The Preacher Rocks

  There were two houses between ours and the church next door. The Browns lived in one of them, with two daughters—one older than me and one younger. When we first moved in, our families socialized a bit, but that didn’t last long. I never knew why, but one day, Dad decided to put up a fence.

When friends came over, we played cowboys, racing around the house and having shootouts with our cap guns, which was before Dad put up the fence. The next house over belonged to the preacher, and beside it stood the church. The preacher often visited Dad a few times a week, and they would sit and have a beer together.

Sometimes, I wandered over to the churchyard, where I loved jumping into the big pile of leaves the preacher had raked. He was one of the most interesting people I had ever met. He had hobbies, built things, and even made his own car out of bicycle parts and a lawnmower engine.

One day, while I was playing in the leaves, he pulled up in his homemade car and asked, “Want to go for a ride?”

“Yes!” I said, climbing up eagerly.

The car had no body—just a frame of pipes, pulleys, a motor, and wheels. As we drove, he said, “I’m heading to my shed. I keep my rock collection there. Want to see it?”

I nodded. “Yeah!”

Inside the shed, shelves overflowed with rocks of all shapes and colors. He explained the different kinds, showing me a saw for cutting some and a vibrating tumbler filled with sand to polish others. Until that day, I had never thought much about rocks. To me, they were just rocks. But suddenly, they seemed interesting.

As we left the shed, he asked, “Want to see my rock garden?”

“Sure,” I said.

The rock garden sat in front of his house, next to the walkway—a small mound of dirt with half-buried rocks scattered across it. But something odd caught my eye. One side of the pile had an old boot sticking out, and on the other side, a hand. It looked like someone had been buried there.

I stepped closer, my stomach tightening, but then I saw the truth—the hand was rubber.

The preacher chuckled. “Just a little joke.”

He had a unique sense of humor, but I liked it. I kept coming back to visit, learning more about rocks and the odd, fascinating world of the preacher next door.

Would you love to hear more of these childhood misadventures?