Image by Joseph Mucira from Pixabay
“You know, I never thought about tea being made on a grill,” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said on the phone, “but Cousin Harry and Cousin Maggie are just different kinds of people and it seems to be working for them.”
“That's the Lee-of-the-mountain stuff,” said Eleanor's eleven-year-old friend Velma Trent. “Some of my Jubilee-of-the-mountain relatives are the same way – it's why Dad barbecues so well. Get them any kind of fire, and they just be doing anything with it.”
“OK, so – well, if I get off the phone, I can make and send you a video.”
“Great, Eleanor – call me back.”
So Eleanor Ludlow quietly took up an observation post as Col. H.F. Lee checked the metal teapot he had sitting on one of the many barbecue grills at Jonathan Lofton Memorial Park, once Major Jonathan Lofton's personal residence.
The Lofton Brothers had mountain blood in them too, and had brought all sorts of things down into valley life when they had settled in as the richest men in their families and later, in southern Virginia. Old Major Lofton had loved to barbecue, a habit unheard among the wealthy in those days but common among the poor. Nonetheless, the old peg-legged major was a master of the craft. His old, massive grills from the 19th century had been kept functional with many replicas added to them in his memory when his always slave-free plantation, Big Loft, was turned into a state park and the name given to the city that, well before his death, had begun to grow up nearby.
“Of course, the Lofton brothers were interesting anyway – that mountain blood was mixed,” Col. Lee was saying to ten-year-old Andrew Ludlow as the boy took notes and the colonel sliced and chopped ginger. “General Lofton found out for certain only a few weeks before he died in 1864, but Major Lofton lived to laugh about it until 1901. It explained a lot of things, and let him relax in his life. The Lofton brothers and their sister Beatrice were one-sixteenth Black, one-sixteenth Native. Their mixed relatives raised them after old James Lofton got mad that his sallow eldest son – not much older than you then – would dare to defend a slave from getting beaten to death. Joseph took the beating, and he, Jonathan, Beatrice, and their mother got put out, and she took them back to the mountains.
“Joseph survived, and he adopted what his baby siblings grew up knowing – God loves and blesses all kinds of people. This is why the Lofton brothers were different: God brought them out.”
Col. Lee took the ginger and slid it into a big metal teapot on the grill, in which the water was already boiling, and then added a stick of cinnamon and a clove.
“That ginger tea will get ready while we eat,” he said. “That and some of our local Honey Heights honey made at Fruitland Memorial Park from the spring, and we are set.”
“Wow,” Andrew said. “That's a lot to learn, but I guess God is always bringing people out that want to come out.”
“And sometimes even when they don't know – but see, Andrew, here's what happens: when you are called out, you're going. Your Lee-of-the-mountain great-great-great-grandfather, Horatio, was only 16 when he left the Tidewater region of Virginia and came up to the mountains in late 1865, following his great-uncle and our Big Uncle Robert's track. His second cousin Samuel Sydney Lee came into the valley here in 1869. Both of them refused to get involved in the turn back to as near slavery as possible when it came in the 1870s – they too had been called out.”
“Wow,” Andrew said. “I guess this is why Papa has gotten so different too. He used to be much bigger on Confederate flags and red hats and such, but he got called out.”
“Snatched,” Capt. R.E. Ludlow corrected. “See, you play around long enough and you get snatched, Andrew. Listen to what your cousin is saying. Be like Joseph, and Horatio, and Samuel. I wasn't raised hearing all this truth like your Cousin Harry was, but you are hearing it now. I got snatched – with your grandmother here pushing me from behind – so we're already out. But as a man you will have to respond to God for yourself on these matters.”
Andrew considered this, and his life decision at his tender age was captured on video because Eleanor had forgotten all about the tea.
“I think I'm good, Papa and Cousin Harry. I've been through enough people like James Lofton's type of people. They don't know God and they don't care about people. I'm 10, but I think I'm good on all that. I've seen enough. I've seen enough of what people like that have done to Eleanor, George, Edwina, Amanda, Grayson, and Robert, too. I'll be like Joseph and Jonathan Lofton: grow up, get strong in every way, and give people refuge and a way out, and take care of my siblings and keep them safe. I love God and I care about people, so I'm staying right over here. I'm staying right over here, where God called me, and us.”
And he would. Andrew Ludlow, like many others in Lofton County history, had realized what he was called to young, and would stick with it … and his grandfather, knowing in his soul that it was done, went a good ways off in the park and wept.
“You snatched me out in time, Father,” he said. “Thank You – he will never have the regret, the wounds, the scars, the struggles I have – and his siblings will rally around him! Thank You!”
Meanwhile...
“That was a whole lot,” Velma Trent said when she got the video, “but it's gotta be the best and most informational ginger tea recipe ever!”
“And all true,” Mrs. Melissa Trent said as she wiped a tear from her eyes. “Both our Stepforth and your Jubilee relatives told us all this truth.”
Meanwhile even more, big brother Melvin Trent had turned on a beat so that his baby siblings Milton (9) and Gracie (8) could dance and sing.
“Go, Andrew, go, Andrew, go! Go, Andrew, go, Andrew, go! Go-gogo-go-go-gogo-go! Go-gogo-go-go-gogo-go! Go, Andrew, go, Andrew, go! Go, Andrew, go, Andrew, go!”
Velma put that back on the line for Eleanor, and then Eleanor put it on speaker for Andrew and all their little siblings, so Capt. Ludlow returned to find all his grandchildren and his wife and Cousin Maggie dancing.
“You know what – why not!” he said as his Cousin Harry – a colonel, mind you – secured the food being warmed up on the grills and then joined the dancing.
“Look – Papa is coming in – turn the beat up, Melvin!” Eleanor cried.
It was a day of joy that would make the news everywhere there were people interested in such things in Lofton County and up and down the Appalachians … and also, in Heaven, too, that another son in Christ had realized that evil was not what he had been called to in the world, but to good, while still a wee lad of just 10.