Covenant Stories: Main's Folly

Story #21 in the Covenant series

If you go down the road on the right side of our property, past the building and past the storage shed we had to buy because someone kept stealing our lawnmower, all the way to the back and beyond the labyrinth, then just beyond the cactus patch where JoAnn Chappell saw the big snake that one year, you’ll see a patch of healthy and thriving cactus. It is all that remains of something we used to call “Main’s Folly.”

While we were clearing the land for the building back in 1999, we made quite a few piles of brush and wood at the back of the property. Someone had to burn those piles, and that job fell to Michael Main and me. Michael is a news editor at a local radio station. At the time he worked from 2 am until about 10 am. And I was free during the day as well. Our idea was to meet up at the land one day during the week and burn the brush, clearing room for the debris that would accumulate the next Saturday.

I remember how worried we were the first time we tried to set one of those brush piles on fire. We nervously stood before a ten-foot high, fifteen-foot wide mound with a can of lighter fluid and a couple of matches. I squirted a modest amount around the bottom of the pile and stood back while Michael threw the match. That's when we discovered that it's surprisingly difficult to set things on fire. Now I marvel at stories of people casually throwing cigarettes out of their cars and setting whole forests ablaze. Michael and I had a hard time starting fires even when we used diesel fuel and a blowtorch.

It takes about five hours to burn a giant pile of brush and cedar, so Michael and I would start a fire, then sit on the tailgate of the brown pickup truck and talk while we kept an eye on it. Apart from the searing heat and looking like chimney sweeps, it was fun. I’m always looking for guilt-free reasons to sit around and talk with friends. I don't suppose I'll ever have as good an excuse as I did back then.

Now apart from the clearing and burning and praying that no one would cut off his arm with a chainsaw, we had another pressing issue in those days. Cactus. Prickly Pear Cactus, to be specific. Our property was covered with it. And getting rid of Prickly Pear Cactus isn't easy. You can't burn it because it's mostly water. You can't just chop it down and toss it aside because it takes root wherever it lands. I once saw some Prickly Pear Cactus growing on the roof of a storage shed. I kid you not. Michael and I found that if we shoveled cactus into the center of a raging bonfire, it could be burned. But the fire had to be well-established and hotter than Hades to do the job.

I think we were sitting on the tailgate when Michael came up with a brilliant idea for getting rid of the brush and the cactus at the same time. Instead of making a giant pile of wood, lighting it on fire, then digging up cactus and throwing it onto the flames, Michael wondered why we didn't just pile the brush in the center of a cactus patch to begin with. Then we could light the brush on fire and let it burn the cactus after it got hot enough. I thought this was a capital idea, a good example of the kind of creative ingenuity that can surface when two intelligent and well-meaning men are allowed to sit around for hours setting fires.

The next Saturday we told the the folks dragging brush to the back of the property to pile it on top of one of the biggest cactus patches on the property. By the end of the day we had a eight-foot high pile of wood and brush in the center of a twenty-foot wide cactus patch. The following Thursday Michael and I showed up to burn it. We poured diesel all over the wood, lit it, and stepped back to watch the cactus die.

Unfortunately, it was the fire that died.

Undaunted, we doubled the amount of diesel and tried again. No good. The fuel burned away, leaving some of the wood darkened and smoldering, but the fire wouldn't catch. We couldn't get the fire going because of the water-laden cactus at the bottom of the pile. And we couldn’t remove the brush because it was in the middle of a nasty patch of cactus. So we did what city boys do when Mother Nature gets the best of them.

We went home to watch TV.

Michael and I figured the pile would decay and go away all by itself…eventually. We couldn’t guess how long this might take, but we hoped with clean living and lots of prayer, we might live long enough to see it for ourselves.

It was Michael who dubbed this hideous, blackened pile of cactus and rotting wood, "Main's Folly." And there it stood for all to see, a testimony to what happens when good intentions are mixed with gross ignorance. In all fairness, it may have been Michael's idea, but I went right along with him. If this was folly, we shared it equally.

Main’s Folly started a tradition at our church. Whenever someone makes a big mistake that leaves some evidence behind, we name it after them. People come and go over the years, bringing their ideas with them. Some work and some don’t. I’ve had two named after me, the latest being our church sign, which I measured wrong - twice - so that we ended up with a $500 sign that didn’t fit its frame. Reggie Regan fixed the sign but you can still see the seams where he widened it. So now the sign is called “Gordon’s Folly.”

We’ve had quite a few Folly monuments over the years. People make mistakes. What are you gonna do? Welcome to the Church.

A few years ago I was at the back of the property, and I remembered Main’s Folly. I started looking for it. To my surprise, Main's Folly was nowhere to be found. The cactus patch was still there, of course. And if you look closely you can see some charred wood and old stumps deep within it. But unless you know what you're looking for, all you will see is a very ordinary patch of Prickly Pear Cactus.

They say that time heals wounds, and perhaps it does. It this case, nature had been at work for all those years. A power greater than ourselves had cleaned up our mess and taken away the evidence of our weakness and failure.

Like I said, welcome to church.

Gordon Atkinson

• Tags:  
• church
• covenant baptist church
• faith
• the covenant stories

Other Family Articles

When It's Well With Your Soul
by Jennifer Dukes Lee

93

Love Upside Down
by Billy Coffey

20

Most Popular Posts

Start-Up Lessons: Raising the Bar
by Claire Burge

42

What to Expect When You're...
by Jennifer Dukes Lee

80

We recommend logging in before posting comments

Reader Comments