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Laughter in the Pews: Church Chuckles

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One of my readers kindly suggested I share a bit of comedy in this column to lift the spirits of folks back home. Some of the best laughs I know come from church and the honest wisdom of young’uns.

Take my nephew, for instance. A few years back he asked if he had a guardian angel.

“Sure you do,” I told him.

“Your guardian angel is always with you.”

“Does he eat with me?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Does he sleep with me?”

“Sure.”

“Well that must have been who kicked me out of bed last night,” he said.

Kids have a way of cutting straight to the point, and so do a lot of the old church stories that still make the rounds. Like the one an older fellow told me about where radio was invented:

“In the Garden of Eden,” he said.

“What?”

“God took Adam’s rib and made the first loudspeaker.”

Then there’s that little-known fact about Noah’s Ark. Seems there were three camels on board. The first was the camel many people swallow while straining at a gnat. The second was the camel whose back was broken by the last straw. And the third was the one that shall pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man enters the kingdom of Heaven.

Of course, prayer doesn’t always bring exactly what we expect. Farmer Jud and his wife Jeweldine, a childless couple, prayed long and hard for a baby. Their answer came in the form of triplets. When the preacher congratulated them on their answered prayer, Jud just shook his head and said, “Yep, but I never prayed for a bumper crop.

”Another woman, tired of searching for the right man, finally prayed, “Lord, I’m not asking for anything for myself, but please send Mother a son-in-law.”

And then there’s the young fellow who was asked by his prospective father-in-law, “Can you support my daughter in the manner she’s accustomed to?

”The boy thought for a second and answered, “She ain’t gonna move, is she?

”I’ve always heard that bread cast upon the waters returns to you. It may be true for bread, but I’ve noticed all the bread we keep sending overseas sure doesn’t come back the same way.

Laughter has always been important in our family, even though our people tend to be stoic by nature. That stoic streak runs strong in me too. Folks often ask why I don’t smile more. Sometimes I tell them, “I’m smiling on the inside.”

Because of that, the moments of real joy and laughter mean even more to me. May laughter fill your days, friends. After all, God must have a sense of humor—otherwise He would have never made someone quite like us, would He?

Catch more of Randall’s Comedy on Itunes in Comedy Down Home: https://music.apple.com/us/album/comedy-down-home/1733917822

Read his books also for an occasional laugh, check out our store.

Peeking through a keyhole into the past

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I will never forget when I was about 9 years old, I began a fascination with learning more about family history.
It began with a third-grade book report on World War I hero Sergeant York. As I read his story, I was taken by the similarities between the area of his living in the Valley of the Three Folks of the Wolf near Jamestown and ours in the Valley below the Gravelly Spur. I had a cousin who also shared that name, so I soon discovered a loose family connection.
This was the spark that drove me to a greater desire of learning about our family experience and gathering the available data and thus I became an amateur genealogist. Back in those days, there was no internet, so you went from relative to relative, graveyard to cemetery, courthouse to courthouse, and library to state archives in search of the pieces.
My parents were supportive within the reason of affordable travel in helping me on my quest. Coming from two Appalachian families, I did however pose some problems. The stoic nature of our peoples, led to there being a limited desire to talk about the past. I attribute this mainly to not wishing to relive the hardships which tended to interweave each story. Much of the oral tradition of sharing great tales of past family heroes had faded and many stories had been lost. I was able to gather nearer in time information and find many clouded tales of past ancestors that were on shaky ground. Many of my older relatives were contemporaries of Sergeant York, and their husbands or brothers went along as well training, fighting and some dying in World War I. A few stories of the Civil War, trips to the western frontier, and early settlement days did manage to find spots in different folks’ memories.
I did so much of this, at about 13, I was able to publish a short book highlighting what I had discovered at that point which many of our relatives purchased. Though I stopped the serious aspects of documentation and collection in my late teens, I have never stopped the pursuit of greater knowledge of my ancestors.
The advent of the internet has proved to be a wonderful resource to break barriers that came into my path at 12. That has it challenges as well, the information is only as good as the person who put it into the system. I always seek to find the correlating source materials that confirm their conclusions.
In recent weeks I have been blessed to make break throughs on several family lines that have had me stumped for decades. Often times locating one name or one location can open a door that allows you to peer deeper and deeper into the past.
I have managed to break down some of those blocks of late. One line which halted in the Civil War era had stood with no hope until I found some old notes I took from my grandmother and one of her sisters which gave me some potential siblings names. The combination of names in an internet search helped me in two different cases to open the lock and find the lines. I have located new cousins, I never knew and found photos I didn’t know existed of my ancestors.
One was such an amazing key that it opened up a door and walked me back before the time of Christ. Two millennia, I could not believe what I was finding and learning about each subsequent generation. Much of this was compiled by other genealogists, while some was new data, I was finding thanks to search engines. As I mentioned, I am always cautious about conclusions unless I can check the support documents. With that in mind, I traveled back to the founding of Jamestown, and across pond to England, Ireland, Scotland and through the centuries back to the Druids, the Saxons, the Welsh, the Normans, the Vikings, the Franks, the Jewish, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians just to name a few. I learned of ancestors who walked beside Popes, fought in the Crusades or alongside conquerors, ruled over principalities and dukedoms that I never heard of. I learned of ancestors whose lives ended in execution, mysterious murders or in battles with the goal of consolidating ruling power.
To many such history is of no interest to their daily lives, but to me and many like me, it brings our heart joy to know the names, see the images or depictions of those whose shoulders we stand upon. More than all that though knowing their stories.
Today, I am much richer within my heart because now I can literally travel across modern-day Europe and when I am in a country I have never been in before, there is likely a place, assuming they survived time and wars, where there’s may be a surviving house, castle, historic place, a graveyard, a monastery or convent, a statue, or museum containing artifacts that I can visit, point to and say ‘This is part of me and my story.’
I hope you always carry in your heart a bountiful number of family stories and history, and if not, you could with a bit of effort.