Creekbank Stories

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Elmer’s Hand

There are some people who make you smile when you think of them.

Elmer Conner was one of those people.

I can take you to the exact spot where I met him. It’s the near the coffee pot in the Dry Creek Camp cafeteria.

I’d been told earlier that Elmer Conner, an extremely successful contractor in Lake Charles, had a unique philosophy on finances, generosity, and faith.

I wanted to know more, so I introduced myself and asked about his philosophy of giving and finances.

He put down his coffee cup and held up an open palm. “Curt, when God begins blessing people with wealth, He’s doing it so we can bless others.”

Elmer Conner used his free hand as if placing money into his open palm, then clenched his fist. “The problem is that we have a tendency to close our fist, thinking these resources are ours, not God’s.” 

There’s a two-fold problem with this: First of all, we can’t bless others with a tight fist.”

Elmer smiled. “Secondly, if we close our fist, God’s not able to keep pouring the blessings in our hand.”

He opened his hand. “God wants us to live with an open hand.”

It was one of the simplest lessons I’ve ever heard. It became what I still call “Open Hand Living,” and I can attest that Elmer’s way of approaching our blessings works.

 I am forever grateful for that profound story, and that’s why I’m passing it on.

Thanks, Elmer, for that enduring lesson by the coffee pot. 

“ . . . and through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”

-Hebrews 11:4

Our email server has been down, and I’ve missed your comments and feedback. I always read and enjoy reader comments. You can email me at curt@creekbank.net

Curt Lies

My last name is often misspelled. People want to put another s in it as in Isles. Like the Islands.

Sometimes they want to insert a double ss at the end. The worst troublemaker is that a capital I and lowercase l look identical on a laptop.  No one wants to be known as Curt Ills.

But I can beat that. A large organization has listed me as Curt Lies.  

I imagine I’ll be stuck with that moniker for the rest of my life. It’s impossible to get off a huge database.

Curt Lies.  

I’ve been thinking about lying and truthfulness. One of my life goals is to be a truthful man.  If you make up your mind ahead of time, to tell the truth, you probably won’t lie.

I believe the current worst liar in America is a US Congressman from New York named George Santos.

Since his election, Rep. Santos’ resume has collapsed in a tangled jumble of lies and fabrications.  The worst is “that his mother was in the South Tower on 9/11.”  She was in Brazil.

The thing that amazes me is that if you worked at Burger King or Precision Tune and lied like that, they’d fire your butt that same day. Not so with a US Congressman.

George Santos has explained his many transgressions as “embellishments” and “misstatements.”

Where I come from, he’d be called a bald-faced liar.

Like most liars, I bet there’s a long pattern of lying in his life. You don’t become that bad of a liar overnight.  

I don’t know if he’s a pathological, serial, or habitual liar. I’ll leave that to the experts.

But I have one final rural adage that applies to folks like him: “He’d rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stay on the ground and tell the truth.”

Here are some reminders to self:

1. Lying and truthfulness are both habits. Work hard to develop truthfulness. 
2. If you tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.
3. If you don’t tell the truth, it will eventually come back to bite you in the behind.

I could sign off in several ways, but I’ll keep it simple.

Curt Iles

That’s a capital I with a lowercase l.

Postscript: People have nearly the same trouble with my first name. It’s pretty short: Curt.

Here’s how it goes:

“Sir, is that with a C or K?”

“Is it Kirk or Curt?*”

“Is it Karl with a C or a K?”

I now approach fast food restaurants counters in this way:

“Sir, what name do you want your order under?

“Bob.”

No one asks me to pronounce it or spell it or repeat it.  It’s just Bob. My grandchildren get tickled when “Bob” orders.

*One last tidbit. I was married to my sweet wife DeDe for over twenty years before my father-in-law stopped calling me “Kirk.”

Please don’t take my Gas Stove!

I’ve read with interest an effort by the US Consumer Product Commission to ban gas stoves.  I’m always alarmed by the government’s long-armed reach into our lives. Especially when it concerns our homes. I don’t know if “A man’s home is his castle” is a law, but it should be.

Before talking about gas stoves, I want to add this disclaimer: the proposed law would prohibit gas stoves in new homes. You can decide if that’s government overreach.

I have a unique vantage point, being born in the middle of the 20th Century.  I can look back as well as ahead.

In Dry Creek, I knew plenty of folks who’d cooked on wood-fired potbelly stoves. They said, “The day we got our Butane Stove was one of the happiest days of my life. Gone were the days of chopping wood on a frosty cold morning.”

My vantage point also brings me forward to the second decade of the 21st Century.  We’ve enjoyed so many improvements that our ancestors of the 19th Century would be astounded by.

So much has changed during my lifetime. I grew up in the era of party lines and pay phones. Now, I can send out this blog post instantaneously to over 1500 friends scattered across the earth. All I do is press one button. That’s something!

Circling back to my gas stoves, I grew up in a home with one. My folks had a large propane tank in the yard. A gas stove in the house gave instant heat for cooking.

Old-timers in Dry Creek kept a coffee pot above the Gas pilot light, ready to instantly fire up the stove when “company came by.”  By about two o’clock in the afternoon, that coffee had grown hair on its chin.

Most of my generation, including me, moved up to All-Electric homes. They are great, convenient, and cook evenly.  I’m grateful.

Our all-electric homes are great until they aren’t. When a hurricane or ice storm hits, we all run home to Momma’s . . .

Where the coffee is always hot, and Momma is waiting with open arms.

“Where Everyone is your Uncle or Aunt”

I grew up in a rural community where it seemed every adult was my uncle or aunt. I knew they couldn’t all be kin, although they seemed to be. 

They’re two of the sweetest words in the English language:

Uncle.

Aunt. 

In Dry Creek, these terms of respect were given to our elders. I knew them as Aunt Mary Jane, Uncle Jesse, and dozens more. They’re all gone except in my memory. 

These folks reached their big arms and hearts around us with love. That’s how they became everyone’s uncle and aunt.

About twenty years ago, I made a trip to China. The language was difficult and my phrasebook was of little use. One of my new Chinese friends taught me a word: Aie. It was Chinese for aunt. He explained, “China is in the second generation of its one-child policy and an unintended side effect has been the disappearance of uncles and aunts. We’ve lost the word Aie.”

Two thoughts saddened me: Children never knowing an Aunt or Uncle,

and Uncles and Aunts who never had the chance to love on their nephews or nieces.

For the rest of my trip, I addressed older women with a respectful nod and “Aie.” I still feel emotion when I recall their joyful faces.  My Yankee dialect was poor, but their smiles testified I’d gotten through.

Aie. I hope I never forget that word.

I’ve buried most of my biological aunts and uncles.  How I thank God for each one and how they guided me in love.

Every culture and language has a tender term for aunts.  I have a granddaughter of German heritage who calls every female family member Tante. I easily fall in love with the strong Aunties of our American Black culture. 

My Ugandan friend, Joseph, lives in the middle of a circle of thatched huts. Several dozen family members pour in and out of the compound. I’ve yet to sort out who really is a brother, sister, child, uncle, nephew, father, or aunt. 

In the compound, it’s easy to spot the wizened old Mzees. These uncles or grandfathers are treated with the utmost respect. Joseph tried to explain the term Mzee to me. It seems to be a stronger version of Uncle. Mzee. 

It’s how we addressed the male elders of my childhood. They were our Uncles. They were our Mzees. 

That’s the mid-century culture I grew up in a small community called Dry Creek, Louisiana.

A place where everyone was your uncle or aunt.

Enjoy your elders.

They honored me by calling me Mzee.

Mzee Curt

A Patteran for others to follow.

I’ve always been fascinated with Gypsies. There are so many stories, tales, and legends about these traveling people. My favorite story is about patterans.

Gypsies (known as the Roma in Europe) had a unique method of communicating with fellow travelers. At a crossroads, Gypsies would build a small pattern of twigs, leaves, or grass. This was called a patteran and would guide the following Gypsy bands for the direction of their travel.

Patteran is a term most of us are not familiar with. The dictionary defines a patteran as  “a handful of leaves or grass thrown down at intervals by Roma (Gypsy) people to indicate their course.”

As I stand at the crossroads of a new year called 2023, I want to leave some patterans for those who follow. Here are several I’ve jotted down:

1. Love. Love leads us, lifts us up, and is always welcome. I will choose to be more loving in this new year.

2. Kindness. Always be kinder than necessary.  Everyone needs a good dose of kindness, and we can each spread it.

3. I want to leave the patteran of integrity. “Integrity is who you are when no one is looking, and what you are willing to stand for even if you’re standing alone.” It’s a trait that sticks out in the 21st century.

4. I want to grow spiritually. If we neglect the spiritual side of our life, it is to our own peril. The growing man or woman is always maturing spiritually.

These are some patterans I hope to leave at this crossroads called life. I bet you’ve your own list. Write them down. Share them. Live them.

Yours for the journey,

Curt Iles

What is Class?

“Class can walk with Kings and keep its virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch. Everyone is comfortable with the person who has class.”  -Ann Landers

I’ve been thinking about class this week. It’s such a fine word, and it’s a fine trait.  The Oxford Dictionary defines class as “Showing stylish excellence.”

I find class difficult to truly define. I know this for sure, you’ll know it when you see it. Sadly, it’s also pretty easy to spot the absence of class.

 Class walks on a level field with everyone and never views anyone as beneath them.

Albert Einstein said it well: “I speak to everyone in the same way whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”

As I thought this week about folks who exuded class, I thought of Erik Pederson.

The son of Danish immigrants, Erik grew up in Lake Charles. When he moved to my hometown of Dry Creek and opened his business, he and his wife Yvonne became cherished friends and neighbors. 

Erik Pederson showed class in a variety of ways. My favorite trait was how he was the same no matter where he was. I’ve always said that Erik would’ve been just as comfortable in the Oval Office as he was drinking coffee at Foreman’s Grocery.

Another way my friend showed class was his friendliness to everyone. Erik Pederson had an impish smile and a twinkle in his eye that he shared wherever he went. 

Finally, Erik was comfortable in his own skin. There was no pretense about him. He wore his “uniform” every day: Wrangler jeans, a tan snap button work shirt, and boots. His wardrobe was completed by a Gospel of John he carried in his shirt pocket. He was a “what you see is what you get” kind of person. That’s what I loved about him. It’s one of the reasons he was loved by so many.

You see, class has nothing to do with fame, riches, or position. Class is about the inner person and who they really are.

. . . like my friend Erik Pederson.

“Class is an aura of confidence that is sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared.”

                                                             -Unknown

A few years ago DeDe and I spent time in the country of South Africa.  There were several things that affected us deeply on this trip.  It was in the middle of their AIDS epidemic, and we saw death up close and personal. There were fresh graves everywhere.  I’ll never forget visiting the homes of men and women just waiting to die.

In spite of this despair, we also saw a ray of hope. We visited a number of orphanages that were filled with babies and small children. Many were orphaned due to the epidemic.  It was at one of these orphanages that I first learned about what they called Moses’ Baskets.

The South African Moses Baskets were carefully woven and lined with handmade blankets. African women can make anything beautiful and these baskets were no exception. 

The baskets were placed outside churches, schools, and orphanages. A mother could leave a baby, no questions asked, and the baby would be taken care of.

The baskets got their name from the story of baby Moses being placed in a basket in the Nile River reeds where he was discovered there and saved by Pharaoh’s daughter.

The South African baskets were used quite often. In a land of death, mothers either cannot or will not, take on a baby.

This week I read how the state of Indiana is gaining notoriety for an effort to place what they’re calling “Safe Haven boxes” at public places.  (Louisiana has a law allowing these Safe Haven boxes.

Like our Moses baskets, babies can be left and cared for.

This is definitely an alternative to the devastating process of killing a baby. For those of us who are pro-life (and there are many of us), we must support any and all ways of promoting life.

It’s the right thing to do.

    I grew up in a wonderful basketball culture at East Beauregard High School. From the early 60s when the school was opened until the mid-70s, were the heyday of basketball for the school which I attended for all of my education. It’s the same school I later returned to as a coach, teacher, and principal.

There was a fine trophy case in the lobby of the East Beauregard gym. It was filled with championship trophies of all heights and years. Because my Dad seldom missed a game, I fondly recall most of those championship games.

There were several trophies that had the team’s players engraved on the plaque. I would walk through the lobby, look at the full trophy case, and recall those names and players that were part of my childhood and early teen years.

Years later I visited East Beauregard gym and noticed most of those great championship trophies were missing. Further investigation revealed that they’d been moved under the home side bleachers.

Later, I crawled through a cubbyhole under the bleachers. I shined a flashlight on all of those trophies that’d meant so much to me. Sadly, they were tarnished, dusty, and unseen.

East Beauregard now has a newer gym. I’m not sure about the condition of the old gym, but I suspect those trophies are still gathering dust in the darkness under the bleachers.

It reminds me of the words of Jesus, “Don’t store up treasures on earth. Moths and rust can destroy them, and thieves can break in and steal them. Instead, store up your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy them, and thieves cannot break in and steal them. Your heart will always be where your treasure is.”  (Matthew 6:19-21).

There’s nothing wrong with earthly treasures unless we put them ahead of the things that really matter: the spiritual things of God as well as relationships with those around us.

A good lesson for all of us from a stack of tarnished trophies.

T.O.B.

I’m part of a Friday morning Bible study led by Warren Morris. Warren is the former LSU player who hit the famous walk-off home run to win the 1996 College World Series.

He is a great teacher and leader. Most of all, Warren is one of the humblest men I know. From time to time, he’ll share a story about his college coach, Skip Bertman.

Recently, Warren shared one of Coach Bertman’s maxims. He called it T.O.B. and it stands for “Transfer of Blame.” This is the human tendency to always blame someone (or something) else for the failures, disappointments, and difficulties of our lives. You can go all the way back to the Garden to see Transfer of Blame:  Adam: “The woman You gave me.”

Just because something is a human tendency doesn’t make it right. Transfer of Blame is a weakness that the mature person will seek valiantly to resist.

One of the most disturbing trends in today’s culture is the victim mentality. It’s the habit of always being the victim and not taking responsibility for things around us. T.O.B. is a bad habit some folks learn as a child and never leave behind. However, it is a habit that can be broken.

The flip side of transferring blame is to take personal responsibility. It’s the mature person’s way to react. It’s reflected in the maxim, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

A story from the college career of quarterback Tim Tebow is worth telling. Tebow’s 2008 Florida Gators were upset in an early season loss to Ole Miss. At the postgame press conference, Tebow sat behind the microphone and said emotionally, “I’m sorry . . . I promise you one thing, a lot of good will come out of this.  You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will for the rest of this season . . .”

Tebow’s half-minute speech is referred to as “The Promise.”  It’s not surprising that Florida won its final eight games, resulting in the National Championship. “The Promise” is a shining example of taking responsibility and moving forward.

I’ve just finished a fascinating book called One Hundred and Forty Days until Hiroshima. It is a behind-the-scenes look at both the American and Japanese governments in the final months of World War II.

One of the central characters in the book is the new American president, Harry Truman. Facing many doubters, Truman reveals a strength of character and willingness to take personal responsibility when making difficult decisions. This is evidenced later by the famous sign on Truman’s desk: “The Buck Stops Here.”

Basically, our life choices run from “The Buck Stops Here” to “Transfer of Blame.”  We’ll be wise to make the correct choice.

This story, written years ago, is still my favorite Christmas story. Enjoy and Merry Christmas to

you and your family.  -Curt Iles

The Best Christmas Gift

“The only true gift is a portion of yourself.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson.

            With sweaty palms, I wheel my pickup onto Eleanor Andrews Road. I feel as if it’s the first week of fifth grade.

Why am I nervous? I’m a man on a mission: delivering a Christmas tree to my favorite grade school teacher. I fell in love with Eleanor Andrews during my fifth-grade year at East Beauregard School.

She was a legendary teacher who’d tutored two generations of Dry Creek and Sugartown children. Mrs. Andrews was from what we called the “Old School.” She had a well-deserved, fierce reputation of being stern and taking no gruff or lip off anyone.

I quickly saw how rigid her classroom was. Everything was “down the line.” She was the captain of the ship, and no one questioned that.

I also noticed something else: beneath that gruff exterior were warm, smiling eyes. She loved watching students learn and leading them into new knowledge.

I learned to love writing, and my love of reading deepened. Being the mother of three rowdy boys, she had the knack of letting country boys know it was okay to enjoy books and learning.

And I learned to love Eleanor Andrews. During that year, 1967, she became my favorite teacher. Years later, she still is.

#   #   #

This December morning, I received the expected call from Mrs. Andrews.  “Curt, when you get a chance, drop by. I’ve got something for you.”

“Do you want me to bring your tree?”

“Yes, I’m ready for it.”

I know that the best present of the season is now ready.

It’s time for Christmas Jelly.
Back in October, I tagged a special Christmas tree for her. Knowing her exact standards in a tree, I carefully selected the one I thought she’d like best. Holding my saw, I walked around it one more time making sure it was the right height, width, and color.

That’s why I’m nervous. I want her to approve of the tree. I’m once again in the fifth grade waiting to hand in an essay.
I remove the tree from the truck, shaking it for loose needles.

“Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you.” She greets me with that special smile I’ve known over the years. She makes me feel as if I’m the most important person in the world. That’s why she’s always been my favorite teacher.
She nods at the kitchen table. “I’ve got something for you.”

I see the basket full of colorful jars of homemade jelly.

Muscadine, mayhaw, even crabapple. Mixed in are jars of green pepper jelly, and tomato chow-chow. Topping it off is a Ziploc bag of her specialty candy: chocolate—“Martha Washington’s.”
We visit over coffee in the manner that special friends do. We always seem to pick up right where we left off. That’s how the best friendships are.

After two more cups of coffee, I put her tree in its corner of honor. Nodding at her fireplace, I remind her to water it.

“Curt, it’s the perfect tree.”

“You really like it?”

“It’s just right.” We now enter the next phase of this yearly ritual. She reaches for her purse. “How much do I owe you?’

“Nothing. The best deal I ever make is trading a tree for the best homemade jelly in Dry Creek.”
We hug, and I leave with my armload of jelly jars and a lightened heart. At Highway 113, I pause as a log truck roars by. Emerson’s quote comes back to me. “The only true gift is a portion of yourself.”

I touch the decorated jars and am reminded of what the spirit of Christmas is truly about.

It’s about giving.

Giving of ourselves.

Sharing what we have.

Giving handmade gifts that come from the heart.