The Boy on Shady Grove Road: A Childhood of the 1940s and 50s in the South by Clyde McCulley

Author:Clyde McCulley [McCulley, Clyde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Story Night Press
Published: 2016-01-02T22:00:00+00:00

Heaven, Not Today

At church, Kenny and I were taught that we should all want to go to heaven, and not to Hell. Hell was a hot and miserable place where you burned forever. I could not really understand the burn forever part. But, they said, heaven was a beautiful place with streets paved in gold, and doorknobs made of diamonds. I could not really understand that. It sounded awfully glitzy to me. I liked hills and creeks and sand and dirt and ponds to skinny-dip in. Heaven sounded boring to me.

I wondered who could read this in the Bible and then want to go to such a place where you would need to wear sunglasses each day, just to see.

I had asked the teachers about love and marriage in heaven. Would people grow old there? Would you have kids there? The teachers said, “Well, we think that all the people will just be kind of the same. Maybe we will all be like angels, neither men or women”.

This certainly did not make me very excited about heaven. This was not what I had hoped heaven was about.

They also told us that someday soon, Christ would return to earth to gather his people and take them to heaven to be with him. They said that the Bible says, “He will come in the sky in a cloud and it will be about the size of a man’s hand at first, then get larger as he nears the earth.”

The next day, Kenny and I were walking up Shady Grove Road kicking sand and talking about this heaven business. Neither of us was too keen on the idea. We liked where we lived, we just wished we had a little more money and running water in our houses, and an indoor toilet.

As we were talking, I looked up in the sky and there, away off in the distance, was a small white cloud, about the size of a man’s hand. I grabbed Kenny, and said, “Look, Kenny, I think the Lord is coming!” It scared us both to death. What if we were not ready? What if we had some evil thoughts in our brains, or hearts, as the church called it?

I said to Kenny, “I am not ready to go to Heaven, I want to get married first, be able to do it with my wife and have some kids. You will never be able to do it in Heaven!” Kenny was only eight years old and was not sure what I meant by “doing it.”

I did not know what to do. I told Kenny to hide with me under some bushes nearby. We did. We watched the cloud. It started getting bigger, and then all of a sudden, it disappeared. Gone. I grabbed Kenny, and said, “Boy that was a close call.” I was so relieved.

Then we went down the road and went skinny-dipping in Mr. Gerard’s pond. We needed a break. This had been a very heavy day. We were not ready for heaven, not today.

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