A Piedmont Porchlight Story
Folks wear expensive watches these days. Their telephones tell them the time before they even ask. Cars, microwaves, coffee makers… Seems like everything in the world has a clock built into it now.
Growing up in Piedmont, we had one too. It just happened to hang in a church steeple. You could hear that old bell all over town. Not every ring meant the same thing. Some mornings it simply reminded everybody that another day had gotten underway. At noon it told shopkeepers it might be time to think about dinner. On Sunday mornings it called folks to worship.
Children learned pretty quickly that when the bell started ringing, you’d better quit whatever foolishness you were into and head toward the house. Your mama had already heard it. So had your daddy. There wasn’t much point pretending otherwise.
But that old bell did more than keep time. It measured life. Wedding bells always sounded a little lighter somehow. Maybe that was just my imagination. Or, maybe joy really does carry differently on the wind.
Funeral bells… Well, they traveled slower. Softer. Even the birds seemed to pause for a moment. I’ve never figured out whether that was true or whether my heart simply heard them that way.
One Christmas Eve, I remember standing outside First Baptist Church just after sunset. The air had that sharp little bite December brings to northeast Alabama. Windows glowed with warm yellow light. Children fidgeted in coats they were already trying to escape. Then the bell began to ring. One… Two… Three… Its sound drifted across Terrapin Creek and rolled toward Dugger Mountain. For just a little while, the whole town felt wrapped up in that music.
Nobody hurried. Nobody checked a watch. We simply listened. Funny thing about church bells. They never ask whether you’re a member. They ring for everybody. The fellow opening his hardware store. The waitress carrying coffee to Booth Three. The widow sitting quietly on her porch. The children chasing one another down Ladiga Street. Even the old undertaker sweeping the front steps at Magnolia Mortuary.
That bell belonged to all of us. One afternoon I asked Preacher Boone how old it was. He laughed. “Older than me; that narrows it down some.” He grinned. “Not nearly enough, though.”
He reached over and patted the old wooden pew. “You know, that bell has announced just about every important thing that’s ever happened in this town.” I’d never thought about it that way. It welcomed babies who grew up to become grandparents. It celebrated weddings that lasted fifty and sixty years. It wept for folks whose names are now carved into weathered stones beneath cedar trees. It rang through wars. Droughts. Ice storms. Homecomings. Revivals. Graduations. And quiet Tuesday afternoons when nothing at all seemed to happen.
Only now do I realize everything was happening. Life doesn’t wait for special occasions. It unfolds one ordinary day at a time. That old bell knew it. It never rushed. Never lingered. It simply marked the passing of another hour and trusted us to fill it well.
Nowadays the sound doesn’t carry quite as far. Traffic’s louder. Air conditioners hum. Televisions chatter. The world’s become awfully noisy. But every now and then, if I’m sitting on my porch just before supper, the breeze comes out of the east. And there it is. One familiar bell. Still doing the same faithful job it’s been doing for generations. I stop whatever I’m doing.
Not because I need to know the time. Because I need reminding that some things are worth listening for. I’ve come to believe the finest clocks don’t just tell us what hour it is. They remind us what matters during the hours we’ve been given. That old church bell never once told me whether it was ten minutes after three. It told me somebody was getting married. Somebody had gone home to the Lord. Somebody was gathering to sing. Somebody was praying. Somebody needed comforting. Somebody was celebrating. In other words, it wasn’t measuring time. It was measuring life.
And if you ask me…
No clock ever built has done a finer job than that old bell hanging over Piedmont.
