Pease River Revival

Chapter 1

I was born during a dust storm so ferociously blasting its way through the Texas panhandle that it swallowed my mother’s wails outside the lean-to, where Brother and Sister Miller kept the laundry washtub and tools for their kitchen garden. Until I emerged during that typical late winter howl, they had held their secret close. For two months, my parents labored through the winter on the Miller farm, my mother’s pregnancy hidden under men’s woolen coats. They took care of the stock through snow blizzard and dry windstorm, repaired fence, cleaned stock tanks, turned fields, broke ice, killed prairie dogs and pack rats. All this in exchange for a cot inside the lean-to, two daily hot meals, and hot-water baths while predicting misfortune’s postponement, as teenagers do.

When my February birthdays rolled in, my parents recounted the event, gazing as tumbleweeds blew through the yards, crossing dirt roads and piling like thorny arrangements against barbed wire fences, how she nearly choked on dirt clots which my father would retrieve whole fist from her gaping jaws, the lean-to an inadequate shield from brutal Texas extremes. “I’ll be in debt to you ‘til I die, Merle.”

“Well, Ida Olive, I guess you mightn’t. We met at a junction. Merlina Rea here is the road we chose.” They share these sentiments on my birthday, tender words as sparse as a Great Prairie’s gentle rainfall, tousling my hair and patting my shoulders with genderless hands hardened and muscled by toil. To their parenting credit, I did not work alongside my parents until I could carry a full pail of milk from barn to the Miller’s kitchen or drive a wagon without the mules running away with me. Before that time, I was not certain how Ida Olive paid her debt to Merle. Nary a sibling made its arrival during storm or tranquility.

Thereafter, Brother and Sister Miller kept my parents on the farm, at first growing cotton, corn, and sunflowers for the market. Sister Miller owned a share in her parents’ Kentucky horse farm so, she had expensive things that her Texas neighbors envied. After Mother and Father saw to my first breath and allowed my cries to pierce farmhouse walls, the Millers, a childless couple at least twenty years older than my parents, saw their opportunity to expand the farm and score points for Jesus. By virtue of government agriculture and worker programs, the Millers received one hundred young fruit trees of various kinds. Which Merle and Ida Olive planted and tended. Therefore, the Miller aspirations for orchards and heaven kept my parents employed. We lived in one of the shacks reserved for traveling Black cotton workers, which my father enlarged and made comfortable, building rooms and furniture when he found time and lumber among the days and goods that belonged to others. When I was six years old, I finally slept in my own room.

Here is what I learned about my parents. By asking pertinent questions over many years, I could quilt their history at infrequent but effective occasions, such as when they were feverish or feisty. My father was fourteen in 1932 when he hitched a ride on a railcar in St. Louis and traveled west. My mother, born in Tulsa, was also among the thousands of teenagers who as orphans or because a daddy said, we cain’t afford to feed all o’ yeh youngins, hopped on railcars and camped along roadways. They did find plenty of work in exchange for meals but rarely found enduring work or the kind that included proper shelter. My parents were too young. When employers advertised job openings and applicants rushed to the offices, fathers and husbands shoved Merle and Ida Olive to the back of lines.

we cain’t afford to feed all o’ yeh youngins,

Merle first saw Ida Olive at a workers’ camp outside Matador in early May ’34. She led a large group of teenage trekkers in song while their hobo stew, generously loaded with beef scraps, cooked on the open fire. It had been long days for the teenagers; a ranch foreman hired them to put in sorghum seed and repair fence. They camped overnight near the cattle tanks. Ida Olive sang to soothe hurt while everyone took turns bathing in the cattle tank. While they ate, her songs stimulated hunger and shunned loneliness. Her melodic repertoire had songs responsive to every human emotion. Merle convinced Ida Olive to share his blanket one night. When my mother’s belly grew so that she could no longer disregard the tickling of new life, she told Merle. He found work for them on the Miller’s farm. With only two months to spare before birth, they had shelter for themselves and a crib for me, a discarded Lifebuoy Soap wooden crate lined with blankets stolen from where they hung unattended on Peasy clotheslines.

When I was a few weeks old and thriving on mother’s milk, Brother and Sister Miller escorted Merle and Ida Olive to the Baptist parsonage where a simple ceremony gifted legitimacy to we three Meyers. We would have to earn our moral standing in the community.

I knew that my parents liked each other. Daddy clapped when Mama sang, and Mama curtsied when he clapped for her. When Sister Miller discarded a peddled sewing machine and replaced it with a new electric Singer, Daddy brought the old one home for Mama. Several weeks later, after calving season, Mama enterprisingly showed Daddy that she could cut down her only church frock to make a dress so’s the girl who’s growin’ like pole beans don’t show ‘er stuff ever’ time she bends over -- he took her sewing kit and disappeared for three days. This behavior was markedly unusual for Merle; he did not indulge whims. We carried on with chores until Daddy returned with her sewing kit, new threads, and four bolts of new gingham and chambray fabric. He had walked to town and worked at the Pease River General Store for the fabric and his own meals, bringing the goods back in a new red wagon for me. Mama sewed dresses, aprons, and a new shirt for Daddy. Daddy assuaged Brother Miller’s fury and Ida Olive’s worry, promising to work double time over the next several days.

so’s the girl who’s growin’ like pole beans don’t show ‘er stuff ever’ time she bends over

Whether Merle and Ida Olive were fully committed to Baptist dogma before they met each other and the Millers, I am not certain. However, the Old Time Religion Baptist Church in our Texas town was the Meyer’s second home as early as I have memory. Mama and I went with Mrs. Miller when once a week social obligations like bridge club and shopping inspired her to leave her beautiful home; we spent that time cleaning the church building. While Mama swept and mopped floors, I oiled pews, piano, podium, and altar. If it was a spring or summer Saturday, we ran through nearby fields and ditches picking wildflowers to fill sanctuary vases for Sunday service.

Beside cleaning, we also practiced our gospel songs. Ida Olive was a popular vocalist in and around Peasy. Most of the time, she led the services in song, waving her arms to the rhythm and singing several notches higher in volume than the congregation so that Hold the Fort for I Am Coming did not drag along, it being a song about military glory. One of the first big questions of my life was, “Merle, why did Jesus s*******r his enemies?” He grinned, sending me to bed early so’s your impudence ain’t rewarded.

Hold the Fort for I Am Comingso’s your impudence ain’t rewarded

By the time I was six years old, and sleeping in my own room, I sang duet with Mama, sometimes carrying the alto harmony and other times the soprano lead. She kept a stool within reach of the preacher’s podium, and I took to that stool like it was radio performance hour. Within a few more years, I sang solo and wrote hymns that made old women cry and the preacher happy that I was his opening act. A brief interlude occurred when father was back from the war, and his heartsickness silenced our songs for a long while.