"Clyde Burned the
Barn Down"
and
A Lesson on Tithing
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One summer when I was four years old, the threshers were at our farm.
The crew that ran the outfit and pitched the wheat into the separator slept
in
the barn
lofts of the farms where they were threshing. The thresher brought along
a cook-shack which was usually operated by the wife of the man who owned
the threshing rig,
and a helper who helped with the cooking. The threshing crew was fed there.
This particular year, the couple who owned the threshing rig had a little boy
about two or three years older than I. One morning while the threshers were in
the field, the older boy and I crawled up in a hay rack which my father had pulled
up to a large door at the end of the barn. Hay was pitched into the barn loft
through the large door. I was too small to climb on up into the loft, but the
older boy could. I stood looking into the loft wondering what he had in mind.
The threshing crew had their suitcases in the loft, and the other boy started
going through them. He found a box of matches in one of them. Since matches are
a lot of fun to play with, and the day had become rather boring, the older boy
would bring the matches over, and we would pop them on the door sill with a heavy
hook on a short chain we had found somewhere.
That was a lot of fun for two little boys. Since we had no use for the matches
after we popped them, we dropped them down through the hole into the hay-filled
manger below where the horses were fed. It was not long until we had a good
fire going in the manger below us. We quickly decided this was no place for
us to
be. The older boy ran up by the cook-shack and sat down on the ground, I
guess to emulate the air of innocence. I headed for the house as fast as
my little
short four-year-old legs would carry me and ran into the house yelling, "Mama,
Mama, the barn’s on fiah!"
It was only a few minutes until the crew in the field saw the smoke, and
came up to the barn as fast as they could. We had a beautiful pony tied in
another
stall who panicked and pulled back on the tether until it could not be untied.
We had to wait until a man came with a pocket knife and cut the rope. We
saved the pony, but the barn, workers’ suitcases, harnesses, and everything,
including their bedding, was a total loss.
Insurance rebuilt the barn, but I have never lived down "burning the barn
down" when I was a little boy. We moved away in about ten or twelve
years. I have heard, since, that the house in which I was born and lived
for about
fifteen years had burned down and was rebuilt and subsequently burned down
again. I think
it was rebuilt a second time. The place must have had a hex on it; however,
I had a happy childhood in it.
We never did have a set salary while we were [pastoring] in Grace Chapel
[church, Wichita, Kansas, in the mid-1930s], but after eighteen months or
two years,
we were getting about ten dollars a week. I needed another car and bought
a better one on which I was paying two dollars a week. One week I did not
have enough money to pay my tithe and also pay the two dollars I was supposed
to pay on my car. I went ahead and paid my tithe, hoping somehow I could
pick up a little work or somehow manage to pay my car payment which was
not due for a few days. On Tuesday, while I was gone, someone knocked on
the door. When Bea went to the door, a nicely dressed woman was standing
at the door.
After greetings the lady said, "Is your husband the pastor of the little
church up the street?" Bea replied in the affirmative, after which
the lady said, "I don't go to your church, and I probably never will,
but the Lord told me to come over and bring you this money." She handed
Bea two or three dollars, and said, "Good-bye," and left. We inquired
of the neighbors, and no one had ever seen her, and we never saw her again.
I believe that, because I put God first, He honored my obedience and sent
the lady over with just the money we needed.
Dawson, Clyde C. (2000). My Journey. Olathe, KS: Precision Printing, page 39. (Used by permission.)