told His followers the false prophets would bear bad fruit, so watch them closely. Do not judge, He told His followers, but be wise. Be fruit inspectors.
âYou will know them by their fruits,â Jesus taught.
Then I sat in the Quaker silence thinking of Billyâs fruitâself-gratification before Godâs glory, ignorance above wisdom, trickery over truth.
As he prepared to leave earlier that morning, Billy had told me he was booked through the year.
âThe calls are rolling in,â he confided. âIâm thinking of upping my fee.â
That Tuesday, three people came to prayer meeting. I wondered why it was that only three people cared to gather to talk with God, while the Worldâs Shortest Evangelist could pack a church full.
I tried not to be discouraged. But I had an inkling how Jesus must have felt when all the folks fled Him at the end, chasing off to find someone a bit more fun to follow.
I know one thing for sure: Cowboy Bob, the Wild West Evangelist, was right all along. Sometimes weâre just low-down, rotten cowpokes, needing to be marked with the kingdom brand.
Six
Uly
M y best friend in childhood was Uly Grant. At school we sat in alphabetical order, so Uly sat just behind me in Fern Hamptonâs first-grade classroom.
I had known Uly before that because his family owned Harmonyâs hardware store, the Grant Hardware Emporium. It was a big brick building with a display window full of Zebco fishing rods, Schwinn bicycles, and Case pocketknives. I would stand and look at them on Saturday mornings. There was a Miss Hardware calendar back in the corner office, which I wasnât permitted to stand and look at.
Uly Grant was alleged to be a direct descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and United States president. The town folklore was that the generalâs son, Ulysses S. Grant II, began the Grant Hardware Emporium in 1872. Like his father, the younger Grant yearned for life on the battlefield. But then he fell in love with a Quaker from our townâa Miss Penelope Hastings. She was unusually beautiful, andhe was so stricken with love that he went to her father and asked for her hand in marriage.
âSheâs not mine to give away,â her father said. âAsk her yourself.â
So he did, and Penelope declined his proposal. She told him, âI cannot in good conscience marry a man whose business is the destruction of human life.â
Those old Quakers were not to be trifled with.
Ulysses S. Grant II tried to forget Penelope, but couldnât. Her beauty was etched on his mind. In 1870, he surrendered his military commission and they were married at the Harmony Friends meetinghouse. President Grant was not present, in deep opposition to his son marrying a Quaker and fathering pacifist children.
They stayed in Harmony, where U. S. Grant II became a Quaker and founded the Grant Hardware Emporium in 1872. He built it on the southwest corner of the town square, where it still sitsâone block west of the Harmony Public Library and next to the Johnny Mackey Funeral Home.
In the early years of their marriage, accounts of President Grantâs drunken behavior reached Harmony, though the subject was never raised in his sonâs presence. His son was grieved and pledged never to imbibe. Even as I was growing up, we avoided the topic. When we studied the U.S. presidents in sixth grade and came to Ulysses S. Grant, Miss Fishbeck gave a nervous smile, glanced at Uly, and said, âUlysses S. Grant was our eighteenth president. He was a great general and a fine man, except for one weakness which need not be mentioned.â
Then she moved quickly to Rutherford B. Hayes, who never drank anything except water and lemonade.
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I t was the custom in Harmony for Mr. Squier, the history teacher, to take the eighth graders on a bus trip the week after school let out. Weâd work all through the year raising moneyâselling popcorn