Jim and Emuel, #2

Jim was a tie-maker. That is, he hewed ties to sell to the railroad. He could "sight" a log and with his broadaxes "hew to the line." On day in his per-conversion life, he met my father on the street near the Callaway Bank. He presented a problem. He knew of a good stand of timber that was good for railroad tie-making, but there was a problem. It would take the sum of many hundreds of dollars, up front, before he could make the contract. With a co-signer on his note at the bank, things were soon set in order, and Emuel was on his way to the woods with his one-man saw and his broad axe and a profitable venture ahead of him. After his conversion, a good part of his income for some time went to make restitution for old out-standing debts. Let me emphasize one point. Here are two men, among others, whom we knew personally, who lived out the rest of their days in honor and respectability, without any relapse into the old life.

Before I leave this part of our narrative, let me give you another part of the story. One Sunday morning at the close of service at the church on Second Street, Jim Day approached me as I was coming down from the pulpit and addressed me, "Brother Isham, me and Emuel and Jim Salmons are going out in the country to have a prayer meeting, and we want you to go with us." That was before I was married, so I had no one to consult but myself, but there was the difficulty of a prior engagement.

"Well, I'd be glad to go with you." I replied, "but Dorothy Goodman has gotten married, and we are all invited to go out to Paul and Betty Goodman's for a wedding dinner."

"Oh," Jim replied. "We won't need no dinner, and I got a jug of water. We're going out to the place where the sheriff, Charlie Bishop, shot me down," and he repeated, "We're going to have a prayer Meeting." Well, the die was cast. I would go. Sometimes you have to sort out your priorities on short notice. It was expected that I, as the parson, would be in the line at the wedding feast, but here were three fellows, all saved from drink and devilment who had a jug of water and were on the way to a prayer meeting in the woods on a very hot day.

Jim had the use of an older model open, "touring car" that belonged to a Mrs. Cain who lived out south of Fulton. I do not know whether he had ever owned a car, but he sure wasn't the fellow you would want to hire as a chauffeur. We struck out through the woods into an area where I had never been, and at one time came to a ditch that was spanned not by a bridge, but by some heavy, but narrow, timbers laid lengthways across the ditch. Good thing we weren't driving a team and wagon or we would never have gotten across! Finally, we got to our destination. The old house has gone, but the barn was still standing.

As we walked out through the weeds and buckbrush, our guide selected a spot about fifty yards from the barn and near the brush and said, "It was right about here where I fell when the sheriff shot me down. I'd been dogging the law for a long time, but that morning early I went out to the barn, and Charlie Bishop was hiding in the barn waiting for me. When I saw him, I turned to run and he fired one warning shot into the air. Then the second shot brought me down right here. If I could have got about two more jumps, I'd have been under cover of the trees and brush.

"Gradually, I learned more of the story. During prohibition years Jim had his own private business going by making the forbidden liquid that always found a ready market. Twice he had made a successful jail break to return to his chosen enterprise. Now, all those reckless years were past, and a new man, forgiven by God and by man of a lawless and sinful yesterday, was traveling the road of upright living, and had brought the three of us to help him celebrate. We knelt on the chosen spot in a circle and Jim read from his Bible, the ninth chapter of Acts, of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road. Then we all took turns as we prayed around the circle.

This done, our guide said, "Now I'll show you where I had my still." So we followed his lead into the woods. I supposed that our destination was only a short distance away. Wrong. We went on and on through brush and briars, over "hill and holler," and came to a place in the side of a hill where Jim pointed to a spot, not very scenic, and said, "it was right there." Formerly, there had been a place dug out in the hillside. With poles and limb and dirt to cover it over, it had formed a sort of cave. Now it was all fallen in.

The former proprietor of the place had fired his still with pole wood, shoving the length into the fire pit as the ends burned. One trouble had developed from this method. One night as the weary workman lay sleeping on the ground before his fire. the flames burned out along the timbers, and before the sleeper aroused, he had suffered painful burns.

"I carried in sugar by the hundred pounds, and carried out the product in gallon jugs" we were told.

What a way to make a living! But now that was all a thing of the past, but our journey wasn't over. Back over the same course we made our way through sticks and brambles, over fences, across gullies to our vehicle, hot tired and dusty.

Remember, I had come straight from a Sunday morning church service and I had on my best suit-my only suit, in fact. On our return trip by way of a different woods road, the car "high-centered" on a tree stump in the middle of our path. With a minimum of difficulty we got free and returned to town in time for the evening preaching service. As the old hillbilly said, we had been a "fur piece", quite a distance, and we showed it all over.

However, the service was good and meaningful to us. I is wonderful to be engaged in a business that has good benefits. When you can have some part in doing a rescue work that gets people out of the mire of sinful living and up and out on the solid rock of victorious Christian experience, you know that your labor is not lost.