The New Wild West

The following is a reflection on one aspect of our recent visit to my Mom's home town of Douglas, Wyoming.

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They seemed to be everywhere that morning.  After a weekend spent at homes many miles and many hours removed from this prairie town, a horde of laborers, from the marginally capable to the highly skilled, returned to their grueling routine.

These were weathered men in rough, dusty jeans and boots.  In the hotel dining room they were devouring selections from the breakfast buffet and washing it down with coffee.  The rectangular outline of a box of cigarettes or the circular imprint of a can of chewing tobacco marked many hip pockets.  Caffeine and nicotine, staples of the working man.

Intense eyes peer out of faces creased and burnt by days in the sun and unceasing wind of the Wyoming plains.  Their bodies are shaped by strenuous physical toil, producing a certain taut lean-ness reminiscent of an earlier generation of transient workers who rode these plains a century ago called cowhands.  Not the careful, narcissistic sculpting of regular trips to the local gym, theirs was the hardness of hours and days and weeks of constant labor.

In the hallways and the elevator I was passed by men carrying backpacks or tool bags out to their pickup trucks.  A few were standard half-ton trucks, but often there were heavier 3/4-ton or 1-ton rigs laden with tool boxes and equipment.  Where I was used to seeing mini-vans and SUV’s and economical sedans, the parking lot and nearby gas station was full of bulked-up trucks destined for a long drive out to the fields of work: the trusted steeds of the modern western man.  After topping off the gas tank, they ‘saddle up’ for a drive over narrow winding roads, treacherously crowded by the influx of traffic.

Where their predecessors would have herded recalcitrant cattle to the railroad, these men guide fossil fuels to railcars, either oil fracked from miles under the earth or coal scraped from nearer the surface.  The cargo ultimately powers homes and automobiles of people with little understanding of where the petroleum or electricity came from, much like the city dwellers of an earlier era who dined on beef-steak that arrived on their plate long after the cattle drivers had done their work.

As I watched these men, I wondered how long I would last in a day on their job.  I thought about my esoteric work with data and information systems.  Where results are measured by invisible changes to software.  Where I sit in an air-conditioned cubicle farm surrounded by other knowledge workers in office casual attire worried about whether our workstation is ergonomically correct, not whether someone will be injured or killed on the job or just making it to the job site.

Oh, yes, we do our part to bring products to market, to contribute to the necessary stream of capital flowing in the economy.  I am thankful for a mind that allows me to perform complex analytical tasks.  But those coal and oil workers, following the new boom in Wyoming energy brought on by the irresistible economic forces of scarcity and demand, are at the top of the food chain.  If they were not ripping that hard, black coal from the ground or sucking that reluctant dark oil from deep fields of shale, I would be sitting at home, in the dark, with nothing to do.

Why I Pray

When my hands have done all that they can do,
and there is still much more to be done...

I have given much thought to prayer lately.  Mostly about why.  Why pray?  Why do I sporadically, instinctively persist in an activity that is so intangible in practice and results?  What I read or hear from others on prayer is often how: the practice of prayer.  But always how is inextricably linked with results.  I may not be the most observant person, but I cannot point to
examples of a given outcome explicitly following a specific prayer of mine.  So, I have discarded the results-orientation of prayer.  When I meet a friend for conversation, the only outcome I hope for is a deepening friendship, that we will know each other better for the time spent together, that we will have been encouraged.

So, I have tried to put prayer into that framework - a desire for a deeper knowing, to be encouraged as I catch glimpses of a Good that is weaving itself into my life and the lives of others in ways that are not always clear to my limited view.  As I have done this, I have come to a conclusion about prayer: I need to pray because I need a way to express hope.  Hope for things to get better when I or people I care about are struggling with life.  

Sometimes the circumstances of life are cruel and people suffer through no fault of their own.  Other times they, you, and I make foolish choices and endure the consequences.  In either case, what is done is done, it is what it is.  Think back to your high school or college commencement addresses.  How many individuals who sat around you listening to the grand speeches about the great things all of you would do have had any influence outside their small circle of friends and family?  Even the people we deem most powerful on earth are limited.  It is at that point of reaching our limit that we need hope.

When I face the ‘what is’ of my actions and it is a stinking mess, I need hope.  

When realize that those I love have only the faintest understanding of my heart’s cry for them because of my flawed and twisted behavior, I need hope.  

When insurmountable obstacles of disease or death or disaster loom, I need hope.

I need some way to lay hold of hope, to hope that things will get better, for me, for others.  Or, perhaps, if not better, then that the struggle will be purposeful.

And prayer is the best way I know of to express hope in an unknowable future.  Use the word Destiny or Fortune or Fate or, as I often do, Providence.  Whatever you want to call it, prayer is my recognition that there are mistakes I have made that I can’t fix, there are people I love whom I have hurt, there are places I will never go and things I will never do that I probably should have.  I cannot relive those moments and correct those failings.  When I pray, I am simply expressing the hope that the gap between all I wish to be and what I really am will be bridged.  That there IS a Grand Scheme, and in that Grand Scheme, all my limitations have a perfect fit whether it makes sense now or not.

“…we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us…”  Romans 5:2-5 (HCSB)

Monopoly, Munchies and Mayhem

Ah, summer.  When I was 9 or 10, summer was a time of simple pleasures which didn't get complicated until a few years later.  School was out, daylight hours seemed unending, and I could spend the night at a friend’s house.  During the school year, sleepovers weren’t possible.  There was homework and chores and ‘school the next day’ and Saturday baths for Sunday church.  Adult reasoning never resonated with me.  It just translated into ‘NO’.  Homework more important than a sleepover?  Really?  

So, while we contented ourselves with scattered Saturday or Sunday afternoon visits during the school year, as June approached, my friends and I would start scheming.  Most of my sleepover time was spent at best buddy Darwin’s house.  There were two events we spent weeks planning:  The annual church trip to Disneyland in February and sleepovers at his house in the summer.  He spent the night at my house a few times, too.  But I remember best a Friday night at his house.

The key ingredients to our sleepover festivities were food and games.  The 1960’s were a golden era of board games and snacks, before television swallowed up family game time and health cultists labeled ‘junk food’ as the great evil of the 20th century.  Darwin and I had solemnly committed to not only convincing our parents that a rare reprieve from eating what was good for us would do no lasting harm, but getting them to fund our feast as well.

Mom dropped me off early that Friday evening.  Sometime after dinner we headed out to our enclave.  Darwin’s dad had set up their massive family tent in the front yard for us to camp out in, probably to keep the noise out of the house.  For us, it meant more floor space than Darwin’s laundry closet bedroom and independence.  After we pooled our resources, the menu looked something like this:

Taco Flavor Doritos

Cinnamon Pop Tarts

Hires Root Beer

Pringles potato chips.

Chips Ahoy cookies

Nesbitt’s Orange Soda

We had two simple objectives for an enjoyable evening: to consume all of our treats before morning and to play games until sunup.  Some of our choices for games were Aggravation, Sorry, Life and Monopoly.  We may have played some of the other games, but Monopoly was our perennial favorite and a sleepover meant enough time to enjoy it fully.

With only two people playing Monopoly, it can take many hours to play out to the bitter end where one person finally runs out of money.  There are a number of strategies for prolonging the agony: mortgaging property to pay debt; selling properties to pay debt; swapping properties to pay debt; staying in jail to avoid landing on another high-rent property.  

Sort of like the real world.

As the night wore on, the combination of sugar, starch, artificial colors and sleep deprivation began to have their effect.  Everything became funny.  Who won or lost the game didn’t matter as much as making it last as long as possible.  We could have easily passed for intoxicated.  Which we were, on life.  We were doing what we wanted for as long as we wanted and no-one was telling us to stop or be quiet or trying to take our hoard of treats away.  Every hour we would switch to a new entrée - a bag of chips, another package of Pop Tarts, some cookies.  

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, before dawn but well after midnight, the last dollar was drained out of one of our Monopoly accounts.  There was no way to pay the rent — no loans, no property, nothing.  All was gone.  Impulsively, one of us threw some Monopoly money in the air.  Then, the two of us just went berserk.  The player tokens, chance cards, houses and hotels, the rest of the money went flying into the air and all over the tent.  We laughed hysterically as we continued to fling stuff everywhere.  For a few minutes, the inside of the tent resembled a well-shaken snow globe.  Eventually, our hilarity subsided enough so we could begin the recovery effort.

We spent a good half hour scrounging around the tent on our Monopoly search and rescue.  To our sleep-deprived brains, even cleaning up our own mess was fun.  We crawled over un-used sleeping bags, scrounged through empty snack food containers to re-assemble the game.  Finally, we went outside the tent as the sky grew lighter in the east.  We felt triumphant.  We had conquered sleep.  There was nothing left to do but roll up sleeping bags and pack the remains of our stuff back into the house.  We managed to find a few more Monopoly pieces as we emptied the tent.

We crept through the solemn quiet of the house.  Darwin’s stuff went back into his room, mine into a tidy stack in the living room.  To our delight, we were perched happily on the living room couch when Darwin’s mom came out to fix breakfast.  

“Are you boys hungry?”

I looked at Darwin and he at me.  We both groaned and shook our heads.  The exotic binge of the past several hours churned heavily in our guts.  So, we sat on the couch while the rest of the family ate breakfast.  Saturday morning cartoons played hypnotically on the flickering black and white screen of the television.  

And that is where they found us after breakfast: half leaning against each other, heads flung back, mouths hanging open, eyes sealed shut, snoring deeply, the contented victims of our marathon junk food Monopoly fest.

MONOPOLY: Source of my first and best lessons in economics and finance.

A Very Long Day

I was reminded of an episode from my childhood recently while reading aloud “Mary Emma and Company”, the ongoing saga of Ralph Moody that took place about 100 years ago.  The Moody family had just moved from Colorado to Boston, Massachusetts.  On their first day in town, thirteen-year-old Ralph is at a local grocer trying to get a job.  When Ralph tells his prospective employer how many hours a day he would be willing to work, the grocer informs him that the truant officer would not think too highly of that.  Ralph isn’t quite sure what a truant officer is, but he assumes that means he will have to go to school.  When they were living in Colorado and struggling to make ends meet after Ralph’s father died, his mother would let him stay out of school if he had a job earning more than 50 cents a day!  No truant officers came calling.

While recognizing that much good has come from child labor laws and public education, reading Ralph Moody’s story, I am struck by how much he gained from his early exposure to work.  Ralph’s mother wisely struck a balance between making sure Ralph had an education while allowing him to be a resourceful entrepreneur.  Though his formal education in his elementary years was spotty, what Ralph learned in the ‘school of hard knocks’ more than compensated.  I am hard-pressed to think of a book about childhood, fictional or not, historical or contemporary,  where a school boy actually enjoyed being in school.  Rather, it is almost universally portrayed as something to be escaped from.  This makes me wonder why it is that when children are miserable in school, the grown-ups who run the system assume there is something wrong with the child.  As an elementary aged school boy, I experienced that desire to escape on a regular basis.  It wasn’t until about age 11 that I made my first attempt.

When I was in 6th grade, my closest neighborhood friend was Edward Moss.  He was a few months younger than me, which put him in 5th grade.  His older brother Tracy was actually in my class.  There was also a third Moss brother, who by then was in Junior High and had even less appreciation for school.  

It was a time in the school year when the weather was balmy and the memory of summer freedom still fresh.  The Moss boys and I were grousing about school one afternoon when the oldest brother suggested a novel solution: why not just stay home?  To my innocent mind, this was an astounding notion.  How could we NOT go to school?  As it turned out, quite easily.  Although we were not much more than a mile from school, a classic yellow Bluebird school bus wheezed its way to our trailer park every school day, no doubt to ensure that smaller children would make it safely to the hallowed halls of learning.  Still, walking was an option we often used as preferable to the noisy confines of the bus.  

We came up with a deceptively simple plan.  I would meet the Moss brothers at the entrance to the trailer park where the bus stopped.  Of course, there would be other kids gathered there.  We would tell them we were walking to school.  Then, on the way, we would detour into one of our favorite hang-outs — the old cemetery that was just a block or so down the street from the trailer park entrance.

That is just what we did.  It was astoundingly easy.  Once out of eye-shot of the bus stop, we dashed into the cemetery.  Then, we ducked behind a large mausoleum in the middle of the grounds and watched as the bus came and went.

At first, our freedom was glorious.  We wandered around, reading epitaphs, engaged in nonsensical conversation.  While all those other losers were cramped in a hard chair behind a desk, we were breathing deep the fresh air wafting through the old pepper trees and musty marble of the cemetery.  That is, until the oldest Moss boy pulled out a handful of cigarettes from his pocket.  He had snagged them from his Dad’s supply.  Today was to be a day for breaking rules.  So, we all in turn lit up.  I had seen enough public service announcements to know smoking was BAD.  In spite of that, peer pressure was highly effective.  I tried a puff or two.  Even though these were a filtered menthol brand, I can still recall the mint green label, the experience was decidedly un-mint-like.  For a boy prone to asthma and allergies, breathing smoke was a poor fit.  I never tried smoking again.

No, it never was...

That diversion got us to what we assumed must be about lunch time.  None of us had a watch, but the sun was high overhead.  Since our master plan had not gone beyond our initial escape, we had not anticipated such basic needs as food and water.  I had brought a brown bag lunch.  On that particular day, I was the only one so equipped.  Whether we had money or not didn’t matter.  In our present circumstance we couldn’t go anywhere in the public eye.  By the time my meagre lunch was divided among our truant band, it didn’t make much of a meal.  I wasn’t particularly hungry, in any case.  The combination of lurking anxiety about being caught and the after-taste from smoking had effectively dampened my appetite.

Boredom crept in with the oppressive warmth of the afternoon sun, the only possible explanation for what we did next.  We headed out to the street by the trailer park entrance, looking for relief from our monotony.  By the entrance was a rectangular pit in the ground built of cinder blocks and covered by heavy gauge steel plating.  Cut into the steel was a hinged trap door which was conveniently unlocked, but steel plating is heavy.  We managed to pry it up enough to get a grip and, with all of us lifting, got the door open.

Tracy — always good for a reckless endeavor — volunteered to climb down into the pit for a look.  He had just dropped down onto the concrete floor several feet below when someone hissed:  “There’s a car coming out of the park!”

We dropped the door with a thunderous clang, leaving Tracy inside.  The three of us made a mad dash across the street and flung ourselves onto the ground behind scanty cover of brush and rock.  The car creeped up the drive and turned toward town.  Once it passed out of sight, we clambered to our feet, only to see another car coming up the street in our direction.  Again, we waited.  The ground was warm and the smell of dust and sage and sweat began to mingle as we lay there with the sun beating down.  Car number two finally disappeared into the park.

Cautiously, we raised our heads and scanned the street closely before dashing across to see about Tracy.  Again, we pried the door up, taking a bit longer since we were missing Tracy’s help, who could barely reach the door from below.  Tracy’s face glowered up at us, dripping with perspiration.  

“What took you so long?  I’m roasting down here!” 

Those were his kinder thoughts. The rest of what he said is unprintable: “#$%&@“ and variants thereof.

We hoisted the apoplectic Tracy out of the hole.  Peering in, I saw a large pipe crossing the length of the pit with a complicated steel contraption bolted in the middle, part of the system providing domestic water and fire protection for the park.  Hardly worth the trip across the street.

The interminable afternoon drug on for another couple of hours.  We wandered around a nearby orange grove for awhile, tossing oranges at each other and eating a few to ease our hunger.  Finally, we heard the bus making its return trip.  We could safely end the extended game of hide-and-seek where apparently nobody was interested in finding us.  My long day was over.  It would be a much longer time before I attempted to skip school again.  

Certainly, I was NO ordinary boy.  But, just what planet I came from is still open to debate.

Saints

http://www.catholic.com/blog/
matt-fradd/becoming-saints

“Thus, there is another definition of what a Saint is. It is this: One who, with the object of pleasing God, does his ordinary duties extraordinarily well. Such a life may be lived out without a single wonder in it, arouse little notice, be soon forgotten, and yet be the life of one of God's dearest friends.”  Frank Duff

Who is a saint?  Catholics and Protestants will wrangle over the precise definition, with some having a much more complicated formula than others.  As for me, I just know a saint when I see one.  In action.  Someone whose presence reveals a Transcendence that is beyond human, even though they themselves may not be aware of what they carry in the earthen vessel of their flesh.  When the pressure of a crisis bears down, true character is revealed.  Our family experienced a heart-wrenching tragedy recently with the sudden and unexpected death of my nephew.  In the midst of sorrow and questions and painful pragmatic details, I encountered saints.

The first saints we met was upon our arrival in the small Wyoming town for the funeral.  Every hotel, and there aren’t many, was booked solid.  This part of Wyoming is experiencing an oil ‘fracking’ boom so accommodations are hard to come by.  On short notice, a couple who knows our family welcomed my wife and I and our girls into their home, made us comfortable, fed us breakfast, cared for us.  Saints.

Then there was the pastor of the church who left behind a group of kids at summer camp and made a 150 mile drive to officiate the service.  Though it is a small church, he could have delegated the responsibility to his associate.  Another pastor who knew my nephew was there as well.  But, that home-town pastor made the drive, prayed with us before the service, spoke words of truth and comfort to those gathered, sat with family members for the meal afterwards.  Only when most of the cleanup was finished did he finally say his goodbyes and make that 150 mile drive back to his other responsibilities.  A saint.

There is something particularly wholesome about a shared meal after a funeral.  It is an older tradition not always followed.  Breaking bread together, mourners can share grief and fond memories with the helpful distraction of chewing when words fail.  But that is only possible if someone takes care of the preparation, serving, and cleanup for the meal.  In the crowded basement below the sanctuary, three ladies worked tirelessly to ensure that happened.  They seemed particularly grateful when I brought over a few abandoned, food-stained paper plates from my table.  Of course, they insisted that we take some of the leftovers home.  Three dear saints.

You might say, well that is just what people do at times like that.  No, ‘people’, that collective identifier for the individual components of humanity, do not do that.  Only ‘certain people’, those rare and unique treasures who make joys brighter and sorrows lighter and who in simplest sincerity will tell you that they are merely unworthy servants, doing their duty to their Master.  Saints. I am so thankful for them.  And if you look around, you will see them, too.

Two For One Cuts Both Ways

I will not be late, I will not be late, I will not be...

Riding the train to work is the next best thing to working from home.  Both options are far superior to driving myself to work. A key difference between commuting by train and not commuting at all is that trains run on time regardless of how prompt I am.  If I am five minutes behind schedule logging in to my PC from home, no big.  If I am five minutes late to the train station, well, catch the next train, buddy.  For those of you who are always on time for everything, please move along as you may not understand the rest of what I am revealing here.

I intensely dislike just standing, Standing, STANDING at the platform waiting for the Coaster.  Consequently, I afflict my dear wife by cutting it a ‘bit too fine’ every morning that she drops me off.  I have found that telling her I’m in no hurry to get to work rarely helps.  This has been going on for years, commencing precisely the next day after I determined it took exactly 7 minutes and 47 seconds to drive from our house to the Coaster Station under optimal conditions.  Allowing an extra 53 seconds for non-cooperative traffic lights, I am typically seated in the car in our garage just under 9 minutes before the train is scheduled to arrive at the station four miles away.

True confession, in the decade I have been riding, I have missed the train a time or two.  But I have redeemed uncountable hours over that same span, surely enough to take a vacation.  Which is a great idea now that summer is upon us.

One morning this past week, the traffic lights were in a foul mood.  We were late.  I hopped out of the car as the whistle drifted down the tracks and the crossing signals began to clang.  I dashed for the ticket machine and frantically went through the “push-any-button, push-round-trip-button, push-destination-button, push-ticket-type, push-payment-type, jam-in-the-credit-card, push-‘No I Do Not Want A Receipt’-button” ritual while the train screeched to a stop behind me.  

Then, like a Las Vegas jackpot, the machine spit out not one, but two tickets.  Without taking time to look, I grabbed both tickets and, with a mighty leap, cleared the nearest train doors as they were closing, yanked my backpack through what was at that moment a 2-inch opening.  O.K.,  I made that last part up.

Catching my breath, I waved at my lovely taxi driver as the train pulled out, then looked to see that I had one regular ticket and one ‘senior’ ticket.  My first thought was that North County Transit District was giving me a preview of the new, lower rates I would soon enjoy when I turned 55.  But then, I realized I had purchased two tickets for the one of me riding the train.  One ride for the price of two.  I must have hit an extra button in my panic to get on the train.  For a miser such as I, that was a painful thought.

Notice, there are TWO.
Admit it.  You want one.

This little scenario came to mind two days later when I met a friend at Starbucks for breakfast.  I ordered my Venti Caramel Macchiato with a classic Sausage & Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich.  We were finished eating and well into solving the world’s problems (as manly men always do at breakfast), when one of the staff said, “sausage cheddar sandwich for Val” and plop a bagged item down on the counter.  My friend and I looked at each other.  Could there be two Val’s at Starbucks that morning who both shared an affection for the Starbucks version of an Egg McMuffin?  We thought not, but I waited a bit just to be sure.  Five minutes later, it was clear that I was the intended recipient of a second sandwich.  

Reluctantly, I went up to the counter and let the barista know that I had, indeed, already eaten my breakfast and that this was a duplicate.  As Starbucks had no use for it, they generously bestowed the second sandwich on me, which I later consumed at lunch.  In this instance, I experienced a true, two-for-the-price-of-one deal.  For a miser such as I, that was a happy event.

Later, I pondered what grander meaning this odd coincidence might have for my miserly self, other than to be less concerned with a few dollars here or there.  What occurred to me is that people make mistakes.  At home, at work, out on the town.  Sometimes I do, sometimes someone else does.  And if I can learn to be gracious about the little mistakes (mine or someone else’s), then perhaps I will be more gracious with the bigger ones.

An Unexpected Prize

I had three sets of friends as a child: at school, in the trailer park, at church.  Their paths rarely crossed.  I saw my church friends on Sundays and Wednesday nights, school friends at school, neighborhood friends after school during the week and on Saturdays.

Part of this was due to the odd coincidence that both my neighborhood and church friends were at least a few months younger than I was, so ended up in a different school grade, resulting in different classes and sometimes different schools entirely.  The other cause of this segregation was intentional.  Oh, I knew I was supposed to evangelize my non-churched friends and I did invite them once or twice to special events such as Vacation Bible School.  But, I could never picture my friends from school or in the trailer park really understanding church, at least as I experienced it.  Maybe I sold them short, maybe I was a coward, maybe I knew I would be mortified if my school friends ever found out exactly what went on at that Pentecostal church.

Still, I know that the better parts of my character were formed largely by those faithful servants in that little church.  As a child, I was oblivious to any church politics that I encountered later as a teen and adult.  I just saw grown ups who were on their way to heaven and who were doing their best to bring me along, too.

One such saint taught the Junior Boys Sunday School class.  Junior Boys, as defined by the Assemblies of God Gospel Publishing House curriculum, were in 5th and 6th grade.  There was, no doubt, a Junior Girls class, too.  Maybe we even shared the same curriculum.  This was before ‘Tweens’ or ‘Preteens’ were invented.  We were ten to twelve years old, eager for mischief, easily bored.  Our core group of boys had been in church together for a few years, so we knew the Bible stories and the Sunday School drill: be on time, bring your Bible, recite that week’s scripture verse from memory.  So, by the time Sister Smithson got to us, we had worn out a couple of well-intentioned volunteers with our energetic antics.  

Yes, we called her Sister Smithson.  That was how adults were addressed in church in those days.  The men were Brothers and the women were Sisters, though kids were still called by their first name.  It gave a certain family atmosphere to church that I miss.

In any case, Sister Smithson had some advantages that the other teachers lacked.  First, she was the mother of one of our cohort.  “Ah, man, it’s your mom!”  That let the air out of one of our hot air balloons immediately.  Second, she had a certain quiet dignity that evoked respect from this disrespectful group of boys.  Sister Smithson was, in whatever vague understanding I had of the term, a lady.  Soft-spoken, tastefully dressed, patient.  Finally, she somehow knew the way to a boy’s heart: Contests, with prizes.  Say what you will about bribing children to learn, it works.  

One such contest involved cars.  Although her son was never as much a fan of Hot Wheels as I and some of the other boys were, Sister Smithson designed a racing contest.  She drew a simple oval race track on a piece of poster board.  The track was divided into segments, perhaps one for each week of the Sunday School quarter.  Then, she had each of us bring a picture of a car from a newspaper or magazine.  We cut the cars out and glued them onto a piece of cardboard.  There was much conjecture about whose car was fastest as she pinned each one to the starting line.  The prize was a large candy bar and a small amount of cash.  We were off and running.

As the weeks went on, the results were much like any race.  There were leaders, stragglers and middlers.  If you missed a week, you lost a lot of momentum.  Sort of like a botched pit stop.  You could make up the memory verse, but not much else.  As we neared the finish, there were two or three of us vying for the checkered flag.  Blessed with a good memory and a mother who made sure I was in church unless I was close to death, I was a competitive Sunday School racer.  But a strange thing happened on the way to victory circle.  I don’t recall whose car crossed the finish line first and who consequently ended up with the loot.  It might have been me.  But what I do remember was that over the weeks of striving for that prize what became more important to me than winning that contest was being in Sister Smithson’s good graces.  Not that I was afraid of getting into trouble for doing something wrong.  Instead, I learned to value seeing Sister Smithson’s smile when I had done something right.  And that is a prize I carry with me to this day.