Friday, July 4, I drove to Nauvoo, Alabama to spend 48 hours with my Mom. The 14th is her 92nd birthday. Thank you to those of our readers who have sent (or are sending) her birthday cards. She got three in Saturday’s mail while I was there. They go into the basket on the dining room table and will a) be read again and again and b) never be thrown away!

The farm hasn’t looked this green in a generation. Patricia and her husband James always have a nice garden and this year they’ve outdone themselves. Carolyn and her husband Van–they’re buying Mom’s place and beginning to farm it–have turned the land around the farmhouse into a lovely garden also. Sunflowers in the field just beyond the pear orchard. Scarecrows hanging from trees to scare off the deer. “The deer love okra,” said Van. Who knew? Maybe they’re making gumbo.

I timed my visit just right for the blueberries. Patricia has some 20 or 30 bushes in two fields, and they’re loaded. I brought back what probably amounted to four gallons. James works in Birmingham and co-workers buy all he can bring to town. He sells them for $8/gallon which we’ve told him is much too low. Anyone who has spent 30 minutes picking a gallon will tell you that 50 dollars ought to be the minimum.

I’m by blueberries the way I have always been by peanuts. Whether they’re good for you or not, we’ll let the experts decide. But I eat them almost every day of my life just because I love them.

When you leave our house and head down Poplar Springs Road toward Nauvoo, where you intersect with Highway 5 (which runs from Jasper to Haleyville), just in front of you in that big barren space is where our family lived in the early 1940s. My earliest memories of life on this planet date back to that house owned by the coal company. I recall when the state paved that highway in 1946 and electricity came through about the same time.

Patricia and I would sometimes go into the woods behind the house picking blueberries. They grew wild, the plants no higher than your knee, only a few berries per bush. To me, they were like blue jewels. Patricia showed me how to crush them in a pint jar, and add water and sugar. The result was the sweetest, most wonderful taste I’d ever experienced. It was so special that I decided to save some for later. I stuck that jar half-filled with the nectar of the gods in the back of the pantry and checked on it from time to time. For a six-year-old, this was better than money in the bank. Then one day, I pulled out the jar and found myself staring at an inch of mold on top. I was broken-hearted to learn we had to throw the whole thing away.

Thus I began to learn about this fallen world we live in.

As a young father, when I made up bedtime stories for my children, I decided to work blueberries into the plots. Don’t ask me why; I just did. Sons Neil and Marty still recall the tales of Little Good Wolf and his friends Johnny Fox and Curtis Squirrel and some of the blueberry-laced adventures they experienced.

I brought back enough blueberries for everyone we know to have some. Thank you, Trish.

My Dad is a constant presence at our home even though he’s been in Heaven for eight months now. No one sits in his chair, and I’ve not seen a soul in the swing on the front porch. That was his place.

I look at the huge old trees around the house which Pop built in 1954. He set out those trees himself, and now each one looks as though it has occupied that spot for a century. He planted the pear orchard and built the pond.

I always run by the cemetery when I’m coming that way. I know Pop’s not there, but I feel closer to him there. To my surprise, I laid over the tombstone and wept like a baby, like I didn’t even do when he died.

I would not bring him back to the kind of existence he knew the last year or so of his life. It’s just that he was such a powerful, positive presence in our lives and left such a major hole when he left. I just miss him.

You understand, I’ll bet.

Mom pointed out the telephone book for Walker County hanging by the phone. “Pop wrote up at the top of it. ‘The last roundup.’ He figured it would be the last one he would need.”

When the mail came, Mom laughed. “The state of Alabama sent Pop a postcard telling him it’s time to renew his drivers license.” We laughed together. I brought the card home with me; don’t ask me why. As one with a healthy view of death, Pop would have laughed at that postcard and said, “I beat them to it.” He expired before the license did.

In fact, I carry his final drivers license in my billfold. He gave up driving 10 years ago, but renewed the license just for the fun of it, then gave it to me. We look enough alike, I’ve thought of using it for identification purposes just to see if they think I’m 95.

Dr. Mike Miller resigned as pastor of McElwain Baptist Church in Birmingham today. Three weeks from today, he will preach his first sermon as our pastor at First Baptist Church of Kenner. Everyone is beside themselves with joy and excitement.

Today is the final Sunday for our interim pastor, Dr. Mark Tolbert, professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. This church has loved his preaching and his leadership and recommends him strongly to any congregation needing an interim shepherd.