Writings By Phil

As kids on the Big Springs Ranch my older brother, Paul, and I used to play far from the house. The ranch lay in the ancient path where the lava flowed the last time Mt. Shasta blew it’s top centuries ago. In green pastures, dotted with white-faced Herefords (cows), piles of volcanic rock, seeded with juniper trees, bulged from the ground. The combination of stone and trees, though rugged, made perfect fortifications for young boys playing cowboys and Indians, army, Two Musketeers or whatever make-believe game caught our fancy that day. If our younger brothers came looking for us we could hide, undetected in one of our forts.

That was a day long before cell phones. It was even before walkie talkies! We often played out of ear shot and if my mother yelled as loud as she could, calling us to supper or to go to town, there was no way we could have heard her.

To solve the problem, my parents found an old cow bell. When it was time to eat, my mother rang that bell. It’s clanking tintinnabulation could be heard in the far extremes of the realm in which we played. When we heard that bell, we knew we better skedaddle down those cow paths and get home as quickly as possible.

It was during those long ago days, when my father was a rancher during the week and a preacher on Sunday, that my mother learned a new song. I remember her singing it as she worked around the house and did outside chores. I’m guessing she even sang it as a special in church!

“When I was just a boy/girl in days of childhood, I used to play till evening shadows come. Then winding down an old familiar pathway, I heard my mother call at set of sun:

Chorus: Come home, come home, It’s supper time, The shadows lengthen fast. Come home, come home, It’s supper time, We’re going home at last.

One day beside her bedside I was kneeling, And angel wings were winnowing the air. She heard the call for supper time in heaven, And I know she’s waiting for me there.

In visions now I see her standing yonder, And her familiar voice I hear once more. The banquet table’s ready up in heaven, It’s supper time upon the golden shore.”

I haven’t heard or thought of this song for decades, but this afternoon it popped back into my head and lodged there, playing over and over. Why? Because this morning at 5:45 my Mother’s Heavenly Father rang His golden cowbell and called her home!

Doris Louise (Haley) Burns Born March 7, 1924 Called to supper in Heaven, August 6, 2020, Age 96, Last of Eleven- nine sisters and one brother. There was one big family reunion in Glory today!