New Gulf and the Universe

The town stunk to high heaven. Often it smelled like someone had bad gas in a small room without ventilation. Sometimes you could smell New Gulf long before you could see it. And part of the town was visible from quite a distance.

On the car ride from home in Clute our family played a game. Who would be the first to see the smoke stacks? The smoke stacks were part of the sulfur company; the reason for the town’s bad smell. My brother would yell from the back seat “I see the smoke stacks!” when we were still miles away. He must have been fibbing.

The best thing about New Gulf was my grandma and grandpa were there. They lived in a white company house like just about everyone else in town. My grandpa worked for the sulfur company. And my grandma baked all kinds of goodies. She baked wedding cakes, birthday cakes, cakes for parties, jelly rolls and donuts. She was called the donut lady because every Thursday she would make donuts and everyone in town would come by and purchase some. I am amazed that my grandma was diabetic and never was able to taste her sweet creations. I am a product of my grandmother’s baking – I love to lick the bowl.

For me, my brother and my cousin, New Gulf offered a world of freedom and was a wonderland for three boys. The front yard of the house had a cedar tree and the side had a chinaberry tree. They were great lookouts for a game of cowboys and indians.

There was a golf course to roam free on. When it rained hard we swam in the golf course’s ditches. We played dominos in the club house with the old man who ran the place. At night we walked with my grandpa and his dog listening to his funny stories and picking up golf balls left behind by hackers. I think the reason I took up golf for a while as an adult is because it reminded me of my childhood.

A general store was just a street away where we traded old coke bottles for money to buy candy. Reese's were best.

There were train tracks with dewberry bushes growing beside them. In the spring grandma sent us out with a five gallon bucket and a stick (for the snakes) to pick berries for a cobbler.

Beside the rail road tracks were smooth round brown rocks. When the rocks were thrown against the metal tracks and broken, the inside of the rock was shiny and hard and had deep dark colors.

One day my brother, my cousin and I were breaking rocks on the tracks to see what was inside. I found a rock the size of a baked potato and threw in hard against the metal tracks. It took a couple of throws to make it break. It broke smoothly the length of the rock and we were amazed by the beauty inside. The inside of the rock was a shinny black color with flecks of white throughout. It looked like a picture of outer space – at least the outer space we knew about from watching Star Trek reruns. Every time I spend any time looking at the stars I think about God. I think that’s why the stars are there. They exist so that I can understand that the universe is so much bigger than me. When I looked at that rock I thought of God. When I think about that rock today, I think of God. That day in the small town of New Gulf, God fit the universe inside of a rock for three boys to see.

I look up at your macro-skies,

dark and enormous,

your handmade sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

Why take a second look our way?

Psalm 8:3-4