I did some more math and figured this startling fact out: 20% of my life, and 46.1538% of my working life, was spent in the employ of Timberline Baptist Camp in Lindale, Texas. That's a lot of employ.
And more startling than that? Having spent that much time at Timberline, and that time having meant so much to me, aiding in the development of me as a person perhaps moreso than any other experience, I spent so little time talking about it to you people-- the people with whom I converse with often.
So, here is where I'll talk about it. A little.
First, a few brief facts. I visited Timberline a couple of times as a child at RA camp. As a Royal Ambassador, I will do my best, and so on. As a child I told myself, I could work here. It'd be cool. So as a sixteen year old I applied, was interviewed, and accepted. I began work in the summer of 1991 and continued until the winter of '97. I was on summer staff, I worked retreats, was the chief cabin and dining hall and bathroom cleaner during off seasons. Met one of my closest friends and college roommate there. First appreciated the incomparable beauty of the great East Texas Piney Woods, of which I grew up in. It was just a special place and a special time.
I could fill volumes with stories about Timberline, but let me suffice the time with letting you know about Jeanette Gentry.
Jeanette was the head cook at the camp. During my first couple of months of employment I was assigned, for weeks on end, to be the kitchen assistant. Basically my job was to hang around the kitchen all day washing dishes, mopping floors, cleaning the dining hall restrooms, and answering to Jeanettes ever beck and call.
Jeanette was an old fashioned country woman who was as tough as nails. She could make you cringe with just a second-long glance in your direction. She ran the kitchen with an iron fist. At first I thought that she was a cold hearted workhorse.
But as the years went by I learned something deeper about Jeanette: She actually cared for me as a person. She inwardly despised the hyper religiosity I was involved in vis a vis a local church. I'm quite sure she felt I was the most self righteous son of a bitch alive, because I was and she was no-nonsense enough to recognize it. But despite all that, she did what any person who loves another person does-- she took care of me. When I fell victim to skin poisoning (see January 14,) she provided the care. When I returned back from my first trip to Estonia, she provided the unexpected hug and told me she was so glad I was home-- even though Lindale nor Timberline was my official residence. When she saw the pleasure on my face at the taste of her tator tot casserole, the next day she made an entire one just for me.
All of this was done with as little fanfare as possible.
One of my most traumatic experiences was falling out of the bed of a truck that was going around 40 mph, while hauling brush Brent and I had cut to the place up the hill where we threw all the cut brush. Standing on the open tailgate of the truck while leaning into the brush, trying to hold it in, William (the driver of the small Toyota truck) hit a pothole, I fell backward, my leg got tied up into a vine, and I was dragged about 10 yards before he stopped. The blow to the head by the pavement knocked me out. When woke up a few seconds later the first words out of my mouth (according to Brent, which I don't remember) was "Am I dead?" The entire right side of my face was bleeding with gravel being imbedded in my skin. A chunk of the skin on my knee was torn off, as well as major abrasions to my right hand. The blood dripping down my face was dripping down and staining my brand new See You At the Pole shirt. It was quite a gruesome sight. But like any hard working camp hands, Brent and William told me to go on down to the dining hall, they'd take the brush from there. I asked them if they were sure, if they think it might be better if they called 911? But they just laughed at my sickly appearance and told me to go see Jeanette.
After what seemed like a ten mile trek, I made my way to the dining hall, which was only about 200 yards away, limping the entire journey. As I made my way into Jeanette's office I stood in the doorway waiting to be noticed and babied. She was huddled around some craft that she was showing some of the other ladies, their backs to the door- not immediately noticing me. As a few of their heads turned around and saw me, they all screamed in horror, some of them turned their heads, others ran up to me in wonder of how I could look so bad. But not Jeanette. As soon as her eyes caught my eyes she said "Get out of my office and go take a shower." I'm thinking, "What?! A shower? I'm about to die here and you're telling me to take a shower?!" But I did, because she told me to.
When I returned to her office the rest of the ladies had gone back to work and she was at her desk doing paperwork. When she saw me in the doorway she walked over to the recliner in the corner and moved some stuff out of the way and motioned for me to sit down. Not saying a word she methodically reached into her filing cabinet, removed several different types of ointments and bandages, and began her healing work on me. Her first job was to clean my face, pulling out several pieces of gravel that the painful shower I took missed. She then poured something on my hands. Then she cared for my knee. As she was putting stuff on it she stopped, and in one of those very tender moments that we are occasionally blessed with between another person, she told me that I needed to be careful. She said "you mean too much to me and everyone else around here to be sidelined. Now suck it up and go back out there and be Craig, scarface and all." Then she gave me a wink and went back to her paperwork as I walked out the door with a tear in my eye.
A couple of years ago I read a book called "In the Land of White Death," which told the story of a Russian whaling ship that became stranded in the ice of Antarticta. The story was about how a couple of the survivors survived and found their way back to civilization. Part of the reason they found their way home was because of lessons learned and documented from another ship that had years earlier gotten stranded in the ice. A few years after the original shipwreck, the pieces of the boat washed up on the shores of a Canadian island. The lesson learned was the new discovery of specific wind patterns caused the ship to end up where it did. And those lessons learned saved the life of the survivors of the whaling ship, the Santa Anna.
The name of the original ship that washed up on the Canadian shore? The Jeanette.
Now, more than three years after the cancer ravaged Jeanette's body and took her from us, in the course of every single day, remnants of her memory wash up on the shore of my mind. I can't cook a single meal without thinking about her, for she instilled within me the love of cooking for those you love. I can't mop a floor or clean up a mess at work without thinking about her, for she taught me by example the dignity and care it takes to do what others consider "dirty work." And most significantly, I can't look at the scar on my knee without thinking that at one time, to at least one person, I was the center of the universe. And I was cared for.
"And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. Pursue love...."
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