Pilgrimage of Joy . . .

UNCLE L. E. AND THE SAND-HILLERS
by W. Carl Ketcherside

The great change in our lives, one which was destined eventually to affect almost the entire Ketcherside clan, actually began with one man. My father’s brother, Lewis, always called by his initials L. E., was very close to him. He was less than two years younger, and in their boyhood days they had been inseparable. My uncle was married the year that I was born. Even before he was married he had begun to sense a yearning deep inside himself for some relationship with the power to provide hope and assurance by enabling him to overcome tendencies and temptations which troubled his sensitive soul. The new responsibility as a very young husband drove him to talk to my father about his feelings. My father laughed in his face and made crude jokes about it.

The Baptist Church was the only one in our village. In the period between revivals it was always in the doldrums, but twice per year, in the spring and autumn, a fire-eating preacher was imported and all of the members were infused with new life and got on a spiritual high. Backsliders wept over their lapses. Alcoholics vowed to renounce liquor. Sinners were exhorted to flee from the wrath to come. The night L. E. went to the tent which had been erected on a lot adjacent to “the church,” the preacher happened to be a rough-looking specimen from the backwoods, who chewed tobacco and murdered the King’s English. But he knew the Bible!

As he reeled off verse after verse from memory, L. E. was first fascinated, and then captivated by the fact that God had spoken, and that we had access to His words, written down in plain English so every man could read them for himself. It was the first time in his life he had ever known what the Bible really was. That night, sitting in an audience of perspiring villagers, under a hot canvas, he resolved that, if God spared him, he would learn the divine will for his life.

He did not sleep that night, but lay awake thinking, meditating and praying. The next day underground he went about his tasks mechanically, and as soon as the whistle blew he ascended on the cage, and left the changing-room to go straight to the home where the revivalist was staying. Years afterward, when we worked together very closely, he told me all about it more than once, and always with the smile for which he was noted. He told the preacher he had already prayed all night and day. The preacher asked him what he felt and he said that he felt like he wanted to do what Jesus said and do it at once. After about an hour, the backwoods evangelist said it wasn’t much of an experience, as experiences generally went, but he reckoned it would have to do. That night the Baptists voted to accept his experience and qualify him for baptism. The community was dumbfounded. To convert a Ketcherside was like the bringing of Saul of Tarsus to bay. And at the end of the revival the converts were all baptized in the swimming-hole in the small river. L. E. went straight home, changed into dry clothing and started in on the Bible.

Two weeks later he announced to the local Baptist preacher that he wanted to preach the gospel he had obeyed. At a district meeting of Baptist preachers it was agreed that he was an unlikely candidate, but there was no way of discouraging him short of shooting him. It was decided that, since he was too poor to go away to college, and did not have the entrance requirements anyway, not having finished the fifth-reader, he should study for a year at home, at the end of which time he would stand for examination before three ordained Baptist ministers, and if he met their approbation he would be licensed as a supply preacher for the unstaffed rural churches.

During that year L. E. became a real problem to all of his friends and relatives. Some of his former cronies were convinced that he was “touched in the head.” He gave up going to shootingmatches, which gave the other contestants a chance to win. He wouldn’t play cards. He quit drinking beer. My father said he was making “a damned nuisance” out of himself and if he didn’t quit spouting the Bible at everyone he met he would lose the only worthwhile friends he ever had and end up with no one to talk to but a bunch of sickly, white-livered Christians. My father considered this a fate to which death should be readily preferred.

At the end of the year L. E. put on the suit he had worn at his wedding, the only dress-up clothing he owned, and met with the Baptist tribunal. They questioned him for three hours and it soon became apparent that he knew far more about the Bible than did his questioners. For every query his reply was “The Bible says.” When one of the preachers said about one quotation, “I don’t remember ever seeing that in the Bible,” he picked up the man’s book from the table and read it to him. At the end of the examination his questioners retired to a room for consultation. They left L. E. sitting at the table awaiting their decision about his future course.

When they returned the spokesman said, “We cannot approve of you to do supply work or recommend you to the churches. In fact, we are convinced you would kill every Baptist Church in the district if you advanced the ideas you have set forth today. You are not a Baptist at all but a Sandhiller.” L. E. had never heard of a Sand-hiller, so he asked what one was. The reply was unhesitating. “A Sandhiller is a special brand of Campbellite, and the worst enemy the church has, and you sound just like one.” The answer did not mean much to L. E. He did not know what a Campbellite was either, but he left the place with a firm resolution to find out.

The following Tuesday he was assigned a new man to help carry the tripod and set up the drill which rested on it, and with which holes were drilled in the face of the underground wall for tamping in explosives. While they were eating lunch from their dinner-pails at noon, L. E. said to the man, “Did you ever hear of a religious bunch called Sand-hillers?” “I sure have,” answered the man, “I’m one of them myself.” He then proceeded to tell him this was a nickname given to them by the Baptists because they had originated down in the sand-hills about thirty miles south, and some of them had moved into the mining area to find work. He arranged for L. E. to meet a merchant who was an elder of the Church of Christ, and the first evening they talked together they continued their speech until midnight. L. E. walked the three miles to his home and arose early to work all day in the mines.

He was hungry for the word, and began to attend the meetings in Flat River, a five-mile round trip each time. There was no preacher but anyone of the men in the congregation could teach, exhort and admonish. Sometimes as many as three would take turns speaking briefly. They convinced L. E. that one could be just a Christian and a Christian only. He became convinced of their plea to be simply the church mentioned in the scriptures. But when he expressed a desire to be affiliated with the little group a lengthy interrogation ensued, led by some who insisted he would have to be baptized again. He resisted on the basis that he had obeyed the Lord. Most of the members were ready to accept him, but two or three became very belligerent, and to avoid further friction, he finally consented to be immersed. In later years he always said, “I was baptized twice. The first time was to obey Jesus Christ, the second time to placate and appease the Church of Christ.”

Almost single-handedly he changed the village of Cantwell. He visited every house in town, including the one occupied by the saloon-keeper and his fashionable wife. He invited everyone to gather in his front yard each evening to hear the Bible explained. It was somewhere to go and relieve the tedium and the people came. Many of them carried hickory splint-bottom chairs on which to sit. Others sat on the ground or leaned on the picket fence. With a kerosene lantern hanging on the porch post and casting its sickly gleam upon the printed page, while moths and other insects flitted about, L. E. read and expounded. He was one with his audience. Many of them had known him from the time he was a lad. He went down into the mines with them everyday. He had helped them all with any task that was too great for them. Now he shared with them each night what he learned during the day.

When his shift underground was finished he took time to talk with men and women about their souls before he slept. He baptized his parents. He baptized his brothers and their wives. He baptized his two sisters. The day he baptized “Blind Emmy,” his cousin who had been born sightless, the whole community walked down to the creek for the occasion. When the poor blind woman was brought up from the water she raised her hands toward heaven and began to shout for joy. Caught up in the emotional excitement of the moment they led her up the road toward the village, shouting as she went. Some tried to quiet her, thinking she was “going out of her mind.” But it was as if she had not heard them. Other women began to weep, and men began to cry out to God to have mercy upon them. Years later, when I led “Blind Emmy” from door to door to sell “products” she told me that she saw Jesus “as plain as day.” I wondered how one who had never seen the form of a man and had never even seen her own face in a mirror, could see Jesus. But I didn’t say anything or ask any questions. I am glad now I did not.

An electrifying current swept over the community with the exception of one home — ours! Being a Lutheran, my mother could not attend the studies in the front-yard up the street. She would like to have gone because she loved people and the socialization before and after the study would have meant a lot to her. Women used such occasions to trade seeds for flowers that others admired, or to tell what they were eating out of their gardens, and all of this would have meant much to mother. But it would also have caused her to “go back on her raising” and she couldn’t do that.

When my father went and sat outside the circle of light across the dusty street, he returned home aggravated and angry. He told my mother that his favorite brother had somehow allowed bats to occupy his belfry and to observe it was a crying shame that an otherwise good man would permit himself to be ruined by religion and waste time in which he could be doing something useful for people, by standing on his front porch talking like an idiot.

Years later when we were al1 one in Christ, mother told me that she knew even then that L. E. was having an effect on my father. He became too angry and fumed around too much. Moreover, he poured a pipe ful1 of tobacco out of the Bull Durham sack, lighted it, took one draw on it, and then absent-mindedly knocked it out against the heel of his hand. That had never happened before. My father became short-tempered and snapped at my mother when she spoke to him. He had never done that before either. The Spirit was moving in for the kill!