Grounded

A few weeks ago, I listened to a fascinating podcast "In the Red Clay." (Not a children's podcast, I might add).  It concerns a man (Billy Sunday Birt) who was considered a hit man  for the so-called "Dixie Mafia." I never knew there was such a thing, though my early days were traversed all over dirt roads in the great countryside surrounding Atlanta, where much of this activity was rumored to have occurred, in the 60s and 70s...my very growing-up years. While listening to the tales spun out of this podcast, however, I began to think about how closely I certainly came to the characters that are introduced. I wish Daddy were still here (but of course, but he'd never come back now, after all he's seeing). I can just imagine him connecting a lot of dots from some of his people back in the day. His Daddy was known to be a rounder, with plenty of brushes with the law, usually having something to do with alcohol. The Dixie Mafia was all about hauling moonshine. I believe PawPaw had an old still across the street from their house in Smyrna, but I could be wrong. It involved a radiator, that's all I'm sayin'... There were some bad cousins, one using my Dad and Uncle's print shop after hours to make false documents. Arrests and a murder or two in my family, and you have a dingy, dusty veil of Southern gothic mystery back there, roaming the back roads that were still not quite civilized. It doesn't seem that long ago, but I guess nothing is, if you can still remember it. 

The Red Dirt story also involved a local hero: Douglas County's Sheriff Earl Lee. I don't know much about him except that he was an amazing lawkeeper -- putting the fear of God into people while keeping the peace and respect of most everyone. He was (and is) revered and kept his jurisdiction on the straight and narrow. But he was first and foremost, a man of God. The word is that Billy Sunday Birt was paid to murder Sheriff Lee one Sunday, while Lee was coming out of church. Though Birt has been credited with as many as 56 or more murders, something made him pause and reconsider. Lee lived for many more decades. Years later, Lee allegedly led Birt to Christ and arranged for him to be baptized in a country church. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction.

Irony runs along my lifelines as well. My PawPaw was nothing like the tender-hearted, God-fearing man who raised me. Many years after he died, MawMaw told me that she sometimes dreamed PawPaw was still alive, that the law was pounding on the door. She said that when she would wake up, she'd be relieved he was gone. In the next breath she was talking about how she had always loved him, no matter what kind of mayhem he was dredging up. God uses whatever He likes and PawPaw's blood runs through these veins just like my Daddy's does. I guess I've got a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. But I sure do love my roots, deep in that Georgia red clay.