Our grandmother, Mama Kate as we called her, would always tell wonderful family stories when we were growing up. She took great delight in repeating the escapades of her three sons. And there were many. Some would make her laugh so hard she could barely tell the story, but there was one I must share that she did not find humorous.

In those days of the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, communities were small and tight-knit. Relationships were close. Marriages between neighbors were the norm. People helped one another.

Some of my grandparents’ dearest friends were Mr. George and Mrs. Florence Coan. They lived right in the middle of our little community, Mineral Springs. Mr. Coan ran a store. It was a happy day when we went to visit, because we always got to visit that small store too. My Pappy would almost always buy candy for us.

But the story I tell today happened years before I got to visit that store. For my Dad and uncles to be teenagers, it had to happen sometime in the ‘30s. And it was in their teen years they got into trouble with the Coan boys.

It was Halloween. The boys decided to have a little “fun”. Now in those days “boy mean-ness” was understood. Fellas just have to do their share of pranks and silliness. It’s just in them. I’m not talking about crime or intentional harm…boy hood pranks, that’s all.

Those Tyson boys headed to Mineral Springs just about 2 miles from their farm. The Coan boys were on the ready. I can’t remember if Trick or Treating happened as we know it, but I think I remember they did get treats from some folks. They were not interested in Treats.

Now you must remember that indoor plumbing was almost unheard of. An indoor bathroom was a luxury. Mineral Springs was a community with outhouses. So there was an outhouse behind every home in Mineral Springs. Well the next morning, almost every outhouse had been thrown over…not one was left standing.

Mama Kate never revealed who” ratted” out the Coan and Tyson boys. The thing she remembered most was that she and Ms. Florence were not going to be able to show their faces at the Women’s Society at church.

The part of the story that always impacted me most was, Pappy and Mr. George went through the community and made arrangements for those boys to repair all those outhouses. They stepped up and found a solution…a payment the boys could fulfill on their own. Those two fathers stood in the gap and made the way for the young men to make reparation and for Mama Kate and Ms. Florence to go back to the Women’s Missionary Society at church.

I think about Pappy and the father he was. The way he protected all of us, showed us a loving, just father who would make the way for restoration and forgiveness. (Don’t get me wrong. There was also a reminder, a spanking, for them to think twice before they did that again. Appropriate corporal punishment was not frowned upon in those days.) But it was the wisdom and the willingness to find forgiveness and restoration I always think of in Mama Kate’s story of the outhouses.