Davison's Doodle

Sabbatical: Week 4

This is the last week of sabbatical segment 1. I’ve completed most of my writing projects and later today my books, Sacred Steps, will be available from a link on this site. They are in the Apple bookstore and available now. My thought projects continue to simmer. You can find those in an earlier post. Friday, I’ll be visiting H2O for my exit float to transition out of sabbatical. I don’t know about you, but my dreams tell me about my stress level. I must be anxious. I am having “chase” dreams which are a normal occurrence for me when the details of an event or assignment begin to weigh. I’ve done pretty good clearing the detail clutter from consciousness during sabbatical, but the subconscious is a powerful thing and it is telling me that the work of my vocation is beginning soon.

Typically, I don’t see the CBS Sunday Morning broadcast. By 9am, I am either at a congregation or still traversing Oklahoma on my way to a congregation. Yesterday, the CBS Sunday Morning Show turned 40. I think it is the best Sunday morning show a person could watch. It is “60 Minutes” without the stopwatch or politics. I can remember my parents watching “On the Road with Charles Kuralt” which appears to be the foundational idea of CBS Sunday Morning. When I have caught some of “Sunday Today with Willie Geist” it seems like NBC is borrowing from CBS. Hat tip.

During the 90 minutes of memories, back of the house interviews, and clips of the reporting two things caught my attention. First, the memoriam segment was short, and all those remembered were born pre 1935. Their long tenure at CBS, and in life, a testament to the good that a news agency can do when it decides to be less sensational and more educational, even, maybe a bit spiritual at least with this show. An example: the final two minutes called, “Moment of Nature”.

It is this aspect that stirred my memory and imagination. How are the last two minutes of the show captured, created, and make it to air. You can watch the segment, Capturing the “Sunday Morning” Moments of Nature. It is where this story opens that shook a memory from my youth on Caddo Lake. This expanse of natural water shares the border of Northeast Texas and Northwest Louisiana. Caddo is where my father’s family and extended family spent weekends. My father’s family loved the lake. I’ve seen old movies of Pop (my father) water skiing. There is one clip on that roll where my parents, the newly married couple, slept under the stars and my mom is waking up Pop.

Caddo Lake. I don’t know how the family came to camp on that little spot of land off Highway 1. They didn’t own it. You turned off the two lane road onto a dirt road into the woods. That path ended at a little lagoon where family would set up popup campers and tents around the perimeter of the community campfire. The lagoon and little channel deep enough for boats was protected by giant cypress trees. My mother tells a story of trying to keep me, the newborn, cool one summer in the dense, humid air of western Louisiana. That place, that lake, is hallowed ground. My paternal grandfather, whose name I carry as a middle, was killed by a drunk driver heading back to Shreveport for work. I was not quite two years old. I’m told that Pop is a replica of Papaw. I think of them both when the first cast kisses the water and the stillness of fishing begins.

With both sides of our family in the area of Caddo Lake, we spent time there when my sister and I were growing up. I remember the great monsoon rains that made it impossible to get out of the camp area by car or truck. Pop’s youngest brother used his new green bass boat to extract families from the camping area and deposit to the boat ramp and waiting cars. Where did the cars come from and who was driving? Everyone I knew was stuck in the mud. And, when we were older there were two summers that my parents borrowed Uncle Robert and Aunt Dixie’s houseboat for a week of vacation.

It is interesting how the memory works. I don’t remember dates, but events associated with places, music, people, and then build out to find the date, approximate or exact. My memories of being at Caddo were awakened by this seven minutes of TV. They were always there. An image of Caddo followed with these opening words from the report, “The sun has just barely come up, but photographer Scot Miller is already out on the lake with his camera. “This is church!” he exclaims.”

Church indeed.