Nashville – Part Five

Joe and Sally were good to me. By that I mean that they made me welcome in my new workplace and they made me welcome into their home. In the kitchen at Ireland’s Steak and Biscuits they showed me how to cook and present the menu – my task was the production-oriented steak and biscuits and ham and biscuits; Joe cooked the specialty steaks and Sally provided the fries, baked potatoes, and other fixin’s. I was quite fine with Joe cooking the higher-priced steaks since the last thing I wanted to do was to mess up on my new job.

The best meal I had while in Nashville was cornbread and pinto beans at Joe and Sally’s. It was my best meal because of the company, because they invited me into their home. We played “spades” well into the night, eating pinto beans and cornbread; the joy of their friendship, friendship to someone who had been a stranger just a few weeks before – made those basic foods taste as if they were being served on the Queen Mary.

Early on in Nashville I met Dylan, a young man about my age. I invited him to go to church with me. He told me that he couldn’t go because he didn’t have “church” clothes. I told him that if he’d go with me that I wouldn’t wear my “church” clothes; I told him that it wouldn’t matter how we were dressed, we’d just wear our normal everyday clothes. On a Sunday morning we went to a church, walked inside, stayed for the service, and walked out; no one engaged us in conversation. I was wrong about what would happen if we didn’t wear “church” clothes.

I hope Dylan came to know Jesus. I hope Joe and Sally came to know Jesus and had a good life, I hope they stayed together and got married and are healthy and happy. I wonder if they ever think about me. Probably not, they had a greater effect on me than I had on them, I was a stranger and they took me in, they gave me friendship.

If I had been black and gone into a white neighborhood in the Civil Rights era what are the chances that a family would have rented me a room when I couldn’t pay for it until my first payday? What is the likelihood that white coworkers would have invited me into their homes?

I was a stranger and they took me in. There are some things you never forget.