Dalton RobertsThis morning I had coffee with my late friend Joe Anderson.
Cousin Joe, a great blues singer from New Orleans, wrote "Some people believe in reincarnation, but I say when you're dead you're done."
I disagree with him. When God gives life to somebody, I don't think they are ever done. They and their deeds live on forever, and in many ways, they are even more alive as we tune into the things they said and did -- the lives they lived among us.
So that's why I say I had coffee with my old pal Joe Anderson this morning.
Oral Roberts often spoke of a "point of contact," and today Joe and I had a point of contact. And it was a coffee percolator.
In something I wrote, I lamented today's silent coffeemakers that only make a tiny ding when they have finished making the coffee. I told how much I missed the Maxwell House ads with the little perky percolator that kept pumping the coffee up into a tiny glass at the top to the rhythm of a little happy tune.
I hunted one of those percolators in stores and in yard sales. When I get something on my mind that way, I relentlessly pursue it. But I never found one.
One day Joe showed up at my house. "I saw where you wanted a percolator like those in an old Maxwell House commercial, and I saw one while shopping, and here it is," he said as he set down on my desk a brand new GE 169165 percolator with that little glass bubble on top! I tried to pay him, but he would not accept my money.
"I ain't accepting no Communist money today," he kidded as he sat down for a chat. Among other things, he told me he was terminally ill.
Yes, he called me a Communist, but Joe and I had flung some awful epithets at each other over the years when we argued politics. Once he really did call me a Communist, and I'd bet I had called him a right-wing idiot. Joe had a heart as big as a basketball, but he cut no one any slack in political debate. Our friendship had advanced to the point that we could verbally brutalize each other and still remain friends. To tell the truth, if I had run into Joe in those days and he hadn't let the blade down on me, I would have thought he didn't like me any more.
Well, today Glenda and I made our first pot of coffee with Joe's percolator, and when it started pumping the coffee into the little glass thingamajig, I declare to you it seemed Joe joined me there in the kitchen and was grinning from ear to ear. My Cherokee mother taught me to sense presences, and I clearly felt Joe there with me.
Now, I'm not asking you to share my beliefs. But don't expect me to deny things I have experienced in my life. I have often sensed the presence of friends who have departed, and Hebrews 12:1 tells me I am not a fool.
I'm sure it was Joe. But come to think of it, he didn't put the saber to me.
What's wrong, Joe? Please come back and say anything you wish to me. It will be just fine, old pal.
Email Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com.