Altar Call – Opelika-Auburn News
Walter Albritton
Retirement gives you time to visit old friends and sit
by a fire
Retirement
is not so bad after all. Last week my wife and I spent two nights in a very
nice hunting lodge over in west
The Landrum
Creek Lodge is out a ways from
We slept in
a bed
Some land
owners grow cows.
Roy is
proudest of his walnut trees. It takes a lot of faith to plant walnut trees.
Roy is my age and he knows his walnut trees will be harvested by his children,
and perhaps even his grandchildren.
We sat in
the great room of the lodge, chatting and renewing our friendship before a
large, stone fireplace. There was no fire of course. But I imagined one, and
hopefully we can go back in February and enjoy the fire I wished for in
September.
February is
as early as we can go back. Some serious deer hunters will take over the lodge
soon, and they’ll be drawing a bead on those bucks until the end of January.
Roy has
worked hard to upgrade the deer population on his place. Deer are plentiful,
but it takes careful planning to raise deer that can produce those prize racks
that hunters want to bring home.
Handsome
bucks are being used these days to breed deer in the same way that prize bulls
are used to breed better quality cattle. Roy showed us an example of how the
antlers of one buck had improved greatly over a three year period.
Roy and I
became friends at Auburn University more than 50 years ago. He recently retired
after a long career as a chemist with Gulf States Paper Company.
We talked
at the lodge about many things, about life, and family, and how we finally
learned to treasure friends more than things. We talked about the debt we owe
to our parents, and to many others who have influenced us along the journey.
Roy’s mom,
Janie, is 87 now, recently confined to a nursing home, and struggling to regain
her strength. But her mind is still
good. She was quite alert, warm and friendly when I visited her in the hospital
not long ago.
Janie
learned to paint well in her later years. We admired many of her lovely
paintings during a brief visit in her home nearby the lodge.
Over the
years I have known a number of solid Christians, the kind we call “the salt of
the earth.” Janie has been one, and her godly influence in Roy’s life is easy
to see.
Before we
came home Roy took us over to Ezell’s Fish Camp. Those folks have been cooking
good catfish at that rustic place on the Tombigbee River since 1937. For supper
down by the riverside you simply can’t beat fried catfish.
Every night
he finds his way to the nursing home to feed his mother. He remembers that when
he could not care for himself, his mother tended to his needs. Now he does not
neglect her.
You never
have to wonder where
I plan to
tell