I was thinking back the other day, and the best I can figure I learned to drive going to gospel meetings back in the 60s when I was about 15. Preacher Miller would pull up beside our house – located on a hill on Juniper Street in LaGrange – get out and move to the passenger side to let me drive to the meeting. (I always knew he was a brave man, but I didn’t know how brave until then).

It was one of the highlights of my growing up years. Driving down old country roads may not sound too exciting to you, but you have to remember that I’m getting pretty old and lived during a simpler time. Mark Twain was a few years ahead of me in school, but not all that many.

Grandad always had a nice car he kept cleaner than one you’d find on a car lot; and he had power steering, too, so it was easy to drive. We might drive 40 miles east to Columbus for a meeting or 40 miles other directions to Napolean, Alabama or Temple, Georgia. These were all country churches without air conditioning, fancy preachers, or Starbucks.

I liked Napolean the best because it had a graveyard beside it, and it just had a good feel to it way out in the country. The roads were narrow and curvy, though, so I had to make sure I made it to the church and didn’t end up in the old country graveyard.

I learned a great deal more than how to drive going to those meetings. I learned what was most important to Preacher Miller, too, and that was the church the Lord died for and the gospel that He preached.

Ah, I sat many a long night and listened to some great preachers back in those days. They may not have sported advanced degrees, but they all had a degree in knowing the Bible and loving to preach it.

One of the best was Lynwood Smith from Brookhaven, Mississippi. He just left us a little over a year ago. He could paint a picture better than Norman Rockwell – not with a brush, of course, but with words. You’d sit in that old building in Columbus or Napolean – your heart still racing a little from negotiating that last curve before you got to the building – and listen as he painted a picture of that boy coming home after leaving his father to go to some far country. Before Brother Lynwood would finish, you could almost see the tears on the father’s face and the dust on the young boy’s feet!

A couple of hours later – driving home slowly around the curves of a now-dark road – Preacher Miller would fill in any gaps that Lynwood might have left.

Those are some of my best memories. I did not know at the time that they’d even add up to a decent memory, and I sure didn’t know that the experiences would form something deep and solid down inside.

But I know now.

And I know that even though those country roads were twisting and curvy, the preaching was straight as an arrow!

Readers may contact Steve Bowen by e-mail at steven.bowen@redoakisd.org.