I grew up at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley, in a little hill town called Bristol, VA, at least it was a little town when I was growing up in the 1950s. On a clear day, from lots of places near my home, the Blue Ridge Mountains were in full view, their skyward beauty displayed against the blue of the horizon. Many of our houses, built immediately after the end of World War 2, for the benefit of veterans returning from battle, my dad being one of them, were on the side of those hills, cut into the rock and clay, with basements beneath to support the living quarters above. It never occurred to me when I was young that those were actually two-story homes with half or most of half underground.
The house I grew up in was on top of one of those hills, directly in front of a cemetery. Being on a mostly flat area, we didn’t need a basement, but we had one and it was completely beneath street level. I spent a fair amount of my formative years on a large farm north of town. There, we called a place like our basement a root cellar, somewhere to keep canned goods from the garden. And on top of the root cellar was a smoke house where we processed pork and beef.
At the bottom of the hill, on the farm property, a sizable creek bed lay, flowing every day all year long with cool mountain water. The creek bed at the bottom of the hill was essential to the farm. Back in town, at the bottom of the hill, and at the end of the street where I lived, also lay a creek that ran all the time. That one was used (by us kids) as a place to play on hot summer days.
Whether in town or on the farm, we had to go down the hill for enjoyment and we had to climb back up the hill to get home. Hiking up those little hills always seemed like a trek and there were always complaints about the effort required to get back home.
As a student in high school, by the time I made it to junior year, just about all my required courses for graduation were in the bag and I had plenty of time for “crip” courses, the super-easy gatherings of students, most of whom did not care one bit about school. During senior year, with good grades, and the help of a student counselor, after a couple of morning classes I was let out to go to work. Growing up on a farm meant work was not a challenge. Farm tractors, tobacco, cows, horses, chickens, and hay bales made sure of that. But this sort of work was new—nice, clean clothes and shirt tail in the waistband of my jeans. I worked for a large discount chain store at the top of a hill.
My first assignment, push shopping carts from the bottom of the hill up to the store front. You see, no matter where you worked in my community, a hill was always nearby offering challenges of all sorts. For me, it was simply brute strength to get those heavy metal, car-destroying, squeaky-wheeled denizens up the hill only to find them back down the hill a few minutes later. (NOTE: Some things never change. People still let those carts roll into cars and they leave them sitting wherever they empty them. That is sure sign of laziness and disrespect.)
Here is the picture. Smart, handsome (by my own account), strong kid with excellent grades, management and leadership skills already developed, wrangling shopping carts for $1.00/hr. Back then, time and money were no great concern as long as gas went into the Mustang and girls were available for dating. Pushing carts didn’t last long. Someone realized I was a bit above average, so I graduated to grocery bagger. I still had to drive up from the bottom of the hill to get to work, but now I could stay at the top and work in the air-conditioned building—until one of the cart pushers didn’t show up for his shift. Dang. You just can’t escape those hills and buggies.
Later on, preparing for college, I moved from bagger to working in the aisles as a stocker, then assistant department manager, then department manager, then buyer, and eventually from store to store training managers. I also met my sweetheart in that store 55 years ago. We’ve been married for 54 years.
The moral of this story: I started at the bottom of the hill and worked my way up. But that’s not all. As a twenty something married man, with a small child in tow, after becoming a child of God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I became associate pastor at one of the largest churches in that same town. I showed up for my first day of work in a neatly pressed suit, white shirt and tie, and shiny leather shoes. I had arrived, or so I thought. When I sat down in my pastor’s study to get my first assignment as a minister, he told me to go paint the rusty toilet stalls in the men’s bathroom, downstairs, at the bottom of the hill. Our church, like most houses, had a basement. The challenge, little to my knowledge, was to discover what I was “made of.” What was a young, self-willed, proud, sure-of-himself, wet-behind-the-ears, so-called preacher, willing to do to serve others.
That was a long time ago, but the hills are still there. And it seems that society has forgotten to start young people at the bottom of the hill. Go to college, get a degree, land a job, and succeed, they are told. Don’t get your hands dirty, don’t work for minimum wage, or less, don’t take a menial job to learn how to function in society, how to fail, how to struggle. Start at the top and stay there they are told. That’s why so many 20-somethings, 30-somethings, 40-somethings, 50-somethings, and so forth are in debt up to their eyeballs and cannot figure out how to manage money and life.
I cannot begin to tell you all the things they need in their lives. But I can tell you this. Starting at the bottom of the hill is the challenge that sometimes ends on top.
larrywaynesykes.com 